NOVEL NEXT 💻 HERO GALLERY: Xin (2025 Summer)
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ZHI-XIN WU
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The Programmer Who Chose to Live
Welcome to Xin's part of the Hero Gallery 2025 Summer. This POV character was the 2nd to be initialized when I began drafting the Nucleus story across its 4-5 main books, but he was the last to be finalized (even after Dilinur) as far as his age, demeanor and physique.
He's that guy who studied hard growing up, that straight-A guy in the class, studies 10 hours a day as a kid, works 10 hours a day as an adult, pretty much putting everything else on hold until the age of 30...maybe even later.
That's when he realized..."hey, I have this stable job, pretty okay income but also long working hours, the money is good enough, but I don't know what I'm doing. Is this my whole life?"
No girlfriend, no wife. BUT HEY, it's a high tech era, AI tech coming here. I guess he could settle with an AI girlfriend and call it victory...or is it?
Now something like 40 years old, is it too late to pursue the dreams that he had as a kid? Is he still deserving of it? What does he have to compensate for the things that younger dreamers have? Is he still deserving of...romance? The one thing in the universe that cannot be logically solved?
Xin represents every programmer who's looked up from their third monitor at 2 AM and wondered if there's more to life than clean code and optimized algorithms. He's the guy who chose safety over adventure, logic over passion, the predictable paycheck over the uncertain dream.
But here's the thing about programmers—we're problem solvers. And when Xin finally recognizes that his life has become an infinite loop of work-sleep-repeat, he approaches it like any bug that needs fixing. Except this time, the debugger can't help him. This time, he needs something more human: the irrational courage to try things out, the outcome be damned.
"It's never too late to refactor your life. Like throwing out the old code and starting a new project."
Late night at ZenFusion Data Solutions. Screens full of code, a life measured in commits and sprints. This is where our story finds him—'successful', stable, and utterly lost.
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Office → Home → Office. Under surveillance cameras that see everything but understand nothing. Is this living, or just executing code of another kind?
In another timeline, Xin finally makes it to The Quantum Pour with Lorna. Sometimes the best moments are the ones that almost happen.
At Door Valkyris, Xin uses his Quantum Watch to crack an ancient puzzle. Turns out debugging code for 20 years prepares you for solving cosmic mysteries.
Act 4 Preview: Becoming the Hero
Alliance experimental armor turns the nerdy programmer into the superhero he dreamed of being as a kid. Sometimes dreams just take a detour through a few technological developments. He will be one of the two people to wear this armor on their Mars mission.
Act 5 Preview: The Weight of Choice
Official SIMU uniform, high-grade ballistic weave. But something troubles him—a recent development with someone he deeply cares about. Some problems can't be solved with code.
Book 1 Finale: New Horizons
With the final boss defeated, Xin waits at a starport for someone very important. A shuttle bound for somewhere far away. His family will travel there together. The adventure continues...
Next up: Lorna Weiss • The Warrior Who Carries (the Franchise)