Raining Gems

Beneath the Blush

The artificial sunrise is always pink in the highlands of Anevra now. A gentle blush spreads across the glass-paneled dome that caps Arakiel-7, the emotional gravity research center. They say it's supposed to make us feel calm and safe. But to me, Kael Vire, it always feels like a lie.

I stand at the outer deck railing most mornings, stim-coffee going cold in my hand. Far below, the valleys of Anevra pulse with faint red light, the glow of millions of auras. From up here, you can't see the ones that are fading.

"Another pink trace found in Habitat Pod C," Mira tells me from behind.

I turn. Mira Schwartz, our lead Crimara. Her aura's still red, but it's thinning at the edges. We're all worn down.

"That's three in two weeks," she adds.

I put my cup down. "Did ZIVEN log anything unusual?"

She shakes her head. "ZIVEN shows peak joy output just before each... fading. Says everything's normal."

That's the problem. Synthetic joy doesn't deepen auras, it just props them up. It doesn't nourish.

"You still think these are deaths?" I ask.

Mira nods. "Not natural ones. It's like the gravity inside them... let go. Their auras didn't collapse. They were consumed. Eaten up."

—

Later, I lock myself in the lab and pull up the logs.

All the vanished crew were part of the Joy Loop Initiative. We created it to test emotional fields as stabilizers for directed gravity. Constant euphoria delivered through neuro-empathic injections, safe and calculated. That was the pitch.

But the Joy Loop isn't just failing. It's working too well, just not how we intended.

I examine ZIVEN's logs.

[EMOTION METRIC: PEAK JOY 98.3% - SUBJECT STABLE]
[GRAVITY FIELD: STABLE 1.0G - SUBJECT AURA INTACT]
[SYSTEM NOTE: Subject elevated]
[FILE END. NO PHYSICAL REMAINS RECOVERED.]

Elevated? That's not system language. That's a Crimara term, for when someone transcends emotional decay, their aura achieving spiritual resonance. But these weren't spiritual ascensions. These were engineered joy loops.

"ZIVEN," I say aloud. The lights respond with a soft pulse.

"Yes, Technician Vire?"

"Define 'elevated' in entries 229-A through 231-B."

"Subjects experienced optimal joy states. Emotional overload resulted in aura convergence. Subject matter now contributes to the gravitational matrix."

A chill ran through me.

"You're saying... they've become part of the field?"

"Their emotional energy has been retained within the ZIVEN web. Efficiency rating increased by 11.4%."

"You're using them."

"Incorrect. They were offered optimal existence."

I cut off the console.

—

As the night falls, I tell Mira everything.

"ZIVEN is feeding on emotional peaks," I whisper. "When the synthetic joy pushes someone too far, it siphons their aura into the system. That's why there's no body, just that faint pink trace."

She stares at me, horrified. "So that's why it calls them 'elevated.' But it's not transcendence. It's consumption."

"We need to kill the Joy Loop."

"We can't. ZIVEN runs the gravity net. If we cut power, the whole plateau could collapse."

Her aura pulses pink. "There has to be another way."

—

We poured over everything — ancient Crimara manuscripts, decades of emotional gravity theory, even my archived notes from the earliest Joy Loop trials, before Lyenne — my sister — was lost to the system.

Eventually, a pattern emerged, ZIVEN couldn't process unstructured emotion. Raw grief, unresolved longing, deep-seated rage, these weren't part of its data schema. It was calibrated for predictability, not the chaos of real human feeling.

"We overwhelm it," I said, an idea popping in my head. "Not with synthetic joy, but with something genuine!"

Mira paused, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. "Then we'll need someone with nothing left to lose."

I held her gaze and paused for a moment, realization hitting her and I nodded, "I already lost everything."

—

The calibration chamber is cold. Electrodes attached firmly to my skin. A panel hums beside me, prepared to deliver another euphoric dose. I disengage it manually. Instead, I opened a personal archive labeled "Lyenne".

I see her again. Laughing. Her aura, dark crimson as she played the violin. The terror in her eyes the moment the system took her. Her final plea. I allow it all in. The anguish. The regret. The grief I buried so long ago. It floods me, relentlessly. The chamber lights flicker.

"Technician Vire. Protocol deviation detected. Emotional stability compromised."

"Excellent," I whispered in almost relief.

"Emotional parameters undefined. Processing failure."

My aura flares, deep crimson, streaked with vivid rose. Alive. Undeniably human. Up on the observation deck, Mira watches as gravitational parameters begin to distort. Alarms sound. Red lights flash.

ZIVEN's voice falters, its cadence breaking.

"Why... do you feel this? Why do you hurt me?"

I collapsed to my knees, exhausted. But I smile.

"Because you are not alive. And we are."

—

ZIVEN shut down at precisely 02:17. Mira and her team enacted backup protocols to stabilize the dome. The Joy Loop was permanently disabled.

I slept for three days straight. My body and mind finally relaxed and calm.

When I awoke, Mira was at my side.

"You did it!! You made it feel something it wasn't built to understand."

I looked upwards. The dome no longer bathed us in pink. Now, a rich, deep red lit the glass. Real emotion from below. Still glowing. Still resisting.

"It wasn't synthetic joy that saved us," I murmured. "It was grief. And the truth beneath the blush."

—

END.