Projecting Aether

Gerald scratched his head. "Wow, you even approve new tray designs. Talk about micro-managing. How do you get any sleep?"

She looked at him strangely. "Tray? No, that was the new J'Sepp Drive motivator."

"All I saw was an empty tray."

She tapped her chin puzzlingly. "Oh, I forgot, you humans can't see aether, can you?"

"No."

She covered her mouth to suppress a chuckle.

"I suppose that is funny."

"Well, yeah. It's like... living on an island but not being able to see the ocean. I'm just trying to imagine what that must be like."

She looked around in awe. "So, you seriously can't see 90% of what is going on in this room?"

Gerald looked about. "I see machines, I see people, I see skivs.

Her hands dropped to her sides. "That's it? Wow. That must be so weird."

Gerald took a moment to size her up, considering whether or not he could trust her. "Oh, what the heck." He tapped on his brow. "Why not see it for yourself? I know you've peeked in here before. And by the way, shouldn't that be illegal?"

She shrugged. "You could make a law telling people not to use their brains, but good luck enforcing it."

"That's not what I meant. I think something was lost in the translation there."

Her ta'atu glowed brightly and he felt an intense pressure behind his eyes. Rather than fighting it, he just let it happen. His vision split in two as if he had crossed his eyes. The second image of the room hung over the first, then disappeared.

Ch'Rolette broke the connection and stepped backward, as if in pain. "Holy cow, it's like you're blind!" She bent over, looking as if she were going to lose her lunch. "Blind, deaf, and dumb. How can you live this way?"

"If you've never had it you don't miss it, I suppose."

"It was horrible."

While she caught her breath, he considered something. "Could you use your ta'atu to do that the other way? Let me see what you see?"

She shook her head. "It wouldn't work. Your brain isn't designed to accept that kind of sensory input. It wouldn't know what to do with it. It would be like projecting holographic data into a rock."

"Oh."

She thought for a moment, gently biting down on her luscious lip. "But I suppose I could create an analogue. Project the aether as something mundane that your primitive brain can comprehend, like colors."

"Is primitive really the best word?"

"You're right, of course. Primitive indicates that you could one day progress and evolve, and that is impossible. Perhaps retarded would be more accurate."

"I think I preferred the first one."

Her ta'atu flashed and suddenly Gerald was surrounded by a sea of colors. Rivers of turquoise and vermillion flowed in and out of the room like a gentle breeze. It flowed into each person, then out of them again.

The people themselves were filled with the stuff, passing through their veins and arteries like droplets of sunlight, swirling about their muscles like curling vines. When they spoke it created indigo ripples, when they thought it created periwinkle eddies. Their emotions wafted off of them like pollen, swirling around and filling the room, before gently descending and dusting those around them. It surprised him so much that he nearly lost his footing.

The conveyor belts he had seen were not empty at all. They were beams of light that extended like a spider's web for nearly a mile in every direction. He could see down at the far end where garbage trucks dumped their collected refuse onto the beams. Then workers would channel the pools of indigo through themselves and into the trash.

They willed it into dozens of claws that pulled apart the material, breaking it down into its basic components. Other workers refined it further, creating millions of tiny hands so small they were little more than a mist; breaking down the matter into its smallest elements. The next workers in line would create a breeze of lavender that sorted some elements onto one belt, and other elements onto another. Still, more workers infused magenta rays into the dust, and it took on its own color as if it were aether as well.

From there the readied material entered new rooms where still more workers sang to the floating colors around them and the matter reorganized itself, following patterns laid out by master copies that hung in the air above them. Structural crystals like bones, circuits like nerves, motors like muscles, covered by still more workers with stylish casings.

By the time they were done, the products were fully formed and boxed, and the floor would reshape itself into tubes that sucked up the boxes like great worms, taking them down to the floors below where the aether would be restored to normal matter.

"You recycle everything from trash?" Gerald asked aloud.

"On a planet like Central it's cheaper than mining the ore ourselves, even when you consider the exorbitant amounts we pay for these individual's unique talents."

Her voice was everywhere, through him and around him, as if she was the voice of creation itself.

"Plus, the local government pays us a hefty sum to do the trash collection, so we make money at both ends. That is the Ssykes way."

Gerald realized that he was actually looking through the walls as if they weren't there at all. He looked down, and he could see arteries of crimson energy moving through the planet, continents and tectonic plates held up by blossoming fountains of it, all connecting at the core, which pulsed like a living heartbeat.

He looked out and could see out into the sky. Streams of light fanned out into space like a giant tree. The vast interstellar distances between planets suddenly felt like nothing, and for a second he swore he could see where each branch connected to another living world like this one. And each of those beats with a heart of their own.

The sky was no longer a black void dotted with small points of distant burning gas, but a sea of life, filled with a chorus of voices. Roots growing out through space, connecting all life everywhere like a giant tree.

"This is incredible." He looked back towards her and was amazed at what he saw. Cha'Rolette floated in the air above him, surrounded by the purest white light that fell off of her long, flowing robes. Each of her ta'atu appeared as an estuary of energy that reached out and touched everyone and everything around her. She looked like an angel.

And then, just as soon as it had appeared, the vision was gone, and Gerald was back in a colorless world of dull grays and empty conveyor belts.

Losing his strength, he began to wobble, and she had to prop herself underneath one of his arms to keep him from falling over.

"I... I can't believe it," he stammered, trying to remember everything he could. Reviewing what he had seen over and over again to fix it permanently in his memory. "I... I get it now. The priests and priestesses always taught me that through the aether everything was connected, but I never really understood it until now."

Cha'Rolette gently patted his rock-hard bicep. "And yet you presume to lecture me."

The ceiling opened up above them and she levitated him back to where they had begun. Gerald looked over at her with new eyes. Even now, the angelic image in his vision dominated his thoughts. He wondered if perhaps he had been wrong about her. He wondered if perhaps she was someone he could trust. He wondered if this was someone he could...

And then he saw it.