As Nickel sat in the boat, having paid the last of Rishi’s money, he sat stooped, shivering, and paralyzed by all that had happened. The tears kept coming, but his skin felt numb to them, shriveled by the cold.
The waters were calm yet frolicking in even waves. The fog had lifted, scarcer over the waters, heaving its blue expanse clearer for Nickel’s eyes to see—a landscape free of the fog for the first time in what felt like forever.
The rowing men were stragglers, not looking dissimilar to Steve and Farrul when Nickel had first met them; rugged, creased skin, stained, worn clothes and coats tattered by use, covered in straggly beards and hair from years of living in the canyons. They were also looking for Hedonim, they had said, but nothing more.
They sang more than they spoke. After a couple of hours of being rowed by the men, Nickel’s attention finally drifted to their words, all of them:
There’s a hundred men to sail the seas and row them to the sun
When all is done and my screens have cleaned my weary eyes to sow, the sun of my dreams unraveled from the fog,
I lift my head to the woman of the sky, unbeknownst to her,
I drink from the bosom of a canyon creek, and then I truly know,
When I lie in the puzzle of my Hedonim dreams and the paths that may go
The man without his eyes, But a cunning device, Looking through the Ether’s fog,
I thank the maker, whoever may be, tomorrow or the day before
For all I know it’s the drink I give to forget all my woes
When I row, row, row I know there’s nothing to lose, It’s why I call it my
After a raucous battle and a near-fatal destabilization of the android farm, Nickel escaped Merrix, instructed to hitch a boat at Rinkwine River to Hedonim. Theren had told him of an Ashram Temple, where Rishi’s disciples could be found. Nickel knew he didn’t want to enter Hedonim unprepared.
He ran and ran, past the outskirts of Merrix, until the city buildings disappeared, leaving only empty rock flats around him, save for sparse vegetation and plant growth.
As the shore of the flat by the faint blue of the river appeared, Nickel ran faster than ever.
Three monolithic structures loomed ahead of him. As he neared them, they began to hiss, their doors sliding down to reveal three figures staggering out of their capsules. They were heavily armored in battle suits from the twenty-first century. Their heads were completely bald and pitch white, scarred by small metal devices embedded into their skin.
Nickel stumbled forward, his feet faltering beneath him as he crashed to the ground. Gunfire erupted—but it wasn’t aimed at him. It was directed at the cryogenically released soldiers, their corpses animated by electrically induced movements from their embedded devices, returning fire at their attacker.
Their attacker was Steve, who had promised to wait by the shore to take Nickel and himself to safety—and to Hedonim.
Steve fired at all three soldiers, neutralizing them one by one. But not before the last soldier got off a final shot. The last line of fire struck Steve, both him and the soldier collapsing to the ground, rendered slack.
“STEVE!” Nickel screamed, running toward him, falling at his side. He clutched Steve’s hand, begging him to stay with him, tears blurring his vision as he sobbed convulsively.
When Steve finally spoke, he made a gentle shushing sound: “Ssshhhhhh… here, boy, don’t be afraid.”
Nickel quieted, trembling as he listened to Steve’s last words:
“Thank you for taking me this far,” he croaked. “When you return to the world we came from, remember why we’re here… for each other… I’ve lived with the Ether, starving for it… over and over again. But I know, and you know, that there’s more to the world—to each other. To be with the Ether is to be alone… Don’t be alone, Nickel.”
After signaling the distress beacon, Nickel hacked his way through the rest of the androids, exhilarated by his newfound will and strength. Just as he was about to jump off the walkway onto the other side of the street, a piercing circle of burning pain burst across his back, spreading in tendrils of shocking electricity. Nickel cried out, his body contorting involuntarily before going slack. He fell face-first beside his clattering sword, loosened from his grip.
Nickel winced in pain, gasping and panting for breath.
“Nickel Veda,” came a cool voice from behind, accompanied by clanking footsteps on the walkway.
How do you know my name? Who are you?
The speaker finished walking down the walkway in slow, deliberate steps before lightly hopping down onto the ground. A hard hand rolled Nickel over by the shoulder. As Nickel turned onto his back, he gasped repeatedly, moaning incoherently, staring up at his attacker with wide eyes.
Slowly walking before him was a soldier, dressed in none other than the military secret soldier armor that Nickel had seen on the experimental elite force being developed back at the military base he studied in before leaving on his hovercraft.
“I tracked your hovercraft coordinates before you crashed in Atalantia,” the soldier said through his muffling helmet. “What is it that makes you leave a lucrative and high-status role in the Ether Realms for this wasteland of all places?”
Nickel wheezed, his limbs shivering and shuddering from the shock, still unable to move or coordinate his body.
“The Ether Realms have made all places on Earth wastelands!” Nickel growled, his voice ragged as he struggled to control his breaths.
The soldier cocked his head, eyeing Nickel. Through the muted black exterior of the soldier’s helmet visor, Nickel thought he could almost see eyes squinting at him in a jeering expression.
“Defect from the Realms, and you defect from the interests of the United Republic, whether you call it a wasteland or not,” the soldier said. He lifted his gun, twisting the cap around the nozzle—no doubt shifting the mode from stun to… probably kill.
“Trust me,” the soldier breathed. “This is much better than anything you’d go through in interrogation.” He trained the gun on Nickel, and the circular device inside its chamber began to spin, emitting a noise that grew louder and faster, turning into a whirring hum. “Besides,” he added, tilting his head to the side, shrugging his shoulders, “they’d kill you at the end anyway—”
A flash of light blinded Nickel. He cried out, squeezing his eyes shut. His whole body screamed with panicked adrenaline, his nerves fraying under the blast.
“You’re good.”
Nickel gasped again, shuddering. He slowly opened his eyes. The soldier lay limp on the ground before him, a trail of smoke rising from his torso.
Someone made a blowing sound behind Nickel.
“I guess farming wasn’t all I was meant for,” came a voice, laughing. It sounded oddly familiar.
Nickel groaned, rolling onto his stomach, looking up at Farrul’s smirking face. Farrul stood with two blaster rifles in his hands, his mouth puckered as he blew the smoke from the end of one of them.
Nickel laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He closed his eyes, laughing hysterically. Farrul walked over, lifting him up by his back. As Farrul offered his hand, Nickel took it, still laughing, unable to contain himself. He steadied himself with Farrul’s help, gripping his arms for balance. The worst of the shock had faded, leaving only tingling tremors and sharp feelings of itchiness.
“I’m good,” Nickel said, still chuckling. Farrul slowly let go of him.
“Oh, man,” Nickel breathed, wiping his nose. “You continue to surprise me.”
“So do you,” Farrul replied. “Why the hell are you even here?”
Nickel chuckled again, this time dry and weak. He shook his head. “M-man, it’s a long story.” His face slackened. “Wait, why are you here?”
“He has a pilgrimage to finish.”
Nickel turned to see Theren walking toward him, followed by several other Thraíha dressed in the same stone-plated battle garb the Thraíha patrolmen had worn when they met Rishi.
“Theren,” Nickel whispered in disbelief.
“You did good work, Nickel,” Theren said, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. “The beacon you activated alerted not just the Merrix defenses but my platoon following the pilgrimage to Hedonim.”
“Where’s Steve?” Nickel asked, turning to Farrul.
“He’s the reason we’re here,” Theren said. “He flew to show us the way.”
Nickel stared into the distance between Theren and Farrul. “My hovercraft?” he asked suddenly, turning to Farrul, frowning, his mouth agape in surprise. “It works?”
Farrul inhaled deeply, making a cringing expression. “Yeah… he pretty much flew it until he destroyed it,” Farrul said. “Sorry.”
Nickel stayed quiet for a moment, then shook his head, smirking.
“Probably for the best,” Nickel muttered, looking down. “I’m done with the Ether.”
“But it’s not done with you,” Theren said, stepping closer. “The year of the Past World is 2200—the only year from it we Thraíha recognize. The tides of the Huntsman’s travels are shifting below our feet.”
“The Ether Wars,” Nickel said. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a prickling tremor of nervousness. “I have to warn my family.”
“The war is coming for all, Nickel,” Theren said. “Hedonim is part of a project for our minds,” he added, tapping his temple with his finger. “But before we take a stand for our minds, we must fight the battle for our land.” He pointed toward the alley’s end, where the ruckus of fighting and chaos raged beyond the haze of dust and rubble.
“For Atalantia!” Theren called.
“FOR ATALANTIA!” boomed the Thraíha behind him, raising their weapons in salute. Their voices echoed through the streets of Merrix.
A conch war horn blew from an adjacent square. Nickel picked up his fallen sword and joined the running mass of Thraíha fighters.
“ATTACK!” Theren shouted. “Shut down the heart of our enemies! ATTACK!”
They surged through the streets, rushing toward the android farm hanging in the sky.
The world was ablaze. And Nickel was alone. The fog danced violently around him, split and pushed aside by smoke and rubble falling, careening around him. The man, Gancho, the friend of Steve who had led him through the city to safety, had told him to wait for his return after fending off soldiers and pirates seeking to exploit the chaos, the ruckus, and the disarray. But Gancho never came back.
Nickel was curled up in a ball, covering his head to shield himself from the rubble and dust. He was back in his hovercraft, all alone, nothing to do but stay out of sight while the world inside and out crumbled.
“Rise…”
Nickel opened his eyes a crack to see the air outside—gray plumes of smoke and ash mixed with the orange fog.
“Stand, perch yourself like a hawk before flight.”
The voice of the Thraíha Oracle returned to him. He remembered his last conversation with her, flashing through his mind in this moment of chaos. He recalled sharing with her his inheritance from his parents and the conflicted feelings he had about it.
“When you perch yourself atop the tree of Life, you see the universe unveiled. You must perch atop the highest canyon peak before a hunt.”
“For that, you must rise. Stand, not with your chest inward, but expanded like a hawk’s plumage.”
Nickel removed his hands from his head and started to uncurl himself.
“Stretch your wings high… hold them to the air, not against it, and you may soar like Great Father Hawk.”
Nickel straightened his back and pressed his fists into the ground. He growled and punched the earth.
“I am a Thraíha!” Nickel shouted to himself, striking the ground again. He straightened himself further and slowly stood up, dusting himself off.
He saw the blade that Gancho had left behind. Turning around, he spotted the disjointed walkway hanging from the side of a building with shattered railings. There were android guards sent by the United Republic war fleet, guarding the distress beacon to mobilize the emergency units of Merrix Depot. Nickel had been hiding from them thus far, sitting alone, cowering in fear.
No more.
Nickel leaned over and picked up the blaster rifle that Gancho had left behind. While his mind screamed against his footsteps, he moved forward and aimed the rifle at the blaster-points of the androids. In a flash and burst of crackling light, they were disarmed of their guns.
Without waiting to see their reaction, Nickel grabbed the sword Gancho had left behind, swinging it through the air as Akela had taught him, calibrating his positioning and accustoming himself to its weight. Then, holding it in his practiced offensive stance, Nickel rushed toward the walkways like the Thraíha warrior he was.
Steve’s brow oozed with beads of sweat that dripped through his bushy eyebrows, threatening to blur his vision even more than it already was through the window of Nickel’s hovercraft. He wrenched his hands around the pilot controls, struggling to stay aboard. His vision strained against the halo of light proliferating in multiple directions as the American Eagle hovercraft neared the edge of the rising canyon, its silhouette abrading the horizon’s sunset.
“Aaagh!” Steve wheezed, clenching his teeth. Despite having gotten the craft airborne again, its systems were heavily compromised—some outright destroyed—including the digital haptic overlay that should have provided a filtered ViewFinder, making it easier to navigate the horizon’s swaddling, obscuring light. That, along with other vital equipment and safety measures, had been lost when the Eagle crashed into the Thraíha settlement compound months ago.
To Steve, it felt like years ago—the moment he had met Nickel, the start of a beautiful, promising adventure—separated by his coma and the following period of uncertainty and deepened disillusionment. But he knew that all those weeks spent reconfiguring and cooling the fuel chambers during the final stretch of his recovery would be worth it now. Strapped together with twine-supplements tying broken pieces of the hovercraft into a barely functional whole, Steve was on a recourse, taking the American Eagle on another bender—probably for the last time.
Fizzling electronics and groaning, colliding machinery sputtered from behind, at the end of the control room, where pieces of the hovercraft’s outer shell clattered together.
“Can you fly safer?” Farrul screamed from the rear control modem, where Steve knew he was hanging on for dear life as the blasting winds slipped through the hovercraft’s fractured hull. “If I don’t fall out, my pants will!”
“Ahh! Quit yer’ jabberin’!” Steve roared, squinting as he leaned back against the pilot’s chair, swerving the hovercraft around the canyon edges, back into the space of unobstructed light. “Just like always—” Steve grunted, driving the piloting wheel to the left, jamming it hard to swing the hovercraft, accentuating pressure to the wheel of its pulmonary axis. “—it’s me doing all the work, and you yappin’ yer ass—OOOAAH!”
The entire disjointed frame of the hovercraft shuddered, violently jerking Steve in every direction. The movements jiggled the steering controls in his grip, causing the hovercraft to shake even more. The light grew even more blinding as the lifting fog layer rose off the ground, synthesizing the light-rays that hadn’t reached the canyon bottom before. Now, the fog was rising, meeting the sky in an effulgence of swarming light and vapor, threatening to overwhelm Steve’s sight.
He hadn’t attempted anything like this since before he had been stranded in these canyons—before he’d served as a cook aboard the expedition ship that brought him to Atalantia in the first place. He had once dreamed of becoming a pilot, joining the U.R. flight corps, escaping a life of destitution in a polluted city—or worse, a labor camp on that Pacific trash island. After his parents had died in prison—starved, undernourished, sentenced for failing to pay their housing—Steve had become a paranoid young man. In his grief, he had been terrified of ending up like his parents… or like his sister, whom he couldn’t save.
Hell, he had even once dreamed of joining a Space Force, if only it had still been an option. But with the Earth polluted to death and space exploration abandoned, all that remained for Steve now was a life more pleasurable than before—whether in Earth’s heavens or deep within the Atalantia Canyons.
A groaning creak reverberated through the hovercraft as a wave of vertigo tipped it sharply to the right, lurching Steve against the armrest of his chair. Screw it. He was going to bank the hovercraft this way, leaning into the capsizing motion to fully swerve around the rising canyon’s remnants.
“HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTT!” Steve roared, spinning the navigational control as the hovercraft’s hull thundered under the force of the twisting ascent. The entire craft rattled from every direction. Steve gasped, gagging against the motion sickness twisting his insides. He had only ever seen other pilots try to escape a burgeoning windstorm in the canyons once—when he was just a cook aboard a craft attempting to flee. But he had watched those pilots struggle and ultimately fall against the onrushing forces of light, air, and wind.
Steve slapped the sonar gridding map screen switch, desperate to wake it up. Nothing. His breaths were coming so fast he could barely hear them. How was he going to see enough of the canyon to maneuver around it? He screamed in exasperation and horror. The sonar map wouldn’t turn on, wouldn’t clear his surroundings of obstruction, wouldn’t—
The tips of the canyon flickered through the fog—visible, then gone, then back again.
“Fuck it!” Steve grated, screaming through his teeth. “I’m going manual!”
For the first time in decades, Steve truly let go—not just of the ship controls, but of the controls in his mind. He stopped tweaking the haptic commands and flung his entire body into the main navigational wheel, standing up from his piloting chair, his chest straps tightening around him as he moved.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH……..”
Steve swung the hovercraft completely around, fully leaning into the capsizing motion. The hovercraft turned upside down, the air outside and the entire body of the craft screaming against the maneuver. Wherever the edge of the canyon was, it was now far below, the American Eagle completely inverted over the last rise of the canyon.
Vertigo surged up Steve’s body, coursing through his stomach, chest, and throat like a stream of bile. His hair swung wildly above his head, falling over his shoulders with the motion. He continued to scream, but Steve couldn’t hear a sound over the cantankerous roar of what seemed to be the hovercraft tearing itself to shreds. He clung to the wheel for dear life, pushing against it to stay in place as the ship maintained its upside-down ascent over the canyon and through the fog.
When the hovercraft climbed high enough for the fog to dissipate into a rolling density of churning clouds below, Steve screamed again and shoved against the navigational wheel to finish his rolling flight maneuver.
The hovercraft righted itself quickly and violently, flinging Steve backward, ramming him hard against the piloting chair. He cried out, wincing as pain flared through his left arm and back, the ghostly remnants of his old injuries throbbing from the impact. He squeezed his eyes shut, panting. I’m too old for this shit. But he, Farrul, and Theren’s small group of Thraíha accomplices had dragged this broken hovercraft through scores of canyon impasses, sailing it over the Renowak River with grizard beasts swimming alongside them, pulling the Eagle by rope—just so Steve could try, one last time, to do for Farrul and Nickel what he had failed to do for his sister all those years ago: give them a better future.
He knew that if he could do that—if he could try—then he would finally be at peace, resting his weary, broken soul and body in Hedonim.
A chill swept over him, submerging him like the waters of a wintry ocean shore. Stronger gusts whipped past, tearing through the hovercraft’s cabin. Something else had been sheared off during the flight, allowing even more wind to pour inside.
“Farrul?” Steve shouted, coughing and sputtering. His body trembled with residual adrenaline. “Farrul? You still there? You okay?” More coughing. No response. Steve let out a moaning sigh, his face twisting in sorrow and fear. “Oh no, Farrul,” he groaned. “Farrul, please be there—” His voice faltered into a feeble, whispering plea. “Farrul, tell me you’re still there… Farrul—”
A shimmering glow warmed the insides of his eyelids, turning them a bright, hot red. Steve gasped, eyes snapping open. Before the hovercraft’s window, the air had become a blazing orange. Sunlight filtered through, its flickering rays sending strange tremors through the fog, coalescing from the thick bank he had just passed.
The fog swirled around the glowing center, then split apart in torrents to the left and right, leaving a luminous figure at its core.
Steve moaned feebly, his eyes widening. He pressed his back against the chair as hard as he could, fingers clutching the handholds in a grip so tight it felt as if his joints would snap.
The radiant halo of the singing sorceress manifested at the heart of the fog before the hovercraft’s window. Her body was unadorned, a luminous form of molten light, her larger-than-life figure shifting sinuously, twisting like a snake, her movements warping the fog around her. In a gust of wind, she began to sing:
“Come to me,
You will see,
The words your mother forgets.”
Tears welled in Steve’s eyes. He brushed them away with his hands, only for more to gather at his eyelids. He had never known his mother well. He felt like he had never truly known any woman well enough. Born to the Ether, destined for the Ether.
“Gather near,
You will hear,
Pleasures of the heart’s lament.”
The sorceress grew larger, her halo of hair becoming a swath of mist as she snaked around the hovercraft, gliding across its light, diving below, leaving a trail of glowing air and swirling matrices of digital configurations in her wake.
Steve closed his eyes. He knew it. He was near Hedonim. Finally.
He opened them, pushing the navigational wheel to full throttle. Nickel was near Hedonim too—he had made it to Merrix Depot before Steve did. When he’d heard the distress call signs, he couldn’t believe it. He had assumed Merrix Depot didn’t even exist anymore. He had transmitted a message to an old cowboy there to take care of Nickel before the assault took place.
Steve propelled the hovercraft through the wake of the glowing fog, searching for Nickel, knowing it would lead him to Hedonim too.
The concave walls of the dropship trembled with the friction of the howling atmosphere, sending tremors that rattled the exit pad. The men of the Eighty-Fifth Infantry were locked in their gear, their armor covering their entire bodies in large white and gray plates. They hung with grips from the rungs where the hangar walls curved into the roof. The shifting pink light filtered through the rectangular window in the middle of the roof, the beams of light gyrating with the movement of the atmosphere whipping past the dropship as it bulleted through the polluted heavens.
The shifting light illuminated the soldiers. Their helmets were black visors above a circular gas filtration unit—an advanced gas-filtration combat helmet. They had to be prepared for the radiation of the Atalantia Canyons. Their suits were studded with blocky gray plates over white joint pads. On their backs were laser rifles, locked into charging holsters attached to the backs of their suits.
They waited in silence for the intercom transmission from their mission commander.
“Air should be turning orange… any second now…” said a soldier in the middle of the right row, looking up through the window of shifting light—ebbing, flowing, ebbing, flowing. A few of his comrades leaned slightly to glance at him before peering up at the window. Instead, the light deepened into darkness as the dropship ruptured a thick cloud, the pinkish glow fading to a bloody red through the density of the new cloud impasse.
“Attention!” came the dull but crisply loud voice of the mission commander through the faint hum of the intercom, blasting his slightly muffled but distinct words through the circular loudspeakers embedded around the walls near the ceiling. While the commander’s voice was clear, it was softened by shock-proof casing. Like everything—and everyone—in this room, it was prepared and proofed for violence of the most extreme.
The soldiers raised their heads in reverence and attention, aiming to catch every word.
“You are about to enter the drop zone!” the commander announced. “The target has been identified, and you are to be unloaded within close proximity. Check the hangar display for a quick rundown of key diagnostics collected from transmission sonar.”
A bright blue flash of light washed over the hangar from the rear, shifting the soldiers’ gaze to a large flatscreen unveiled by a rising access panel that softly whirred as it slid into the curvature of the ceiling.
The screen stayed blue for a few seconds before a series of bullet points in white font flashed onto it in the span of a blink, as if the glaring white letters had been there the whole time.
The dropship continued descending, clanking against the air.
“The target area has a much higher population density and more sophisticated organization than previously estimated,” the commander intoned, his voice blaring over the ruckus of descent. “Life detection and radiologics from sonar indicate a Type B civilization with moderate to low technological capabilities. Stand by and prepare for a rank-and-file unilateral city invasion.”
“Damn,” came the soft, electronically muffled mutter of a soldier through his helmet as he and a couple of others exchanged surprised glances.
The bullet points on the screen disappeared, replaced by a new set under the heading:
Target Chain of Activity:
Smuggling network
Clustered in Merrix Depot
Human Targets:
Mynar Sidvak – Leader of commercial operations
Nixon Feel – Head of smuggling operations
Kevin Ronk – Mediary of cartel groups
“You will be fed general demographic and physical information about each target based on satellite compromise. We are looking at an entire city of canyon squatters. Reconnaissance sonar has discovered that, over primitive communication channels, the city is called Merrix Depot. Merrix reportedly hosts at least two million people at any given moment.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered the same soldier as before, shaking his head at his comrades in disbelief.
“We’ve detected a near-constant stream of people and goods moving in and out,” the commander continued. “In the last week, there has been an anomaly—a continuous procession of people clustering in large plazas in Merrix and moving together through and out of the city toward Hedonim.”
“Are they trying to get caught?” the same soldier jeered.
“The uniformity of their clothing, chanting, and synchronized movements suggest that this is a religious group,” the commander went on. “Their movements have sharply increased smuggling activities, concentrated in Merrix’s main plaza. This religious procession is occurring out in the open, bringing key smuggling vectors well into sonar’s view.”
The screen changed again. Geographic markers appeared, highlighting hot spots in red circles.
“Thanks to this new religion, we’ve identified critical targets to Merrix commerce. These are your new targets for a unilateral assault.”
“Reconnaissance has already mapped out new coordinates for you. Turn on Heads-Up Displays to see them. I’m leaving it to Lieutenant Roger.”
The information on the screen disappeared, and the blue screen flashed out in the span of an eye-blink.
“Soldiers!” boomed the voice of the commander as the darkened screen’s access panel slid down from the ceiling with a long whine. “Today, history will be made on the side of the United Republic!” He seemed to spit out his last words in a frothing scream. “The security of the Ether, the United Republic, and the whole world depends on this mission.”
“Long live the United Republic and long live Realm Five!” roared the commander over the intercom.
“Hut!” drilled all of the soldiers, standing straight against the wall. They bent at the chest with a fist, holding their right arms diagonally against their torsos. “Hut! Hut! Hoo!” they intoned before a final smack of their fists against their chests and the screaming bout of Lieutenant Roger.
“File up! File up!” he screamed, breaking chest salute, removing his arm from the handhold, and marching toward the center of the room, violently whipping his hands through the air to move them forward. “Move your ASSES!”
A shrill buzzing siren ruptured the air, dulling Roger’s ordering voice. It was the buzzer announcing the opening of the drop hatch.
As the soldiers lined up in their drop-flank, a rumbling whine and creak of gears hissed through the floor as the large square platform of the drop pad formed a depression, sinking into the floor while the motors whirred against the inner walls. Roger continued screaming, pacing around the newly formed border of soldiers standing at attention around the drop hatch as its sunken platform slowly slid into the ship, unleashing a fury of howling wind—almost loud enough to overtake the intermittent sound of the buzzer.
The dropship had broken through the dark cloud impasse, and rays of clear light filtered through the domed window overhead, illuminating the torrents of churning fog below, its starkly inhuman, polluted color.
The lieutenant’s flight stabilizers switched on, causing his boots to weigh and cling more securely to the ship, gripping the surface via pressurized pumps spitting exhaust into the air, compressing the magnetic cleats he had stepped into. As he walked around, he tapped each soldier, ushering them to step over the rim of the opened drop hatch, lightly slipping over and down through the opening. Moving clockwise, each soldier received a firm pat on the shoulder and jumped off, vanishing into the fog of Atalantia—killer bunnies, militarized and armored to the teeth, dropping like fallen angels, demons summoned from hell, plummeting through the heavens.
Finally, the lieutenant stood at the rim of the hatch where the soldiers had stood, switched off his boots’ pressurizers, and kicked off his magnetic cleats, letting them tumble down the hatch, disappearing. Then, he hopped over, jumping higher than any of his comrades, betraying a bunny-like glee and frenetic locomotion in the bounding twist of his knees and lilting of his chest.
He disappeared through the hatch, his head cocked downward, leaving behind the empty skeleton of a dropship—its last organs expelled, the screaming wind pouring through the dead heart of a nightmare’s vessel, a harbinger of death.
As Nickel entered the warmer air of the inn, a shiver ran over his scalp, slithering down his spine. Despite the musty heat of the inn’s gray-walled room, the sign of the ranch outside still sent a grave chill through him.
There was a group of men in large cowboy hats hovering around the front desk, haggling with an innkeeper who was speaking in frantic bursts, his stubby hands moving as furiously as his words in response to the taller, bigger men around him.
Beside Nickel, the throng of weary travelers moved through, mumbling quietly as they headed toward another innkeeper who guarded the entrance to a brighter-lit hallway—likely leading to the residential rooms.
Reserved and stooped over, people sat by the bar and the small diner area beyond the front desk.
The chill running over Nickel’s scalp turned into a queasiness the further he walked into the inn. He paused, perusing the inhabitants more closely, a growing suspicion gnawing at him. He was uncertain of his whereabouts, of the motives and worldviews of the people inside—both seen and unseen.
AND FUCK YOU IF YOU VOTED FOR HIM!
The words from the sign outside hung in his mind like a specter, shadowing his perception with fear.
“Where are you coming from, boy?”
Nickel almost didn’t notice the pasty man with bulging skin spilling out of a stained gray smock and apron, standing just to his left, barely behind him. Following the man’s craggy voice, Nickel met his eyes. He gulped but responded quickly.
“I’m from Merrix Depot,” Nickel said, furrowing his brows to feign resolve. He wondered what this man—or the others—would think of the Thraíha, but he wasn’t curious enough to find out.
The man’s brow pressed together, folding his blubbery skin and the scant wisps of hair on his forehead.
“Merrix Depot,” he rumbled through puckered lips. A woman with long brown hair pushed past him, carrying trays of food scraps over her head. “This is Merrix Depot,” he said. “Where were you before Merrix Depot, eh?”
“Uh—I don’t remember,” Nickel muttered. “I’ve been here my whole life.”
“Errrrr, Leuvisia!” the man called, twisting his torso to crane his neck behind him. “Come deal with this one. Looks like we’ve got another foreigner who can’t speak.”
The woman with long brown hair whisked her head to glance at him before returning her attention to the tray of food she carried. She stooped over an opening in the wall where a dish rack lay.
Leuvisia! the man called again. “Come here! I can’t deal with any more of these foreigners coming through.” He started toward her. “Hurry up!” he grated, coughing.
“Just a second,” she cooed from the back of the room.
“Hhhugh,” the smocked man rumbled once more. He turned his back on Nickel. “Understaffed—understaffed. What does it matter anyway, when everyone gets scared off by the farms…”
He walked away as the woman approached Nickel, asking him strange questions about his original language and what work he was here to do. Nickel remained vigilant, leaving most of her questions unanswered. When she asked if he was here for brickwork at the border between Merrix and the Wicked Woodlands, he said yes. When she pressed for more details, he pretended not to understand.
Eventually, she led him to a table where he was to be seated with residents of his assigned hall.
When he sat down, a bear of a man with a face crowded by a prodigious beard was seated across from him. A large hat and a hood concealed most of his features, save for the small dark pits of eyes warped through the grimy glass of a dark drink that he held by his face.
Nickel rummaged through Rishi’s sack, finding a thick pouch jingling with the firm, pocking edges and rims of coins. He sighed in relief. He would get to eat, after all. The relieved understanding was followed by a growing awareness of the hunger pangs gnawing at his stomach.
The same brown-haired woman returned, carrying a steaming tray of their starter meal. More men joined around the table, yapping amongst themselves, peering at and flirting with the woman—who ignored them. Her face had remained sullen the whole time, even when interacting with Nickel earlier. Her eyes carried a strange silvery glint, an almost glossed-metallic sheen that flickered under the dim, grimy yellow bulbs overhead. Her eyes reminded Nickel of the wares-seller he had spoken to briefly before entering the inn. But he never got a good enough look to study them, due to her fleeting appearances, the dim light of the room, and his own reluctance to meet her gaze for too long.
This place gave him the jitters, and he felt more comfortable keeping his head down, like the boorish man sitting across from him—still sipping from his large glass, still silent and reserved, leaving the large shared platter of food untouched.
The food’s warm, steaming aroma carried a salty touch that added an enticing contrast to the dusty, grime-filled mustiness of the inn.
Nickel stabbed at a bowl of dried fish, cutting into the caked, roasted flesh, through the flimsy bones of its ribcage. A cluster of murmurings and scraping chairs grew louder toward the rear of the diner, near the bar. Nickel looked up from his food, over the shoulders of the men sitting next to him, around their table, at a set of travelers perched on barstools. They were watching a large holo-screen projector, where a holographic newscaster walked across the holo-stage, using her fingers to pinch and zoom into the three-dimensional background behind her. The simulated imagery was splayed out from the back of the bar, next to the glass cupboards, drinks, and supplies.
Heads obstructed Nickel’s view of the News Deck, making it hard to see from where he sat, but he could still make out the flickering halos of violently shifting light and color. The background elements kept shifting, and the newscaster maneuvered the simulation with her hand, calibrating its movements to be as steady as possible. But there was only so much she could do for a shaky, handheld-recorded video—which was why the three-dimensional background proved useful. If only Nickel could see what was happening in it.
A red rectangle materialized from the back of the Holo-Deck, expanding as it moved forward to station itself at the bottom, merging with the newscaster’s legs. Words in all capital letters flowed across the rectangle.
Nickel wouldn’t stand up and walk to the Deck—he wouldn’t risk drawing more attention to himself. But he managed to make out three words:
IT., SOUTHSHORE, and RIOT
As more people joined the barstools or hovered around, the Holo-Deck became more obscured. The voices of the people originally seated at the bar hushed at the arrival of strangers, allowing the electronically configured flatness of the newscaster’s voice to drift further into the diner, making its way to Nickel’s ears:
“……………..with the election coming up, the Realms are coming outside more and more, leaving the Ether for the streets as pressure mounts to define the course of the next century……” The Deck was designed to project her voice into the room, filling it like a real person’s would, but the volume synthesizer adjusted dynamically based on the space of the room. Her voice quickly became muffled by the travelers huddling around the bar, breaking and interspersing among groups who knew each other and those who didn’t.
“……….while video footage is limited, the two-hour recording behind me has proven to us all that what the President claimed were just trolls threatening to create a new Ether Realm have shown that they can mobilize and stay true to their word…….”
A new holographic avatar appeared—an older, wrinkled woman being interviewed by the newscaster. Their voices sounded real, except for the nasally electronic twang filtered through the digital transmission. The men seated around Nickel grew louder, laughing and shouting at one another, overtaking the interview on the Deck.
Clacking footsteps behind him and the looming shadow of a tray announced the reappearance of the waitress. She asked if anyone was finished with their food. The men seated to Nickel’s left flirted with her, one of them calling her “sweetie” as she repeated her question about the trays in a cold, indifferent manner.
Nickel wasn’t done eating, so he kept his trays before him. The boorish man seated across from him handed his tray to the woman without so much as looking at her, then asked for another meal.
“Eh, hungry eyes,” one of the men jeered. “Haven’t had enough to eat?” He jostled the man beside him in the ribs.
“Shut it!” the man snapped before his friend could say more.
When the waitress asked for payments, Nickel offered her coins from Rishi’s pouch.
“Sorry, sir, we only accept digi-cash,” the waitress said, shaking her head.
Nickel looked around, mouth slightly ajar in surprise. He’d just barely started eating and had already checked in for the night.
“You can’t transfer the cash?” he asked, jostling the coins in his palm.
“No, sir. If you can’t make a payment in the next five minutes, I’m going to have to report you to Merrix Deputy.”
Many eyes in the diner turned toward Nickel, catching him off guard. This was a much bigger deal in Merrix than he had thought. Everyone at his table was watching him, anticipating his next move. Even the boorish man had looked up from his food, studying Nickel with small, pitted eyes.
“Pay up, kid,” came the grumbling voice of the smocked man from earlier. He emerged from the kitchen to the left, wiping his hands with a white cloth. His face beamed with sweat. He scowled. “Trust me, you don’t want an arrest warrant on your head… so pay up!”
“………….Finneban has promised to reward those who are willing to create a new Realm…………” The drifting voice of the newscaster became audible once again, save for a few seconds of hushed whispers and mutters.
Nickel sighed, closing his eyes and raising his brows in consternation, prolonging the moment before admitting that he didn’t have a digi-card and couldn’t pay.
A wooden chair creaked from the far corner of the diner behind Nickel, followed by a heavy rustling of thick clothes and a clinking of chains. The rustling softened, and heavy, padded footsteps approached.
Nickel turned to see a large figure with a strong, bearded face, shrouded by a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. The man pulled a card from his trench coat and placed it on the table, pushing it toward the waitress’s checkbook with a large, knotted, callused hand.
“No need for a commotion,” the man said in a cool, gravelly voice. “I’ve got the kid covered.”
Nickel looked up at the man, too flabbergasted to thank him. The man met Nickel’s gaze and smiled, giving him a wink.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” he muttered, just loud enough for those at the table to hear. “I’m a friend of Steve’s.”
Nickel shivered like he was in a tundra. Although, he couldn’t tell whether his tremors were from the flights of cold settling in or if the unsettling news was playing a part as well. Somehow, the world and its discontents were even more unnerving without the Ether to inundate him with its information.
Why didn’t I follow Rishi? Nickel thought, sighing. He couldn’t make sense of where he was heading, but somehow, that was both liberating and terrifying. He’d just found out that the canyons weren’t as free of the Ether as he had thought. He had passed a swarm of Ether farms overhead above Merrix on his way to the shopkeepers’ square. One of those farms was releasing Finneban campaign satellites, which meant he’d probably become the nominee of Realm Eight. If they’d pushed him to the Elector Ring, then he would be a final candidate to go up against Rixen, the president who had defeated Finneban thanks to cybernetic implants that decelerated his senile aging faculties.
Before Nickel had left the Academy on his hovercraft, he’d been told that the Ether Wars were just a legend—that they’d never happen. Their prospects had been destroyed and defeated alongside Finneban’s political ambitions. But really, the Ether Wars had been going on the whole time, brewing, until they were about to cascade.
Nickel tried not to think as he looked for Apple’s Inn. He was following the instructions of an old woman he had seen outside a mystic’s shop. He’d asked her about any places he could stay, and she had proffered Apple’s Inn.
“You looking to buy some wares?” came a crooning voice.
It was an old man standing by the side of a vendor next to the block of squat tenant buildings that Nickel passed. His voice caught Nickel by surprise, stopping him in his tracks.
The man wore strange visors over his seamed, hairless face. They were darkly tinted, but occasional sparks of yellow light shot across his lenses like polka dots, coming and going.
“No, sir,” Nickel said, waving his hand as if to shoo him away, but dropping it and leaning closer to ask a question:
“Excuse me, do you happen to know where Apple’s Inn is?”
“Oh, you won’t get any cyber-wares there,” the strange man said. He wore long faded purple overalls shot through with embedded silicon strips. The table at the vendor before him was filled with strange crystalline objects embedded with electronic equipment. “I have the best around—oh!”
His face lit up, nearly jostling his visors off as he ducked underneath and popped back up, holding a headset inlaid with a light strip so dark and purple that it looked like a tube of liquid encircling the headgear. “You’ll never miss a night of sleep with these trinkets,” he said, spinning the rizzler-cups embedded in the earmuffs. “Melatonin-enhancing membrane. You’ll be fast asleep over there—”
Over the heads of a stream of huddled people pouring into an open doorway, a large sign read:
APPLE’S INN
No dogs, cats, lizards or
ANDROIDS
Permitted entry!
Ignoring the continued stream of words from the seller’s mouth, Nickel adjusted the straps of Rishi’s sack over his shoulders and bounded for the inn.
He turned back to look over his shoulder, shouting,
“I’ll be back! I like those mufflers! I’ll come back and buy them!”
As he bounded up the incline of the street, toward the growing crowd, it came into greater focus, revealing the headsets with glowing tabs strapped over the heads of a throng of people in large trench coats. Jacked in. This was where the Ether was on the ground level. Without the hovercrafts, people wore them.
As Nickel slipped into the crowd, the stench of grime and sweat overwhelmed him, emanating from the weary travelers. Dulled mutterings and conversations swarmed around him. Their softer voices indicated that they were in a hurry to get inside.
As Nickel walked underneath the large sign of the inn, a ranch building across the end of the street next to the inn caught his attention. Spangled over its right side were large banners that read:
FINNEBAN
2201
MAKE EARTH GREAT AGAIN!
On the front-facing side of the ranch, facing the street and every pedestrian and traveler on it, was another banner, just as large, with its font big enough for everyone present to read:
It was the sound of chirping women dressed in faded coveralls, wearing darkly tinted visors under the tattered brown canopies of fabric beneath the Bay roof of a vending station that finally convinced Nickel he’d run far enough from the hedonistic pilgrims. He doubled over as he hobbled onto a sidewalk next to a large squat building beside the vendors. He stooped over, placing his palms on his knees, panting—catching his breath.
The adrenaline, the screaming of his legs, the rapid intake and exhale of breath, the desperate need for rest—it was delicious. A soothing, cool drink against the inevitable confusion and overwhelm at where he had arrived, both physically and mentally. He’d forked out on his own, traveling alone. No Rishi, Thraíha, or Steve to guide him. He’d also let go of Hedonim and the burden of many troubles he had carried.
Nickel coughed, raising his fist to clear his throat. His eyes stung from the disorienting foggy streetscapes. He didn’t want to think. He’d been feeling a freedom and release of abandon, but he could sense the anxious creep of uncertainty. Without Hedonim, where else was there to go? What was there to do?
The chirping of the women suddenly faded. A whirring overhead cut his attention away from the ground. When he looked up, he saw a small, oval-shaped vessel passing above him. It was rusted, and certain shafts surrounding its body were broken, torn asunder at the edges. Yet it was decked with bright, multi-colored bulbous lights across its frame, like a festive holiday. The lights flickered in a sporadic array, flashing specific colors at specific times in a sequential order.
Nickel smiled, letting out a laugh as he squinted at the vehicle looming over the street. Maybe the canyons weren’t such a bad place to be. It was teeming with more life than he had assumed. These places seemed unbound by the limitations and boundaries of the Ether Realms’ camps. Clearly, life—and cultures like the Thraíha—existed outside the constrained norms of the Realms. Nickel wondered if he could pick and choose the lifestyles and relationships with technology he encountered in Atalantia. Instead of trying to fit into the camps and Realms fighting for control of the Ether, he could travel the canyons, meeting new people and cultures, choosing which ones he wanted to adopt or live with. But then again, there were the Death Riders. How many more people like them lurked in Atalantia?
The air cooled as a long shadow passed over Nickel, darkening his part of the street as the vessel drifted past him. He continued squinting at it, noticing grids and protruding spindles but no visible apertures or windows for a clear-eyed pilot. Nickel frowned, watching it leave. Was it a hovercraft piloted by someone inside, or a satellite? A remnant probe like the one over the Thraíha temple, languishing in the air, left over from the days before the nuclear fallout? Or was it a satellite designed to spy on whoever had traveled this far into the canyons of Atalantia, this close to Hedonim?
Nickel shivered, his merriment at the festivity fading into unease. The faceless nature of the flying vessel unsettled him. Was it designed to instill fear in wanderers like him?
Nickel trudged along, lowering his head. The earth still sparkled along the cracked ridges, bumps, and crevices under the glow of streetlights and the fog’s illumination. Frowning, he looked up at the sky. Sprinkles of glowing light speckled the vast darkness. The contours of high-rises and additional layers of buildings around him became more visible. More satellites floated down toward the earth, smaller than the vessel from before. One clanked against the side of a building, tipping over and scuttling along the surface of a window, which was largely obscured by fog.
Muffled shouting echoed from behind the window, high above. The window scraped open, and the muzzle of a rifle slid through, emitting a flash of fiery yellow light. A thin laser beam struck the circular satellite, sending it careening toward Nickel.
“Who’d you shoot?” came a woman’s hoarse voice from the window, followed by muffled footsteps.
“Not who!” shouted a man. The muzzle of his gun disappeared behind the window. “It’s another fucking satellite!”
“From the Ether farms?” the woman’s voice returned.
“I thought the firewall would work,” the man said, his gun buzzing with the sound of a reloaded cartridge. “It’s these damn Finneban trolls…” His voice faded along with the woman’s.
The shot satellite wobbled in the air, its lights flickering and sparking out. Nickel stopped walking, watching it teeter through the sky. The area of impact was charred, warped metal encircling the damage. It screeched as it spun erratically, a dangerously volatile object spiraling out of control.
Nickel ducked as the satellite hurtled toward him, plummeting before suddenly swiveling left. He staggered back, nearly falling on his rear. He turned to run before the satellite finally crashed into the ground, spinning manically as it did.
The fizzling noises of its electronic equipment shorted out entirely, and the satellite fell silent.
Nickel ran to the fallen satellite. No flickering lights remained, but the rear compartment emitted a thin trail of smoke into the air.
Nickel kicked at it, flipping it onto its other side, then darted back in quick, frantic steps. He wasn’t going to touch the thing with his hands.
A logo with emblazoned words was spangled across the front. Walking closer, Nickel finally read what was on it. Emblazoned in large, thickly sized letters, it said:
FINNEBAN
2201
Below that, in slightly smaller yet still imposing letters, it read:
“Pilgrims to Hedonim come in all shapes and forms,” said the pre-recorded voice from the statue. “You’ve been hurt by the Ether Realms. It’s time for you to free yourselves from the fragmentations that you have instilled within yourselves. From the lives you’ve lived inside of the hovercrafts and screentubes. As the world is tearing itself apart by the neck through the Realms, you have come to be at peace and embrace the physical touch of others, of real people. Free yourself from the touch of the Realms and the segregation you have all known through the screens you’ve called your homes for so long.”
“Hmmmmm.”
“Mmmmmmm.”
The voices of many men murmuring together took hold as they all swayed gently to a soft ambient melody playing from the speakers. Nickel found himself swaying and murmuring as well. Lost all sense of self-consciousness. Dissolved. Not fragmented. A single force. A single world. No self to bind.
Statue. A marble ball. Heavy. Rotund. Shaped like water. Yet sculpted to match. A solid ball in the haze of steam and fog. Nuclear war or not. Hot springs or not. The ball was there. Still.
“The United Republic was said to hold together the last remnants of the United States of America, the last great empire of our land called Earth,” the voice from the balls’ speaker said. The sudden realization emerged: the balls were shaped and glued together as if they were a pair of testicles. “The creation of something new was supposed to withhold from the inevitable fall of a civilization. The United States of America as you knew them was meant to crash and burn two centuries ago in the 21st century. The United Republic was formed in the wake of its destruction to cement a sense of control on the part of the hegemonies that be and to invoke a sense of maintenance of identity on the part of citizens continent-wide. The United Republic is and always was a dupe.”
Lifting. Shapes. Words made into shapes. Shapes made into words. All they were. The hands of Nickel and of others wafted over him and his body like smells in the air, floating and wafting.
“Rejoice in the death of your dying Republic. It has denied you from the beginning, chastised you for enjoying what is only natural since the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Now, in the year 2200, you will embrace each other in your arms—”
The arms of the bundled group closed in further on Nickel, pressing harder as they slid across each other’s skin.
“—as you make your way to Hedonim, the final installation of the world as it was meant to be. As the Ether Wars kill what’s left of the United Republic, desecrating the tomb of the United States of America, join me and your brothers as you set sail to the world of your desires, free of conflict and suffering.”
A loud grating sound echoed from under the street. The sonorous humming of murmurs from the men around Nickel lost the lilting constant timbre of their voices, turning uncertain, lower-pitched, quieter, as the ricocheting grating rumbled like a thundercloud, rising into the air and vibrating against the side of the cliff. The voices of the men subsided, becoming quieter. Nickel felt a tugging uncertainty, confused, rummaging against the torsos of the men around him, following their jerking movements along the napes of their necks and the ridges of their ribcages, sliding, moving away toward something.
“Rejoice,” hissed the loudspeaker, melting into the rising rumble before them. “Rejoice for the year twenty-two hundred, the year of completion………………… completion of the human project. Salvation has arrived in the form of no form. When you step into the vessel of the Covenant, you will enter a new paradise, of no rules, no boundaries, no Ether Realms to control you, or war with you.”
A shadow passed through the crowd like a wave of water rushing over the heads in the crowd before Nickel. He looked up as the slight mirage of shadowed coolness washed over his head. In its wake was a giant sphere, blotting out the murky light of the sky in its dark, overwhelming rak-steel body. A flash of light, a bright effulgence, flashed in the sky along the edge of the sphere at the top as it grazed the zenith of the swath of sunlight, emergent through the fog-addled afternoon sky. Gasps rang out through the crowd, quiet and subdued in awe of the enormity of the vessel as it was revealed to them, shrouding more and more of the Merrix Depot square they were in, blotting out the entirety of the sun.
“Rejoice, pilgrims, for your passage to Hedonim has finally brought you to it,” the speaker boomed, to murmurs and gasps of excitement rippling through the crowd. “Your labors bear fruit, and never will you see a day without harmony again.”
A square patch of the outer surface of the Covenant became alight, revealing that it hadn’t been another extension of the dark steel surfacing outside, but a window that instantly glowed to light.
In the window, against a glowing yellow background as warm and honeyed as the sun, was a beautiful woman in a purple jumpsuit. As the crowd reveled in her appearance, she gazed out at them, warm but with sullen eyes, unseeing. She appeared waxen, though her chest moved up and down, breaking with a heavily dilating face, up and down, as if she was about to start panting.
A gentle hush flowed through the crowd, punctuated by excited, unintelligible murmurs that barely rose above the squealing pressure of the vessel as it slowly finished its ascent along the side of the cliff. When the squealing died, it turned into a soft hiss, and the vessel came to a gentle pause. The woman began to undress. She fingered the collar of her steep V-neck, showcasing a shadowed collarbone and a shiny bosom, contoured by shadows darkening between her breasts.
The crowd rushed forth, growing more energized by the sight, which quickly became less visible to Nickel as more men around him pushed him aside, jostling their way forward. Eventually, their force became unavoidable, and Nickel found himself prodded along in his drugged state, the uncoordinated hands around him becoming spots of heat and pressure, lifting him up. As he moved through, partly of his own accord, partly not, the woman became clearer to him again, this time her bare skin revealed where her clothes had been. This was what he’d wanted all along, he thought. In the levitated state of his foggy, floating high, a smile broke across his face. This was what he had really wanted the whole time. He could finally drop the pretenses of survival, having found civilization again. Merrix Depot was populated with others just like him. In fact, they were swarming around him in a disorderly mass, all searching for real pleasure.
Ether screens and holograms—even the ephemeral visions of the singing sorceress—all enigmas, all out of reach. Before Nickel, another opening revealed itself, emerging from above the heads of the men bustling before him. Their frames hid much of the glowing interior, except for the alighted flesh still visible over the heads of the men, who rushed forward faster, carrying Nickel as if he were surfing a wave.
“Come to Hedonim,” the booming speaker said. “Enter the Covenant and find the realest pleasure you’ll ever experience on Earth—or any planet,” he added in a snarky, mischievous tone.
It was realer than real. Nickel had been trying to survive in the canyons. That’s what he thought had been moving him forward all this time. He was stranded and needed to escape to return. All the Thraíha lore and lifestyle were just a pit stop on the way to the final destination of Hedonim.
Moans echoed from the room revealed at the top of the Covenant. Looking up, Nickel saw the first woman he’d noticed, but now she was with a man, also unclothed, their bodies locked together at the hips. They rocked back and forth, holding each other, holding something real.
But was it real?
It was realer than the pleasures of flesh he’d seen simulated on his hovercraft screens. This was the real deal.
Once Nickel stepped aboard that ship before him, he’d never have to worry about getting a girlfriend—hell, he’d never have to worry about having a mate!
The rumbling of the men in the crowd grew quicker, more forceful, carrying Nickel with them like a fast current.
But was it real?
The thought flared in his mind again as the crowd surged forward. Nickel didn’t know if it was real. Was anything real? He didn’t want to go. I can’t go yet. What else would he do? His parents’ expected lifestyle? No thanks—especially when Hedonim and its fleshly delights lay before him. A ravenous hunger coursed through his body as the open gate of the orgy neared, revealing more of the naked bodies inside.
IS IT REAL?
Nickel gasped, unsure of where he was going. He frowned. I never stopped to think—am I actually leaving for Hedonim? What if this is just like the Death Riders? Am I about to get kidnapped?
IS THIS REAL?
The footsteps thundered around him. The smooth, pale skin of a woman’s back arched in the air, a cascade of flowing blonde hair rolling over her other side, its wispy strands drifting over her shoulder.
ARE YOU REAL?
Nickel mouthed the words, hoping for a response, hearing none. Now, more than one woman appeared, their bodies writhing together, different skin tones awash in a flashing pink light.
Nickel hungered for them. Every preconceived worry attacking his mind dissolved in the froth of the wave spilling over him. Yummy. No meal he’d ever had before was as appetizing as the fleshly feast before him. The isolation of his earliest years—eight, nine, ten, eleven—disappeared like a countdown to something else. His formative years flashed away. This was better than any Ether screen he had ever gazed at. The burgeoning anxiety of puberty—its throes of awakening, humiliation, hurt, and uncertainty—vanished in the bliss of wholeness awaiting him. The women were even closer, even more visible.
The blonde woman caught Nickel’s eye the most. Her body was slim but filled with a fullness of girth, muscle flowing over her abdomen, teasing the dark inlet of her navel, just peeking over the last row of heads walking toward her. Nothing Nickel had seen in the Ether compared to the pleasure of this experience. The foxy woman flicked her head, a wash of dirty blonde hair casting shadows over her petite collarbones, sending inky streaks into the folds of her skin, depressed by the tautness of her toned body.
Below her dark eyebrows, almond-shaped green eyes gazed over the crowd, seeming to catch Nickel’s. When they did, she parted her lips slightly and looked up at him, slowly raising her leaning torso from a surface beyond the gates. A bubbling energy surged through Nickel’s chest, shooting from his groin. As a light ray from inside the room of women shifted, the blonde woman’s eyes changed against the light, shifting from green to blue.
Like the image of the idealized late-20th-century American woman Nickel had seen in the museum on Colony 5 during his STEM school field trip—blonde-haired, blue-eyed.
AM I REAL?
That was a media course he’d taken as part of the program, preparing him for the Ether Realms Media Production. Media. The domain that had overtaken not just the United States but the false United Republic. He had learned how to create the most powerful element of the Ether Realms—and of the world—the imaginary. This yellow-haired, pale-skinned, blue-eyed beauty before him wasn’t supposed to be real. She was a manufactured fixture of 20th- and early 21st-century pop art and culture—an ideal. But Nickel could see the light of the ship’s interior casting shifting halos over her glistening, moving, breathing skin. She was so close that, if he were just a few feet nearer, he could have touched her.
If this idealized, imaginary figure was real, then was she looking at a dark-skinned, black-haired, brown-eyed teenage boy in a tattered Thraíha tunic who was also not real?
Was he not real? What was real… in this world where the mind’s eye was stolen by screens? Nickel looked down, raising his hands, flicking his palm up and down, studying them, slowing the movement of his legs despite the frenetic feet of the other men. Nickel had lived with the Ether for so long that he didn’t know if he could trust what he saw.
Was Nickel real?
Nickel cried out in horror, flinging his arms out, accidentally striking some of the men around him. His breathing turned rapid, his chest rising and falling in unrelenting moans. Tears edged his eyes, blurring his vision, marring the exquisite image before him—closer than ever. His hands started shaking. It felt like the whole world was vibrating, the edges buzzing in and out of focus.
Was it all a joke? All the humiliation and pain? The isolation and suffering? Even the feelings of superiority he’d been granted by his parents in the past? The doomed plains of Atalantia? The struggle? The adventure? Was it all for nothing? The illusions of a life meant to amuse some unknown creator, as transparent as a holographic avatar?
Nickel broke into a sob, his heightened senses amplifying the anguish and tears, ever-flowing. The image of beautiful, naked women blurred into a garish wash of colors and burning light. He hated it—hated how pathetic he felt hobbling toward these women, like they were life preservers for a drowning man. But he wasn’t drowning.
Nickel squeezed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth, his anguish boiling into screams of anger. He hadn’t come this far in the Atalantia Canyons just to drown.
I AM REAL!
He clenched his eyes tighter, twisted his body to the side, and shoved into the mass of men, trying to break free.
Agitated cries and rough swats of hands assaulted him, but he pushed past them. “You are not your thoughts,” Rishi’s voice echoed in his mind. “You are the only observer you can be—a human.” Nickel knew he was real—he wasn’t the illusion. It was his thoughts that had been the illusion all along.
Like Mother Hawk had said, “The acht-chi of the fog summons what you summon, whether you think you are summoning or not. The only way to the mastery of a King-Ho Thraíha master is to let go. When you accept, you can use the fog.”
Nickel pushed through the men as if they were tendrils of orange fog, ignoring their protests. His chest jittered, the helpless horror inside him turning into an almost mindless elation—a more terrifying feeling. For once, the canyons no longer seemed so foreign. He’d treated his hovercraft as an unfortunate refuge from the canyons, his only link to the real world he was so desperate for yet terrified to return to. Bound by the expectations of his parents and the education he had left behind.
As he broke free from the crowd, sprinting into the swaths of fog pushed by new winds, the heart of Merrix Depot faded behind him. He ran into a new education—the unknown world—racing into him, and him racing headfirst into it.
G.R. Nanda 