Emma Yee glided along the aether currents. It had been a strange sensation at first. Painless but disorienting like being in a foreign room and trying to find the way out in pitch-black darkness. However, if she had to explain, 'darkness' would not be word to use; in this place there was no concept of light or colour. The Aether was a void, where the only thing disrupting emptiness was information.
She had discovered very soon after being transposed into the Ather that there were rules at play; the gravity of time being the overwhelming force. One effect of this time gravity was that she could never become lost. There was a constant pulling force -- an attraction to the origin. The origin marked her last position in the physical world: the containment chamber in her lab at the refinery. It was there where she was vapourised and her mind sent here.
The origin was a great comfort to her. It was an anchor to the physical world and a portal to that place where she was once flesh and bone. She found that, by reaching out into the portal, she could touch the physical world and shift her time to the physical present. There she could observe and interact.
She was sure that being linked to the physical world was all that was keeping her sane. To be connected meant that, even here in this alien place, she could still touch others and form relationships. She felt the urge to visit Churchman to receive the comfort of his humorous insight and to feel good at being able to provide comfort in return. But Churchman would have to wait. Something from afar was calling out -- she was being summoned.
Emma found that by surfing the present there were other links to the physical world. One such link was her ability to observe phase shift.
Every time a ship entered phase at some place in the Galaxy it created an impression on her consciousness. It was like being in a great cavern surrounded by thousands of glow worms; she was able to feel the lights, their life forces, flickering faintly on and off. The miracle she found was the ability for her to stretch and pull away from the origin to visit any of the lights she chose. At will, she could become a visitor into the world of a traveller. And as a visitor she could passively consume the thoughts of the physically living.
Now Emma was being called from the center of a firestorm of phase activity. From there, the psyche of one individual shone brighter than the others or perhaps, she thought, 'shone darker' as there was a great malevolence radiating from that single soul. Worrying was that, beyond the hatred and evil intent, this one had amassed great resources - the means for destruction.
Worst of all, beyond intelligence and cunning there was a collusion with another dark force; one that was currently invisible to her. The invisible evil hung about the one like a sticky mist. Before now, there had only been a single entity that she had found invisible to her, and that was the doll at the origin, the one Max Jone called Emma. She had created Emma when her experiment with orr had gone wrong, and she felt ill at the possibility that this dark force was the one and the same.
If she was going to find out more, Emma needed to move into the mind of the villain -- she found a name -- Senniella Atriplex. The transition into the mind of another was effortless, and she found the waking mind of this soul wide open to her advance. Too wide open. It was a trap!
She could sense that her host had been waiting for her and for the first time in ages Emma Yee felt fear.
Resisting the strong feeling to withdraw she felt a question flicker from Senniella to the dark unseen force, “Is it watching?” Senniella asked. Emma Yee knew that she was the subject of the question but could not discern the response. She did however catch Senniella’s reaction as one of relief and elation. With nothing less than triumph Senniella Atriplex said to the invisible being, “How could I ever have doubted you? This truly is the beginning.” And then the light went out, meaning, as Emma had learned, the vessel upon which the figure travelled had completed its phase and had returned to the physical world.
Her troubled thoughts went to the great force of war that was now bearing down on unexpecting worlds; and her heart bled for the pain that would be experienced by innocents in the times ahead. But what of her new world, the Aether? What if this unknown evil that now threatened was to meet her here?
A phenomenal ability gifted by the Aether, Emma Yee expanded her mind and took in all of the facts and feelings that she had gathered in the past weeks. Sorting through infinite possibilities the purpose of the aggressors actions became clear. The threat was more than she could have imagined.
Then and there Emma Yee vowed that she would not let evil enter this place. Alas, for all of her new-found power, all that she was able to do would be to warn Churchman, Max and the few waiting upon the small ship, the Merry Crabbe. Unknowable too was what they could do to help.
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##Thanks to @Lachy1411 for masterminding the name Senniella Atriplex!
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Companionship - beyond flesh
Science Fiction"If this is heaven, why am I alone?" ... Courier, Max Jones has spent twelve years traveling to a secret refinery to receive a special cargo. When he arrives, nothing is as it is meant to be ... #futureAlchemy #augmentedHuman #churchmen #metahuman...
