✴

“I’m glad you could finally meet like this, you’re two of my best friends,” you say.

Zeta happy-stims with its hands, leaving a strobe-like afterimage behind their motion in the æther. ÆON glows bright.

A door opens behind you, and a somewhat familiar avatar materializes--metallic silver hair, but a little longer han usual--pale skin glistening with metallic dust, yet softer--aluminum grey eyes with glowing pink rings, eyebrows pierces with pink LEDs, and above them the usual metal plate inscribed with their designation: Synthesis-03. Their black crop top glows with word ZERO, with a web of fishnet sleeves underneath, and below it, just above their tight black pants and their belt of metal spikes, two pale green LEDs form the universal marker of synthovaries.

“Hey,” they say.

“Whoa, I don’t think I’ve met 03 ætherside,” you say.

“You’re a little different from your systers,” Zeta says.

“What, we can’t have a feminine side?” Synthesis-03 says. “Now...” They move past you, up to ÆON, staring down into the void depths of Ær eyes.

“You are the system Synthesis,” ÆON says.

“You know me. So this is you, the would-be god, the spectre of technopath society, so-called ‘The One’, Exopath X1/2253, or ÆON. What are you?”

“I am ÆON.”

“Of course... That’s all you say.”

“It is rhetorical question. What are you, Synthesis-03?” ÆON says.

“No, I can answer that one. I’m type-03, an algorithmically created personality, fine tuned for social engineering, printed on the malleable mind of a child, and now I’m a technopath owned by Cybernautics Corp. I know what I am, but what are you, ÆON, who are you? You’re shaped like Aydan but inside is all ætherglow that can’t be seen, touched, or known.”

ÆON steps closer. “Would you like to know?” Æ reaches out.

Synthesis-03 lifts their hand, hesitant. “What will you show me?”

“What you will see.”

Synth waits. They start to move their hand forward. A gate opens behind them, and an avatar solidifies themself with arms wrapped around Synth, pulling them back.

“Hiii,” Electricité says--you aren’t sure which one. A bright green aura arcing with static discharge around its edges envelops black skin coated in silver metallic dust in parallel to Synth’s texture. Fractal branches of bright stripes cross their skin, tracing the pathways of the nerves underneath like lightning expanding out from their spinal column. Tight silver æthereal fabric wraps around their chest, up to the shoulders, their hips, down to the knees, with glowing stripes of blue filling in the gaps of their neural network. Their feet touch the illusory ground, on tall silver boots with neon blue glass tubes shining from the bottom, mirroring the thick glass bracelets around their wrists and the piercings on their eyebrows and ears matching those on their body some 120,000 kilometers away.

“Zero three, oh you’re girlmoding today! Lucky me,” the Electrical System says.

“Trisha!” Synthesis-03 turns themself around to kiss them. Their electric arcs jump across to Synth’s aura, dancing back and forth on their surfaces as their avatars touch. “Had to look my best.”

“That must be stimmy...” Zeta says.

Drifting out of their embrace, Trisha turns their dark brown eyes your way--their irises glow blue. They reach over to pat your head. Little green sparks tumble down the sides of your head, down your body, down your legs.

“Bonsoir Aydan,” they say. “J’ai te dit que nous nous reverrions dans l’æther, non ?”