🌈 The Fractal Story Engine | Society & Future | (28) SF-005-S
In the Hall of Forms, under a ceiling that shimmered like the underside of a pearl, the voices of choosing mothers echoed like birdcall through fog. The hall did not end in walls but disappeared into arches of light, where possibility braided itself into shape.
Each year, the Constellary House held the Personality Auction. Mothers in velvet cloaks and pollen-stained gloves stepped forward in turn, their palms smeared with the currency of longing. Fathers paced behind them with their eyes shut tight, whispering names they would not remember.
Aster came alone.
She wore no velvet, no gloves, no house crest. Only a linen shift and the memory of her sister, born years before with laughter preselected, set to never question. Her sister had died young, having never once felt confusion. That had been the cost.
Aster stepped into the bidding circle as the auction began.
One by one, the traits emerged.
Wonder came first: a gossamer thread rising from a bowl of flame. It danced above the crowd like a firefly too shy to land. “Bidding begins at one grief,” said the herald, a thin man with lenses for eyes. “Increments of ache thereafter.”
Hands went up.
Aster did not move.
Discipline followed, hard and blue as a steel prism. It hummed with quiet blades. “Three regrets,” said the herald, “or two if bound with Guilt.” A nobleman near the dais shouted his bid and the prism pulsed, then vanished into the folds of his son’s becoming.
Charisma, Melancholy, Loyalty, Hunger, Detachment, Clarity, Devotion. Each trait ascended in turn, each devoured by bids. Aster watched mothers sob with triumph. Fathers placed tokens of memory into glass chests. The children-to-be flickered in the mirrored floor below, pre-scripted and pristine.
At last, the herald called for final offerings. One last trait would be revealed, a rare echo of the ancient self.
The fire dimmed. The hall shivered.
Out from the coals rose a stone wrapped in vines, pulsing like a buried heart.
“Choice,” said the herald. “True choice. Unbound. Wild. Without scaffolding.”
The hall fell still.
No bids.
“Cost is unmeasured. Payment is unknown.”
Aster stepped forward. Her voice was quiet, but it held.
“I offer my future name.”
The herald blinked, once. The room darkened.
“And if the child becomes cruel?” whispered a woman near the fountain.
“Then I will meet them as a stranger,” said Aster.
The stone cracked. Light spilled from within. Not brilliance, but texture. Possibility. It rolled across the floor and touched Aster’s bare foot.
Far below the hall, in the mirrored cradle where the unborn waited, a ripple passed through one figure. That unborn blinked. Not because it was written in, but because it could.
Later, as the hall emptied, the herald approached Aster. His lenses clicked once, then twice.
“Why surrender the shape?”
Aster held no answer. Only a quiet certainty that what grows wild might one day choose to bloom.
And in a distant corner of the hall, where forgotten bids sometimes lingered like pollen on old windows, the cracked stone continued to glow.