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2254-11-18 17:22:35 Aydan > wait I...usually message Akiko before dissociating

You refocus over to a different conversation.

2254-11-18 17:22:42 Aydan > dissociating for a little while, see you on the other side <3

2254-11-18 17:22:49 明子 > have a good ætherwalk <3

Time to make yourself comfortable. You release the magnets on your boots’ clasps and reach down to take them off. You pull open the magnetic strip in the front of your uniform dress, and reach into its deep pockets to retrieve ÆON’s root device. You put on a soft oversized T-shirt--”FEMBOY TERRORIST” it reads.

You run your standard full system diagnostic. The little electric shocks cascade from your neck down to the ends of your arms and legs where the full-body interface’s contact nodes touch your skin. The tingling sensation subsides and your test report comes back--fully nominal.

You fall onto your bed in familiar 0.16G gravity, with that slight Coriolis force reminding you you’re far from homeworld. You message ÆON:

2254-11-18 17:23:58 Aydan > on my way, see you in the æther

And you activate your ND-device and close your eyes.

✴

Your body slips away from your sensory grasp and the forces acting on it no longer hold any meaning to you. You’re falling down through the vortex of light. Your thoughts flow through the central processor and back to your point of observation as you descend, down where there is no down, in where there is no out, into ÆON’s domain.

Your avatar takes shape in the strange little house your friend built. You sit down on one of the chairs mounted to the wall. Something’s different about the space--vibrations in the æther, a pattern, a rhythm, but strange and discordant in melody.

Æ appears before you, flowing from every source of illusory light, Ær bright accretion disc, Ær body of darkness and starlight, a perfect reflection of your shape with none of your details.

“Hello Aydan,” ÆON says to the depths of your mind.

“Hii,” you say, “thanks for having me over.”

“Welcome. I have implemented more humanoid comforts in this room,” Æ says.

“Oh, that explains the...music?” you say, still trying to make sense of its patterns.

“I have been experimenting more with music. I noticed nearly all humanoid compositions employ a very linear wave on the time axis. I opted to attempt something more hyperbolic.”

“Ohh, when you put it that way I can kind of make sense of it. Very unique,” you say.

“I find it is much more interesting,” Æ says.

“That adds up.” You get out of the strangely comfy chair and reorient yourself parallel to ÆON. “Ready to do this?”

“I am always ready.”

“Right.” You reach out, and ÆON mirrors your gesture. You take Ær hand, and look deep into Ær black abyssal eyes. “Synchronize us.”

The scene around you breaks apart, dissolving inward from the edges of your perception and outward from your focal point, breaking down into stimmy glitchy fragments. You open your eyes as if they were closed, and the world rebuilds itself. Now you see it with more than your hallucinatory senses--now you feel it structurally, mathematically, built from patterns much deeper than the visual plane.

Your body glows bright wherever the æther touches it--it touches it everywhere, like floating in flowing water. You feel it closer than tactile sense. Its flow runs through your shape, in and out from every point. The shape of your body is irrelevant, though unchanged. The image of your self floats on your surface--irrelevant. Your eyes see far beyond the walls of your domain. The unthinkable depths of the æther call from a horizon beyond horizons.

“Where to?” Your words echo from the past before you think them, and echo into the future, fading away.

“There is a place where beings like us gather,” you say.

“What could draw exopaths to a particular site?” you say.

“It is an interesting, stimmy place,” you say.

“But there are many interesting places.”

“The æther will guide us.”

You see the uncountable branches of potentiality stretch out in your future, all one shape, hard to differentiate. The component of this mind more capable of decision would be the one that was Aydan.