My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Liam sat across the desk, his posture relaxed, a faint smile tugging at his lips as Daniel fumbled with the LUCID device.

It had been nearly ten minutes since Liam began explaining the fundamentals — what it could do, how it worked, what it meant. And yet, Daniel still hadn’t managed to form a proper sentence.

The usually composed banker looked utterly shaken. His breath came shallow, his lips moved without sound, and his eyes darted between the black box on the desk and the calm young man sitting opposite him.

It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t, was what he had been telling himself for the past ten minutes.

"Sir..." Daniel finally managed, though his voice cracked. He stopped, closed his mouth, and exhaled sharply, trying to steady his racing thoughts.

He had spent nearly two decades in the uppermost circles of global finance. As one of JP Morgan’s private client managers, he had seen everything directly and indirectly — billionaires quietly restructuring sovereign debt, industrialists reshaping entire markets, tech giants pouring tens of billions into moonshot projects that may never pay off.

And yet here, in front of him, sat an eighteen-year-old boy holding what should have been the holy grail of consumer technology.

A fully functional smart glass. It wasn’t the half-baked prototypes tech companies had paraded at expos for a decade. Neither was it the clunky headsets gamers tolerated because there was nothing better.

This was sleek, feather-light, elegant. A device so polished it could pass as a luxury accessory.

More than that: it was also a gaming device. A true gaming device. A VR console distilled into something no larger than a pair of glasses.

Daniel’s throat tightened as the realization pressed down on him. This wasn’t supposed to be possible. Apple, Meta, Samsung, Sony — they had all burned through unimaginable sums trying to achieve this. And they all have entire divisions dedicated, entire ecosystems waiting, but they were still years away from something viable.

Yet Liam had it here, in a box on his desk.

And worse — no, more terrifying — he wasn’t unveiling it at a keynote, or holding a press conference. He wasn’t standing on a stage in front of flashing cameras. He was simply... sliding it across his desk with a small smile on his face, as if it were nothing more than a clever gadget he picked up over the weekend.

Daniel’s mind screamed, How?

But when he tried to speak, the word caught in his throat.

Liam simply leaned back in his chair, watching, patient, almost amused. He had seen that look before — the look of a man whose worldview had just been torn apart.

And he was sort of enjoying it. Daniel had always worn a composed expression on his face, so it was kind of fun seeing him like this.

Finally, Daniel inhaled deeply and forced his emotions to settle. He raised his eyes and asked, his voice quieter now, "What... is your plan?"

Liam smiled faintly, as though expecting that question all along. "Test it first. See it for yourself before we talk business."

Daniel nodded, though his pulse hammered faster with every second. He picked up the LUCID back, put it back on.

Immediately, the device bloomed to life. The quasar again. The surge of light across his vision. Stars flaring into streaks, galaxies rushing past, the sense of being carried across a living universe.

Immediately, the calm female voice filled his mind.

"Welcome. Please grant permission for neural and retinal scan."

Daniel froze. The words alone made his skin prickle. Neural scan? Retinal scan? That wasn’t consumer tech. That was something in the area of classified researches buried in government labs and only whispered about at private dinners between billionaires.

"Go ahead," Liam already aware that the device was already asking for permission, said gently. "It’s painless and non-invasive. And it’s the only way to secure the device. Without those two scans, Lucid is nothing more than an accessory. This ensures no one but you can ever use it. It’s also a configuration process for using the device."

Daniel hesitated, then swallowed. "...Yes."

The scan completed in less than two seconds. He felt nothing, yet when his vision cleared, he was standing in what could only be described as a digital lobby — a seamless, hyperreal environment that felt more immersive than anything he had ever experienced in VR.

Grayed out floating icons shimmered ahead of him, though most were grayed out. A calm voice spoke again:

"Please create your profile and avatar."

He obeyed automatically, inputting his details. The process was startlingly fast, intuitive, like filling out a form that completed itself as he thought.

Then he saw it: his avatar. A perfect replica of himself, down to the exact clothes he was wearing in the study. He blinked, stunned. The system had captured everything from the neural scan.

But before he could process it further, a soft glow appeared beside him. A woman materialized — tall, graceful, silver-eyed, with a presence that felt simultaneously warm and unsettling.

"Hello, Daniel," she said in a smooth, almost melodic voice. "I am your personal assistant. Would you like to give me a name?"

Daniel’s lips twitched. He was barely breathing but he slowly managed to reply, "Elena."

She smiled. "Thank you. From now on, I am Elena. Shall I show you what LUCID can do?"

He could only nod.

For the next half hour, Daniel was carried through a whirlwind. Games that blurred the line between reality and fiction. Seamless streaming that felt effortless. And everywhere, Elena guiding him, patient, responsive, adaptive.

By the time he removed the device, his face was pale and his hands trembling from shock, and disbelief.

"This..." he whispered, his voice raw. "This is beyond anything I’ve ever..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

He looked up at Liam, his composure broken. "Are you sure you want to release this? Do you understand what will happen? The world isn’t ready. It’ll cause chaos."

Liam’s smile didn’t waver. "That’s the point. The more noise it makes, the faster it sells."

Daniel exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to his temple. His mind was still reeling from everything. He forced himself back into the mindset of a banker, the Manager of a Family Officenow sitting on the greatest product in modern history.

"How many units do you have ready?" he asked hoarsely.

Liam raised one finger.

Daniel frowned. "One hundred thousand?"

Liam chuckled softly. "One million. Plus change."

The words hit Daniel like a hammer. His pulse spiked and his hands curled against the desk.

One. Million.

Daniel nearly laughed, though it came out as a disbelieving choke. A hundred thousand would have been remarkable. Beyond amazing. Even ten thousand would have been enough to start a frenzy. But over a million?

"And the price?" Daniel asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"Seven hundred dollars a unit."

Daniel closed his eyes for a moment, struggling to absorb it. Then he leaned forward, his professional instincts finally taking over.

"One million units at seven hundred apiece... Sir, that isn’t a launch. That’s a financial earthquake. Do you realize? If even a whisper of this leaks, the entire consumer electronics industry will convulse. Apple, Samsung, Meta — they’ve all failed to get here, and you’re about to wipe them off the board overnight."

He continued, his eyes blazing, as he calculated and analysed. "But you won’t release them all at once, will you? No... of course not. You’ll drip-feed them. Limited supply. High demand. The resale value will skyrocket. Owning one will be like owning a Rolls Royce. It’ll become a status symbol, something people fight tooth and nail for."

Liam’s eyes glinted with amusement. "Except there’s no resale market. The device locks to the original user, because of the neural and retinal scans. In someone else’s hands, it’s nothing more than an accessory."

For a moment, Daniel just stared. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face. A wide, incredulous, manic grin.

"You’re going to break the world," he whispered, exhaling hard.

Liam leaned forward, sliding a list across the desk. "Not yet. First, we market. Forty names — the top tech reviewers and gaming streamers. Contact them. We will ship the product to them discreetly."

Daniel picked up the list, scanning it, and nodded. His grin hadn’t faded. If anything, it had grown sharper.

"Yes, sir," he said. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"But...," he continued, "While the device is groundbreaking, there are still a few issues. The neural scan... sounds scary. Same as the retina scan but not as much as the neural scan. People won’t accept that wording. You’ll get massacred by regulators, the media, and parents’ groups. We’ll need to package it differently."

Liam nodded in agreement when he heard this. He hasn’t really thought about this because he was focused on other things.

"I will change the wording. That’s easy. But you will have to explain to the reviewers and we will also put out an official statement that Lucid never reads your mind. It simply calibrates to your neural brainwave patterns for seamless input."

"Everything’s perfect then," Daniel smiled, rising from his seat. He slid the Lucid back onto his face, as though he couldn’t bear to part with it, and bowed his head once. "I’ll get to work immediately."

Liam smiled as he watched him leave, then leaned back in his chair with a soft sigh. All he has to do now was to wait a bit, as the first stone had been cast and the ripples would follow.

Moving on from LUCID, it was time to sign-in for the day.