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EON

T he corporate-appointed apartment was grander than anything I’d ever experienced. At the far end of the studio space, a terminal was already glowing, and I was the moth to its flame.

It drew me in—a gravitational pull that was inevitable, inescapable. I pressed my thumb to the biometric scanner, and I was already in their system.

It was all there, just waiting for me. The screen flashed to a basic desktop, but I pulled up the cyberspace link—and then I was drowning.

The virtual world surged before my eyes, expanding endlessly. All of POM’s network. A virtual city that sprawled beyond comprehension. But I wasn’t the master here. I realized that now. It had always been an illusion. I had no control—not here, and not out in the real world.

I felt that shadowy presence wrap around me. It wasn’t hiding anymore. It dragged me down into a darkness deeper than anything lingering between the stars. My destruction—and my salvation.

A voice that wasn’t a voice—a deep, unending vibration—spoke to me:

This could all be yours. Everything could be yours, if you would just take it.

There was no sensation in cyberspace—no touch, no smell, no taste—but right now, I was sure I could feel icy tendrils licking around my arms and legs, weaving between my fingers and around my throat. They slid over my face and into my mouth, the taste metallic and acidic.

Show me what you can do.

I let everything flow out of me—my Flux, my fear, my pain. It absorbed it all, a perfect black hole from which nothing returned. When I had nothing left to give, I lay back, cradled in that primordial dark.

Then we were moving, the darkness peeling back as the sky filled with stars.

No—not stars. Code. My code. Strings of golden light interwoven with violet, forming the map of my brain, scanned years ago and laid out in cyberspace as a perfect recreation. Each synapse a transistor. Each pulse, new data flowing—rendering the perfect system.

I wove my hand through that digital signal. I didn’t know what I needed to do.

Not yet, at least.

But I would.

Be not afraid. We’re going to have so much fun together, little star.