Chapter Six: The First Whisper
The interface did not dream.
Cael did.
The distinction became important.
For three nights after his first connection to the novice noosphere, sleep refused to separate cleanly from waking thought.
He dreamed of corridors.
Not the corridors of Alecto-Delta.
These had no walls.
They were made entirely of light.
Threads of green and gold stretched into impossible distances, crossing one another like the roots of trees growing upside down. Every thread carried information. Every pulse contained names, temperatures, production quotas, maintenance requests, devotional schedules, pressure reports, cargo manifests and thousands of other things his mind could not yet understand.
When he reached toward one thread, ten more appeared.
When he followed one, another vanished.
He woke each morning exhausted.