“...in fact I’m feeling strong, let’s go out and see everything in the world!” you sign.

“If you’re feeling up to it, sure!” Akiko signs.

🌏

A message arrives in your mind while you’re lost in a thoughtless trance, staring out the window of a train car.

2255-01-16 15:24:14 ÆON > Hello Aydan.

2255-01-16 15:24:20 Aydan > oh hi! how are you liking the local æther?

2255-01-16 15:24:21 ÆON > It is an interesting region, very dense, many active technopaths but also very many signals in between that feel distant and unreal.

2255-01-16 15:24:36 Aydan > that adds up, the total population is overwhelmingly higher but the percentage who are technopaths is very small as a result, even though there must be thousands of us. some allists can use an interface, but their brains just can’t comprehend the æther, so when you encounter them it’s like they’re not really there

2255-01-16 15:24:37 ÆON > Humanoid minds are strange as it is, what are these surfacelocked disconnected humans like?

2255-01-16 15:24:53 Aydan > hmm, they say they don’t have special interests, they only understand things on a surface level, and they think that makes them smarter. they can only really care about themselves but they think they are the only beings capable of empathy. and they think they can read everything about a person by looking at their eyes, even though they can’t connect to our thoughts or emotions at all

2255-01-16 15:25:02 Aydan > they’re very strange people. I understand they diagnose us with “autistic technopathy” because they think we live in our own little disconnected worlds, even though that seems to be what they do? and we’re capable of deep connection, not only with other humanoids but exopaths and machines and animals and inanimate objects even. I guess you could say they’re just really confused and full of themselves?

2255-01-16 15:25:03 ÆON > It doesn’t seem that I am missing much by being disconnected from them.

“Our stop!” Akiko signs. You stabilize yourself with one hand on a pole and the other on Akiko’s hand.

You’re the only two getting off here, and you see nobody around waiting to get on. You completely lost track of where this train was taking you, but the station here feels like another world. The bright, flashy displays and signs and lights of the upper levels are far fewer here, interspersed with many old defunct monitors, some long dead and some flickering with static as a storm of electromagnetic signals passes through them.

“What level is this?” you sign.

“Level 2, as low as the current train lines extend,” Akiko signs.

It’s much darker down here. You still catch glimpses of Sunlight through the dense clusters of walls and towers, but only rarely. You must be further toward the back end of the colony also.

Your steps are heavy again, more tiring than you expected. Akiko helps support you.

“You didn’t count on the higher G near the wall did you?” she signs.

“I’m not used to a matryoshka world like this, layers upon layers,” you sign.

“Let’s see if we can find a way into Level 1, the old city,” she signs.

You look over the city map you downloaded earlier, but this area is not well documented. Streets that should be there are closed off with rubble or built over, while other corridors exist uncharted on the map. You follow Akiko’s lead as she feels her way around the narrow spaces of the lower city.

As you venture deeper into the dense clusters--buildings lashed together with webs of hanging wires--the Sunlight barely reaches you. The cold, humid air here carries a stale scent, not getting enough circulation--most likely why it seems few people live here. But life takes its place even here, with some structures half-overtaken by green moss, and stranger things still, life that can thrive in a forest of rusted iron and shadow.

“Look,” Akiko points to the green face of a half-collapsed house. “You can tell which way is Sunward, the fauna here avoids the Sun.”

“Fauna? What is this, moss?” You examine the thin turquoise layer covering a wall--you could have mistaken it for peeling paint.

“No, that’s lichen! It’s a really cool organism, a symbiotic pair of two species joined into one, fungus and algæ.” Her eyes light up bright green. “See, the moss is soft and fluffy, more plantlike, it’s a plant after all, it thrives in the shade and partial light here like it’s a forest floor, it doesn’t need much nutrients or airflow. The lichen needs even less light, so you see it here in the shadow. Too much exposure to Sunlight could kill it. Even more so for this!” She points out a strange yellow blob spread out across the cracks of a concrete wall in the deep shadow.

“What kind of Earth monstrosity is this?” you sign.

“Slime mold! One of the coolest creatures there is! Did you know they can be grown into a living circuit? We use these in biological computing!”

“Wow, that’s so cool!”

“There’s an intelligence to them, they can navigate their environment and remember where food is. Now these creatures, they really need to avoid sunlight. The moss and lichen still need some, they’re photosynthetic organisms, but not slimes.”

“What do they eat, then?” you sign.

“A lot of things! Often they scavenge, eating the bacteria that comes to eat decaying matter. Some of them farm bacteria inside their bodies and take them with them to feed off of later!”

“I didn’t expect a place like this to feel so...alive.”

“Life will colonize anything, Aydan. Just look at where we are, 300,000 kilometers from the nearest habitable planet.”

“It’s incredible...” The cold, still air sends shivers through your skin. The addition of the metal conduits inside you makes you feel it a lot more than you used to.

“Sorry if it’s colder than I expected,” Akiko signs, as you make out her motions in the dim, flickering light. “Want my jacket?”