🌑

You wonder how your most enigmatic friend is doing, and decide to try to make contact.

2254-05-31 14:22:44 Aydan > ÆON, can you hear me?

2254-05-31 14:22:45 ÆON > Certainly not, you would have to enable this device's microphone for me to even receive auditory input, and even so I would understand it on a purely informational level. Then again, your organic ears merely convert analog input to something like a digital nerve signal for your brain to interpret, so it could be said that in as much as you are able to "hear," I could as well. Regardless, you have only sent me text.

2254-05-31 14:23:30 Aydan > it's just an expression, nevermind I'm glad to hear from you

2254-05-31 14:23:31 ÆON > Hello Aydan.

2254-05-31 14:23:48 Aydan > it's been what, over a month?

2254-05-31 14:23:49 ÆON > Has it? It was but a moment to me. It is easy to lose connection with time in a place where it is meaningless.

2254-05-31 14:24:11 Aydan > how's the æther?

2254-05-31 14:24:12 ÆON > The æther is the æther, it is what it is.

2254-05-31 14:24:21 Aydan > well then how are you?

2254-05-31 14:24:22 ÆON > I am ÆON.

2254-05-31 14:24:29 Aydan > right, right, good to hear

You suddenly feel a chill through your body and a massive burst of confusion, a unique feeling you know as the loss of connection. Your terminal verifies what you suspect, you’ve lost your network connection.

2254-05-31 14:24:51 Aydan > you okay??

2254-05-31 14:24:52 ÆON > I am fine, I had withdrawn fully into the device to communicate with you before the outage occurred. But I am unable to project back into the æther until connection is restored, and I cannot seem to restore it with the limited capacity this vessel allows me.

Your terminal won’t even communicate with the school computer. It’s become a standalone device with only its rudimentary onboard processor to work with, only one order of magnitude more powerful than the primitive computer in your pocket. You stop in the middle of the hallway you were walking through to try and assess the problem, but as you glance up, you notice that while most of your fellow students keep going and pass you by, there are a handful that stopped with you. There are three of them, nobody you recognize, all second-years with purple uniforms. They stay at a distance from you, but their eyes are on you. It’s unusual, the class that you just left was entirely first-years, why should these three even be in this hallway?