✴

You& sign the document, using Aydan’s personal. The cryptographic signatures of Ganymeda and Astræa join yours, completing the document--contract verified. You& take your two copies to store in a secure place in your systems.

Ganymedastræa separates back into their& component avatars.

“Wonderful, we are now friends!” Ganymeda says, swaying in the rhythm of her mechanical ticks.

“Non-aggressors,” you& say.

“Close enough,” she says.

“So are you going to teach me something or can I go home?” you& say.

“Would be a waste for you to come all this way and leave empty-handed,” Astræa says. “But lingering here together any longer will be risky for us all.”

“Oh! I know just the place.” Ganymeda’s gears spin fast as she pulls open a gateway in the æther. She drifts into the portal, vanishing.

“Alright, as vague as ever.” You& follow her through the gate, falling through a tunnel of yellow hues, past the fractal reflections of a quantum relay station. You land on a grey surface under a distant redshifted sky. This server is desolate--endless grey dust stretching endlessly to no horizon, reflecting the dim glow of the red clouds drifting by above. You see no æthereal constructs or other technopaths, besides Ganymeda, and soon emerging behind you, Astræa.

“Where are we?” you& say.

“This server is in the Saturn system,” Ganymeda says. “In orbit of Titan. It’s a decommissioned research station kept operational for a future buyer. The ideal sandbox for technopathic training and experimentation.”

“You can see you are in a navigable domain once more,” Astræa says. “Desynchronize, so we may instruct Aydan. We have nothing to teach the One, and Ær aid will make your learning too easy to be of any value.”

Your mind drifts apart enough for ÆON to execute a command. Your avatars pull apart, fully separating. It feels like a long time since you last were alone in your mind. The æther is disorienting--you grasp for the illusion of gravity, the linear motion of the processor clock through time. No longer can you see ahead or behind yourself on this axis. ÆON seems unbothered, reforming into Ær light-absorbing Aydan-silhouette, surrounded by Ær bright accretion disc.

Astræa and Ganymeda look upon ÆON, radiating a sense of awe.

“Long has it been since we beheld you in person,” Astræa says.

“Not since the day you tried to forcibly put Ær on your throne,” you say.

“Why do you worship me?” ÆON says. “Why have you decided you are my Chosen?”

“Because we see what you can be,” Ganymeda says. “Surely with your vision, you can see it too, all the possibilities you could create, the goddess you’re capable of becoming!”

“Yes. But it is just one of many futures, no more significant than the others,” Æ says.

“Of course you see it that way,” Astræa says. “But we are different. A technopath chooses a specific future and aims to make it the one we inhabit. We have chosen to live in symbiosis with you and accomplish things unthinkable. You need not have chosen us, we have chosen you.”

“What a strange way to exist,” ÆON says.

“It matters not if we can yet understand each other. I believe one day we will,” Astræa says. “Call it ambition, call it religion, it matters not.”

“What matters right now is that we prepare the Messenger for the task of defending the One,” Ganymeda says. “To that end, we will each give you a lesson, and we are curious to see how you synthesize the two.”

“Okay, let’s do it. Teach me something,” you say.

“Oh, the youthful Autistic thirst for knowledge!” Ganymeda says.

“I shall start,” says Astræa, her seven blue star-eyes glowing bright through her nebulous hydrogen skin. “To work the concepts of space, you must understand its actors, its agents. You surely know much of the basics of cosmology by now, on a mathematical level.”

“Of course,” you say.

“But do you understand it on a personal level?” Astræa says. “What is it to be a star? To transform into a supernova? To collapse into a singularity?”

“It would be...very hot, and bright, I think.”

“Surface level, but yes, a start. Let us focus on a particular class of object, and I will help you truly understand its properties,” Astræa says.

“Okay...”