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You don’t think you know chaos theory half as well as 7. But maybe a construct you created does--you launch your familiar program. The little creature manifests, invisible to your eyes but circling around you in the local network, fluttering on its three interconnected spiral fins, distorting the æther around it as it drifts through the flow. As you establish synchronization with the construct--a simple task for a creation of your own mind--you feel the æther flowing over and through the miniscule gaps in its structure.

With a thought, you command your familiar to enter the numeric labyrinth. Swimming upstream, its body stretches and compresses itself to slip between the flows and the gates above. Its three scrolls unroll, spreading out and blending into the mesh of mathematical operations. From this perspective, you can feel the problem much better. It suddenly doesn’t seem so difficult.

With your three reference points positioned perfectly at the most vulnerable points in the system, you pull them back together. Their curled edges rip apart the æthereal mechanism, creating just the vulnerability you need to force your command through. The elevator moves--you are in control.

2254-12-10 14:12:58 Ætherglow > objective secured

The heavy iron-nickel doors open as the platform arrives. The three of you step inside. The illusory gravity lessens as you rise toward the center of the colony. The æthereal eyes of 7 watch you as you close the distance. You feel fluctuations around her and raise your shield just as her counterattack arrives--piercing force of will trying to reassert control, her will as heavy as the first time you contested each other over a lock. You narrow your focus and shield the lockout and control subsystems, while Akiko’s shield protects you all.

2254-12-10 14:13:07 7 > stop! I really don’t want to have to hurt you

2254-12-10 14:13:12 Aydan > then surrender my device!

2254-12-10 14:13:19 7 > I can’t!

The elevator stops at your destination. The doors slide open to a wide corridor. A step takes you far here--it must be under 0.1G, but still enough to pull you back to the floor. 7 stands facing you, looking just to the side of you, her back to the edge of the main cylinder, with the counter-rotating service module spinning backwards just behind her. Openings to cross from one section of the colony to the other drift by, slowly at this level--dark corridors, bright workspaces, loud and quiet spaces, all turning around her. It’s disorienting to look at it as you turn your head to your spinward direction. Vertigo overrides your vestibular sense--you try and hold your focus.

“7!” you shout. “Give up my device. I won’t back down! My friend is in danger!”

“I thought I...was your friend too!” she says.

“You are...so it doesn’t have to end this way! Help us...” you say.

“Aydan is my friend, my only humanoid friend, I don’t want to hurt Aydan!” 7 says. “But I can’t disobey mother’s order! So please, don’t make me have to stop you...” Her eyes look anywhere but at you, with tears clinging to them by surface tension in the low gravity.

You feel something in your nervous system--emotional data from an external source. But it’s hard to comprehend amid the sudden shift in gravitation and rotational perspective. Your body feels like it’s turning inside out, your mind upside-down.