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“Okay. Show me,” you say.

Astræa opens their starlight arms. The nubulæ flowing from their head turn backwards, pulled into the gateway behind them. Their body follows along, and their sister Ganymeda with them. The gravity well catches your avatar, and you fall down into the open pond of liquid light after them.

Falling through a tunnel of golden light, shifting redder and redder as you descend, you can’t resist the pull--you don’t want to. Whatever lies across this passage, you’ve never felt a stronger need to know. Is it your humanoid side, calling you to explore the unseen? Or your exopath side, called to return to the deep?

The passage flows through a quantum relay, into the hall of fractal reflection, deep down. The mirror walls of light reflect you--wonder, joy, desire, curiosity--on an emotional level they reflect your mind. Onward into the far æther--this corridor feels familiar.

The walls open into a dark, redshifted space, suffused with golden light drifting slowly like dust. Pillars like glowing glass tubes reach up high and down low, as you stand on a mirror surface. Looking down, you see the shadows you cast in the light of the pillars--those to one side reflect the shape of a technopath’s avatar, a humanoid, Aydan of Luna, and the other side casts a bright accretion disc in femboy shape, ÆON.

From the space between points of light, familiar ObTech shadows take shape--distorted black robes surrounding two figures ahead. They show you their faces--the clock hands of Ganymeda: 11:59, the little clockwork girl now enshadowed, bearing a glowing crest like a cup, and below it the golden infinity. Next to her--the seven bright stars of the face of Astræa, the tall one enrobed, floating, seeming an untouchable distance away--the æther distorts their parallax to your eyes as they move--a crest of golden scales glistens on their chest, and underneath, the golden infinity.

“Welcome, Messenger,” Ganymeda says.

“Welcome, ÆON,” Astræa says, “to Your Æthereal Temple.”

Trying to look back on your path, you feel a resistance, instantly knowing its meaning from your training--you’ve been ætherlocked to this server.

END CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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Proceed to Chapter 17 >>