✴

You can’t lose your focus now. You’re just starting to make sense of it. But what kind of evolutionary algorithm are you dealing with? It doesn’t seem to match with the concepts of genetic algorithms, or anything resembling an organic pattern. So much to learn.

But it’s so cold here. He clings to you& for warmth as you& stop and look at the street signs. You’ve never been downtown alone before, you’ve always had someone leading you around. It’s such a labyrinth, these streets. You’re not even sure if you’re going in circles. Sometimes you doubt if the same streets even always lead to the same place. You let the scenario play out in the background, and you& take a turn and walk down a street, snowflakes slowly falling around you, blending with the stars above you.

“Don’t let go, ok?” You& look down at him. “I have to figure out which way to go...” It was so hard to navigate back then, without a terminal let alone the augmented directional sense a neural interface would afford you&. But you& can count on the stars, always frozen above and around, turning slowly together throughout the month. But where should they be now, how long as it been since sunset? You don’t remember, and there’s no terminal to guide you. But there is Draco, and above it, Ursa Minor, which leads always to Polaris--it always points north. This is your& guide.

Stars... Akiko’s interests aren’t limited to biology. And life isn’t the only thing that evolves. They’re just specks of light floating on the water’s surface here, indistinguishable to your& eyes from the snowflakes. But if you close your& eyes, you can see them another way--it flows to your& mind from the opposite side of headspace--a four dimensional matrix of stellar evolution leading here to this frozen place in the cosmos. This too is an algorithm, if you can look beyond what your& eyes can see.

“Aydan...” You& don’t hear this, but feel it spelled out with your& own fingers by the one clutching your hand. You open your& eyes and see a girl clinging to your arm, smaller than you, wearing your brother’s clothes, but with black hair--her scarf covers her face and eyes.

“Akiko!” you& embrace her tight, but immediately feel the control slip away again as you& force yourself& away from her.

“You can’t just let us& have a moment alone, can you?!” you& say, across the æther between you, in direct impressions needing no language.

“Let my Aydan go!” she says, into the back of your& mind.

“No! I rather like him!” you& say.

“You’ve gone too far this time, Creeper!”

“And what about you?!” you& say. “You won’t even let me know the boy we love! You won’t even acknowledge me! You won’t even let me have a name! You’re as big of a failure of a syster as our Aydan here is about to be!”

Let her keep him distracted, you have math to do. You’re so close to solving it, this stellar evolutionary algorithm, producing a maze by imitating the cycle of stellar life--you’re just a step away from reverse-engineering it and resolving the seed that generated it.

But here on the white-powdered streets of Korolev, a storm is coming--a dense crowd flowing the opposite direction. Akiko stands a meter away--you’ll be separated--she’ll be lost!