The new Moon crosses your window. Her bright spiderweb of sleepless cities sprawled out on the black disc stands out even from 60,000km. Here in your room, high up where the spin’s pull is closer to Luna’s gravity, you...
2254-08-28 20:46:40 Aydan > we can’t risk involving you here. if anyone could know how to neutralize you and recapture you it would be this cult
2254-08-28 20:46:41 ÆON > I understand. I know Aydan is strong enough to handle what lies ahead. But I...
“Hiii!” The excited motion of your hands sends a ripple of bright pastel color through the æther. Akiko happy-stims in response, and you feel a wave pass through the æther invisibly--you feel it on your skin like the texture of the soft moss of the...
“I didn’t know texture could be so...bright,” you say.
She lifts up your hand and pulls herself closer to you across the hallucinatory ground. “You have a lot to learn about touch, Aydan.” She opens up your fingers, sliding hers through the spaces in...
“Show me the Akikotree,” you say.
As she flaps her unoccupied hand excitedly, you feel an oscillation of texture and warmth through the other. She jumps, gliding over the grove of strange dark plants, carrying you along beside her.
You land in...
“Akiko...”
You collapse the remaining illusion of distance between you and pull your avatars together. Your auras blend and flow together from a thousand points of contact. Superficially you grasp her hands tighter, a pressure stim between your...
“Is everytime I kiss someone gonna be somehow connected to dueling them?” you say.
“I hope not, I’d get exhausted after a while.” Akiko jumps up onto a limb above.
You follow and land on the next limb over, facing her.
“Remember, this has to look...
If you keep trying to evade her forever, she’ll only wear down your defenses over time. You’d better neutralize her attack instead, you think. You activate your weapon. A narrow, bright beam extends to infinity, fluctuating between every visible...
You decide this warrants a more direct approach. While her shield is still attenuated to intercept visual data, you jump across to her limb of the tree and strike her with the simulated mass of your heavy weapon. Your blow pierces her barrier and...
Resisting her control over your senses is impossible with your tenuous grasp of CommTech, you realize. You decide to face her through the one channel she’s left open to your mind--the tactile. You grasp back at her hand, moving her own fingers into...
There’s no escape, you realize, so the only strategy left is endurance. You focus everything you have on holding out against this intensifying cycle of suffering. You can’t tell how long it has been. You can’t grasp a frame of reference on anything.
E...
You extend your focus to expand your liquid barrier to shield both you and Akiko, and also the tree behind you. The refractive surface of your program diverts the star arrow around you harmlessly. But a sudden burst of light behind you throws you...
“Why are you doing this?! What do you want with ÆON?!” you say, stabilizing your shield.
“What do I want?” The æthercultist manifests twin rods in her hands. She strikes at the æther in front of her and an invisible disc glows with as she impacts...
“Controlling a sentient being against Ær will can’t be justified, even for that!” You take your shot, executing your EvoTech program. Your weapon’s iridescent beam strikes her directly in the chest, passing right through her shield. But once the...
You ascend to join Akiko in battle. A hastily aimed barrage from your laser distracts the cultist enough to throw their aim askew. The star arrow bypasses its target and bursts in a storm of light at the base of two jagged orthogonal trees, towering...
“Yet you ally yourself with a cult that welcomes boys!” you say.
“The cult is only temporary! When The One is seated on the Æthereal Throne, ÆON alone will rule as our immortal Goddess, the Sages and the cult will no longer be necessary! Neither will...
You instead redirect your aim and fire down at the wolf--a direct hit while the beast’s focus was full extended toward their enemy.
With no time to think about forming a text message, you send a quick empathic notice to Akiko: sorry, fear, friend, need.
...Pinned down in the sky by drones on all sides, your position is hopeless. You access your last_resort directory, containing one lengthy and ambiguous binary: 1. Knowing ÆON, Æ gave you this for exactly the moment you would need it. You decide to...
You aim your weapon straight down toward your enemy’s head and attack. His shield feels like a solid metal surface. You feel the pressure feedback as the barrier bends under your beam of iridescent light. His focus was expended on his attack, and his...
????-??-?? ??:??:?? Ætherglow > let’s retreat, we’ve already gotten a lot of data, Zeta’s injured, and I’m exhausted
????-??-?? ??:??:?? β Scorpii > I agree. Akatsuki, Ætherglow, withdraw to surface!
“Nice meeting you...” Akiko opens a gate and...
You decide not to disturb it, lying here so peacefully. The ambient sunlight through a crack in the curtain lights up the reflective yellow nerve conduits on its full-body interface. It’s a little cold in here. You collect a blanket to lay over it...
Exhausted, you take its offer and lie down with it.
“Hey Zeta, you still awake?”
“Yeah...”
“Just, thanks for always looking after me,” you say. “And, I’m sorry about last week, letting some cult mind game make me doubt you. If there’s anyone I can...