The Cost of Better

I watched the Evaluation with steady eyes. Fairies flocked around the square, shoulder to shoulder, a living crush of bodies pressing in from every side, each one wearing a thin layer of borrowed courage. You could tell from their ears. Fairy ears always perk up when they are anxious.

More of them poured in, filling the enormous Aurex Square with fear and desperation. The square’s iconic star of gold tiles disappeared beneath the restless patter of hundreds of pairs of wingboots, their constant scuff and shuffle rising into a low, uneven hum. From above, it would have looked like a swarm of ants disturbed mid-trail, breaking formation without direction.

For a society that had prided itself on advancement, they were remarkably disorderly.

The chaos only stilled near the Pinnacle. A perfect circle lay around the tall structure, two hundred meters wide, untouched. It repelled all the creators, an unspoken boundary. A contradictory sight, for it was the reason why they were here. For Approval.

It was time.

The shuffling slowed. One by one, the creators settled into their designated ranks, lines forming where there had been none. Their eyes left nothing unsaid. Tired. Strained. Resigned. They had made their peace with their constructs.

The Red Moon had risen.

The 127th Evaluation had begun.

I thought back to my Evaluation six red moons ago. When the Pinnacle had taken my construct and approved it. A Prime. With it, I was bestowed a higher rank, an Originator.

The bellowing bell tore through my thoughts, dragging me back to the present, where others face the same trial. The same trial we all faced as the cost of living in Novaire.

Creators stepped forward with their constructs. The Pinnacle received them without pause. It identified the category, cross-referenced it against the current benchmark, measured efficiency, impact, and novelty, and decided. If it was better, it became a Prime. If not, it was discarded.

For decades, creators had brought their best work. Inventions. Medicines. Designs. Art. Everything was fed into the same iron logic to decide whether it was a contribution or a waste. The Pinnacle was the arbiter of progress, for this was Novaire, where today’s miracle was tomorrow’s obsolescence.

I ascended the narrow flight of stairs to my lab, the faces from the Evaluation flickering through my thoughts like a faulty projection, appearing and dissolving before they could settle. I pushed the door open. Instantly cold, stale air struck my face, dry as something long sealed. The room felt larger than I remembered. Emptier. The long worktable stretched across the space, bare from end to end.

The wall clock hung above it, its brass hands fixed in place. 9 P.M.

This space had once been crowded with ideas. Papers spilling over each other, sketches layered into stacks, revisions pinned and repinned. Every day, something new to test. Something to improve. Trial after trial, refining what had already been refined, tightening specifications for things that had never needed tightening.

Now, a thin film of dust lay undisturbed across the surface. I reached for a caliper resting in the drawer. The cold metal bit into my skin. I adjusted my grip, out of habit, or what was left of it. My fingers faltered. Too light.

It slipped.

The instrument struck the floor and shattered the silence with it.

I stared at the fragments. When had it become unfamiliar?

A dry laugh escaped me. Years of practice evaporated. The logic of the machine had finally escaped me.

Robotics had once been a promise. I had wanted to build things that worked for us, that freed us. Gave us time.

Instead, I had spent decades building things that took it all.

And still, nothing I once made was enough to keep me here.

My earliest motivations for inventing no longer resonated with me, worn down by repetition. The joys of creation, the quiet thrill of an idea sparking, the satisfaction of assembling something only I understood, the proud feeling that it was mine. Numbness. From now knowing that creation had become repetition. Endless variations.

I looked back at the clock.

9 P.M.

It hadn’t advanced

The next red moon would be my last, I thought. The 7th Red moon cycle was the Originator cycle. I moved through Novaire’s backstreets. The main roads were too bright now, too exposed for someone like me.

After each cycle, fairies drifted out of Novaire, quietly unmaking their lives here. Seeders had to submit a construct every Red Moon, Shapers every third, and Originators every seventh. To fail too many cycles without producing something that became a Prime meant your place in Novaire began to vanish.

A portion of fairies left Novaire, crushed not by a single failure, but by the constant demand to outperform themselves again and again, where being good meant nothing, and being the best was far from unattainable. And if attained was not for long. This economy had become a space for the few exceptional rather than the largely capable.

Those who couldn’t endure it left.

They were called Echoes.

While most Echoes left, a select few built a parallel life for themselves within the hidden advantages of Novaire. The Nether.

With the amount of free time on my hands, I had become familiar with it. It stretched right under Novaire but was crafted by the hands of Echoes. The Nether was a second pulse of Novaire. It was a bustling network of fairies who had found a different rhythm of life beneath the city that had discarded them.

Vast structures of layered stone and metal opened into a living underground metropolis. Broad avenues ran between towering glass pillars. their surfaces lit by steady, warm luminance. Entire neighbourhoods were stacked in terraces and suspended platforms, linked by elevated bridges.

At its core stood the Nether Marketplace.

There was another reason why the Nether was alluring. It harboured the infamous Black Market District. Unlike other black markets, the Nether did not trade goods or jewellery. It traded ideas.

Ideas capable of keeping someone like me in Novaire just a little longer.

I strolled through the market, past clusters of Echoes who watched me in quiet recognition. The deeper I went, the noise thinned, the crowd loosening until it gave way to two towering columns.

The passage opened into a vast archive. Rows upon rows of towering shelves stretched upward, carved into cubic compartments, each storing a single construct. Books, devices, fragments of forgotten work all arranged in a single immense space. Tall, arched windows lined the walls, casting a pale, artificial light.

A preserved memory of every construct ever made, maintained by the Keepers.

The Keepers were Echoes who chose to preserve creation, rather than augment it.

I walked through the archive, past everything creation had ever offered to Novaire. I didn’t slow down. I already knew what I was here for.

A little to the left, beneath an arched window, something caught my eye.

I stopped.

There it was.

Despite everything, a small smile escaped my lips.

Satisfied with my haul, I stepped out of the archives clutching the blueprint in hand.

On my way out, through the Black Market, a group of Echoes watched me with quiet curiosity, waiting. I scanned them, picking out the one I needed. I had done my research on the Nether’s inventors. He would do. Besides, it didn’t take a genius to build what I had in mind.

I pressed the blueprints and the brief into his hands, followed by a heavy leather purse.

He scanned the notes, his expression tightening, a flicker of doubt crossing his face.

"You know," he muttered, looking from the paper to me, "this could—"

I cut him off with a thin smile. "If I’m forced to make an exit, I might as well go out with a bang."

He didn't say another word. The deal was done.

The 7th Cycle arrived, and with it, my package. I pried it open to find the small structure resting in my palm. My heart thrummed with a long-buried fervour.

The clock struck in Aurex Square, the sound reverberating through every street.

It’s time.

I picked up the commissioned construct and headed towards my final Evaluation.

Seated with the other originators, I felt nothing like I had the first time. This time, I had nothing to prove, nothing to offer to a city that demanded progress be an impossible standard.

The Evaluation began.

My thoughts drifted back to the archives in the Nether. Decades ago, when Novaire was building itself into the centre of progress, a fairy had submitted a construct with the intention to help achieve that goal. A construct designed to measure what progress truly meant.

That construct became the standard we bowed to.

The Pinnacle.

I placed the tiny device at the mercy of the Pinnacle and turned away without waiting for the verdict.

As I cut through the ranks of creators, the air began to fracture with a new sound. "Rejected."

The word cut through the square. "Rejected. Rejected."

Back when I had secured that original blueprint from the archives, the strategy was simple, I didn't need to build a better invention; I just needed an override. The Pinnacle judged everything by comparing it to the benchmarks stored in its core. In order to be approved, a construct would have to surpass those benchmarks.

But my little device had done its job. It had reached into the machine's "brain" and dialled those benchmarks to an infinite, unbeatable value. Now, every miracle of medicine, every masterpiece of art, and every feat of engineering the Pinnacle scanned would fall short.

From this moment on, Novaire’s standard of progress was no longer a ladder. It was a wall.

Novaire had forgotten that progress was meant to serve life, not the other way around. Somewhere along the way, it had stopped being about making things better and started being about proving we were better.

It had built a world where 'capable' was a dirty word and only the exceptional were allowed to survive. By resetting the benchmarks, I dismantled the city’s cruellest filter, the idea that progress was a trophy for the fortunate, not the capable.

Progress isn’t just a faster engine or a higher spec, nor the quiet race to outdo what already existed. It was meant to sustain the world, not narrow it to the few.

As the Pinnacle began rejecting every hollow improvement fed into it, I walked away from a city that would have to find its soul again.