It had been nearly a month since Nova Technologies' CEO had descended into Jupiter's crushing atmosphere and threaded a needle through Saturn's gravity well with mathematical precision that defied human capability.

A month of silence from the company that had redefined what humanity thought possible. A month of waiting, speculation, and growing anticipation for what would come next.

But the silence hadn't been empty. The world had spent those weeks restructuring itself around the implications of three livestreams that had systematically dismantled assumptions about technology, economics, and human potential. Universities rewrote curricula. Governments convened endless emergency sessions. Financial markets underwent what analysts now called "The Great Recalibration," with entire sectors losing relevance as Nova Technologies demonstrated capabilities that made conventional approaches obsolete.

Yet beneath all the geopolitical maneuvering and academic restructuring, what really consumed public attention was something far more immediate and personal: the monthly pre-order event.

Yes, it wasf finally here and everyone was beyond hyped for the third pre-order event.

The calendar notification had been set for weeks. Alarms configured. Reminders scheduled every hour for the final twelve hours. Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people had coordinated their lives around a single moment: midnight UTC, the third monthly pre-order event for Lucid devices.

The announcement had been posted hours earlier.

Like they said in previous announcement, this time, Nova Technologies has made 3,000 units of Lucid available but against the enormous level of demand, that amount would barely make a dent in the demand.

But Lucid isn't the only device available on pre-order this month. Lucid Air, the product that was announced after last month's pre-order event, the router that will give each connection a minimum of 1TBps, and also allowing them to have the same level of connection no matter where they are in the world. That product would also be available for pre-order this month.

But just like Lucid, only a few units are going to be available for purchase. 1,000 units. Also, just like Lucid, the supply isn't even anywhere close to being considered enough. And that's considering its exclusive to new and existing Lucid users.

The scarcity was deliberate, everyone understood that. Nova Technologies had the capability to manufacture millions of units—the industrial capacity they'd demonstrated in building a kilometer-long starship proved that beyond doubt. But they chose not to flood the market, maintaining an exclusivity that made each device exponentially more valuable than its retail price suggested.

The Digital Aristocracy had grown to 2,000 members after last month's release, and those 2,000 people had become some of the most influential individuals on the planet, regardless of their previous status.

LucidNet had exploded to 2.4 billion users, making it the fastest-growing platform in history. But of those 2.4 billion, only 2,000 had verified accounts. The ratio was absurd, unprecedented, and absolutely deliberate.

Traditional social media platforms had built their ecosystems on verified accounts for celebrities, politicians, and brands. Verification was handed out liberally to anyone with sufficient followers or institutional backing. But LucidNet operated on different principles entirely.

President of the United States? Unverified.

Elon Musk, with his hundreds of millions of followers across other platforms? Unverified.

The official NASA account? Unverified.

The British Royal Family? Unverified.

Fortune 500 CEOs, Hollywood A-listers, Nobel Prize winners, world-class athletes—all unverified. They existed on the platform as ordinary users, their posts weighted equally with everyone else's, their influence derived purely from content quality rather than institutional backing.

The message was clear and brutal: on LucidNet, your previous status meant nothing. Only possession of a Lucid device granted verification, and Lucid devices were distributed through a lottery system that wealth and influence couldn't manipulate.

Billionaires had tried. Offers of $50 million, $100 million, even $200 million for Lucid devices had been made and universally rejected. Because the people who owned these devices understood something the wealthy were struggling to accept: the experiences they provided, the status they conveyed, the access they granted—none of it could be replicated with money.

The dual security system—retinal scan and neural signature verification—made resale impossible anyway. Each Lucid was bound to its owner at a biological level. Even if someone wanted to sell, they couldn't transfer ownership. The device would simply refuse to function for anyone else.

Some enterprising groups had attempted to create counterfeit Lucid devices. The efforts were almost comical in their futility.

Real Lucid devices arrived via delivery drone, descending from the sky with pinpoint precision, landing softly, and departing immediately. The spectacle alone was worth the $700 price tag—a demonstration of technology and logistics that no other company could replicate.

The counterfeits? Shipped in ordinary boxes via conventional mail. Already they'd failed the basic authenticity test.

But the problems ran deeper. The fake devices don't even function at all, talk less of doing anything the real product does.

In short, they were nothing more than paperweight.

As midnight approached, the global countdown intensified. Time zones became irrelevant—everyone synchronized to UTC, the single moment when the portal would open.

The pre-order page had been live for hours, showing the product listings but with grayed-out "PRE-ORDER NOW" buttons. A countdown timer dominated the top of the page, seconds ticking away with agonizing slowness.

Social media had become a real-time coordination center.

"Is anyone else's internet acting weird? I'm getting paranoid about connection drops."

"I've got three devices ready. Laptop, phone, tablet. If one fails, I've got backups."

"My strategy: click the moment it goes live, don't waste time reading. Checkout first, read details later."

"Good luck everyone. May the fastest fingers win."

"This is more stressful than my actual job interviews."

The final minute arrived. Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people stared at countdown timers, fingers hovering, breaths held.

Sixty seconds.

Forty-five seconds.

Thirty seconds.

Fifteen seconds.

Ten.

Five.

Three.

Two.

One.

The timer hit zero. The "PRE-ORDER NOW" buttons turned from gray to brilliant blue.

And then chaos.

The internet essentially broke. Not literally, because the infrastructure held, barely—but the simultaneous traffic spike was unlike anything the global network had experienced outside of major disasters.

The pre-order system processed requests at speeds that would have made conventional e-commerce platforms weep with envy.

But even processing millions of requests per second couldn't change mathematics. Three thousand units. Hundreds of millions of people trying to buy them.

The entire inventory sold out in less than a second. From the moment the portal opened to the moment "SOLD OUT" appeared across every product page, less than one second had elapsed.

For the people who'd secured orders, there was a brief moment of disbelief, followed by euphoria so intense it was almost physical. Confirmation emails arrived instantly. Order numbers appeared. They'd done it. They'd won the lottery. They were joining the Digital Aristocracy.

For everyone else—the overwhelming majority—there was only stunned silence, followed by rising frustration.

"I clicked the INSTANT it went live and it was already gone."

"My internet is 1Gbps fiber and I still missed it. HOW."

"There's no way humans can click that fast. It has to be bots."

"Even bots need network latency. I think we just learned that hundreds of thousands of people have inhuman reflexes."

But mostly, it was just chaos. Pure, concentrated chaos that would dominate social media for the next twelve hours.

Then the second wave hit.

Because the announcement had specified something critical: Lucid Air pre-orders were exclusive to Lucid device owners. And that category now included the 3,000 people who'd just successfully ordered Lucid units in the past second.

Which meant those 3,000 people—still reeling from the happiness of securing their Lucid devices—now had to immediately pivot to attempting the Lucid Air purchase. And they had to compete against the existing 2,000 Lucid owners.

Unfortunately for the new users, they weren't able to secure any Lucid Air. But they didn't feel bad, because of the fact that they now have to look forward to Lucid delivery drones next week.

The rest of the world—hundreds of millions of disappointed people—could only wait for next month's event and hope their luck would be better.

Social media exploded with even more reactions.

"I've never felt more defeated by technology. I clicked instantly and missed everything."

"Congratulations to the 3,000 people with superhuman reflexes. The rest of us will try again next month."

"My wifi chose THAT MOMENT to lag. I'm burning my router."

"To everyone who got one: enjoy it. To everyone who didn't: same time next month, and may the odds be ever in our favor."

"Nova Technologies has turned monthly product releases into the Hunger Games of consumer electronics."

But beneath the frustration and disappointment, something else was evident. Something that every company, every government, every institution had noticed but couldn't quite articulate.

Nova Technologies had created genuine scarcity in an age where abundance was manufactured. They'd made exclusivity real in a world where influence could usually bypass any barrier. They'd built a system where wealth and power meant nothing, where presidents and janitors competed on equal terms, where possession of a device granted status that billions of dollars couldn't buy.

And people loved them for it, even as they hated the system. Because it was fair in a way that nothing else was. Random chance, fastest reflexes, or simple luck—anyone could win, regardless of who they were or what resources they controlled.

The pre-order event was over. But the chaos wasn't over, because the world was waiting for Nova Technologies' Monthly Transparency Report.

No, they are desperately hoping that Nova Technologies would release it.

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