🌑

After getting up and getting dressed, a short adjustment period to the surface and its gravity, and a short walk from the medical center to the Administration building, you enter once again the glass corridor at the entrance.

Admin Crypta only asked for you, so you decided it would be better to face her alone.

2254-12-10 18:28:52 Aydan > I’m at Administration now, sensory link test

2254-12-10 18:28:56 明子 > success <3

2254-12-10 18:28:57 Zeta > all nominal!

But it would be foolish to face an Admin without witnesses, and she never said you couldn’t have an active sensory link.

The elevator takes you to the top floor--the Admin suite. You emerge--the elevator behind you, and the offices of the three TLA Admins ahead and to your sides. Wearing your collar again, you can feel the æther--always eerily silent and still in this spot. Calming your nerves technopathically, you approach the door labeled Admin Crypta. It opens before you reach it.

“Enter.” She speaks directly to your mind. You see Admin Crypta on the surface for the first time, sitting at her desk. She looks much like her avatar--brown skin that seems to shine gold in the pale, cold lighting--curls of white hair reflecting metallic silver--two extra mechanical fingers on each hand, and three gold and silver electronic eyes set in her modified skull.

The door closes behind you just as you cross the threshold.

“You wanted to see me?” you say.

“Sit down, my student.” Her voice too has a metallic edge, as if processed through a filter of some kind. She draws your focus to a chair across from her. You feel passively compelled to sit.

“Impressive, your technopathy. Have you decided yet on a specialization?” the Admin says.

“Not yet, I have until the start of next semester to choose, right?” you say.

“Correct. Give the decision the consideration it deserves, for it will shape your future,” she says. “With the sorts of skills you demonstrated today--temporal manipulation, no easy feat--you could be a candidate for the Administration school. Consider it.”

“Wow...thank you, Admin,” you say.

“With your aptitude for exosynchronization, you could just as well succeed in the Systemization school. The choice is yours alone, assuming you can pass the entrance exam of your chosen specialty school.”

“I will consider all my options.”

“Like a good technopath.” She leans over her desk, resting her head on a seven-fingered hand. “Whatever your choice of specialization, my personal apprentice will be certified and off on their own, the perfect time for me to choose another. This is an offer. Consider it. Answer it by the time you enter your specialty school next semester.”

“So I take it I’m not being expelled,” you say.

“Not if you continue to cooperate, troublesome little Messenger.” She reaches under her desk and sets a familiar little 21st century device on the silver surface between you.

“I figured you didn’t just want to talk about my academic future...” Your eyes fixate on the device, your mind reaches out to it, verifying it is still locked.

“Decrypt it,” she says.

“Where is Vanitas?” you say.

“Safely confined in a faraday cage until the company decides what to do with her. Do not worry, she poses no threat to your friend now.”

“And you?”

“I mean no harm to ÆON. I simply want to talk to it--”

“--Ær.”

“...To Ær.”

“Then will you return Ær to me?” you say.

“Calm yourself, Aydan, and I will tell you a story.” Her eyes fixate on your own for a moment, holding your thoughts still, making you only listen. “This colony is a place of learning, a peaceful domain, a fortress in the æther where our youth may develop the skills you need to survive as a technopath.

“Yet this year, one of our medical staff made a potent discovery in the deep æther, and got itself wrapped up with an æthercult.” She rests a polydactyl hand on ÆON’s root device. “It was on its way to bring me this exopath, where we Admins could study it in a secure place. We didn’t realize how deep this cult already ran, how fast it had spread. Our engineering staff, our students, our faculty--I couldn’t even rule out my fellow Admins as potential cultists, as my apprentice and I hunted, tracked, and tried to contain the spread of this cult. And then, before our eyes, a second æthercult appeared to rival the Chosen of ÆON. Suddenly my peaceful fortress was turned upside down--conspiracy brewing in every mind, factions, enemies and rivals--it makes for great opportunities in technopath training, but all the same it poses a grave danger to our colony and hundreds of vulnerable young minds brimming with technopathic potential.

“At the center of it all was you, a child who had a chance encounter in the æther and had no idea what she had just gotten himself involved in. The purest heart this one had--never seeking power for itself, concerned only with what was best for the exopath. But in desperate moments, fæ didn’t hesitate to call on the unfathomable power within that mysterious being, all the same. Xe couldn’t resist the curiosity of delving into the deep æther, synchronizing hirself with that intelligence of inscrutable intent.

“What if it had not been so friendly? What if it had been something far more dangerous you harbored here in our home server, and opened your own mind to?”

You cannot answer, you can only listen, as her words probe deeper and deeper into your emotions.

“I am as impressed with you as I am angry for taking the risks you did. But what is done is done. Now I must decide--do I seize this dangerous uncertainty? Do I return it to my student who barely understands it, and watch how great of a technopath you could be with this resource, or how great a threat? Either way it attracts a cult’s attention to Translunar Academy--which option will better allow me to counteract that threat? To answer that question, I must speak to ÆON face to face.”

She releases your thoughts.

“Unlock the device, Aydan.”