The year was 2098.
The skyline of Massachusetts was no longer the blend of colonial charm and glass towers that once defined it.
Now, sleek silver spires pierced the clouds like the fingers of a machine grasping at heaven. Drone corridors filled the skies, their humming swarms cutting neon trails through the dusk like restless fireflies. The air smelled faintly of ozone and rain-cooled metal. Billboards shimmered in midair, AI-curated advertisements shifting in real time to match each pedestrian’s pulse and gaze.
Boston had long since become a hybrid; half memory, half algorithm. Even the Charles River glowed faintly blue at night, laced with hydro-reactive nanolights that cleansed pollution while displaying streaming data for tourists who no longer came.
And in the midst of that vast digital jungle; where drones buzzed like metallic insects and data streamed through the air like whispers of the wind; stood a forgotten corner of the city: four crumbling rooms above an old grocery warehouse, half-dilapidated and barely clinging to relevance. It was a relic of another time, hidden like a corrupted line of code buried in a perfect algorithm, surviving not by design, but by defiance.
Inside, on the top floor of that half-forgotten block, Owen Anderson sat on a rusting cot beneath a flickering light. His cracked hologlass tablet hovered inches above his knees, projecting the same sentence he’d read too many times this month:
We regret to inform you that your application has been declined.
Another one.
The words hung in the air, sterile and final, before fading to black.
He exhaled through his nose; slow, steady, controlled; then tossed the tablet onto the bed. The screen flickered once, stabilizing like a wounded thing that didn’t yet know it was dying.
He stared at the ceiling. The light buzzed, caught between existence and failure, mirroring the rhythm of his own uncertainty.
Tomorrow, he realized, he wouldn’t have a roof.
The city’s welfare program had already cut him off last week. The landlord’s polite warning had turned into an automated notice this morning. By sunrise, the drones would seal his door and reclaim what little furniture he owned.
So he sat in silence; his silence; the kind that buzzed louder than noise.
Owen leaned back against the cold concrete wall, the chipped paint scraping his shoulder blades through his thin shirt. He was twenty-four, tall and sharply built, his face half-shadowed in the dim light. There was something almost defiant in the line of his jaw, the quiet calculation in his storm-blue eyes; the sort of gaze that didn’t just look at the world, but measured it.
He brushed his fingers through his thick dark hair, the gesture automatic, weary. He wasn’t vain; just tired of being reminded he still looked like someone who should have had a future.
Outside, a delivery drone zipped past his window, scattering a burst of pale light across the walls. For a brief second, it illuminated the cluttered fragments of his life; schematics pinned to the wall, broken propulsion models stacked in corners, old research notes scattered like snow.
Everywhere you looked, there were fragments of dreams that had almost worked.
Owen rose from the bed and crossed the narrow room. The floor groaned under his weight. He paused beside the window, its glass spider-cracked but still holding. Below, the city pulsed; streets alive with holographic ads, people in smartwear moving in clean, programmed patterns. He’d once imagined himself among them, not as another face in the crowd, but as the mind behind the machines that made their world move.
Instead, he stood above it, unseen.
His reflection in the window stared back; a ghost with tired eyes and unkept ambition.
For a moment, the city’s glow caught his face in blue light, and in that flicker, he saw the boy he used to be: barefoot in a government shelter, holding a drone made from junkyard scraps, grinning because it flew for three seconds before crashing.
He smiled faintly at the memory. Three seconds of flight; that was all it had taken to make him believe he could change the world.
The smile faded.
Now, all that remained was a man surrounded by broken prototypes and unpaid rent notices.
He moved back to the bed, picking up the tablet again. He opened another email; one from MIT’s alumni board, an automated message congratulating graduates on their ongoing “impact in the field of aerospace innovation.” He laughed under his breath. A dry, bitter sound.
Impact.
The only thing he’d impacted lately was the limit of his patience.
He closed the tablet, set it aside, and reached for the mug on the desk. The coffee inside had gone cold hours ago, but he drank it anyway.
The city outside dimmed as the night cycle algorithms kicked in, drawing down the artificial daylight.
Owen sat there for a long time, listening to the hum of the drones fading into distance, the faint clatter of pipes behind the walls, the low electric heartbeat of the world that had outgrown him.
He reached for the notebook lying beside his cot; a worn relic of paper and ink. Most people had abandoned such things years ago, but Owen never did. Pages grounded him in a way holograms couldn’t.
He flipped it open to a fresh page. The last line from the previous night stared up at him, written in hurried, slanted ink:
Humans are still the only species that can dream of flying before they build the wings.
He read it again. Then underlined it once.
His hand hesitated over the page. He wanted to write more; to make sense of the storm in his head; but the words wouldn’t come.
So instead, he whispered them.
“Just one chance,” he said quietly. “Just one yes.”
And outside his window, the city continued to hum; unmoved, unaware, and utterly indifferent to the boy who still dared to dream of the sky.
By seventeen, he had secured a full scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scoring a perfect 1600 on the SAT; something the admissions board hadn’t seen in over two decades. But what the board never saw were the nights that built that number.
While other students came from legacies and prep academies, Owen arrived at MIT with a second-hand suitcase, three sets of clothes, and a brain wired for the stars.
But before that… he came from a world that didn’t believe in stars at all.
The South Boston Youth Shelter wasn’t a home. It was a place built to hold kids until the world forgot them. Rusted pipes dripped along stained concrete walls, and the heating system coughed more than it worked. The windows were nailed shut from the outside, their glass smeared with grime thick enough to turn sunlight into shadow. Every night, the air was heavy with the smell of disinfectant, old fabric, and quiet despair.
Rows of metal bunks filled the room; each one occupied by a story no one cared to hear. Owen’s corner was the smallest, wedged between a broken radiator and a stack of storage crates. His mattress was thin, the blanket even thinner. But beside his bed sat a box of what really mattered: broken circuit boards, salvaged drone wings, scrap metal, and one fading physics textbook he’d found in a donation bin.
While others killed time playing old VR games or sleeping through the endless days, Owen studied. Not because anyone told him to; but because he couldn’t stand the thought of staying there forever.
He’d wake at 4 a.m., before the lights came on, huddling beneath his blanket with a flashlight borrowed from a janitor, scribbling equations in the margins of his book. The words blurred from exhaustion sometimes, but he pushed through, whispering formulas under his breath like prayers.
One night, while everyone else was asleep, an older boy; Marcus; rolled over in the bunk above him. Marcus had been there longer than anyone. Sharp eyes, sharper tongue. The kind of person who had already stopped believing in miracles.
“You’re wasting your time, kid,” Marcus muttered, his voice rough, echoing in the half-dark.
Owen didn’t look up from his notes. “Go back to sleep.”
“I’m serious.” Marcus leaned over the bunk rail, his silhouette outlined in the weak red glow of the emergency light. “You think the world gives a damn about some orphan genius? I’ve seen people smarter than you leave this place and end up scrubbing synth-toilets in New Jersey.”
Owen paused, his pencil hovering over the paper. “Maybe they gave up too early.”
Marcus chuckled. “No, kid. The world gave up on them first. Doesn’t matter how hard you study. The system’s built to forget people like us.”
The words hung in the air. Heavy. Cruel. Honest.
Owen didn’t answer. He just turned another page, forcing himself to keep writing even as his chest tightened.
But the truth was; he heard every word.
He carried them like a scar.
Years later, sitting in his half-empty apartment in Cambridge, staring at his newest rejection email, the memory came rushing back.
Marcus’s voice echoed in his mind; cold, smug, certain:
“Doesn’t matter how hard you study. The system’s built to forget people like us.”
Owen exhaled shakily, staring at the hologlass screen.
Maybe Marcus had been right.
He’d done everything right; every step, every grade, every sleepless night; and still ended up here. Broke. Jobless. One day away from losing the only roof he had left.
He rubbed a hand over his face, bitter laughter slipping through his teeth.
“So what now, Marcus?” he muttered to the empty room. “You win?”
But then his gaze drifted to the old photo pinned on the wall; himself at ten, grinning, holding that scrap-built spaceship. The boy who refused to believe the world couldn’t be changed.
And just like that, the bitterness dimmed.
Maybe Marcus was right about the system.
But not about him.
Because Owen Anderson was never built to surrender.
He was a dual-major in Aerospace Engineering and in Astrophysics, and quickly rose through the ranks. Professors admired his raw intellect and unmatched curiosity. He spent nights in the lab running complex simulations, building scale models of ion propulsion systems, and dreaming about interstellar travel.
Despite being laser-focused on his dreams and studies, Owen Anderson stood out at MIT; not just for his unmatched intellect, but also for how effortlessly attractive he was. Despite his popularity among classmates; and more than a few lingering gazes from girls across departments; Owen never dated. He was charming, polite, and had that rugged, quiet type of handsomeness that made people naturally lean in when he spoke.
He had the kind of handsomeness that didn’t try too hard. Tall, with a lean but athletic frame that came naturally from years of biking across campus and pulling all-nighters in the lab. His thick dark brown hair always looked perfectly disheveled, like he’d just run a hand through it. Sharp cheekbones, a strong, angular jaw, and his blue eyes, they weren’t the pale, empty kind that vanished in sunlight. His were deep and stormy, like the Atlantic on a winter morning; a mixture of frost and fire, calm on the surface but hiding entire galaxies behind them. They carried an intensity that made people pause mid-sentence, as if they’d just glimpsed something ancient and unknowable.
When he focused, his eyes sharpened like the edge of a blade; cold, precise, brilliant. But in quiet moments, when no one was watching, that same blue softened into something almost mournful… like he was always looking for someone who hadn’t arrived yet. As if every star he studied in the sky was just a mirror, reflecting a loneliness he never spoke of.
People often said you could get lost in his gaze.
What they didn’t realize was; he was already lost in it, too.
Late at night, when the campus was quiet and the corridors of MIT shimmered with the faint blue of night-mode holograms, Owen often found himself alone in the lab; long after the others had gone home.
The only sounds were the soft hum of servers and the occasional buzz of the old vending machine that no one used anymore. The world outside slept; his mind didn’t know how.
He stood by the window, the city lights far below casting their reflection against the glass. His own face stared back at him; sharp, tired, uncertain.
For a long while, he just watched his reflection, those storm-blue eyes that others called beautiful, mysterious, even magnetic.
But all he saw was someone searching.
Someone who’d spent so long running toward the stars that he’d forgotten what it felt like to belong anywhere closer.
He lifted a hand and traced the outline of his reflection’s jaw in the glass, the cold surface biting against his fingertips. “Who are you trying to impress?” he whispered to himself.
The reflection didn’t answer.
His gaze drifted past his own face to the sky beyond the window; the faint smear of constellations barely visible through Boston’s haze. The stars looked distant, unreachable, like a memory fading into static.
He used to look at them and feel inspired.
Now, he looked at them and felt… small.
The equations scrawled across the whiteboard behind him caught his eye; rows of symbols and lines that once made sense, now just fragments of a dream that refused to come true. He turned away from the window, staring at his work, at everything he’d built, discovered, designed.
And yet, for all the genius written there… none of it could tell him why he felt so empty.
He walked to the far end of the lab, where a small mirror was fixed above the sink. The harsh fluorescent light flickered overhead as he leaned closer, staring into his own eyes again.
He’d always carried that intensity, that spark people noticed instantly.
But looking deeper now, he saw what no one else could;
the exhaustion, the quiet ache of someone who’d given everything to reach the stars and still ended up stranded on Earth.
He chuckled softly, shaking his head.
“Lost,” he muttered. “Completely lost.”
The sound echoed faintly in the room, swallowed by the whirring of machines.
And for the briefest moment, he caught himself wondering if anyone would ever really see him; not the prodigy, not the “forbidden star,” not the flawless mind or the perfect GPA;
but the person who’d been staring back at him all along, hoping to be found.
Then, as the lab lights dimmed automatically for curfew, Owen turned back to his desk, opened a fresh page in his notebook, and began to write again.
Because sometimes, when you’re lost, the only thing left to do… is keep moving.
Even when he was buried in books, tapping equations on his neural pad, or scribbling formulas across whiteboards, girls would pause just to watch him think. There was something magnetic about him; an aura of mystery, intelligence, and kindness rolled into one.
He never flirted. Never lingered. Never dated. That only made it worse.
Some girls in engineering used to call him “MIT’s own forbidden star”; brilliant, beautiful, and forever out of reach.
He’d be walking across campus, reading academic magazines, hoodie half-zipped, and girls would turn their heads like he was a celebrity. Conversations would stop mid-sentence when he walked into a room. In the cafeteria, girls would purposely sit nearby, pretending to scroll through notes while sneaking glances.
A running joke in the dorms claimed every department had a secret group chat titled “Operation: Owen,” where girls tried to decode his type, his hobbies, his past, anything that could get his attention.
But Owen remained oblivious. Or maybe he just didn’t care.
He smiled at everyone, helped whoever needed it; especially first-years who struggled in classes he’d already mastered; but never crossed a line. His focus was the stars, his heart tethered to dreams beyond Earth.
One evening, the astronomy lab on the third floor was nearly empty. Blue holograms of stellar trajectories glowed faintly on the walls, the hum of projectors filling the silence.
Amelia Rhodes sat hunched over her console, panic etched across her face as red error warnings blinked across her screen.
“Binary orbital decay?” a calm voice asked behind her.
She turned. Owen Anderson stood there, hands in his jacket pockets, expression easy.
“Yes— I mean— yeah,” she said quickly. “The simulation keeps collapsing before the secondary mass completes its orbit. I’ve tried everything.”
Owen stepped closer, eyes scanning the equations. “You’re not overcomplicating it,” he said. “You’re just using the wrong frame.”
He adjusted a few settings. The orbit stabilized instantly, glowing blue.
Amelia stared. “What did you do?”
“Shifted to the barycentric frame,” he said. “Physics behaves better when you stop fighting it.”
She laughed softly. “You should be teaching this class.”
“I tried,” he said with a shrug. “Apparently I explain too much.”
She studied him for a moment. “You’re… not what I expected.”
He smiled faintly. “Being human tends to disappoint expectations.”
“Well,” she said, a little hopeful, “if you ever want to tutor again—”
“Keep practicing,” he replied gently. “You won’t need help for long.”
He nodded once and walked away.
Amelia watched the doorway after he left, unaware that he was already somewhere else—back to the rooftop, back to the stars, where his heart had always lived.
Some said he was waiting for someone.
Others believed he was simply unreachable.
One time, the seminar hall was packed beyond capacity. Rows of students were spilling into the aisles, balancing notebooks and glowing e-slates in their laps.
A Nobel-winning astrophysicist was scheduled to give a guest lecture on black hole navigation systems. But that wasn’t why the place was full.
Whispers buzzed across the hall:
“He’s definitely coming today.”
“I heard he even asked a question in last year’s Q&A and the speaker didn’t know the answer!”
“Did you see the way he solved that multi-axis orbital stability problem in 30 seconds?”
The door opened, and Owen walked in; hoodie zipped halfway, hair slightly windblown, carrying a flask of black coffee and a half-eaten protein bar.
Instantly, every girl within a 30-foot radius turned. Some nudged their friends. A few subtly fixed their hair. One girl dropped her stylus. Another muttered, “There goes my concentration for the next hour.”
He took a seat near the front row; completely unaware of the small fanstorm behind him. A brave girl tried to slide into the seat next to him, only for two others to “accidentally” arrive at the same time. A mild territorial scuffle broke out.
“Ladies,” he said, looking up calmly, “there’s an open row two seats behind. Better view, too.”
They froze, embarrassed; and laughed it off; but backed away.
From the podium, the astrophysicist leaned into the mic.
“I hear we’ve got a legend in the audience today,” he said. “Mr. Owen Anderson, your thesis made its way to Geneva last month.”
The crowd turned to him, some clapping. Owen just gave a quiet, respectful nod.
The lecture resumed. But half the students in that room couldn’t remember what was said.
They were too busy staring at the boy who could have had anyone; but chose to chase only the stars.
The third floor of the Hayden Library was unusually quiet that evening; aside from the soft whir of page-turning and the distant clatter of someone dropping a pen. Owen Anderson sat by the window, backlit by the golden hour sun, his head buried in a dense astrophysics journal, pen tapping rhythmically against a notebook filled with propulsion calculations.
Across the room, Olivia Seth, a biotech major with flawless grades and equally flawless hair, fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve. She’d been psyching herself up for three days just to talk to him. Her friends had bet chocolate credits that she’d back out. But not this time.
She crossed the room, pretending to look for a book, heart racing as she neared him.
“Hey… Owen, right?” she said, clutching a neural tablet to her chest like a shield.
He looked up slowly, warm hazel eyes locking with hers. He gave the faintest smile. “Yeah. Olivia, right? Biotech department?”
She blinked, stunned. He knew her name?
“Y-Yeah! I mean… yeah. I was just wondering if maybe sometime you’d want to; uh; join our study group? We’re doing a biotech-astro crossover project and, well… we could use a genius like you.”
He leaned back in his chair, friendly but unreadable. “That’s kind of you, but I’ve got three research papers, a simulation on Proxima’s flight corridor, and a coffee addiction to maintain.”
She laughed nervously, unsure if that was a yes or a no.
“I’m flattered, though,” he added gently. “You’re brilliant too. I’ve seen your CRISPR presentations. Keep going. You’re doing amazing work.”
Before she could respond, his eyes were already back on the page, the moment dissolving like mist.
She stood there a second longer, cheeks pink, then turned away; half-defeated, half-dazzled.
Owen seemed to find interest only in knowledge and not beauty.
One day, night sky was clear, stars crisp against the black canvas of space. From the rooftop observatory, you could see all the way to the edge of the city. Owen often came here alone; his escape from the chaos below.
But tonight, he wasn’t alone.
Elena Briggs, a third-year physics student known for her grace and intellect, stood beside him, she just wandered there and found him. She had been planning this moment for weeks, waiting for the right time, the right setting. She had fallen for him like so many others had; slowly at first, then all at once.
They stood in silence, watching Saturn rise above the horizon.
“Owen,” she finally said, voice quiet but steady. “Can I ask you something personal?”
He turned slightly, offering her that kind, patient gaze of his. “Sure.”
She took a breath, heart pounding. “Why do you always… turn people down? I mean; don’t get me wrong; you’re allowed to. But I know at least fifteen girls who’ve confessed to you. You’ve never even… tried?”
He looked back at the sky, as if drawing the answer from the stars themselves.
After a long pause, he spoke; not coldly, not shyly, just honestly.
“Because I’m waiting for the true love of my life. Until she comes, I won’t belong to anyone. I’m a one-woman man.”
Elena swallowed. The words hit deeper than she expected. There was no ego in his voice. No arrogance. Just truth.
He turned to her gently. “You’re incredible, Elena. And anyone would be lucky to have you. But my heart’s not ready. It’s not hers yet. And if it’s not hers… I can’t give it to anyone.”
She managed a small smile, blinking fast. “She’s going to be really lucky, you know.”
Owen nodded, eyes distant. “I just hope the universe lets her find me.”
They stood in silence again, two brilliant minds under the same stars, separated by something unspoken; but wrapped in mutual respect.
And from that night on, the phrase became legendary across campus.
“I’m waiting for the true love of my life. Until she comes, I won’t belong to anyone.”
Some joked about it. Some romanticized it. But all of them, deep down, admired it.
Because in a world of artificial emotions and disposable affection, Owen Anderson was one of the last real believers in forever love.
