G.R. Nanda

Exploring Fractal Noise: A Review of Paolini’s Bold Sci-Fi Novel

Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini is a weird science fiction novel, really pushing hard into the weirdness. This is his second published novel in the Fractalverse, his adult science fiction universe, following his epic standalone space-opera, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which was reviewed upon release four years ago on this blog.

This review won’t be as in-depth because it’s been many months since I’ve read Fractal Noise. However, the book really left an impression on me, and I’ve been meaning to share my thoughts about it in at least a cursory blog post.

Fractal Noise is a better, tighter, and more streamlined novel than To Sleep. To Sleep was the first foray into the Fractalverse, and Paolini made sure to make it worth the universe’s debut. It is chock-full of world-building, truly ripening the epic space-opera format. It also carries a strong philosophical message of optimism and weirdness that Paolini has worked to define his Fractalverse, both on the page and in public, through his online marketing and discussions of optimistic space exploration and the scientific and anthropological zeal behind it.

Fractal Noise is not an epic. While To Sleep clocks in at a whopping 880 pages, Fractal Noise is just 250. Tonally, it is quite the contrast from To Sleep, which is heavily imbued with a Golden Age/Star Trek-styled optimism for the future—specifically, a future of humanity among the stars.

Fractal Noise takes this universe to a different facet. The main character, burdened by the loss of his fiancée, is part of a xenobiology expedition crew. Alex, a talented xenobiologist, is isolated on the crew’s ship, utilizing whatever chemically-induced products he can find to manipulate his depressed nervous system, physiology, and mind into feeling more alert, stable, and able to sleep.

From the get-go, the novel turns into a first contact story, but of a wholly different kind than To Sleep. The first contact in To Sleep spurs a tragic loss akin to one at the start of a hero/heroine’s journey and bursts into a rollicking space opera akin to Asimov, Niven, and the James S.A. Corey folks behind The Expanse. However, Fractal Noise is a first contact story more in the vein of the zany Stanislaw Lem and his psychologically morbid and tormented classic novel Solaris.

In fact, Fractal Noise seems to mine a lot of thematic, tonal, and aesthetic influence from Solaris. Both share a protagonist who is a younger man still reeling from the loss of a female lover. Both books are first contact stories. Both first contact experiences engage the protagonists’ psychological states of depressed stasis and provoke the roots of their depressions. Both use the space-exploration premise and aesthetic of far-future interplanetary space exploration to induce a deep interrogation of the state of the human mind. It’s like an Arthur C. Clarke story, but instead of falling into a scientific anomaly that opens up a spiritual mystery, the mystery is a Lovecraftian, existentially horrifying nature of the universe and man within it.

While To Sleep was a celebration of science and scientific speculation, Fractal Noise depicts a crew of highly educated individuals who are burnt out from their objective and their Enlightenment worldview of productivity and scientific advancement.

Alex is introduced to us as a skilled biologist who is finding himself at a loss to make sense of his feeling stuck in life, with his exclusively STEM-oriented education. The loss of his fiancée seems to serve as a metaphor for the loss of his relationship with humanism and the greater aspects of life beyond the objective and scientific.

This allows the first contact to become a way for Alex to find an alien form of life at a time when he’s struggling to find life within himself—his career, lifestyle, and routine. Addled by melatonin to sleep and a commonly used drug called AcuWake to stay alert on low sleep, he is struck by an opportunity that he knows his fiancée would have been smitten with and loved to jump on.

The novel feels in a lot of ways like a pandemic novel. By that, I mean it’s a creative work that struck in me many of the feelings of malaise and digital overindulgence experienced during the COVID pandemic. This blog was created at the start of the pandemic, and it feels, in a way, like coming full circle to be publishing a review of the first book I would describe that way.

When we meet Alex, he’s barely getting through his work and struggling to find motivation to stick to a routine. He spends time messing around with holograms and holographic feeds to procrastinate. When he’s trekking on the planet emitting the strange pulse alongside his crew, his HUD (Heads-Up Display) in his EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity) suit is basically a smartphone or laptop with access to numerous apps, files, and entertainment media, alongside the features he needs for his work.

The novel jumps between two timelines: one of him and his crew discovering the alien pulse and engaging in the first contact mission, and the second of Alex’s relationship with his fiancée leading up to the tragic end. The second storyline is given extra weight when it’s revealed that Alex carries with him a digitally replicated file of all of her memories. During the course of the story, he is tempted to access that file and watch her life experiences, especially the ones with him, to relive what he has lost.

Fractal Noise tells a story of how an individual relates to life when experiences, autonomy, pleasure, and interconnectivity are ubiquitous thanks to technology. It portrays the mundane and meaningless sludge of existence that we’ve all felt when mindlessly scrolling and consuming digital content. It captures an isolated autonomy and weakened spiritual agency in the face of drugs and technology that give us virtual control over the contents of the past, the preservation of the present, and our productivity. When you take drugs to sleep, drugs to wake up, and can superficially preserve the past and superficially engage yourself digitally, you create a cocoon or prison for the mind.

In this way, the typical first contact premise is given its own unique spin through the cyberpunk-infused themes that Paolini injects into the writing. Finding alien life becomes about finding your own life. Finding your own humanity amidst the search for alien consciousness becomes about waking up from your own artificially induced drudgery.

Fractal Noise‘s crisp and lean world-building plays into this, depicting a spaceship, technologies, and character backgrounds that create a vivid interplay of a sterilized hub for scientific advancement. It’s the opposite of To Sleep in many ways. But the balance between world-building and plot feels much more refined and streamlined than it did in To Sleep. Paolini’s science fiction writing is more vividly literary than the stories of Arthur C. Clarke, but it certainly shares the smoothly woven science fiction and scientific world-building of Clarke’s work. Paolini has upped his game for this swing at the science fiction bat.

This dark, dour book is one that I highly recommend, and I promise that it still holds an optimism of the spirit. It’s often the case that science fiction stories portraying how technology has perverted human agency and experience have the most optimistic takes on human spiritual potential. Fractal Noise is definitely not the most optimistic, but there’s still enough optimism to go around.

2200 Blues Chapter 54: Part One

Note to readers: “2200 Blues” is a novel in progress, and each chapter is an early draft in its unfolding journey. Your thoughts and reactions are invaluable, guiding its evolution and refinement. 2200 Blues © 2024 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

“Stay back!” Li growled at Nickel. 

“I want to see him!” Nickel complained as Li gently shoved him back, sending him staggering and bumping into a few other Thraíha who were shouting and clambering to get through the throng. 

“No!” Li said, pointing a finger at Nickel. “Not today! I’m not letting another outworlder out!” 

“I’m not an outworlder!” Nickel said, seething with anger. He glowered at Li, feeling a rising fume of outrage. He’d had enough of Li and his intimidating behavior. “I’m Thraíha, and I’ve done the work to prove it!”

“Work?” scoffed Aarole, appearing from the bordering crowd of Thraíha. Looming higher over the rock mound next to Li, he stared at Nickel through pitted eyes, his mouth slightly open as if testing Nickel’s response, waiting to see his provocation. 

“You’re not one of us. If you weren’t born Thraíha, you’re not Thraíha!”

“I’m going to kill you,” Nickel snarled, his emotions getting the best of him, his sleepless mind fueling his fury.

“Aah, aah, aah,” Aarole said, smiling and crossing his arms, his eyes narrowing even further. “I knew you were good for nothing. You’re outworlder scum, like the Vramung scum.” He took slight steps over the mound of rock, rising above Nickel, moving his body closer to Nickel’s so that he loomed over him in an aggressive proximity.

Nickel gulped, trying to step back, but only moving his heel ever so slightly across the rock before hitting the legs of the Thraíha behind him. He was cornered; the lower nape of Aarole’s chest was barely an inch from Nickel’s face. Nickel had met thuggish bullies in the Military Academy before—worse ones than Aarole and his friends. He wished he hadn’t spoken his last words to Aarole, as they invited new trouble from someone he had already had trouble with among the Thraíha.

Aarole leaned further over him, causing Nickel to cringe and cower back, pressing helplessly into the restless limbs and torsos of the Thraíha men behind him. Their presence was unrelenting. 

“Going to kill me, eh?” Aarole hissed.

“We have word!” someone shouted from afar.

Nickel edged backward into a narrow opening in the boulders behind him, only to feel his arm caught in a tangle.

“What do you mean you have word?” came a distraught voice from close behind. It seemed the tangle Nickel was caught in was a group of Thraíha wrestling to hold one another back, one trying to stop the other from breaking through while the other tried to push him out of the way. Nickel felt frozen, unable to pull his arms free, largely out of fear, with no other place to hide or escape from Aarole and the physical altercation sure to ensue.

“Akela will know you threatened to kill me, and after you missed the last hunt, you’ll be gone forever!” 

“I know you seek after Kythria,” Aarole muttered, grinning widely.

The alarm turned into a tsunami inside Nickel.

“Who are you talking about?” Nickel asked in a growl, though he already had an idea. 

“The girl who painted you for your initiation,” Aarole said. “That’s a courtship test.” 

“I’m not interested in the rituals,” Nickel said. So that was her name. Kythria. The Thraíha girl he’d passed through the village square, the one who grabbed the young boy, Kyang. 

“But you just said you’re Thraíha,” Aarole sneered. “I’ve seen the way you look at her, the way you go silent around her. If you tried to kill me, I could invoke the courtship rituals over you.” Aarole smiled a large, cruel smile.

Emotions roiled inside Nickel. His heart hammered with anger’s agitation, mixed with his addled sleeplessness.

“What are you talking about?” Nickel husked. His head buzzed with confusion, shock, outrage, and helplessness. He had expected Aarole to get physical with him in response—to shove him off his footing into the crowd and possibly do worse. But instead, Aarole was trying a psychological trick, a manipulative play at a perceived vulnerability. It was seemingly much worse than a physical altercation. What better way to provoke his feelings of belonging—or lack thereof—among the Thraíha than by threatening to implicate him in the courtship rituals?

Before Nickel could respond, a man hurtled into the crowd next to him. Cries rang out in Nickel’s ears as he and the men around him went crashing to the ground. The weight of other bodies pressed on him, causing him to tip over alongside them. Their flailing limbs ensnared Nickel, swatting at him as he fell. Nickel found himself on the ground, leaning against a fallen man, his right eye smarting from an impact with someone’s elbow.

“This is the worst patrol formation I’ve ever seen!” Li shouted over the men. “It’s pathetic!” 

“It’s because we have more men than we need!” shouted a raspy voice from behind. “Out! Out!” shouted an older man from ahead in the crowd. “Too many men! This is why we said we had enough! You shouldn’t have come! Our flank is already filled ahead!” 

“Vramung can’t see us like this!” came the booming voice of Akela. Many of the men quieted at the sound of his voice. Nickel brushed himself off and got on his knees, dragging his upper body across the ground. The men he had fallen with were dispersing, untangling themselves and getting up.

“We can’t let the Cast-Out spirits affect us like this!” roared Akela. “Up! Ohh! Up on your feet and leave! This is not strength!”

Grumbling, the young men around Nickel slowly dusted themselves off and began walking away, down the slowly declining surface of the dark rock plain. Nickel stood up and followed them, the crowd widening as they moved. He craned his neck to the sides, searching for Aarole, but couldn’t see him amidst the other men. The motion of turning his head made him dizzy from sleeplessness. The dark, rocky terrain below beckoned to him, pulling him under, threatening to topple him into the darkness of the rock.

Where is he? Crossing Steve was one thing, but now Aarole? It felt like one bad encounter after another—another slip-up, another knotty entanglement with someone. For the first time, Nickel wished he could leave the Thraíha behind. The emotional entanglements and sources of conflict were becoming too much. An impassive, hardened Farrul. An infuriated, misunderstood Steve. And now a threatening Aarole, after they had already gotten off on the wrong foot. Nickel had threatened him, knowing it could go nowhere good—an act of impulsiveness. Now he feared what Aarole would do. What he could tell Kythria. Or the Women’s Council. They dealt with interpersonal affairs—and the rites of courtship.

Nickel gave an exasperated grunt, gritting his teeth and wheezing. He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over them. How much worse could this get? He had just gotten relatively accustomed to Thraíha culture, and now he found himself entangled in a potential courtship plot. He had no idea how the rites even worked and couldn’t believe that Aarole might use this as leverage against him. Nickel had to get to the council before Aarole did. But what could he say that wouldn’t make him sound crazy or wind him up in the very situation he was trying to avoid?

Before he could mull endlessly over that thorny goal, a rough hand clamped down on his shoulder. 

“There you are, Nickel,” came the sonorous voice of Akela, a soft tone of his deep, timbered voice sending warm air into Nickel’s right ear. Nickel stopped walking and turned sharply to face Akela. The white irises of Akela’s wide eyes, with their gray pupils, pierced Nickel’s gaze, contrasting with Akela’s lined, worn face and dark features.

“Yeah?” Nickel exclaimed loudly and nervously, scrunching up his shoulders and turning to face Akela.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Akela muttered, still speaking softly. “The council told you to come to the patrol early!” he growled in a quiet husk.

Nickel frowned, confused, looking warily at Akela. 

“No, Akela,” Nickel said, refusing to corroborate any guilt. He had already gotten himself into enough trouble by ditching the farm work Luvele had assigned him and fighting with Aarole. He wasn’t about to have another slight added against him. “I was at the farm. That’s where I was told to go this morning… The council never came to me.”

Akela kept his hand on Nickel’s shoulder, continuing to stare at him with a glazed expression, his pitted eyelids betraying confusion, suspicion, or both. 

“I came here because I was worried for the tribe’s safety,” Nickel added, hoping to justify leaving his farm work.

Akela sighed, removing his hand from Nickel’s shoulder and turning away. His fur tunic fluttered in the soft but steady wind. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Akela said, walking back up the rock at a brisk pace. “This is an emergency, and I need an outworlder to bear witness.”

“Me?” Nickel said, jerking into a trot behind Akela as he gained distance on the rock climb. 

“Yes, you,” Akela hissed, without turning around. He jerked to a stop and waved his hands at the few men who were slowing down as they walked back down the rock to follow Akela and Nickel. “Stay down!” Akela called. “Just the two of us going up. Go back down!” He motioned to the few men milling around, pointing back behind him.

Nickel hurried after Akela as he resumed his trek. The haze of orange flattened into a stiller curtain of fog, thickened by the climbing elevation and the brightening tint of the afternoon sun. Fear swarmed Nickel—a flicker of relief at leaving the Thraíha village behind and, more so, leaving Aarole’s threats behind, was immediately met with a dangerous thrill of fear and uncertainty. He was walking into the unknown. The visitor outside the Thraíha had caused all this commotion, a stark reminder that Nickel was in a foreign land with foreign dangers.

The higher they walked up the rock, the more the men below dispersed, until it was just the two of them climbing. Nickel’s heart hammered in his chest, but he followed Akela, fearful of breaking pattern and suffering a worse consequence. 

“Vruhá ná khelté huurrhá? Korrath ná jhurrú!”” came a voice in Thraíha from far ahead. 

“Sounds like he’s happy,” Nickel said, attempting to recognize the pattern of Thraíha words he was becoming used to hearing. 

“Korrath ná jhurrú means ‘go to hell,’” Akela said without turning around.

Nickel’s mouth opened in surprise, wanting to say oh, but no words could form on his lips. Terror flooded back, drowning the momentary ease.

2200 Blues Chapter 53: Part Three

“If that Vramung slime is back here again, I want answers for where my brother went!” one of the young men said, his friend shouting in agreement.

“I’m not letting Vramung anywhere near here!” shouted another young man, interrupting the old man’s response. “My father nearly lost a leg for him!”

“This is not for you to handle, Hiru!” the old man shouted, though his voice was muffled by the restless young men surrounding him. “Don’t make it your business if it isn’t—aaaaiiiii! Where are you going? Come back!”

A few of the young men stopped shouting at the old man and now shouted at each other, calling on one another to leave, dashing through the opening at the village intersection.

“Get back here! You’re going to lose your heads!”

A mass of children spilled out of the nursery behind the smelting station. Two women rushed out of the hut, frantically herding the children as far away from the village center as more Thraíha folk rushed past Nickel.

“Hey, Nickel, where you going?”

A young boy by the name of Kyang slipped past Nickel. His small, round face still softened by youth, as he hadn’t yet reached the throes of adolescence. His small, narrow body seemed to leap over the ground in the single strides he took. He grinned at Nickel through wide-reaching gums and crooked teeth.

“Where are you going?” Nickel implored. A procession of priests rushed past Nickel on his left, their glittering robes embedded with jewels. They were chanting something in the Thraíha language, indecipherable to Nickel.

“Where everyone else is?” Kyang spoke as if unsure why Nickel was even asking.

“To the sentry-posts?” Nickel asked.

“No, you dumb worm, weren’t you at our hut?” Kyang asked.

“No, I was working at the farm,” Nickel said. Kyang squeezed his face and made a sound that was halfway between a scoff and a giggle.

“You’re always off doing something else,” Kyang snorted.

“Yeah, well, I’m older,” Nickel said, chuckling and waving his hands gently in the air before slapping them on his legs. “You’ll get there soon.”

Kyang eyed him with a tilted face. “Enjoy it while you can,” Nickel said, raising his eyebrows in emphasis. Before he could wait for Kyang to respond, Nickel was distracted by the murmuring of men speaking in Thraíha behind him.

“Háthrú hán gaá, ní chágrá hou.”

“Hátraín ná vakkuru háchú, ní chágrá ní hou.”

“Hátruú thri hána cha, ná háchaarru túrra.”

“We pray for you,” said one of the Thraíha priests chanting. “We pray for all of us, all Thraíha. May Great Father Hawk bless us and keep our spirits together in the face of the cast-out.” He whispered before breaking out into more mutterings in Thraíha.

A string of women walked in front of the men, carrying buckets of water over their heads. Nickel had seen them carry buckets every afternoon, but today they walked in a more hurried manner. It seemed that everyone was moving a lot faster, much more swift and hurried about their tasks—more agitated as they went on about their day. Nickel couldn’t tell where the workers ended and the Thraíha joining the patrol or seeking answers about the “Vramung” began.

“You know, I’ve been here longer than you.”

Nickel turned back around to look down at Kyang. His beaming face held a self-assuredness that Nickel had known in himself not long ago, one he still held within himself today, though with a greater understanding of how he had gotten himself into trouble. Kyang’s smile stretched wide across his face, making his youthful exuberance contagious.

“You just got here, but you act like you’ve known Akela and Father Hawk your whole life,” Kyang said.

Nickel couldn’t help but smile at that. “Really?” he asked, chuckling, his smile widening as he watched Kyang curiously.

“Hurry!” hissed a young woman who slipped around Kyang from behind him. “You have to get inside! You’ll get trampled by the patrolmen!”

It was the same young woman who had dressed Nickel in furs during the initiation rite. He recognized her from her slim, short figure and the dark flowing hair tousled by water. But it was her round face with almond eyes that gave her away to Nickel. She tugged at Kyang’s sleeve, and he followed her.

Amidst the chaos of the Thraíha village square, Nickel watched the young woman disappear into the crowd, his eyes trained on her short, wide-set curving frame—the gentle arch of her lower back through her flowing dress and her curving, muscly legs walking to and fro.

Nickel had never learned her name, and he didn’t know if he ever would. To him, she was as close to the singing sorceress in the flesh as he’d ever met. An enigma, as much so as the visions he’d witnessed.

“All clear out!” commanded a tall Thraíha woman in the formal garb of black dress and headwear from the Thraíha Council of Affairs. Knots of gathered women in similar garb swarmed around her, confronting a crowd of Thraíha amassed around the entrance of a random hut meant for traversing Thraíha miners. Men and women with pickaxes and shovels gathered around the front of the hut, confused by the women’s entrance and their ushering out of the Thraíha workers. It was strange that they weren’t gathering in the Oracle’s hut, where they would normally congregate for Council meetings.

“The end of time is here!” shouted Sybil, a crazed old man with wide eyes and a craggy block of long gray-white hair. He stood to the far right of the councilwoman and workers, daring to step into the fray of wandering Thraíha, standing right in their way.

“The Huntsman has sent another star hurtling towards us! The dying sun has finally met the dying earth. Father Hawk has finally come for the sins of the Past World!”

“Not the time!” shouted a woman rushing around him. “Get out of the way, you sleepy snake!”

More Thraíha rushed past, covering Sybil from view alongside the councilwomen.

“Vramung is the last omen of our demise!” screamed the old man.

“Go back to sleep, old man!” a man shouted.

“Nickel!”

Whirling around, Nickel saw Luvele struggling through the many throngs of Thraíha rushing through the square.

“Nickel!” she repeated. She was glowering, her pale face reddened by exertion and wide-eyed with anger. “Get back to the farm! Get out of here—” she grunted as she was pushed to the side by a running Thraíha. “Come back, or you’ll take a bath with the cows, and I’ll scrub all of you!”

Nickel’s eyes widened, and he cringed, mouth forming a grimace. The disgust took mere milliseconds to settle on him before he decided that he’d had enough of Luvele.

Wagering the risk, Nickel turned around and bolted through the crowd, joining the moving frenzy. Pushing past some Thraíha and being pushed by others, Nickel found the rush of Thraíha heading out through the right, out of the village.

Nickel broke through the crowd in the village circle, running past the opposite line of huts toward the gently rising mound of darkened rock.

Nickel was ready to find out what other outworlders roamed the Atlantic Canyons.

Ecopoetics – Rolling Hills of Grass

A darkened mush

within a vat of mineral,

a ripening rush

descended the bowels of a mammal,

the discovery feels liminal,

scents swim like eels

wafting through the fronds of grass

on a mountain of grazing lass,

the climb harkens of Olympus,

the heavens meet me

and I am beckoned to kneel

only interrupted by a bee,

the altitude fills the lungs with levity

and the prairie with freshness of the soil

grounded by the mountain’s gravity

the ancient flotsam of existence

floats over and through me

each mote and sound

a data for eternity

the green prairie rustles,

rippling into a yellow savannah,

greased by the glaring sun,

bringing death to my bustles.

2200 Blues Chapter 53: Part Two

Nickel frowned deeper at Farrul, who was unassuming, walking across the earth of the garden without so much as giving Nickel much mind. The nonchalance of his appearance surprised and eluded Nickel. Was it possible that Farrul had become accustomed to travel through a passageway or catacomb out of the power plant wreckage that was unknown to Nickel?

While the Thraíha had built and set up huts in their settlement, they had also made do with caves and the recesses of the canyon rock. The Thraíha had built atop and within the land they inhabited. While it was a relatively flat rock plain, it was still winding, providing apertures of concealed holes that emerged in the rising rock the deeper he moved across Thraíha country. And with the anatomy of the remaining power plant architecture enveloping the rim of the settlement and serving as a kind of makeshift border, sheltering from the elements of the canyon windstorms, Thraíha country was even more labyrinthine. Nickel didn’t know where canyon rock began and Thraíha hutments ended. It seemed that perhaps not all those hutments were above ground.

Farrul picked up the tools that Nickel had dropped, keeping the satchel he carried on his arm down to the side. He began handling Nickel’s tools, testing the blade against a whittle he pulled out of his satchel.

Nickel ignored the farm animals milling before him and gently puffing out air through their nostrils. He walked over to Farrul, leaving the stables momentarily.

“Hey, Farrul, you brought a whole bunch of tools with you too, huh?”

Farrul looked up at Nickel as he knelt, a look of passive disinterest on his face.

“I guess you really are serious about farming,” Nickel said. “They told me before, but now that I can see you doing it, I get it more. You got every tool you could need, I guess.”

“Is this about Steve?” Farrul asked coolly.

Nickel pressed his lips together, his eyes steeling over.

“What?” Nickel said. “What makes you say that?”

“Trying to get the band back together?” Farrul said, breaking into a wry smile and chuckling. “Not much of a band to begin with, though.” He looked back down at the earth, pulling a mallet out of his bag to balance the side of a kupernacle stem as he gently sheared at the edge of its leaf with a razor-thin blade from his bag.

“Did Steve tell you about our conversation?” Nickel asked in a trepidatious tone, feeling his heart sink. “That’s actually not what I came to ask you about.”

“What do you want to ask?” Farrul said, still watching the plant closely as he worked.

Nickel sighed, watching the sunlight sift through the edge of the opening in the roof. The orange glowed at the center of the sky, sending warm rays of nearly yellow tones sifting through the sky.

Nickel now wanted to ask about more than just the first question he’d had in mind as he had first walked to Farrul. He couldn’t think of it as much the first question now, though, once Farrul had spoken.

“I have a more important one now,” Nickel spoke almost through gritted teeth. “What did Steve tell you?”

“I barely talked to Steve. I thought I told you how I feel about him,” Farrul said.

“We barely have a way out. Every second we’re not walking to Hedonim is a second moving us further from our goal,” Nickel said.

Farrul frowned.

“I thought you were all good to stay with the Thraíha,” Farrul said.

“I never said that,” Nickel said.

“You said they had it so much better than us—than me and Steve.”

Nickel didn’t speak, frozen by Farrul’s words, struggling to find a response. Where is this going? The sense of alienation that he had been feeling growing inside of him was now turning into a dreadful panic. The plan he had with Steve and Farrul before meeting the Thraíha—when the three of them were just vision-addled stragglers desperate for civilization—was now breaking apart. Or had it been broken from the start? Steve had always wanted to become one with the Ether, and it seemed that he saw Nickel as his means to do so. Farrul had always distrusted Steve and harbored resentment toward Nickel. Even if it had subsided since getting to know Nickel, he had always felt cynical about Nickel and Steve’s plan for the three of them to work together, with Steve as the lead to Hedonim. That cynicism was nowhere more apparent than it was right now to Nickel.

“Do you want to go to Hedonim?” Nickel asked.

Farrul shrugged.

“I don’t know,” said Farrul. “But I want to leave the Thraíha.”

“What will you do after?” Nickel asked. He secretly was asking to know for himself as well—what Nickel could do once he left the Thraíha, what kind of role or place in society he could fulfill once that time came.

“I like farming,” Farrul said, still withholding from looking up at Nickel. Having made notches in the leaves of a dozen or so plants, he was slicing through them one after the other, speedily cutting the halves of the kupernacle leaves’ surfaces. “I’ve always wanted to go back to the Ether, but I have this now. If I could farm and live in the Ether—farm in the Ether—that would be really nice.”

“Do you think it’s possible to do both?” Nickel asked, his heart beating fast. If Farrul was like Steve, then Nickel would have neither of them to even remotely work with to escape the canyons.

“Háthrouu ná chuurhá. Nickel háth gáth jurrá?!” called Luvele in a high-pitched scream. She was hobbling to the farm from the far right, away from the rock plain beyond Thraíha country. She was carrying two stone buckets in both of her hands. Their surfaces were bumpy, with rough protrusions. They were presumably carrying water. She glowered at Nickel.

“Oy! Nickel, what are you doing?” she said, shaking her head. “The cows are lonely while you chit-chat. You should have milked and scrubbed three of them by now!”

“Sorry!” Nickel called, walking towards the village. The panicked avalanche he was feeling from talking to Farrul turned into an unbalanced vertigo, threatening to tip him over with each step.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Luvele drawled as she grunted while chugging the two buckets of water. “I thought working with so little sleep would teach you a lesson, but you’re tripping up over and over.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Nickel asked, attempting a guilty tone, though he secretly hoped she would kick him out of the farm so he wouldn’t have to work.

“No!” Luvele said. “Not so fast.” She dropped the buckets of water at the gate to the side of the garden and opened the gate. “You’re staying in the stables, and I’m staying here to wash, so you work and you don’t talk to Farrul.” She bent over, her butt holding the gate door open as she stooped over and picked up the buckets of water. “If you don’t work on the cows, I’ll put you on patrol.”

“Patrol?” Nickel asked, freezing after taking a few steps away from Farrul toward the end of the garden where it met the stables.

“Yes, Nickel,” Luvele said. “And it’s a whole lot more moving around and work than here. You must carry big weapons, restock, and report. You’ll be running around, and I’m sure you’d rather be cleaning cows instead.”

Nickel stood still, his mind swarming with rushing thoughts and feelings. Patrolling. Sounded more fun than grazing cows. Besides, he wanted to see more of what lay beyond Thraíha country. But he was confused.

“Why patrol this early?” Nickel said. “The sun just got to the top.”

“It got to the top because the Huntsman’s always watching for us. His eyes are our eyes,” Luvele said.

“Is this about the visitor?” Nickel asked, pulling the gate between the garden and the stables a crack, still watching Luvele.

“It’s quite a ruckus,” Luvele said, walking into the garden. “You don’t want a part of it.”

“Did he leave?” Nickel asked.

“For now,” Luvele said. “We don’t know if he’ll come back. If he’s come for you—”

“Come for me?” Nickel asked, aghast. Even Farrul had stopped what he was doing, turning to watch Nickel and Luvele as he was stooped over kupernacle plants.

“Yes!” Luvele said. “If any of the outworlders who roamed these canyons saw you, you’d just be another Thraíha to them. But you must be careful! I don’t want you losing any of the protections the Thraíha council has granted you.”

What was going on at the Thraíha borders? Nickel had stayed with the Thraíha so long he still had no real inkling of what lay beyond. Who were these outworlders?

“So get to work!” Luvele said. “Keep your place!”

“I’m sorry, but I’m joining patrol,” Nickel rushed out of his mouth. Looking away from Luvele, he bolted out of the garden, squeezing past Luvele through the gate.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Luvele screamed at him. “You don’t even know where you’re going!”

Nickel didn’t look back. Instead, he bolted away from the farm, running far away from their metal frames. He passed under the shadows of the looming metal spires and enclaves jutting out of the farming area. The pattering of heavy hunting boots rained down from the opposite sides of the huts he approached.

There was a storm of voices echoing from the farther peripheral reaches of the village. Nickel ventured in between the bordering huts, rushing through the village square while keeping to the walls, vying to stay out of sight.

A stream of men rushed past the square, looking for weapons spilling out through an open crate in the smelting station. They cursed at one another and shouted, trying to hurry through the items and armor hanging loose from a rod at the top of the smelting station, just below the roof.

Footsteps thudded behind Nickel, becoming louder with each step. Whirling around, he caught sight of other young men running. They didn’t seem to notice him as they sprinted, eyes trained on the intersection where the village met the workers’ grounds.

Nickel slowed down, watching them stampede past. They blitzed around the smelting station, toward the mound of rocks that surrounded the front of the village, climbing higher as the land spread out across the horizon. Many disappeared into the orange haze, reappearing intermittently as they ascended the rising plane.

Others stopped by the smelting station, shouting at the men who stooped over the armor spilling out of the crates.

“Don’t go there! You’re not supposed to follow them!” an older man shouted, trying to herd the weapons.

“They want us on guard!” a burly young man yelled back, waving his hand toward the village.

“Don’t listen to your friends!” the old man responded, turning to the frantic, agitated young men who swarmed around him, blocking them from Nickel’s view.

Nickel had never seen the village in this much disarray and frantic movement—at least not since he, Steve, and Farrul had been ambushed by the Thraíha after fleeing Nickel’s hovercraft.

2200 Blues Chapter 53: Part One

Guilt wracked Nickel for the next few days. While the Thraíha were agitated about the strange visitor who had happened upon their settlement, he was consumed by his conversation with Steve. He spent hours sobbing in a rock crevice within the rocks surrounding the Thraíha temple.

The shock, disappointment, heartbreak, anger, outrage, and immense guilt over how he’d yelled at Steve—the man who was the reason Nickel was still alive after crash landing in the Desolate Canyons—flooded him, all on the day Nickel had been initiated as a Thraíha. It all felt like a cruel joke.

The rigor of the Thraíha lifestyle started to feel cumbersome beyond its usual difficulties. While waiting for the next hunt, he was tasked with many of the same activities as before. He could barely keep his mind off his conversation with Steve, regretting how it had quickly turned from a sweet and warm reunion to an uncomfortable and ultimately tragic falling out.

Steve was the adult he could count on to know about the canyons, about Hedonim, and the world around them. He was someone who’d seen more of the canyons and knew about the world. Nickel was now surrounded by adults of the Thraíha who only knew the world through the lens of their culture, of magic and spirits. Nickel had no doubt that magic and spirits existed. He’d had enough experience with visitors to know that. At this point, he knew it wasn’t simply mirages in the fog, as Steve had once explained to him. Though, it might be that in part. That was the point—Nickel didn’t know where the effects of the orange radiation from the nuclear power plants began and the magic apparitions ended. And Steve was the only adult he’d met here—the only person he’d met in the canyons who’d seen much of it, who knew the former, who was from the Past World, as the Thraíha would put it. And Nickel had insulted him, enraged him, and stormed out of his own hut.

When Nickel returned from the rocks surrounding the temple, Steve was nowhere to be found in Nickel’s sleeping hut. Nickel didn’t see Steve anywhere else, but he didn’t bother to ask anyone about his whereabouts.

It didn’t matter because no one asked Nickel about Steve’s whereabouts either. He was long gone, and the times when Nickel had run into Farrul again, nothing was mentioned. Feeling uneasy about facing Farrul after their confrontation at the top of the temple, and his falling out with Steve, Nickel dreaded a confrontation or greater disliking from Farrul. To his surprise, Farrul hadn’t said anything about either of those things to Nickel. He’d shown no potential conflict with Nickel. He had shown his usual ambivalence and a greater sense of disinterest. He’d always been difficult to figure out or discern. Though, he was sleeping in a different hut than Nickel. He’d been told by Akela that Farrul wanted to reside closer to the farm now that he was tasked with more agricultural duties. Though, Nickel couldn’t help but wonder if that was due in part to an aversion to Nickel on Farrul’s part. A way to avoid him without facing him for his perceived slights or misdemeanors. In fact, was Farrul’s greater disinterest in talking to Nickel that—

“Thraxxa, for Father Hawk’s sake!”

Nickel whirled around to face Luvele, the caretaker of the kupernacle garden. She was glowering at him as she stooped over a pair of bladed stone shears, surrounded by rogue plants that she had been shredding. They were invading plants, different from the kupernacle leaves lined up ahead of her and in the bed where Nickel knelt.

Luvele was a stout woman in her later middle ages. She had a round face with curling black hair, cut short to help her travel in the muck around the overgrown algae and wilderness outside of the Thraíha settlement. She was covered in brown Thraíha overalls and had large beady eyes that seemed to watch everything under and in between the plants of the garden, kupernacle or not.

“Sorry?” Nickel called, raising his eyebrows. That word seemed to be what he was owing the most these days.

“Boy, you’ve barely been cutting your share of the leaves!” Luvele shouted at him.

“Huh,” Nickel muttered, looking down at his hands. His stone blade was hanging limp from his palm in the dirt where he’d cut the last kupernacle leaf to the right several minutes ago.

“What are you daydreaming about?” Luvele asked in her high-pitched voice.

“Oh, nothing,” Nickel said, staggering to his feet. He picked up the blades he was using before, holding them at his sides. He looked around, tracking where he would begin cutting away at the leaves again. The damp, almost sweet scent of the sliced kupernacle leaves that he had cut had grown less pungent since he had last cut them open with his blades.

“Have you been sleeping?” Luvele asked.

Nickel rubbed his eyes.

“Yes,” he complained. He sighed. “Actually, no, not enough.”

“Well, hurry up with the cutting, and go to sleep early today!” Luvele said. “They won’t let you on the hunt tomorrow unless you’re well-rested.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Nickel said, nearly falling down in the bed of kupernacle leaves again, nearly falling to the side on the way down. He left a mark in the dirt where his blades cut a small furrow next to the plants. He continued the sweeping motion of hacking at the stems at the base of the kupernacle plants, trying to retain his sleepless focus. While he worked, he could feel Luvele’s eyes on him.

“Why haven’t you been sleeping enough?” Luvele asked. Nickel took a deep breath, dusting dirt from his tunic.

“I don’t know,” Nickel lied. “I’ve just been thinking a lot.”

“About what, boy?” Luvele asked.

Nickel grumbled incoherently.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Luvele said. “I need to know why you took the place of Farrul and another boy today, but can’t keep it together for the work.”

Nickel closed his eyes.

“The Mother Hawk can bless you all she wants, but if you can’t put in the work, then you can’t follow Father Hawk to the hunt!”

“Aaaaaarghhh,” Nickel grumbled louder.

“If you can’t tell me the truth, then you’re out of here and into the stables,” Luvele said.

“Tell you the truth?” Nickel said, frowning. “If I just keep working, wouldn’t that be fine?”

“Stables,” Luvele asserted loudly, pointing at the cows ahead of the kupernacle plants behind her, past the arch of the remaining rusted metal roofing.

One of the cows, a yellow animal splotched in purple, gave a gentle moan from the stables’ clearing.

Nickel’s heart sank. It was always a hassle to take care of the cows and get down in the muck of that clearing’s thick dirt. The soil that had been amassed was concentrated in this part of the Thraíha settlement. Being outdoors, it was carefully confined to an area of the settlement where it was rammed together in a thick patch to buffer against the corrosive fog and where it wouldn’t spill onto the rock surface where it would be bound to dissipate.

“Please, I’ll finish my work here—I’m almost done,” Nickel complained.

“Too late,” Luvele said. “The sun should show any moment now.”

Nickel groaned. Sure enough, the sun appeared through the foggy atmosphere, a rare respite of greater transparency at the zenith of the foggy atmosphere. It shone through the large gaping hole above them in the structure of rising walls that made up the Thraíha farm.

Nickel walked out of the garden, knowing that the afternoon sun was the mark of the next work shift, now made unavailable to him by Luvele.

He walked into the muck of the stables, passing under the arch of the metal overhead and through a wooden gate into the muck of the stables. Stepping inside, the sickly pungent scent of the dirt hit his nostrils, causing them to flare as he cringed. It was a sickly but earthy smell. He preferred the thin sweetness of the kupernacle leaves. The walls of the metal enclave were closer to him now. They stretched over him, joining in a curve at the roof. They were thicker and covered more of the surrounding space than the air of the garden. The metallic scent of the rusty surfaces, splotched in brown, was strong, mixing with the dank sourness of the dirt to produce the mix of claustrophobia-inducing sensations that made Nickel hate working in the stables so much. The damp slushy feel of the dirt clung to his legs as he waded through it, causing the wet cloth of his pants to stick to his skin.

“Fuck you, Luvele,” Nickel muttered under his breath as he struggled towards the lazily lounging multicolored cows stranded at the end of the stable.

“I don’t know what that means, but I heard that!” Luvele called. The Thraíha only swore in Thraíha. The closest they shared with Nickel was “hell.”

“Ah, Farrul, good thing you’re here!” Luvele called. “Your friend Nickel decided that today was not a day to have slept.”

Nickel stopped walking through the muck, turning around to see Farrul enter from the other end of the farm, at the wall opposite the garden.

Nickel had learned from the book he’d stolen from the temple that it had formerly been one of the active nuclear power plants within the canyons that powered Hedonim before it became an AR hotspot. He hadn’t yet been able to read too much more, but he surmised from diagrams that the sprawling, looming enclaves of old, sheared-away steel were the carcasses of old extensions of the power plant or nearby buildings meant to support its operations. The twisted metal spires and enclaves had a grotesque appearance, leaving the whereabouts of its inhabitants and visitors shrouded in shadow and obscure spatial location.

The 21st Century #1

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PREAMBLE:

Divination, dangling leaves, dickory, dickory

dangling dicks, flopping, a bee buzzing,

danger alert, drumming heartbeat,

darting through the air, running through the trees.

Cars, the ever-present vehicles, cankering, crass,

But efficient, a roaring convenience,

as omniscient as the rustling leaves and chirping birds

Internet, the interconnected network, a zooming cursor

Aimed at the human mind, boggling

and incessant, a virtuality inescapable, thorough

and distant, immediate but abstract, interconnected,

interwoven, immediate and inescapable,

An Ether hanging over us, creating Realms

Unseen, but apparent

The black screen, dead, but inviting, a tomb

of yesterday’s interactions, virtual phantoms, abstractions

and icons, a world slipping away, an abstracted

one reappearing,

empty promises and forgotten walks,

the smell of fresh leaves and ripe grass,

but another icon floating through the mind,

Processed alongside the abstractions of a digital

interface,

flickering to life from the dead screen.

EPILOUGE:

Amnesia, allowances for habit, forgotten melodies

that hurt as we dance to them, remembered

painful step after another

Amnesia, the impulse forged to keep us alive,

now keeping us complacent with the world.

2200 Blues Chapter 52: Part Four

“I’m an agent of myself,” Steve grumbled. “I know what I want and why I want it.”

“Really?” shouted Nickel, his chest growing with a rising heat. He shook his head, scoffing. “Oh my God, your whole plan—get to Hedonim, use my hovercraft. I get why Farrul said you were so crazy, why Farrul hated your plan so much.”

“My plan is why you’re here!” Steve growled.

“So what?” Nickel hissed. “I’m supposed to go along with and help your addiction? Help you get another digital hit?”

“Listen, I’ve seen a lot more than you,” Steve said. “I have years ahead of you. I’ve seen war and famine.”

“Really?” Nickel shrieked. “What is that supposed to mean? Because you’re older, all your plans and ideas are justified?”

“I know what gets us out of this mess,” Steve said. He pointed a stubby finger at Nickel. “You belong in the Ether too. It’s the only place where people like us can find the help we need and live a life worth living.”

“How would you know what a ‘life worth living’ would be?” Nickel said.

“You’ve got spirit,” Steve said, “but that don’t count for years.” He pointed at his temple. “That’s where I’m ahead of you. I can see further ahead.”

“Oh, fuck off with that,” Nickel sneered. “You’ve just had more time to get your head stuck in the Ether.”

“Nickel, I’m trying to help you!” Steve growled. “That’s all I’ve ever done.”

Nickel froze on the verge of retort, caught off guard by Steve’s comment. He felt a pang of guilt that was quickly subsumed by the outrage he felt at Steve.

“Aaaaaargh,” grumbled Nickel as he dropped his head into his palms, rubbing his forehead.

“Why can’t you see?” Nickel said between his fingers. “This wasn’t going anywhere. You acted like I was the key. It seemed like you were really just thinking about my hovercraft.”

“You know what you sound like?” Steve said. “You sound like those Luddite party members who just want to take away our freedoms.”

“What?!” Nickel exclaimed, ripping his hands away from his face.

“Yeah,” Steve said, nodding his head, frowning at Nickel. Now he crossed his arms. The familiar old man was now a stranger to Nickel. The face that had shown him warmth so much was now a wall to Nickel, a wall of misunderstanding and ignorance that Nickel wanted so desperately to break through but couldn’t.

“I’ve heard everything you’re going to say!” Steve asserted, weighing his finger he used to point at Nickel. “Those party members have been saying all that for far longer than you’ve been alive! They’re afraid of anyone who looks like a genetic human, and they think that because of that, we need to go back to the Stone Ages. They don’t want anyone in the Ether.”

Nickel’s mouth dropped in astonishment. “What does anything I said have to do with that?”

“Listen, kid,” Steve said, wagging his finger in the air. “I got years on you, seen more than you’d think to know because you haven’t seen it yet! I don’t have that much schooling, but I’ve learned from those smarter and older than me!—believe it or not—that the world gets torn down by those who want to take away our freedoms and those that want to keep them.”

“You think you’re free in the Ether?” Nickel screamed.

“I’m freer than I would be,” Steve said. “Anyone who says that we don’t need to get rid of the Ether is really trying to take away my freedom!”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Nickel snarled, walking around Steve towards the entrance of the hut that he and Steve came through.

“You know it’s true,” grumbled Steve. “It’s why you were in that hovercraft.”

That’s why I don’t want to go back, Nickel thought.

“But you don’t get that,” Nickel whispered.

“That’s why you met us, right?” called Steve. “To help us out. So we could help each other out? But I guess you don’t want to do that even after everything I did for you!”

Nickel closed the flaps of the hut entrance behind him without looking back. He breathed heavily, his heart pounding. A film of tears formed in his eyes, creating a haze over the sight of the orange fog and the neighboring huts and caves it shrouded.

“Ungrateful little shit!” came Steve’s voice, echoing from inside the hut walls. “Just like Farrul! You think you’re better than me? You’re just as hooked to the Ether as I am! Get back in the hovercraft! Stay in it and see if you stay out of the Ether.”

Nickel balled his fists in anger. He gritted his teeth, wanting to say something but too overwhelmed by anguish and outrage to do so. He knew Steve was right. If he stayed in the hovercraft a night, he’d be pulled to the Ether in heartbeats. It didn’t mean he wanted to for the rest of his life.

“You’re gonna leave me here to die?” Steve called. “The Thraíha can’t use me! I’m gonna die in these canyons!”

2200 Blues Chapter 52: Part Three

Steve stepped back and hunched over, drawing his hands, including the one held in his sling, towards his face, drawing attention to his wide eyes and the words coming out of his gaping mouth.

“I’ve been around before the Ether!” Steve rasped in a quieter but more exasperated and emphatic tone. “Remember? I’ve got years on you! I’ve seen more—a better understanding. I’ve seen the world before the Ether. Wasn’t worth saving.”

“Back before the Ether, before a single Ether for the whole world, we were trying to find ourselves in our separate screens. Interlinked but separate. There was no way to see the world, see how and why it was falling apart. Many ways! You couldn’t get anywhere! You didn’t know what to believe about the wars! Except to hope you didn’t get drafted with the nuclear arsenal!”

“We went through televisor after televisor. They got better, and you felt better for what you saw on the screen, but it wasn’t enough. You still had to step outside, deal with the world fogging up with pollution even outside the Atlantic canyons! Can you believe that? And ya’ didn’t know what to believe.”

“Then the Ether came online,” Steve said, his eyes becoming softer but remaining wide in a kind of ecstasy. “It changed everything! You could finally leave the world forever! Without getting killed or killing yourself. And you knew what to think!” Steve smiled. “And look for in the world. How to see the world—it was the world. It was now all there was to see!”

“I’ve known that I can get back there,” Steve husked. “I always thank the Lord of technology for that, for giving me a second chance at living my life.”

“It’s a better world than the one we have,” Steve said. “I was twenty-four when the Ether Realms were created. As soon as I joined Realm Three, my life changed forever. I had a way to see the world. I could understand my place in it. Understand the future.”

“Give me more pleasure than I could want, more women than existed in real life. I could try every face I could imagine. Real or not.”

“Then it was taken away from me!” Steve snarled. “The expedition ship I was a cook on was supposed to deliver us to a greater Ether artifact—a beacon for greater connection to the Ether. I was supposed to become the Ether!”

“We plumbed the sky to clear it from mining silicon, and we were lost!”

“I see the million faces I lost and the singing sorceress, Nickel! She’s calling to me!” Steve waved his hands aggressively towards himself. “Hedonim is all I have!” Steve leaned his head and torso towards Nickel as he spoke those last words.

Nickel backed away, leaning further into his cot, sitting upright on its frame and scooting away. He looked down at his legs, shaking his head and sighing.

“It’s all you have too!” Steve protested. “Why do you think different now? Why don’t you want to go to Hedonim anymore?”

Nickel had followed a crazed, desperate old man bereft of a livelihood and clinging to the Ether. Farrul had told him that Steve was crazy, and Nickel could see the inkling of that expression. But Farrul wanted to return to the Ether as well, just abandoning Steve while he was at it.

“I don’t want to go back,” Nickel said.

“You’re not going back to the Eagle!” shouted Steve. “You’re going somewhere new! Hedonim is new!”

“I don’t feel whole in the Ether,” Nickel said. “I do for a while, but it always leaves me empty. You may have felt connected in a Realm, but I didn’t. It’s been so long since you were in the Ether, Steve! A lot has changed!”

“Nothing has changed!” Steve said. “Except that I’ve been without the Ether for longer. I knew what it was like! The Ether was a dream, a luxury that I may have been able to access if I could find a terminal I could afford to pay for. Then the Ether-banks came out. They were so big—as big as a house!”

“Did you buy one of those?” interrupted Nickel. “Is that how you used the Ether?”

“I did when I could,” Steve said. “I rented out the banks that other people, richer people, bought. I wanted that so bad.” Steve motioned with his hands, clawing the air towards his chest. “The phones and computers I had then were too small for all of the Ether Realms.”

“We needed something bigger,” Steve said. “Something that could let me be in the Ether longer than a few hours. I needed a device that could be with me always.”

Steve stared at Nickel with wide-open eyes, silent as if he was impressing that need of his onto Nickel, waiting until it registered in Nickel’s mind.

Nickel opened his mouth slightly to speak, closed it in fear. He clamped his mouth shut, weighing Steve’s story and the question Nickel wanted to ask in turn—the one he was afraid to ask.

“Well,” Nickel said, gulping, “did you get that device?”

Steve’s eyes stretched, becoming glazed as his face relaxed, loosening as his face became slack, a delirious slight smile forming on his face. He extended his back, raising his head higher, drawing back from the close proximity to Nickel’s face. His smile grew wider, though his lips barely strayed from each other, only slightly opening. He smiled wider, and his face slackened even more.

“I did,” Steve muttered in a voice much softer than before, nodding his head. “Two years after the Ether Realms went online, everything changed. That’s when the first hovercraft came out.”

It was like a bar of solid ice slid down Nickel’s chest, freezing the innards of his stomach while twisting them in knots. Nickel felt the edges of his mouth weighing down in a somber frown.

“It changed everything,” Steve said, almost in a whisper. “It was an Ether-bank and an aircraft all in one. You could finally bring the Ether with you everywhere. You could live in the Ether!” Steve shook his hands, nearly bouncing up and down in giddiness.

Nickel’s mind swarmed with buzzing. His thoughts spun around, barely swimming through the cascading hot flashes of memory and the accompanying confused and agitated emotions that accompanied them.

“Well, I,” Nickel started before breaking into a nervous chuckle as his face melted in apprehension. “I never thought of my hovercraft that way all this time… all these years.”

All the time lost to the hovercraft, all of his life lost to the hovercraft. Year after year since the age of twelve, when he could first fly one. The bright flashes of light that surrounded him in the hovercraft; its screens waking to life the sunrise of the only world he really inhabited.

“That’s why I need you, Nickel,” Steve husked, coming hard on the middle of the sentence, heaving his chest in a wheeze at the middle of the sentence, emphasizing it with a big smile. As he spoke, he stooped closer to Nickel again, moving his hands down the air as if he was about to squeeze him. “I haven’t been inside a hovercraft in so long! Until you came into my life!”

Nickel’s heart nearly stopped. His face steeled over, and his frown deepened. He felt as if his whole body froze as dread creeped ever so further through him. Steve’s words smarted through Nickel’s mind, forming a shocking revelation that sent the icicle hanging in his chest plummeting further into his gut, causing a painful constriction and flare at its impact.

“You saved my life, Nickel,” Steve croaked, his voice broken up by a lilting mirth that edged on laughter. His smile was bigger now, his crooked stained teeth showing wide across his gums. He brought both of his palms up, holding the sides of Nickel’s face with them. The cold, calloused hands, marked by faint lines of worn use and age, touched Nickel’s cheeks.

“You gave me a chance to go back to the Ether,” Steve said. “To live a life again.”

“B-b-but this is life,” stammered Nickel. “We’re living right now. That’s what we’ve been doing these two months, Steve.” Nickel’s heart began to thud loudly.

Steve looked at Nickel with an empty, disbelieving expression. He frowned in disbelief.

“What are you talking about?” Steve grumbled. “There’s no living here,” he said, waving around the nearby area with his hands, turning his body with the motion. “I thought I told you when I first met you—the orange fog makes you see things.”

“Are you talking about me or the Thraíha?” Nickel asked in a louder voice, crossing his arms. He still couldn’t keep the shakiness out of his voice, but he spoke louder.

“Is there really a difference?” Steve asked, cocking his head to the side and giving Nickel a skeptical side-long glance with arched eyebrows.

Nickel’s face contorted in the inklings of a defensive response but stopped short of opening his mouth.

“Before we crashed your hovercraft, I think yes,” Steve said, nodding. “Two months later, I think no.”

Nickel frowned, and the edges of his mouth twitched. But he still didn’t respond yet.

“Not wrong, am I?” Steve said, shrugging his shoulders.

“You—” Nickel started, breaking into an exasperated scoff. He shook his head. He knew what he had learned from the Thraíha—a way of life Steve seemed not to understand. It seemed Steve may have been so incapacitated or unconscious during his stay with the Thraíha shamans that he hadn’t been able to live with the Thraíha lifestyle and follow their rituals of living as Nickel had. Although Nickel couldn’t tell if it would have made a difference for Steve. If he wasn’t already too corrupted by the Ether. If Nickel journeyed to Hedonim, would he wind up like Steve as well?

“You don’t understand, Steve,” Nickel said. This was the first conversation where he addressed Steve by his name. He never felt inclined to speak with him on terms other than following and working together for survival. “I’ve lived in the Ether too… I mean, you don’t get to be me, so distracted by screens that I don’t notice my hovercraft getting pulled into a windstorm in the middle of nowhere on low fuel—without living in the Ether for a long time!”

Steve nodded. “I know,” he said.

“You know,” Nickel repeated in a suspicious tone. He sighed. Was that why Steve joined Nickel? Why he took him under his wing? Why he helped him so much? Nickel was afraid to ask. “You said you helped me and Farrul,” started Nickel, watching the moon dial tucked under a car across from him, “because you couldn’t help your sister—because we remind you of her.”

Steve hesitated, and Nickel eyed him, knowing he’d asked a sensitive question but yearning to know the answer to the statement he’d really posed as a question.

“You’re like my sister,” Steve said. “That’s why…”

Nickel frowned, unconvinced. “Really?” Nickel said in a louder voice. “Tell me the truth! Is it that or that you’re addicted to the Ether?”

2200 Blues Chapter 52: Part Two

“You don’t know?” said Nickel. “What did the Thraíha say?”

“They had me stay with their shaman for a good while,” Steve said. “I don’t know where else I can go. They tried to mend it the best they could, but herbs and massages are all they have. Unless I can get a surgeon, this is it for my arm.”

Nickel felt like his heart dropped to the bottom of his stomach. His face grew solemn, and he looked at Steve’s arm, unable to say anything.

“It’s okay,” Steve said. “All I can do is move on. I’m used to it.”

“I’m sorry for joking about your arm,” Nickel muttered in a soft tone, meeting Steve’s eyes once again. “I didn’t know it was—”

“Ahh, don’t worry about it,” Steve said, walking to Nickel and placing his good hand on Nickel’s shoulder. “I learned a long time ago to laugh at what hurts. Besides, I’ve got better things to care about—like how we’re going to get to Hedonim.”

“Right,” Nickel said, gulping. Steve removed his hand from Nickel’s shoulder, wobbling over to walk across the hut. “There’s a lot that happened while you were—gone.”

“I think I know,” Steve said. “I heard from the shamans when I was resting. You chose to go somewhere else on a pilgrimage with the Thraíha.”

“Somewhere else?” asked Nickel.

“To the Windings,” Steve said, “where they say the Flower of Life has reappeared.”

“What?” Nickel exclaimed, frowning in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, I want to go to Hedonim,” Steve said, stopping at the end of the hut to Nickel’s left. He turned to look at Nickel through bristling eyes. “I don’t know what ideas they’re putting in you, but that’s where I’m going—and I thought we were going to use your hovercraft to get as far as we could to Hedonim.”

“No, wait,” said Nickel. “You’re forgetting—”

“—before you broke your hovercraft,” Steve interrupted.

“It’s broken?” Nickel gasped, staring wide-eyed at Steve.

“That’s what they told me when I asked,” Steve said, looking at Nickel more intently. He walked back over to him.

“Is it done for?” Nickel muttered, nearly whispering. His heart hammered with growing worry. “No fixing it?”

“That’s what it seemed like,” Steve said. His voice had taken on a more serious tone. “The shamans told me that it was too dangerous for anyone other than the blacksmiths to go into it.”

“That doesn’t sound like there’s no hope for the Eagle,” Nickel said. “They don’t let anyone there. They pull kids out of the area where they keep it.”

“They said it’s cursed, Nickel,” Steve said, growling. “Sounds like their way of saying it’s done for.”

“No, it doesn’t!” Nickel shouted, getting agitated now. “It just means what they say—it’s a part of the Past World—that’s what they mean.”

Steve sighed in exasperation, shaking his head. “I don’t care what a hawk-worshipping cult thinks,” Steve said. “I just want to get to Hedonim—and I thought you did too.”

“I do!” protested Nickel.

“Well, it sounds like you’ve been too busy trying to be a Thraíha.”

Nickel reeled with outrage. He fumed through his nostrils, feeling shock, anger, and a stronger flash of alienation than he’d felt before. He also felt confused. The feeling of loss and emptiness in the canyons returned to him. No matter how much time he spent in the canyons or with the Thraíha, he was still here by a dangerous accident. Steve and Farrul were strangers—the first people he’d run into after his hovercraft was dragged down into the Atlantic with no way back up.

It was a state of panicked isolation that had gotten Nickel to form bonds with them. Their desperation had in turn tied them to Nickel. They were survivors struggling to escape their hostile environment.

A new question flashed across Nickel’s mind; had they been more interested in escaping the canyons or returning to the Ether Realms? They’d been obsessed with Hedonim from the start. Was that more because it was the best landmark to escape the canyons or because it was the best way to return to the Ether?

Did they have a choice either way?

The question dawned on Nickel like a rock sinking to the pit of his stomach.

“Hedonim is something different to the Thraíha, Nickel,” Steve said.

“What?”

“Not what I see or what you see. Thraíha think Hedonim will let them bring their God to ours.”

“Our God?” Nickel frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The Ether is our God,” Steve said. “The singing sorceress. Hedonim is our temple.”

“No, no,” Nickel said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Nickel,” Steve placed his left hand on Nickel’s cheek. His palm was cold, grubby, and calloused. “I’ve been alive so much longer than you—much longer. You’ve only known the Ether Realms. I remember the world before the Ether. Not much of a world to begin with.”

Steve’s hand pressed closer on Nickel’s face, causing him to wince, tilting his head to the left.

“You know why I stay with you and Farrul?” Steve said. His face was haggard. Though cleaner than before, his face was worn and seamed even more up close. His face held the desperation and emptiness Nickel had been so disturbed by—in himself, Steve, and Farrul when he’d first met them. Steve’s face was distraught—it carried the distraught wildness that Nickel had been so used to seeing in Steve, except now he could see it closer, understand it better for what it was. It was the wildness in his eyes, his heavy breath. More than just a desperation to survive but a desperate, unquenchable hunger. Steve had been in the canyons for a long time. He’d found himself tripping into visions of the singing sorceress for much longer than Nickel—even Farrul. He’d had much longer for Hedonim to percolate in his mind, much longer to be enticed.

“You know why I take so much care of you and Farrul?” Steve asked. His mouth puckered, remaining open, his warm breath washing over Nickel’s face. “Because I know what it’s like to be a kid alone without the Ether.”

Nickel cringed upon hearing those words. Without the Ether. He’d spent so long in his hovercraft numbing himself from that feeling. From the despair he’d felt at his addiction to the technology that numbed him from that same despair among others, tracing down the rabbit hole of his life—his mind.

“I know what it’s like to be a kid—lost in the world with no one to fend for but yourself. You know where I come from, Nickel?”

Nickel didn’t answer. He was frozen, his face a grimace, wary of the man before him but too afraid and shocked to let go.

“I was born on the Pacific outposts,” Steve said. “Trash heaps. I had nothing to lose, and it seemed nothing to gain either. My sister and I—little sister, five years younger than me. We were sent to work on the trash heaps off the Eastern Seaboard. My parents were indentured by the companies making the waste. We barely saw them, but when we did, it was me and my mom made me swear I’d protect my sister. We had to go work to help ma and da buy our freedom. In order to do that, we had to buy our way out by making more money for the company than normal.”

“I was always supposed to keep my eye on my sister when we were out working, but one day, I had to go dump my load for the trash compactors landing round our lot from the sky. My sister was struggling under her load, trying to carry it up to where she was supposed to. I told her to wait until I came back to help her, to stop carrying it because it was hurting her. When I came back around, she was higher up the heap than she’d been before, lying dead under a pile of trash. The trash inspector had told her to keep climbing up, keep carrying more of the load. I was ten. She was five!”

Nickel looked up at Steve solemnly. He had taken his palm off of Nickel’s cheek, but he looked on at him with wide eyes. Nickel’s mouth hung open. Before he could respond, Steve continued.

“This is where we are. Where I was. A world that had given up before I had anything to give up. That’s why I take care of you!” He growled. His eyes were wide, fuming in anger. “That’s why I take you and Farrul under me. Keep you safe. Because I—” he pointed his thumb at himself, “couldn’t do that for my sister.”

Nickel still couldn’t find himself to say anything in response, numbed by shock.

“This world has nowhere left to go,” Steve said. “Except the Ether… There’s nowhere left in the Ether for me to go… except for Hedonim.”

“I don’t want to go to Hedonim,” Nickel said in a shaky voice, shaking his head.

Steve frowned, turning his head askance, glowering at Nickel from the side.

“What are you talking about?” growled Steve.

Nickel felt a heat rising through his chest, threatening to block out the words he was chewing on, attempting to voice.

“I’ll just be going back to where I was before—inside my hovercraft, wasting away inside the Ether,” said Nickel. Steve’s face writhed with emotion. Nickel sighed and rubbed his face in his palms, continuing to shake his head. He spoke before Steve could cut him off:

“That’s what I did! I did that for so long! Sitting inside my hovercraft, almost never looking out the window, looking through my screens instead. Everything was through Realm Five. The wars I had to support or be mad at—the war zones I couldn’t fly through. I couldn’t even get through to where I wanted to. When I wasn’t watching random BideoSute videos or 3D pornos, it was the world on fire—the places to avoid, where to restock on supplies, at what aerial ports would associate me with the wrong war efforts. Which war efforts to pay for to get the resources I wanted. I can’t do it anymore!”

Nickel glowered back at Steve, feeling the heat addle his politeness. Nickel breathed heavily. Steve, still wide-eyed, looked surprised.

“I can’t,” Nickel rasped in a quieter tone but still forceful. “I’m sick of it—I was sick of it before I crashed in the canyons—not just before we came to the Thraíha. I spent months in the Eagle, escaping from my problems—from the engineering program I was supposed to be in, trying to numb the pain but always feeling sick for doing it. But I had nowhere else to go, just the screens to keep me company. I’m done with that.”

“Which is why we’re going to Hedonim!” protested Steve.

“Hedonim is part of the Ether, you idiot!” snarled Nickel, pointing at Steve. He realized it was the first time he’d raised his voice at and spoke pejoratively to Steve. “It’s part of the same digital system! It’s just a different overlay!”