Defense attorney for Aremus Crud, Jeff Warnica, paced a couple of steps back and forth in front of the jury, head lowered, rubbing his hands, once again running through his plan in his mind.

Of course, malicious intent had been established long before trial. The defendant himself never denied committing the act. He was caught red-handed changing his birth month from March to June in the planetary database.

No one could deny that Aremus’s breach plan possessed a certain elegance. His algorithm for cracking 2048-bit system encryption was downright ingenious, and he was caught only through inexperience—he forgot to switch to a different virtual identity before starting the hack. Everything else had been flawless. Three days after the arrest, one of the top cryptographers in planetary security remarked at a closed briefing: “If that kid had been born under the right sign, we’d be working for him now, not trying him.” Either way, his guilt was beyond doubt.

Still, Jeff hoped to soften the jurors’ hearts with certain facts of Aremus’s life and the unusual story of his birth. Not to mention that, in the end, all the boy ever wanted was to fly spaceships, not rob banks.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we all know our education system is built on astrological data. That data determines a child’s natural abilities and allows our educators to avoid wasting time teaching a child something he has no innate talent for. If you have a gifted musician, there’s no point forcing him to study differential equations or quantum mechanics. Our qualified bot-tutors focus on music literacy, finger dexterity, cultural enrichment, art history, literature—and above all, music, music, music. That child is destined to become a composer, a Carnegie Hall pianist, a violin virtuoso. On the other hand, if a born scientist or engineer falls into their hands, what sense is there in stuffing him with humanities? His natural talent must be nurtured in the exact sciences: mathematics, physics, logic, spatial imagination, and so on.”

Jeff paused, then paced twice more before the jury.

“However, ladies and gentlemen, however. Imagine, just for a moment—” Jeff’s lips curved into a gentle smile “—that, by some bizarre twist of fate, the astrological data… the data based on precise location and time within the Solar System… are wrong. What then?”

“Your Honor, objection,” the prosecutor cut in. “I see no relevance in this supposition. How can astrological data be wrong?”

“Your Honor, please allow me to continue. The relevance will become clear very shortly.” Jeff turned to the judge.

“Objection overruled. But make it clear to the court as quickly as possible.”

“Of course, Your Honor. That is exactly what I intend to do right now. Please call the witness—Mrs. Crud.”

Jeff paced a couple more times, rubbing his hands, while Mrs. Crud walked to the stand.

He cast a quick glance at the jurors before asking his first question.

“Mrs. Crud—” honesty and integrity seemed stamped on the lawyer’s face “—please place your hand on the Bible and say: ‘I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.’”

Mrs. Crud complied, and Jeff began.

“Mrs. Crud, where were you at the moment your son was born?”

“I was flying from Asper back to Earth.”

“So you gave birth on a spaceship. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Just for the record… what were you doing on Asper?”

“I worked as a linguist and translator for two Asperian languages. But because of… well, you know… the growing unrest on the planet, we were ordered to evacuate immediately.”

“One more question. Natural or artificial insemination?”

“Natural…” She started to continue, but Jeff stopped her with a gesture. “The jury is not interested in the details of your private life, madam. So—when your son was born, you were aboard a spaceship. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And who delivered the baby—the ship’s doctor?”

“It was a medical bot. Its database included delivery protocols. Though not very detailed ones.”

“Are you saying there were complications the bot couldn’t handle?”

“There were some complications. I lost consciousness during labor and was in critical condition.”

“Excellent. And who recorded the place and time of birth—the same medical bot, correct?”

“Well…” Mrs. Crud paused, gathering her thoughts. “That’s where everything went wrong. You see, the birth took place on a spaceship traveling at very high speed. So even while the baby was being delivered, the ship covered thousands of miles.”

“And yet,” Jeff raised a finger, “and yet, in your son’s birth certificate, Aremus’s place of birth is listed as Los Angeles, California.” Jeff turned to the judge. “Your Honor, you have a copy in the attached documents.” He turned back to Mrs. Crud and looked at her curiously. “Why?”

“Well, how do I explain… The ship’s medbot could deliver the baby, but it couldn’t issue a birth certificate.”

“Why not?”

“That procedure falls under jurisprudence, and the medical bot only had medical programming.”

“Then why didn’t the captain or some other officer do it?”

“Because at that moment we were being pursued by an Asperian warship. The captain and crew were at their posts on the bridge, managing the escape. When we finally got out of danger, the ship had structural damage; the crew was busy restoring hull integrity and other critical navigation functions. Besides, I was still unconscious and clearly in no state to insist on proper bureaucratic procedures. Later, when the ship finally landed in Los Angeles, my baby and I were taken to Martin Luther King Hospital, and only there did the staff discover the child had no birth certificate.”

“This one?” Jeff took the document, opened it, and showed it to Mrs. Crud. “Correct?”

Mrs. Crud looked at the paper and nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

“Fascinating!” Jeff strode quickly to the jury box. “Please note, esteemed jurors: Martin Luther King Community Hospital is apparently quite close to that lost patch of deep space where the actual birth took place!” Jeff emphasized the word “apparently.” “In essence, Aremus did not replace his true birth date with a false one—the one recorded in his birth certificate, March 14, was false from the very beginning.

Thus, we have no clear idea what planetary influences actually shaped Mr. Crud’s abilities. The humanitarian profile assigned to Pisces—medicine, psychology, arts, social work—was almost certainly wrong for him. Directing his life down that path would have been a catastrophe for him and for everyone around him.

What he did—rewriting himself from Pisces to Gemini so the system would finally let him study what he was obviously born for—was the act of a desperate boy trying to fix a cosmic mistake.”

“I object,” the prosecutor interjected again. “This does not justify hacking the planetary database and manipulating data.”

“Overruled,” the judge brushed the objection away like a fly. “So, counsel, if your client was born who-knows-where and who-knows-when, and his astrological sign cannot be determined—what kind of character and inclinations does he have?”

Realizing his question might be taken as mere curiosity, the judge caught himself:

“Nevertheless, continue, counsel.”

Jeff smiled gratefully at the judge.

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Turning to the prosecutor, he added:

“I hope the relevance of my argument is now clear to the court.”

***

Three years later, on a prison shipyard on Venus, outside the dome the temperature had climbed to +480 °C. Inside the hangar, however, air-conditioned coolness prevailed and the air smelled of welding ozone.

Aremus Crud, in a gray jumpsuit numbered 78763-G, welded a patch onto an old freighter. With his mask pushed up on his forehead and his face streaked with soot, his light eyes stood out—faded, as though bleached by years of artificial light. He no longer looked like the scrawny kid from the trial: broader shoulders, calloused hands, movements precise and almost tender, the way a person moves when he speaks metal’s native language.

A guard-bot, model Cerberus-9, approached. Its voice was metallic but programmed with the fake cheerfulness coders believe is “motivational.”

“Prisoner Crud, Aremus. Profile update available. Review and confirm.”

The bot handed him a tablet.

On the screen—standard citizen card, except in the “Zodiac Sign” field a new word now stood in bold:

**GLITCH**

Below it—an emblem: a broken ring on black field. 

Ruling planet: none. 

Element: vacuum. 

Recommended professions: space engineering, deep-space navigation, repairs outside the Solar System—99.7 % compatibility.

Aremus read in silence. 

His gaze froze on the word “Glitch,” and memory dragged him back to one day in fifth grade.

He stood at the board, face burning. 

The teacher-bot projected his horoscope for the whole class and announced coldly, like a sentence:

“Complete absence of talents. Recommendation: route to human resource recycling.”

The class burst into laughter. 

Someone behind him hissed: “You’re a total zero.” 

He just stood there, feeling everything inside collapse into a small, black, scalding knot. 

Then, during break, the smart kids cornered him in the bathroom and beat him.

That same knot rose from his stomach to his throat now.

After three seconds the bot repeated:

“Confirm receipt and acceptance of new data.”

Aremus ran a finger across the screen, as if checking whether the paint had dried.

Then he laughed—first a breath, then for real, hoarse, as though he hadn’t used his voice for anything but “chow” and “lights out” in three years.

He laughed because the system had finally admitted it: 

he had never been a zero. 

He had simply been born under the wrong star. 

Under none at all.

Two other prisoners working in the same bay turned around. One lifted his welding mask and shouted:

“What’s wrong, bro? Heat finally got you?”

Aremus shook his head toward the tablet.

“No. It’s just… I’m officially a system error now. 

They gave the error a name, a coat of arms, and ninety-nine point seven in my pocket. 

So I wouldn’t break their database again, they made a separate box just for me.”

He turned the tablet toward the others.

They came over, looked, then started chuckling, then laughing out loud. Laughter rolled through the hangar like an echo.

The bot, glancing at the prisoners and not understanding what was happening, repeated:

“Confirm receipt…”

Aremus pressed “Confirm” with a soot-blackened thumb, leaving a perfect print on the glass.

“You know what, Cerberus?” he said without raising his eyes. “Tell whoever came up with this… thanks. Now I know for sure—I don’t belong to any of your damn planets.”

He lowered the mask, struck the arc.

A blinding white flare lit everything for an instant.

In the welding light, the broken ring on the tablet screen seemed to breathe.

And somewhere far away, in Earth’s archives, in the “Zodiac Sign” field, a new entry appeared—the thirteenth.

It was not born of an astronomical discovery.

It was born of a bureaucratic mistake.

Aremus had tried to change his birth month from Pisces to Gemini so the system would finally let him touch the stars with his own hands.

And the system did better: it erased him from all twelve signs at once.