THE REBORN GENIUS

CHAPTER 1 — THE GENIUS THEY CALLED A DEMON

The executioner raised his axe, but Justin was still trying to explain why the washing machine had exploded.

"You're making a terrible mistake," he said, struggling against the thick ropes binding his wrists behind his back. "The machine didn't explode because of witchcraft. The heating element overheated after the water circulation system malfunctioned. If you had allowed me another hour, I could have repaired it."

Nobody listened.

Hundreds of angry townspeople crowded the execution square, their faces twisted with fear, disgust, and hatred.

Some carried farming tools, others held stones, while a few mothers shielded their children as though looking at Justin might somehow infect them.

At the center of the square stood a wooden execution platform. A few feet away, the remains of Justin's latest invention lay scattered across the ground. Its metal frame had been blackened by fire, and one of its circular components had broken into several pieces.

Chief Harold stood before the crowd, wearing his usual dark ceremonial robe. His expression carried the satisfaction of a man who believed he had finally defeated a dangerous enemy.

"Look at what this demon has created!" Harold shouted, pointing towards the wreckage. "He claims that this strange box can wash clothes without human hands. Now tell me, what kind of ordinary man creates something that produces fire?"

The crowd responded with angry shouts.

Justin slowly raised his head.

"It's called a washing machine," he explained, his voice carrying an unmistakable note of frustration. "It uses mechanical movement and heated water to clean clothes. The fire happened because the heating mechanism malfunctioned. I've already identified the problem."

For several seconds, the villagers stared at him.

Then laughter erupted.

"Listen to him!" someone shouted. "He still believes his strange explanations will save him!"

An elderly farmer pushed through the crowd and pointed an accusing finger at Justin.

"I saw him holding a stone beside a wooden box that produced fire! He didn't even need firewood!"

"That was a stove," Justin replied. "An electric stove, to be precise. The stone was a piece of insulating material."

Another villager immediately stepped forward. "I saw him create wind with another strange object!"

Justin closed his eyes briefly. "That was a fan. It produces moving air through rotating blades. I've explained this to you people, more times than I can count."

A third man raised his voice.

"And what about the wild pig you caught without chasing it? You placed something on the ground, and the animal entered it by itself!"

"An automatic trap," Justin answered. "It's designed to capture animals without requiring someone to chase them. Honestly, how difficult is that to understand?"

His response only intensified the villagers' anger.

Chief Harold raised one hand, and the crowd gradually quieted.

"Do you hear him?" the chief asked. "Even with death standing before him, he continues to mock our traditions and insult our intelligence. This creature believes he is wiser than everyone in this town!"

Justin looked directly at him.

"I don't believe I'm wiser than everyone. I simply understand certain things that you don't."

A collective gasp passed through the crowd.

Harold's face darkened.

"Then perhaps you should explain how a man without a teacher, without a master, and without knowledge of the sacred arts can create objects that perform impossible tasks."

Justin opened his mouth to respond, but the sight of the crowd stopped him; he suddenly understood that they had never wanted an explanation.

They wanted a monster, and unfortunately for him, they had already decided that he was one.

Justin had not always been hated; there had been a time when the people of the town considered him an extraordinary child.

He was born with an unusual ability to understand complicated structures. At just four years old, he had dismantled his father's broken pocket watch and arranged its internal components in the correct order.

His father had initially panicked, believing the child had destroyed the only valuable possession he owned, until Justin reassembled it and made it work again.

By the age of six, he could identify mechanical faults simply by listening to the sounds produced by damaged equipment.

At eight, he constructed a small wooden windmill using discarded materials from his father's workshop. The device turned whenever the wind blew, allowing him to grind small quantities of grain without requiring anyone to operate it manually.

His intelligence was extraordinary, even by the standards of the most gifted scholars.

Justin's schoolteacher once described him as a child whose mind worked several steps ahead of everyone around him.

He could understand mathematical principles after hearing them explained once, remember complicated diagrams after briefly examining them, and discover solutions to problems that had frustrated adults for years.

As he grew older, his curiosity became almost impossible to satisfy; he wanted to understand how everything worked.

He studied mechanics, chemistry, electricity, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and countless other subjects. Whenever he encountered a problem, his first instinct was to investigate it rather than accept that nothing could be done.

Unfortunately, the people around him did not share his enthusiasm.

His first invention had attracted admiration because it was simple enough for everyone to understand. However, his later discoveries became increasingly difficult to explain to people who had never encountered the scientific principles behind them.

When Justin constructed a basic electric generator, the townspeople accused him of stealing lightning.

When he developed a crude water filtration system, they suspected that he was performing some kind of purification ritual.

His mechanical fan was described as a device that imprisoned the wind, while his automatic animal trap was considered evidence that he could command wild creatures.

At first, Justin found their reactions amusing.

He believed that if he continued demonstrating his inventions and explaining how they worked, people would eventually overcome their fears.

He was wrong; the more he invented, the more suspicious they became.

His intelligence, which should have been his greatest advantage, gradually turned into the reason people avoided him.

Children were warned not to visit his workshop. Shopkeepers refused to sell him certain materials, and some parents instructed their sons and daughters to stay away from his house.

Even people who secretly admired his inventions were afraid to defend him publicly.

Justin noticed the change, but he refused to stop.

He had never invented things to frighten people. He simply wanted to improve their lives.

The water pump he constructed could provide clean water without requiring women to carry heavy buckets from the river.

His improved farming tools reduced the time required to prepare fields, while his mechanical grain grinder could save an entire family several hours of exhausting work.

He had even started designing a simple medical apparatus that could help treat people suffering from breathing difficulties.

Yet none of those achievements mattered when fear became more powerful than reason.

The incident that finally destroyed Justin's life had begun with an ordinary request.

A wealthy merchant's wife had complained about the enormous amount of time she spent washing clothes. After hearing about Justin's previous inventions, she approached him privately and offered to pay him if he could develop a machine that would make the work easier.

Justin accepted immediately.

He spent several weeks studying the available materials, calculating the necessary mechanical movements, and constructing a working prototype.

The machine was not perfect, but it functioned.

It used a rotating drum, a simple heating mechanism, and a manually controlled water circulation system. The design was crude compared with the washing machines Justin had studied in his previous years of experimentation, but it was a significant improvement over washing everything by hand.

The merchant's wife was delighted when he demonstrated it.

She even invited several neighbours to witness the invention.

Unfortunately, one of the machine's connections had been improperly secured. When Justin attempted a longer demonstration, the water circulation system failed, causing the heating mechanism to overheat.

A sudden burst of flames damaged the machine and ignited part of the merchant's storage room.

Nobody died, but the incident frightened everyone who witnessed it.

Justin immediately attempted to extinguish the fire and explain what had happened. He even offered to compensate the merchant for the damaged property and repair the machine.

However, the merchant's wife had already begun shouting that Justin had brought a curse into her home.

Within an hour, the entire town was talking about the incident.

By sunset, Justin had been arrested.

By the following morning, Chief Harold had announced that the town council would hold an emergency hearing to determine whether Justin was practising forbidden arts.

The hearing lasted less than twenty minutes. Nobody examined the machine, Nobody investigated the damaged heating mechanism, and Nobody asked Justin to demonstrate the malfunction.

They simply declared him guilty.

Now, as he knelt before the execution platform, Justin finally understood how little his explanations mattered.

"Do you have anything else to say before your punishment is carried out?" Chief Harold asked.

Justin slowly looked around the square.

He recognized many of the faces watching him. Some had purchased his inventions, while others had once approached him secretly for assistance repairing their equipment. A few had even praised his intelligence when they believed nobody important was listening.

Yet none of them stepped forward.

His eyes eventually returned to Harold.

"You stand before me without shame," the chief continued. "Do you still believe your inventions make you superior to everyone here?"

Justin gave a tired smile. "No. I simply believe that understanding something is better than being frightened of it."

"You insult the people who brought you before me!"

Justin stared at him. "You brought me here because you couldn't understand what I built. That isn't my fault."

The chief's expression changed.

For a moment, the entire square became quiet as Harold struggled to contain his anger.

Then he turned towards the executioner. "Enough! Carry out the sentence!"

The executioner stepped closer.

Justin lowered his head, and for the first time that day, he felt something other than frustration.

He felt disappointed. Not because he was about to die, but because he had spent so many years believing that knowledge could improve the world.

He had wanted to make people's lives easier. He had wanted to eliminate unnecessary suffering, reduce exhausting labour, and create things that would give ordinary people more opportunities.

Instead, he was going to die because people believed his inventions were unnatural.

The executioner positioned himself behind Justin and raised the heavy axe.

"Your final words?" Harold asked.

Justin lifted his head one last time. "I spent my life trying to make things easier for people who hated me for doing it. If there is another world beyond this one, I hope I find people who appreciate intelligence instead of fearing it."

He closed his eyes.

The axe descended.

Justin expected death to be immediate. Instead, he heard a strange mechanical humming sound somewhere beyond the darkness.

It was faint at first, almost like the vibration of an enormous machine operating in another room. Gradually, the sound became louder until it seemed to surround him.

Then an unfamiliar voice spoke. "Interesting. Another one has finally arrived."

Justin attempted to open his eyes, but he could not feel his body.

"Another one?" The question barely formed in his mind before the humming sound disappeared.

A moment later, something cold touched his cheek.

Justin's eyes snapped open.

He found himself lying face-down on unfamiliar ground. His head throbbed painfully, and his entire body felt unusually heavy. He slowly pushed himself upright.

The first thing he noticed was the sky.

It was an unfamiliar shade of blue, and the clouds appeared unusually large. A thick forest stretched across the distance, while an enormous mountain rose beyond the treetops.

He was surrounded by unfamiliar vegetation; there were no buildings, roads, or signs of civilization anywhere nearby. "What...?"

Before he could finish speaking, a loud bark interrupted him.

Justin turned his head.

A scruffy brown dog stood barely a few inches from his face. Its ears were raised, its tail was stiff, and its mouth was open as it barked directly at him.

Justin stared at the animal.

The dog stared back.

Then something extraordinary happened. "Hey! Are you planning to sleep there forever?"

Justin froze.

He looked around, searching for whoever had spoken. Nobody was there.

The dog tilted its head impatiently. "I'm talking to you, idiot! Are you deaf?"

Justin slowly turned back towards it. His eyes widened. The words had come from the dog's mouth.

He stared at the animal for several seconds, waiting for someone to reveal that the entire situation was an elaborate joke, but Nothing happened.

The dog simply sat down and scratched behind one ear.

"Well?" it asked. "Are you going to keep staring at me, or do you actually understand what I'm saying?"

Justin's mind raced.

He had studied animal communication, biological behaviour, and countless other scientific subjects. He understood that animals possessed different methods of communication, but he had never encountered a situation in which a dog could speak a language he understood.

He cautiously raised one hand and pointed towards the animal. "Did you... just speak?"

The dog rolled its eyes. "No, I barked. What do you think?"

Justin's mouth opened slightly. For the first time in his life, his intelligence offered him no immediate explanation.

Then another thought struck him. "Where am I?"

He looked down at his hands, examined the unfamiliar ground, and glanced towards the distant forest.

His execution had been real. He remembered the axe falling. Yet somehow, he was alive.

And if the talking dog was any indication, the world around him operated according to rules he had never encountered.

The dog suddenly stood up and began walking towards the forest. "Come on. If you stay here much longer, something will eat you."

Justin remained where he was. "Wait! Where exactly am I?"

The dog stopped and looked over its shoulder.

For the first time, its expression became serious. "You're in the Outer Wilderness, human. And if you don't want to become dinner, I suggest you start moving."

Justin stared at it.

Then the dog added something that made his blood run cold. "Especially since the creatures hunting you have already picked up your scent."