William first saw the stars when he was six years old. He lay on the roof of his crumbling house in a remote village, following the stars with his small fingers, whispering their names as if they were old friends. The universe beckoned to him, a gentle voice in the wind that whispered, You belong here.

The world outside had other ideas, though.

His father was a peasant farmer, his mother a tailor, working every day to bring food for the three children. Education was a privilege, and dream of stars? That was sheer madness.

"Stars will not fill our belly," his father always said to him. "The earth is your destiny."

Still, William could not help but feel the yearning in his heart.

In school, whenever his teacher said the word physics, his ears stood up. The motion laws, gravity, and energy were more interesting to him than anything else. He showered his teacher with questions galore. "Why do stars glow? What occurs in a black hole? Can we ever move faster than light?" His questions had no limits, but he had limited resources.

The closest library was miles from him, and there were no astrophysics books in his village. Nevertheless, William would not be deterred. He read late into the night by the dim light of a kerosene lamp after borrowing dog-eared science texts from his schoolteacher.

His passion for knowledge was not unobserved—but not in the manner he had anticipated.

The villagers made fun of him. "A farm boy wanting to be an astronaut?" they jeered. "You must learn to plow the fields, not follow stars." Even his own family scoffed at him. His younger siblings teased him frequently, not because they were mean, but because they just couldn't get it.

But William didn't give up.

He learned under trees, on rooftops, and between his chores. His hands became rough from tilling the fields, but his mind flew through galaxies far beyond his little world.

At sixteen, he chanced upon an online course in astrophysics from a renowned university in the city—free, but with a catch: it needed an internet connection. The nearest cybercafé was fifteen kilometers away.

Every weekend, William took the long trek barefoot, trudging along rocky roads, enduring the blistering sun or the deluging rain, just to sit in front of an old, slow computer. He soaked up every lecture, every equation, every theory, jotting down notes in a worn notebook as if his life was at stake.

One afternoon, fate stepped in.

Professor Rao, a well-known astrophysicist, had dropped by the café to monitor his emails. He saw William bent over, his fingers flying across the pages of his notebook. Curious, he approached.

He stood in stunned silence as William worked through complicated equations well beyond high school level, as if they were basic arithmetic. Rao observed something remarkable in the boy—a raw, untrained brilliance.

"Who is your teacher?" Rao finally inquired.

William stopped, nodded at the computer screen. "This," he said.

The professor was amazed. An unschooled village kid understanding advanced astrophysics just through online lectures? It was unprecedented.

"Want to become a scientist?" Rao asked.



William's eyes sparkled. "More than anything," he breathed.



Rao knew he couldn't let it happen. He walked William through the application process for a scholarship at a university in Bangalore, certain that such a gift couldn't be wasted.



When William came home with the news, reality hit with force.



His father refused.

"You will fail," he said. "Boys like you do not become scientists."

The words hurt, but William refused to back down. "If I fail, at least I'll fail trying," he said.

For the first time in his life, he rebelled against his father. Rao supported him, and a scholarship that paid his tuition fees allowed him to depart from home and move to Bangalore, with only a bagful of second-hand books and an indomitable dream.

However, entering the university was as if entering a different world.

His peers were from elite schools, their English smooth, their knowledge refined. William struggled. His accent embarrassed him, his lack of formal education made him feel like an outsider.

He was overwhelmed.

But he would not be defeated.

All-nighters in the library became commonplace. He spent page after page crammed with numbers doing repeated problems until he knew them inside out. He jotted equations on canteen napkins, muttering hypotheses under his breath while holding down jobs in order to be able to buy food.

His efforts were noticed by his professors. Rao, his mentor, kept encouraging him. "The universe doesn't care where you come from," he said to William. "Only where you're willing to go."

And William continued going.

Years went by, and he became famous. His work on gravitational waves and dark matter made him known. Soon, he was invited to give talks at international conferences. The boy who used to draw stars in the roof of his house was now computing the destiny of the universe.

One day, William received a letter of invitation from NASA.

He stood before a crowd of top scientists, his voice firm, his mind clear. As Dr. William Carter, he described his revolutionary work on dark matter how it formed galaxies, how it kept the universe together.

Then, for an instant, he glanced up not merely at the harsh lights overhead, but beyond them.

Beyond the ceiling. Beyond the boundaries of what anyone had ever thought possible for him.

Out into the infinite sky that once softly whispered his name.

And he smiled.

Because he had succeeded.

He had reached out and touched the stars.