✴

This seemed like a great idea at the time, but what would an exopath like you know about surface-style orbital mechanics? You search your vast knowledge of the theories of physics and the laws of mathematics, but it only amounts to stimmy patterns that fail to translate into physical contexts.

You figure out your bearings as best you can and attempt a maneuver 45 degrees between the prograde and radial in headings at the periapsis of your orbit. You fire your handheld thruster and let momentum and gravity carry you--directly into the bottom of the stairs.

In the impact, you fall from your mount and roll across the rough pattern-carved stone, until the pull of the singularity starts to lift you up again. You grab onto an inset in the illusory ground. Behind you, the crawler holds on with many legs hooked in.

“Now look what you’ve done, we’re on the wrong side, I’ll have to climb up to the bottom, and I wasn’t finished climbing down!” the crawler says.

“Sorry,” you say.

“Get this mass off of me!” the little one says.

“Sorry! Sorry...” You terminate your program, and the physics simulation of the space falls back into its normal state, with you now laying on the bottom of the stairs--now the top, but turning the opposite direction.

“Finally that’s over,” the crawler says. “Now that you’re out of the way, I have been delayed more than long enough.” It crawls on past you up the stairs.

The little exopath circles above you. “You humanoids are truly nothing but trouble.” It vanishes into the wall. You are alone.

Lying here, looking up at the beautiful red star, the tower seems to spin around you. Up, down, spinward, antispinward--you’re getting nowhere. Your vision unfocuses, starting to split into double perception.

Be careful, Aydan, you think.

What?

Our sync rate is falling. It will not be safe for you here if we split, you think.

I can’t make sense of this server, you think.

This is not a place of sense.

Even synced with you, I can’t see the æther like you do. I can’t let go of the universe that’s hardwired into my system. It’s like chains that pull me back up whenever I try to look deeper, no matter what I try.

You look up at the remaining bracelet bound to your avatar wrist.

And I’m preventing you from seeing what’s ahead of us. We’re just stumbling around in the dark here.

You stare at the pulsating star, mesmerized by its pattern.

Why do we so badly want to go there? How do we know the answers we seek are there? you think.

We do not.

Then why did the æther take us here?

The æther is the æther.

You turn your gaze, getting lost instead in the infinitely deep layers of the patterns carved into the floor under you, the colors flowing through its valleys.

Final Exam will be a surfacewalk compared to this...

Focus your intent, Aydan. What do we want?