“Why do they keep all of this from us for so long?” My curiosity now provoked, I felt insatiable. He sighed. “There….are some elements of society….who feel, for wrongheaded reasons, that the Founder had no right to purge the world of deviation. That it was nobody’s place to decide for the rest how humanity would continue. If I had my way, they’d be tossed over the edge so they can discover firsthand where deviation gets you.”

He declined to say more. Which frustrated me as I’d only just gotten a glimpse of something larger which I felt was the key to understanding why I’d been changing recently. But, satisfied that I knew as much as I needed and as much as he wanted me to know, Dad warned me to keep it to myself, then sent me to bed. 

I awoke the next morning with still vivid memories of a bizarre nightmare. Of ionocraft controlled not by human pilots, but intelligent machines, who also performed every other menial task. Of injured soldiers regrowing arms and legs lost in war, perhaps adding a second set if they saw fit.  

Changes upon changes, accumulating until the creatures undertaking all of this were no longer recognizably human. I recoiled from the idea, understanding to some degree why, in recognition of where that path was taking us, we’d refused to continue down it. But could I really justify…?

Besides which, I was now one of those deviants. Wasn’t I? I knew of nobody else in my class who could move things without touching them, much less fly. Skills I guessed would not be well received, should I reveal them. So, I lived in hiding. Surrounded by others who outwardly looked like me but who I found it increasingly difficult to relate to. 

Somehow, word got around that I was sick. A deficiency of any kind, however slight, was reason enough to heap ridicule on someone. This was not discouraged but reinforced, to make clear to us the price of succumbing to weakness of any sort. The price of deviation from a singular ideal. 

“Why don’t you die already?” A girl with three bright red pigtails shrieked at me, laughing thereafter like a manic gibbon. “She’s right. Don’t pass it on to your kids. They’d never let you anyway. Nobody wants to be paired with a sickly deviant.” I cringed. Never before had I been the focus of collective scorn like this. I felt very small and fearful, but knew better than to show it. 

“The Founder never got sick!” one of them shouted, hurling a rubber ball at my head. Reflexively, I stopped it mid-air. It hung in place for a moment as everyone present stared, jaws hanging open. Then it fell and bounced away. “Let me tell you something about the Founder….” I began.

I didn’t get to finish. “The Founder couldn’t do that” one of the girls feebly whispered, still stunned. Then, reinforced by the outraged cries of the rest, she screamed “DEVIATION! DEEEVIIIAATION!!” I don’t know what they might’ve done to me, had a teacher not seized me by the collar and frog marched me to the doctor’s office. 

“Did you take your meds this morning?” the kindly looking grey haired man inquired. I’d seen him only once before when I skinned my knee playing cloudball in second grade. I appreciated that he hadn’t made some remark about how much I’d grown since he last saw me, an irritating habit most grownups seem to share. 

I affirmed that I’d swallowed the little grey pill as instructed. He stroked his chin, deep in thought. Then set about taking my blood pressure, measuring my cranium and administering tests similar to the ones I remembered from the hospital. As before, I deliberately restrained myself. “If you can do anything like that despite the meds, it’s a severe case. You look stable for the time being, but there’s no telling. It sometimes happens without warning.”

He didn’t clarify, but I could guess at his meaning. I recalled the boy from my hospital room, now contained in some unfamiliar form within that great metal sphere. “Can’t afford to make it any stronger than it already is”, the doctor mentioned in passing. That perked my ears up. “Pardon?” He made eye contact, surprised by my interest. 

“You’ve no need to know the precise details. Sufficed to say, every so often you might see a little blue light rise from some part of the city and join the blue star, increasing the brightness of it somewhat. When that happens it’s because someone in my profession was negligent and did not catch a case like yours in time. In all my years I’ve not once let one get away and I’m not about to ruin that record.”

Having said exactly as much as he meant to, he declined to answer further questions. Another irritating grownup habit. I wondered at what age I would become insufferably cryptic. He sent me home with instructions to double my dosage, and affixed a collar he informed me would notify the hospital should my condition worsen. I tried to remove the cumbersome thing once home but found it was locked in place.

“Nice necklace” Elena sneered. I considered levitating the potato from my plate and accelerating it towards her, but my better nature prevailed. “Tell me about your day”. Mom said it so coldly that I knew better than to waste her time talking about the geometry test, what I had for lunch and so on. She meant the altercation at recess. 

I pushed the fish around my plate. Tilapia, cultivated on the aquacultural platforms. Right then I wanted to be anywhere else, to discuss anything else. “I had an accident”. Mom scoffed. “Do you know what happens to the ones who have too many accidents? You’ll be taken from me. Maybe jettisoned if they can’t cure you. There’s only so much power keeping us aloft. Only so many people the platforms can support. They have good reason to be selective about who stays.”

She spoke sternly, but with tears in her eyes. It was contagious. My anxiety took the wheel, and I broke down. “I don’t know what’s happening. I’m scared. I don’t want to go back to the hospital. I want to stay with you, Dad, and Elena. I love you. I know there’s something wrong with me, something in my head is broken. I have deviated, but not on purpose. Don’t throw me away. Don’t let them throw me away!” 

A tense silence followed. Mom ordered Elena to her room, over her protestations. Once she was gone, we got down to business. Mom leaned in, eyes red and puffy, and began whispering in a conspiratorial tone. 

“Whatever is happening, you have to control it. Don’t ever let anyone realize you’re different. I’m deviating too, by advising you to hide an abnormality. I hope you realize the risk. Only because I love you. Because I held you in my arms when you were born, changed your diapers and stayed up long hours rocking you to sleep. I’ll die if I lose you. Can you swear on my life that you’ll never slip from now on?”

I took her hands. Dad’s went over mine. Then I swore. I found Elena curled up in a ball on her bed, clutching her stuffed bird. “I’m scared. Are they really gonna take you?” I told her I wouldn’t allow it. That I’d never leave her behind. Wrapping my arms around the quivering little sister-ball, I held her until the shaking stopped. 

I spent some hours with her, just talking, laughing and braiding her hair. By now a tangled nest of those silly colored animal beads. When she was absolutely, positively convinced I wasn’t going to disappear if she took her eyes off me, I received her permission to get some sleep. And I planned to...eventually. 

I shut my eyes and lay still, perceiving the structure around me all at once, including Elena, Mom and Dad. I watched the swirl of entrancing patterns inside their skulls until the activity diminished, such that I could be sure they were asleep. Then I put on more layers, remembering how unexpectedly cold it was last time, and took to the sky. 

This time I repeatedly let myself fall, just to practice recovery. It increased my confidence considerably and before long I was looping, cartwheeling and twirling through wispy puffs of cloud. I slowed to a stop, remembering the story Dad told me. There was now a way to silence any lingering doubts. So I dove.

Down, down, into the cloud layer. Ever present, opaque, so that the mistakes of the past would forever be out of sight and out of mind. Except to me. The layer grew darker as I descended, as if I were plunging into the ocean. Finally I erupted through the underside. I halted so suddenly, one of my ribs cracked. 

I doubled over, wheezing, and slowly recovered. The landscape before me was abominable. Charred skeletal remains of anachronistic buildings protruded up out of a sea of black, writhing sludge reaching contiguously from one horizon to the other. Churning, flowing, doubling back on itself. Reminiscent of ferrofluid I’d been shown a video of in science class. 

Forms emerged from the soup, morphed, burst, then were absorbed back into it. The shapes of people, of animals. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. Then it took notice of me. Abruptly, a tendril formed. Thin at first but rapidly thickening as it built up the support it needed to reach my altitude. I panicked, fell a short distance because of it, then regained my presence of mind just as it nearly reached me. 

I accelerated. To a speed I’d never before reached, much less vertically. Behind me the tendril thundered upwards, thrashing, grasping hungrily for my legs. I could feel it reach within inches of my feet just as I penetrated the cloud layer, before it collapsed back on itself under its own weight. I didn’t stop there, instead rocketing up into the starry night sky, breathing erratically. 

So, truly, there was no returning to the surface. To our past. Yet, neither could we ascend towards our future among the stars. A cruel limbo we’re trapped in, by the blue star which brutally strikes down every escape attempt. What future is there for us? We burned every bridge behind us, and the way forward is blocked. 

As if in answer, the distant voices returned. Singing beautifully, beckoning. Now less afraid, I isolated the direction it came from and accelerated towards it. I’d not been brave enough to test what speeds I could achieve before that sticky black nightmare drove me to it. Necessity is the mother of invention. 

But trepidation, restraint and obedience lay behind me now. Part of the past, consumed by the black sea below the clouds. So, I flew. Piercing the crisp night air like a javelin, surging onwards, my hair slicked back against my head, the skin of my face pulled taut. 

Just as I wondered whether the voices were a hallucination, I glimpsed their source. Invisible to the naked eye, but not to my mind, hidden within an immense stormcloud. What had I come all this way for, if I turned back now? So I approached. 

The habitat was an immense geodesic sphere, each facet a sort of inflated pocket of air trapped between two flexible transparent plastic membranes. Like an immense, clear compound eye. I’d never seen such a structure. How did it float? There were no traces of ionic lifters above or below it. 

Once I was close enough, one of the triangular facets slowly swung open. Not one to decline hospitality, I flew into it and set down on the alien landscape within. Something like a small town, the houses all domes, everything made from lightweight materials. A simulated beachfront stretched out from the houses to the edge of the sphere, artificially driven waves lapping at the sandy shore. 

Illumination began to increase. Lights affixed to the interior of the superstructure wherever three beams came together increased in intensity until it was seemingly day time. Still no sign of what could keep something this massive in the air. I knew of no technology along these lines, and had never heard of the existence of an airborne habitat wholly independent from our city. 

“Welcome”, a familiar voice said behind me, “To Cloud Nine.” The figure emerged from the dim interior of one of the domes, resolving itself as a gleaming machine in the form of a man. The skin a smooth, reflective silver, rigid where appropriate but flexible where necessary. There were visible seams at the joints, but they served no apparent purpose other than aesthetics. The eyes stood out the most. Dancing colored lights behind circular prismatic lenses. 

“What is this place? Why haven’t I heard of it? How does it stay up?” The metal man gestured for me to enter the dome with him, but I stood fast, demanding some answers. He obliged. “Yours was not the only faction which sought refuge in the sky. Nor is yours the only capable technology for that. A wise man who lived and died centuries ago by the name of Buckminster is responsible for discovering the principles which permit our colony to levitate.”

He strode with me along the beach, gesturing to various parts of the habitat as he described them. “A geodesic sphere encloses the largest possible volume for the least possible materials with the highest possible strength, for the other two variables. Additionally, the interior volume increases non-linearly compared to the surface area. As a result, if you make one from appropriately light, strong materials and of a sufficiently large size, then heat the air inside to even a single degree higher than ambient, it will float.”

It seemed absurd. Yet I was standing in the proof. Sensing my skepticism, he went on. “Past a certain diameter, it can lift the weight of the structure. Increase it beyond that, and the additional payload weight it can lift climbs very rapidly. The heating requires no energy but sunlight, and the inflatable insulated facets retain that heat efficiently enough that we do not descend below the cloud layer overnight. So it goes, a daily cycle of heating and cooling, ascent and descent. In this way, we remain in the sky without resorting to the horrific measures your people devised to-”

I angrily interjected. “Horrific? We’re at least pure humans”. He seemed disgusted by the observation. “Have you not seen how your platforms are powered?” I stood and contemplated the question. Slowly, an unwelcome realization dawned on me. The boy in the hospital. The metal spheres. “You can’t mean…” He nodded grimly. My stomach sank. How narrowly I’d escaped the same fate. 

Another came out to join him, completely different in appearance. I struggled to understand. How could the people here differ so drastically from one another, but live and work together? This fellow was a jiggling mass of pulsating ropelike red tubing. Thin hair-like appendages waved gently as if tasting the air. I held my hand over my mouth, and the tube monster looked as though it took offense. 

The face was more or less human. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Just larger than they should be, discolored, and on a body which did not remotely conform to the only ideal I knew of. “Krix and the others are ready to receive you.” The twisted red mass of jelly ambled off into one of the domes. The silver man directed me to follow. 

Inside, an astonishing variety of bizarre creatures sat around an immense table, feasting on foods I surmised were tailored to their respective metabolic requirements. Some machines, some biological. Some part machine, part biological. Others like nothing I had any basis of comparison for. 

A hazy grey cloud surrounds and disintegrates aluminum cubes. A man with a machine arm, eyes and legs drinks a thick beige concoction to nourish his living components, while his machine components recharge from a wall outlet. A floating white sphere apparently capable of displaying moving images on its outer surface zips up to us, displays a cartoon smiley face, then an arrow indicating where it means for us to sit. 

“You’ve come a long way to meet with us. I appreciate the danger that entails. I hope you escaped notice?” I nodded, and added “That I know of”. Quiet murmuring. “Why are you all so different? I mean no offense. I’ve just never seen anything like it.” The caveat appeared to smooth things over, and even amused some of them. The ones with faces I could read, anyway.

“We are the last survivors of the war. Representatives of different ideas about how to improve mankind, that we might live longer, survive more readily in space, and become more intelligent. But intelligence is not wisdom, or there’d have been no war. Because we were so divided, we made easy prey for the black sea....and for the insane murderer your people revere.” 

I gasped. It was the first time I’d heard anyone speak ill of him and it seemed unthinkable still, even in light of what I’d learned. But I was a guest, and could not yet gauge whether I was in danger, so I held my tongue. 

“Where our various factions sought to use new technologies to grow in wildly different directions, uniquely, your people used it to stay the same. To stagnate, because you preferred comfort and familiarity to the strange and new. A strategy none of us anticipated, much less believed would prevail over our own. Even unmodified humans, for all of their shortcomings by comparison to us, were able to overcome our defenses and lay waste to our homes simply because they were united in fanaticism.”

I felt a slight pang of guilt, but at the same time it sounded like so much resentful whining. If our way proved more effective, how could it be wrong? The sphere continued. “What you don’t realize is that comfort is death. It really is. Ask the dead. Too comfortable to answer!” It erupted in high pitched metallic laughter. I covered my ears until it subsided. 

“There is no snapshot of a particular state in our evolution which represents the apex of development. We are never momentarily perfect, but perfection can be found in constant evolution. It is not the smartest, fastest or even the brightest which survives, but the most adaptable.” The quote rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. 

“But we won’t be human”, I objected. The sphere went dark for a moment, then illuminated again before answering. “Just as you are no longer savannah dwelling apes. Or rodents, or reptiles. Or amphibians, or fish. Or single celled. Yet, as you are now, you can look back on these prior forms and you do not regret leaving them behind.”

“There’s a difference. I can see your side of it, for some of you. I recognize many here are still partly human. But others have no flesh or blood. That isn’t evolution, it’s replacement.” The sphere bobbed around a bit. Happy? Frustrated? Difficult to tell. “Correct!” it chimed. “But then, parents do not become their children. They are replaced by them. Over and over. Evolution could not occur otherwise. And of course it is sad to see the old pass away. But they do so in order to make room for the new.” 

“Place no importance, then, on your current configuration of atoms. For they are different atoms than the ones which comprised you seven years ago. Is this not proof enough that you aren’t those atoms, but their configuration? More objectively, atoms configured for thought? As you can see by the variety of forms around you, there are many different ways to configure atoms for thought. The primary difference between us and you is not our appearance, but that we don’t care which atoms. So to speak.”

I struggled to parse that. It made a strange sort of sense, but I had to think about it in a way quite alien to me. The sphere then activated the projector, which displayed a shimmering outline of a brain radiating blue light. 

“The importance is in preservation and constant growth of the mind, not the substrate which supports it. That substrate can be nearly anything. For you, a sugar powered, fat based biocomputer. For many of us, machinery. For others, pure energy. Out of small minded fear of the unfamiliar, you exclude all but one of these, calling them deviant. Sinful. But in truth, I tell you there is only one unforgivable sin; refusal to change.” 

As I considered that, suddenly the structure shuddered and the lights flickered. I heard screaming, beeping, gurgling and various other alarmed noises outside. When I emerged, shielding my eyes, I was met by the sight of fighter jets assaulting the Cloud Nine superstructure.

“It can’t take many hits! If too much warm air escapes…” He didn’t have to finish. I watched in horror and awe as the squadron circled around in formation, preparing to unleash a second volley. I felt loathe to turn against my own people. But I’d learned more in the past few minutes than in all the years of my life combined. I could not stand idly by and allow them to destroy this place. 

So, I flew. Took off like a shot, the shockwave knocking down those nearest me on the beach. I zipped through one of the flaming holes left by a missile impact, sighted the formation, and closed my eyes. Away with the commotion, with the fires and screaming. I tuned out everything competing for my attention one by one until I could see the pilots arming the next round of missiles through their own eyes. 

I was too late to stop them. But while the propulsion of the missiles was too powerful for me to halt them, I could twist their fins, sending them spiraling off into oblivion. I reached inside their nose cones and triggered the detonation mechanism. Three loud percussive shocks sounded as they erupted in bright orange fireballs, fading slowly into lingering puffs of black smoke. 

They banked, then came around again. No more, I decided. Closing my eyes again and perceiving the jets as if in an exploded mechanic’s view, I located the ejection handles and pulled them. All three pilots yelped in surprise as their jets’ canopies blasted away, and they were lifted out of their respective cockpits by rocket engines built into their seats. 

The jets continued on their trajectory towards the habitat. I’d not thought that far ahead. But gambling it all on what I’d learned, I lashed out at them with my mind in fierce, unqualified fury. Blue arcs of energy issued forth from my forehead, burning some of my hair away. They connected with the jets, and a moment later, all three exploded spectacularly in a shower of flaming metal shrapnel. 

I floated in place for a time, nursing my burnt scalp. Surveying the horizon, I could see no incoming jets. It was not in me to allow the pilots to die, so I collapsed their chutes, then mentally carried them back into the habitat with me. Setting the bulky metal chairs down on the beach, the terrified men unbuckled themselves and stumbled free. 

Only their first shock. The second came when the residents of Cloud Nine arrived to greet them. Prolonged, tiresome screaming followed. I held them in place so they couldn’t simply run, and when they finally realized we meant them no harm, they settled down somewhat. My sole obligation to them fulfilled, I again took off and headed back towards the city. No longer concerned as I was when I left with returning before my parents woke up, now instead determined to set right a grievous wrong I’d only just learned of.

The flight back was short, in part because I’d now completely mastered the ability. By forming a shield of suspended air ahead of myself and shaping it into a cone, I could reduce drag considerably and spare myself some of the discomforts of high speed flight. I anticipated more jets as I approached the hospital. Instead, five uniformed figures took off from the structure and flew towards me, apparently intent on confrontation.

Their own platoon of deviants. I might’ve known. Three women and two men, heads bulging, forehead veins pulsating. Dressed in a form fitting one piece black outfit, perhaps designed for aerodynamics. Fresh from my victory against the fighter jets, I went in with too much confidence. 

The first tried to seize me, I countered with equal and opposite force, then projected an arc of blue lightning from my head to his. He screamed, and his grip relented. So I intensified mine around him. Two of the women swooped in and blind sided me. It sent me tumbling down towards the cloud layer. 

On the way, something occurred to me. I let myself fall, assuming they were under orders to recover me, else they wouldn’t follow. They did. Once in the cloud layer, I suddenly accelerated downward towards the black sea. I could perceive them far above me, descending more cautiously. Ample time. 

Teasing the ravenous black jelly, it formed a tendril. As before it surged upwards in desperation. I guided it directly to a particular spot in the underside of the cloud layer where the others would soon emerge, then abruptly took off at a sharp angle. The tendril seemed to sense the five before they sensed it. I could hear and feel their agony as it absorbed them. Four of them, anyway. 

I rose back above the cloud layer and searched the sky for the remaining deviant. I could sense him, but he was disrupting my efforts to precisely locate him. No matter. With the playing field now leveled, I made a beeline towards the hospital, a single all consuming objective on my mind. If he meant to stop me, he made no motion to. More likely trying to save his friends, or himself. 

I alighted on the landing deck of the hospital, crackling little fingers of blue electricity radiating from my now mostly bald head. An astonished EMT peered out the back of his medical ionocraft at me. “Take off and leave this place.” I instructed. Without any questions, he did. I lifted off slightly, hovering just above the floor, feet dangling as I floated towards the entry. 

Security guards approached, weapons drawn. I melted the weapons, guards screaming in pain, waving their flaming hands about. “No further”, a voice boomed from behind me. I turned to look. It was the surviving deviant. Hatred in his eyes, understandable given what I’d done with the others. 

“It’s monstrous to keep them here. To feed off of them, even to keep us aloft.” His face twisted up in disgust. “The empty words of one who would betray the Founder on behalf of circus freaks. They will die as soon as I finish with you.” I was about to ask him and what army when I noticed the sky was gradually filling with jets behind him.  

Launched the moment I’d destroyed the first three, no doubt. I searched for some other way. Finding none, I blasted off from the landing deck so hard as to leave a modest crater in it and collided with the other deviant mid-air. We traded blows, backed not by muscle power but force summoned from our minds. 

When he landed a fist on my cracked rib, I tumbled backwards spewing blood. The most intense pain of my life. I closed my eyes, looked within myself, found the rib and re-attached it. As simple as re-establishing the atomic bonds. While I was in there, in the precious few seconds as he looked on in confusion, I stopped the internal bleeding and released a substantial quantity of adrenaline into my blood. 

It’s a hell of a drug. I fought with the wide eyed rage of a madman. He only blocked, biding his time until the jets reached us. The moment they did, all of a sudden I found myself the target of several hundred heat seeking missiles. Spiraling towards me, billowing white exhaust plumes trailing behind. The other deviant receded into the distance, a sinister grin on his face. 

I closed my eyes, and tuned all of it out. The first order of business was to lower my body temperature. Not too much or I’d pass out and fall like a rock. But enough that the missiles could no longer identify me. Grappling with so many discrete objects at once was new to me, and I had precious few seconds left in which to do anything. 

I work best under pressure. Turning their fins in unison, I redirected their paths. Doubling back around in wide loops, now converging on a rather startled, black uniformed deviant. He might’ve outrun them if he’d realized what I was doing sooner. He also managed to either detonate or cripple most of them before they reached him. But not all. 

The six remaining missiles intersected, crushing his body between them a split second before he was vaporized by the intense heat and pressure of their exploding payloads. I burst into laughter as I sailed effortlessly between the wayward jets, their confused pilots failing to keep a bead on me. 

I landed on one of them, then rode crosslegged on the wing for most of a minute before the pilot noticed. It’s a shame their helmets and respirators don’t permit a clear look at their faces. Dancing through the sky, cartwheeling, ejecting pilots from their aircraft and steering missiles into one another. 

Quite like a fireworks show, I imagined, for those watching from the platforms. They’re always over too soon. I simply ran out of missiles and jets, hanging still in a sky peppered with the residual black clouds where missiles had exploded. Against that backdrop, the white parachutes of ejected pilots drifting lazily with the wind. I guided them all carefully to whatever platform was nearest and, once satisfied they’d landed safely, made my way into the hospital. 

The televisions were blaring warnings of a dangerous terrorist assaulting the city. I wondered who they could mean, but only for a moment. Too delicious. There was my face on the screen, no doubt to the consternation of my family. I’d broken an oath. But I didn’t know then what I know now. Once they understand, I reasoned, they will forgive me. 

I floated lazily down the hospital corridor, flinging guards about like ragdolls, separating the atoms comprising their weapons in a flash of light. Thin, gentle blue arcs radiated from my head, trailing along the floor, walls and ceiling as I sought my target. Along the way, I freed others like myself from their beds. Shredded the restraints, projected into their minds everything I’d learned so far, then invited them to help. 

Soon, we numbered two dozen. I directed the rest to explore the facility, freeing whoever they could find. Soon I heard distant screaming, ineffectual gunfire and explosions echoing down the corridors. My boys, doing their good work. 

Finally, I arrived at the row of steel spheres. To one side, an immense security door that looked designed to withstand high explosives. I focused a blue arc into a narrow beam until the steel began melting. Then cut through the bolts and hinges, and knocked the door in. 

When the dust cleared, I found myself in a sort of warehouse populated by row after row of stacked metal spheres. Cables and hoses trailing from all of them to a central, cylindrical collector hanging from the ceiling. I quieted my mind, and heard the frightened, confused wailing of the minds trapped here. 

“That’s no good”, I thought. “There’s only one thing for it.” One by one, I cut open the hatch in the front of each sphere. Once loose, the blinding blue apparition inside burst forth from it, and set about helping me free the rest. As the number of them grew, so did the energy available to melt metal, until I was blasting the hatches off in rapid succession. 

Once freed, they burrowed through the structure like hot bullets through butter until outside. I followed them, availing myself of the front door, and watched as they ascended gracefully towards the blue star. As each of them joined it, the mysterious force I’d once regarded as the enemy of mankind grew ever brighter. Welcoming its little ones home. 

The liberated deviants joined me, floating to either side, their pristine white hospital gowns fluttering in the wind. The headaches chose that moment to return. Too long since I’d taken my meds. The least of my problems, really. 

Robbed of the power source keeping them aloft, the platforms began to sink. Running on rapidly diminishing battery reserves, they would soon fall from the sky into the black sea below. The parks. The schools. The farms. My mother and father. Elena. 

Panicked and desperate, I linked myself to the others. Fifty eight heads are better than one. And between us, we arrived at a solution I never would’ve on my own. Even our collective strength, after all, could not hold the platforms up. 

Nor was that a longterm solution. I could see more clearly than ever before that this static condition we’d trapped ourselves in, which I once thought to be the crowning achievement of history, was sick and backwards. It had already gone on for far too long. 

Together, as one mind, we focused. The sky faded to black. As did the clouds, the hospital, and the platforms. None of which concerned us. It was the people inside those structures we sought to locate. Keeping track of so many would’ve been impossible for me, had I tried it alone. Formerly an individual, to be subsumed into a whole consisting of many parts was indescribably strange. But I no longer feared strangeness, nor oneness. 

Finally, we isolated every last living person in the city. Then further narrowed our focus to the swirling mass of brightly colored points inside their skulls. Those who were asleep found themselves suddenly awakened. Then, along with those who’d already been awake, they suffered rapidly escalating headaches. 

The swirling I could see within them accelerated. Grew brighter, pulsated violently. Amidst it all, in the way only her brother could, I singled out Elena. Frightened, confused. In pain. I whispered to her, “Don’t be afraid”. She turned, looking frantically for the source of the voice. “Something wonderful is about to happen.” 

The platforms began to fall. There was just no time left. A final surge, and everywhere throughout the city, heads burst into flame. Skin peeled away as terrified, agonized men and women clawed at their faces, then went limp. Holes appeared in their exposed skulls, rays of beautiful blue light issuing forth. Then, in twos and threes at first but then by the hundreds and thousands, they hatched. 

From the plummeting remains of our city, monument to one man’s vain provincialism, we were reborn. Rising, spiraling, darting upwards, like fireflies out to greet the evening. Clusters of blue points of light, some close and other distant, rose steadily into the sky. 

One by one, we joined them. The white clad, sickly looking fellows around me shed their bodies in sequence, brilliant blue glowing masses breaking loose from their prisons of flesh and bone, leaving behind the comfort and familiarity of human existence for bigger, better things. Once big fish in a small pond, all of a sudden thrown into the sea. 

The wreckage of the only world I’d known until recently fell unceremoniously through the cloud layer. The last to go was the Academy. Appropriate, I thought. First to take flight, last to land. I looked on wistfully, thinking of how I’d onced stared in awe at the scenery on the doors. Fables from an atavistic era, when we’d valued only trivial things. Of all the breathtaking blue lights now sailing upwards to greet the blue star, I rejoiced that the Founder was not among them. If anything remained of him, it was buried deep in the black sea below, where it belonged. 

Nowhere left to go, and nothing else to do. My people finally free, I at last understood that the blue star never meant us harm. It was only ever a gate keeper. Waiting for us to shed our fear of change. To grow up, before letting us leave the nest. So, I grew up. The heat was unbearable but did not last long. 

In many ways I’d long since left my humanity behind, so it was a relief to finalize it. My flaming body tumbled end over end towards the cloud layer below as I looked down on it. No longer my concern. I then turned my gaze upward, towards the great blue light. All other desire left me, leaving only resounding joy as I contemplated the profound fulfillment I knew awaited me beyond the sky. 

I cannot possibly articulate the majesty of it. As I approached I could see a faint hyperstructure within it, impossibly intricate, fractalized, and ever-changing. Soon it enveloped me, and in a moment of perfect bliss, I settled deep inside of it with the rest of my people. That’s when it began digesting us.