“How can we see this?” I asked. “You said this Path was memories of people who entered the nowhere, but presumably nobody was here to see this part.”
“Time is strange here,” Chet said, still kneeling. “I imagine that cytonics were able to uncover this somehow. Do you see this here? What do you make of it?”
A line had appeared in the ground—the illusory version. It was different from the rest of the fragment, shinier, a different color. As we watched, it grew up into a wall, just a few handbreadths high. But a tiny pattern appeared on it, a little swirl. It felt like some kind of natural occurrence. Like erosion.
Yes, that was it. A kind of interdimensional erosion. Only created when…
A figure appeared in the scene. A dione, with blue skin.
I felt the vision abruptly slow. Decades were no longer passing with each second; this was in real time. The dione stumbled to their feet.
“Preindustrial clothing,” Chet guessed, pointing at the furs sewn roughly together.
The dione gasped and spun around, confused. They smiled, baring their teeth. Wait, no. That wasn’t a smile. For diones that meant aggression, or maybe fear.
The dione didn’t see us, and it felt eerie to have them look through me. They then dropped to their knees and started clawing at the tiny wall that indicated the portal.
Until…time seemed to speed up again. We watched the unfortunate dione as a blur trying to find a way off the fragment. They aged, then died. Their corpse turned to dust, leaving bones. It happened in seconds.
“That poor creature,” Chet said. “Dying alone in this place.”
I knelt beside the dione’s bones. The fragment had grown larger, but only a little. “Matter leaks into here from the somewhere. You’ve said you suspected this, Chet.”
“Indeed! Perhaps the belt formed because of weakened boundaries.”
I scanned the darkness and thought I could pick out another fragment forming in the distance. And the lightburst…it was a tiny bit larger. “So the fragments grew around small weaknesses between this dimension and ours. The lightburst consolidated as a reaction—it became the uncorrupted region of the nowhere. A kind of…safe room in a quarantine zone, perhaps?”
“Yes,” Chet said. “Yes, that feels correct.”
There was another piece. Something more to this. “If the somewhere is leaking into here,” I said, “did the nowhere in turn leak into our dimension? What shape would that take?”
The answer was right before us. Other diones appeared in the vision, coming through the portal, each leaving a tiny addition to the wall—more matter, and another swirl each. These learned to jump in and out, and no more died alone in here.
“Cytonics,” Chet whispered. “This is how it happened. The nowhere leaked into our dimension, and it…changed people living near the breach. It made us.”
“It’s like…interdimensional radiation,” I said, “that infuses people with the nowhere?”
I felt a surreal sense of disconnect as—in the near distance—another fragment grew in fast motion. Other people appeared on it eventually, but of a different species. Varvax. The Krell, though they didn’t have their exoskeletons. They were little crabs, and…
I felt the two species connect, speak mind-to-mind before they even got close enough to shout at one another. The first two species to ever meet, at least in the nowhere, and long before either had access to space travel.
I tried to listen to them, tried to focus my attention. Like squinting, but with my brain. Cytonic metaphors are weird, but that’s what it felt like. I pushed, and something in the memories encouraged me.
Further, it said. Express your talent. Listen…
I linked with it, and my brain interpreted what was being sent. Information, both verbal and nonverbal.
When I’d fought the drones on Detritus, I’d interpreted their instructions and responded before I consciously registered what I was hearing. This was the same. My mind, or my soul or whatever, knew what all this meant. And something clicked.
Ahh…I thought. So that’s how you do it.
When I listened in on others with my mind, I did it by pretending I was something I wasn’t. I somehow spoofed being the communication’s intended recipient. It let me remain shadowy, unseen—a spy.
Good, the memories said. Then a soft impression appeared in my mind. A place. Go here, the vision whispered. Alongside the words came the image of a fragment with some ruins. Then the vision vanished.