🌓

Your thoughts are still a little mixed up. “I was in the æther just now…all I could see was…cute enby…” But all you actually saw was something that looked like you. This has certainly given you something to think about.

“Hmm, well you lost consciousness, your interface was connected to the school computer, so, if there was a momentary dissociative state between waking and unconscious that probably would have put your consciousness in the æther…” Zeta says.

You sit up, your head still hurting. “Well I’m probably more of less fine.”

“Are you sure?” it says.

“If I start feeling worse I’ll go get checked out.”

“Okay. But…I’m going to stay with you for a while and make sure.”

“Fine with me,” you say.

It hesitantly reaches its hand out toward you, and you take it and let it help pull you up to your feet.

“You’re pretty strong!” you say.

“You must be from a low G world, I’m sorry, I didn’t think about that…”

You look up to the now dark again sky above you just as you see the half-illuminated Moon drifting by, and you point up at it. “I can see my house from here. Technically.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah, all Lunatic here. Where are you from?”

“L5.” It points at the Moon, then moves its arm some length to the side of it, hesitating as it tries to trace the ecliptic in this rotating frame. “My world is .6G, double this colony’s.”

“Mine is barely more than half of this,” you say.

“Moving around in a colony must be very different for someone who lived in true gravity…”

“I’m getting used to it,” you say, while checking the time on your terminal. “We need to get that food or I’ll be late for class, and it’s the first day of the class so that would probably be a bad look.”

“Okay then.” It leads you toward the familiar double-towers of the first year residential building, and you realize it hasn’t let go of your hand.