✴

You look over the ledge down to the far platform, counting out the number of pixels in between on both axes.

You see the arrangement next to Zeta, an overwhelmingly complicated pile of shapes.

You make a pattern:

▢■■

■■▢

▢▢■

You get to work on your task, trying to call to mind everything you know about cellular automata. It’s simple enough to come up with a self-replicating and self-sustaining pattern growing infinitely in one direction.

ÆON steps out onto your new platform, Ær black hole eyes looking down at the target. It pulls together a structure and inserts it strategically, and the ground breaks and dissolves away ahead of you, consuming itself to infinity, while the launchpad you need remains locked in place.

Zeta comes along behind you with its machine--seating three and flanked by spinning wheels of motive shapes, oscillating between forms.

You climb onto the delicate contraption, making sure not to malign even one pixel. And with its passengers secure, Zeta pulls out an inhibiting structure, allowing the machine to glide off of the launchpad and down on a direct path to the target.

The ground above grows far, though it’s hard to see distance scaled in a domain of pixels. Your craft cascades down through the vortex, over the consuming darkness below, without straying from its path. But as you drift down, the song is anything but stable and tranquil. It breaks its cycle to fall down an ominous downward climb, settling into a tense minor chord.

A second glider drifts into view just beside you--a light, agile craft carrying only the pixelated avatar of Pulse. A shield surrounds your glider, distorting the image beyond with a grid flashing in chaotic patterns of greyscale pixels.

Flying her glider right alongside you, the Pulse-construct reaches out just as a rippling effect takes hold of the waveform and pulls it just out of alignment. She reaches right past Zeta’s shield, right through yours once again, and pulls one pixel out of its place. As she drifts back away from you, your craft spirals uncontrollably down as its components tear themselves apart, consuming and replicating in all the wrong ways.

As the last of your ship dissolves away, you feel the gravity of the sub-bass layer pulling you down, down into the all-consuming depths. You maneuver yourself enough to reach out and take the hands of Zeta and ÆON.