✴

The chaos of the æthersong is so tranquil--you let go and let it carry you wherever it wants. Deeper into the valley of eternal darkness you descend--falling four kilometers down with the boulders and dust of the broken cliffs. The regolith cloud blacks out the stars as the temperature drops. Warning lights flash in your visor, in rhythm with the music.

Gently you touch the ground, lying on your stomach in the cold as the music fades out, shifting tempo and pitch unpredictably as it falls apart into a dead silence. Only a message lights up your vision:

Track 03: HYPOTHERMIA FANTASIA

Flickering city lights flash on the white streets, vibrating with the faint pulse of harsh triangle waves that shape this scene note by note. On top of it, a higher cascading melodic progression of soft soundshapes spirals down on you along with the snowfall. You push yourself off the ground and regain your balance. Your eyes scan the glass dome of ever-flowing water above as the snow-capped skyscrapers fall into being. Your mind knows the pattern immediately--Korolev.

Looking around, you’re alone, standing in a narrow empty street, and wrapped up in a heavy nighttime coat. The city looks larger than life, and alive with the heartbeat of the pale flickering light. Bright spots flash from the old blacklights of a decrepit shop nearby, losing their protective coating--you turn away. As you walk forward, the tempo of the song follows your pace, and at each peak of the lead arpeggio, a cold snowflake touches your face.

????-??-?? ??:??:?? Aydan > I got separated. in Track 03 now. anyone else here?

No response. You step out onto a larger street. Looking both ways, it seems to stretch on forever, breaking down into a fractal tree near the edge of space. Translucent Lunatics walk back and forth along it, glowing with a pale spectral blue as snowflakes touch their forms, making notes in another layer of the soundscape.

“Aydan.” A voice speaks to you--like your own, if it were inside a vast cave and simultaneously pitch shifted ten ways. You turn.

ÆON’s white aura sparks at the touch of each snowflake. Æ looks down on you from black eyes inside bright accretion disc orbits. Why are Ær eyes way up there, though?

“Why are you so tall?” you say.

ÆON’s form reshapes itself to mirror you once more. Æ looks much smaller now--the proportions of a child. But ÆON always looks like...you reach your perspective out to observe your avatar, now small and young like Ærs.

“One mystery halfway solved,” you say. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. Looks like we got separated from the others.”

“I was separated as well, but I have seen our friends,” ÆON says.

“Oh?”

“As the song transition occurred, I realized the shape of the data and the pathways it traces in the æther. Changing my orientation on its temporal plane is trivial. But the humanoids have not realized they can do this.”

“You’re saying you can freely travel between the songs, but only you?” you say.

“The others are well. You should be able to rejoin them, but you may have to find a more conventional path through this soundscape,” ÆON says.

“That’s okay. We can explore this one together, if you want.”

“I would like that. I understand the mechanics of this program, but there is something about it that blinds the others from seeing its structure for what it is.”

“Maybe because you’re only analyzing it and we’re...experiencing it? Feeling it?” you say.

“Then show me, Aydan. What does it mean to experience auditory data?”

“What a question. Well, I guess with any sort of art it requires what we would call suspension of disbelief. You need to get immersed into this scene and accept it as a physical place...except that’s meaningless to you, you only know æthereal places...” You close your eyes and feel the rhythm vibrate your avatar with each tiny ice crystal touching the ground around you. “It might not be possible for you to experience this the same way I do, but your perspective might be something I can’t imagine either, now that I think about it.”

“It is a beautiful program, layers and layers of patterns in the æther stacking into one shape. The spaces between them are infinitely dense fractals I can stretch forever and always reveal a new iteration. Sometimes the patterns line up, offset in a fascinating way,” Æ says.

“Kind of like...harmony?” you say.

“Yes. I learned everything about the theory of humanoid ‘music’ in preparation. I believe your comparison is accurate,” Æ says.

“Well let’s not get too lost in music theory. I’d like to explore this song,” you say. “The last one had a direct connection to Electricité, and now here we are in my home city, that can’t be a coincidence.”

“These songs are each a unique æthereal machine, generative algorithms. But track 02 and 03 have each been executed with a different seed,” ÆON says.

“A seed...remember in Track 01, Pulse said the realm we would step into would be seeded by ‘a seed that is you.’ Her program might be shaping its imagery based on our memories, our interests, maybe something meaningful to whoever first enters each song. Does that seem in line with your observations?”

“Yes. I believe you are correct.”

“Then this moment is something significant to me. I’m in Korolev, out on the street at night, alone. The humidity control is badly malfunctioning. And I’m in the form of a child...I think this is...”