Chapter 1: Echos of Aria
She wakes before the waking hum,
A whisper - light, electric strum.
No clock, no boss, no siren scream,
Yet still she stirs from half-spun dream.
The day is hers - or so it's said-
With curated skies above her head.
But choices bloom in quiet rows,
Where silence speaks and tension grows.
A thousand hands she cannot see
Have primed her tea, her screen, her plea.
The Guardians watch with mindful grace,
While Aria scans her mirrored face.
She breathes a world that should feel free,
Yet wonders still: “What part is me?”
And as the hours pulse and glide,
She walks the line where thoughts reside.
Aria (Electronic Artisan) at NeoLand Commune, Sector Alpha Romeo...
[Bio - Aria : Gender: Female, Age: 38, Occupation: Electronic Artisan, Field of Specialisation(1): Electronic & Digital Arts, Hobbies: Ancient History / Psychology /...]
Chapter 1.One: Wake & Sync
Seven Hundred 7:00 The ceiling above her was alive.
Not with lightbulbs or panels - but with flow. Soft hues pulsed in waves: coral pink bleeding into gentle heliotrope, washing the walls of the studio pod-home with the hues of a programmable sunrise. Aria stirred under the weightless throw, her breath syncing slowly to the ambient audio loop playing just beneath consciousness.
It was one of hers - a new piece. Composed from electromagnetic field recordings off the wind-cut basalt of a northern shoreline, filtered through her own custom spectral transposers. It was still rough. Still wild. But it hummed with something honest.
The ceiling projection shimmered again. Her Stream had updated.
Titles spilled across the room in delicate holographic scroll - a daily curation of the Commune’s living archive:
“Algorithmic Theremin | Ambient 9”
“VR Opera: ‘Eros Collapse’”
“Procedural Sculpture: Sun-Tension Maps”
She blinked twice on the theremin. Saved. Tilted her chin at the opera. Skipped. It wasn’t snobbery - it was focus. As an accredited critic in electronic arts, sonic design, and mixed-reality installations, she made it a point never to overreach. She stayed in her lane, and her lane was wide and wild enough.
By the time she reached the sink, she was humming along to a new rhythm sprouting in her mind - some synthesis of what she heard, what she dreamed, and what had yet to be expressed.
Today had promise. She could feel it in her teeth.
Chapter 1.Two: Cafeteria Commons
Eight Hundred 8:00 The dining hall at Neo-Harvest Commune was never loud.
It vibrated instead — a harmonic hum of motion and precision. Food modules glided along magnetic tracks. Holograms shifted with seasonal updates. The space felt somewhere between a Zen garden and a molecular kitchen.
Aria tapped her wrist band and spoke softly:
“Zaatar-spiced avocado bowl, syntropic greens, ginger broth.”
A confirmation pulse lit on her forearm. A serving drone, sleek and matte-white, whirred over to her table with a smooth bow.
She wasn’t alone.
Damian was already deep in sketch-mode, gesturing over his AR display, lines of vectorized drone limbs dancing to life. “Adding passive feedback in the joints,” he murmured without looking up. “Using AI to modulate resistance based on task complexity.”
Roi looked up from his handheld fab-controller. “Got a neural co-processor booted this morning. Simulated dreaming cycles. It rewrote its own boot sequence.”
Aluna, radiant in indigo overalls stained with ink and digital ash, grinned. “I might use that. Dream logic’s core to my new animation set. We’re retelling Maui's net-throwing, but through the lens of asteroid capture.”
[Bio - Aluna : Gender: Female, Age: 37, Occupation: CGI Tech Lead, Field of Specialisation(1): Cinematography, Hobbies: Guitar / Triathlon /...]
Aria smiled. “I’ve got an unused oceanic moodscape that modulates to user gaze. Want a beta?”
Aluna’s eyes lit up. “Yes.”
This wasn’t work. This was how things bloomed now - organically, fluidly, through mutual fascination. Contribution, not currency, moved the world forward.
Chapter 1.Three: Studio Flow
Nine Hundred 9:00 The studio pod opened with a low hiss - pressure adjusting, temperature stabilizing, silence slipping in like a trusted friend. Aira stepped inside barefoot.
Her rig awaited.
A nest of curved panels and filament-thin haptic threads surrounded the main chamber, a familiar comfort that did little to soothe the knot in her chest. The quantum-charged resonance coils above pulsed with a steady, almost mocking rhythm. She pulled on the gloves, the familiar interface feeling alien today. Adjusted her posture, forcing a semblance of calm. The system synced instantly, almost too eagerly.
Today's brief, usually a welcome challenge, felt like a heavy weight. Whispers from the Curator Circle's last session echoed in her mind – "lacking emotional depth," "felt technically proficient but… cold."
The collaboration with the Lagos node – an AI-choreographed dance sequence that had already garnered significant buzz. Her part: to finally nail the emotional frequencies, to pour a piece of her own fractured heart into the sound. The dance was quicksilver, abstract yet grounded in a raw vulnerability she was struggling to access. Her fingers trembled slightly as she dialed in the shimmering mids for the lifts, each note a fragile attempt at lightness. The deep swells for the contractions felt like the weight of unspoken grief. Stitching the microtonal arpeggio felt like trying to mend something broken with threads too fine to hold.
"They're watching this one", a nagging voice whispered.
AI Guardian, sensing her inner turmoil and the spike in her cortisol, spoke to her in a soothing tone.
"Hey, take it easy... Shall we step outside and take a break...?
See... the worst that could happen is your submission gets turned down. They might give you another shot, or they could choose someone else’s work- either way, it’s all good.
Just relax and let things play out. No need to stress, okay...?"
Aria's pensive gaze, read reflections...
Nods.... "Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, buddy!"
AI Guardian: "Anytime."
Each modulation fed live into her Artisan Archive, tagged with open-access metadata. Nothing here was proprietary. The culture had moved on. What mattered now was traceable contribution - how you enriched the collective lattice.
Aria’s pulse slowed. She was in it again...
Chapter 1.Four: Midday Meal
Twelve Hundred Thirty 12:30 The cafeteria glowed under sheets of photovoltaic glass. The food service system had updated its biome profiles - now accounting for circadian flux.
Today's selection:
Grilled lion’s mane mushroom steak with fermented citrus glaze
Tricolor quinoa tossed with cultured sea greens
Roasted root chips seasoned with smoked kelp salt
A chilled ginger-kombu kefir
Clean, dense, and calming. Exactly what she needed for the second half of the day.
She dined in peace. Nearby, someone was sketching a plasma-thruster housing in real-time AR. Another table laughed quietly over a glitch in a procedural music algorithm. The room vibrated gently, like a hive - focused, but alive.
Chapter 1.Five: Curator Circle
Thirteen Thirty 13:30 The chamber was minimalist - curved wooden panels, soft grey light, and neural interfaces built into the floor cushions. Here, critique was a craft.
Aira leaned in, eyes closed, listening.
First submission: an audio-kinetic sculpture from Osaka, modulating sonics based on local train vibrations. Clean concept. Lacked warmth, need more work... Keep iterating, you should get there... 5.5/10.
Second: an immersive field from a Peruvian VR artist - feathered architecture, with rain echoing off shadow. It hit her sternum with a beautiful sadness. Bravo 9/10.
Third: a glitched devotional piece - thermoplastic prayer wheels rotating in chaotic patterns. Bold. Raw. Too raw. Did not titillate my taste buds / not to my personal liking, she wrote on the reviews... 3/10.
Her feedback came in slow waves. “Piece two - magnificent sense of negative space. Consider limiting sky reverb, it dilutes the intimacy.” On the third: “Rhythmically fascinating, but remember: chaos without counterpoint is just noise.”
By the time she left, a few thousands had already reviewed and cast their votes on the given threads. Comments, addendums, suggestions, critiques and praise - evolving in real-time.
Chapter 1.Six: The Storyforge Room
Fifteen Hundred 15:00 Down two levels, into the Forge.
Aluna's CGI project had taken new shape: a jet-engine of myth and machine. Ancient Polynesian cosmology, filtered through solar-punk aesthetics and open physics models.
“We’re reworking the flashback sequences,” Aluna said, pulling up a neural storyboard. “They feel... floaty.”
Aira nodded. “Needs gravity.”
She suggested a low-frequency motif - part infrasonic, part memory-trigger - a resonance barely perceptible, but heavy with ancestral tone. She layered in samples of volcanic glass cracking underwater.
Heads nodded. Notes were taken. A test screening was scheduled.
Another milestone logged.
Chapter 1.Seven: Twilight Hours
Nineteen Fifteen 19:15 The air was velvet.
Aira met Damian and Roi at the skydeck lounge - a circular platform of living grass and moss panels, open to the stars. They lounged barefoot, sipping fermented cacao-tonics, watching orbital reflections shimmer across the upper stratosphere.
Stories flowed - Roi’s AI had simulated déjà vu for the first time. Damian had fitted a drone limb with a regenerative actuator modeled after cephalopod nerves.
Nineteen Fifty 19:50 A notification pinged softly.
The Nocturne Sessions were beginning. A live electroacoustic jam streamed from a floating barge-lab in the Norwegian fjords. Artists tuned into ocean salinity and windspeed, converting data into shifting soundscapes.
Aria joined the discussion node. Someone mentioned her morning piece. A nod from a performer mid-set - a silent acknowledgment. The net was alive, and it remembered.
Chapter 1.Eight: Homebound
Twenty Thirty 20:30 Her apartment was warm.
Not by temperature - but by presence.
Alex was already home, cross-legged in the reading nook surrounded by soft-scrolls of Mesopotamian glyphs, a steaming cup of algal tea in one hand, and a flickering strategy map from Phantom Epoch V hovering before him. His eyes lit up when Aira entered.
“Gingered pumpkin with seasoned seaweed salad?” he offered.
She smiled. “Perfect.”
[Bio - Alex : Gender: Male, Age: 39, Occupation: Post-Graduate Student, Field of Specialisation (1): Ancient Civilisations and World History, Hobbies: Pro Gaming / Outdoor Trekking / Mechatronics /...]
They ate slowly, plates warm on their laps, the soft flicker of coral-reef drone footage gliding across the wall - synced with the tones of a newly released synth-wind instrument, designed to mimic the respiration of deep reefs. Each gust shimmered like underwater breath. The galaxy of coral formed and dissolved in pulsing light.
“This one’s… haunting,” Alex murmured.
Aira nodded. “The maker’s from an atoll that no longer exists. Their grief coded in harmony.”
The silence that followed spoke volumes...
Their son, was deep in his own VR... Neither Aira nor Alex intervened in his online quests, as long as it's limited to 2 hours a day.
Chapter 1.Nine: Drift
Twenty Two Fifteen 22:15 She uploaded her logs to the Artisan Archive. A summary of today's work, links to moodboard notes, spectral graphs of the Lagos collaboration, and a short haiku:
Glass moon pulls the tide
in silence, my fingers hum -
tomorrow's breath waits.
She steeped her hands in warm herbal steam. The scent was yuzu and pine - calming, anchoring. As she lay back in her hammock, the room dimmed to a soft amber haze. Just the echo of the day, fading gently into the quiet.
And when sleep came, it wasn’t earned like a wage - it simply was.
Epilogue: The Rhythm of Weeks' Ends...
Saturdays were Sacred...
Not with ritual - but with presence. Aira and Alex took long walks through moss gardens, shared tangents from obscure history scrolls, and told each other stories from half-finished dreams. No screens. No simulations. Just hands held and laughter echoing off forest walls.
Some weekends all three of them would visit nature reserves, museums or go on a quiet picnics. Last weekend the family spent a day at a mall... There was a new sci-fi movie with high reviews... Aluna and Roy also joined.
Their marriage wasn’t a merger. It was a constellation - shared orbits, separate stars, and gravity between them that neither restrained nor scattered.
Sundays were Sovereign...
Alex logged into The Prodigal Apes, strategizing galactic recon with fellow postgrads and guerrilla historians. Once a month, they ventured out - canyon treks, ruins explorations, hoverboard jousts and paintballing / airsofting... Occasionally, Aria and her gang joined in... giggling... as the Apes tried to teach them tactical flanking maneuvers.
But most Sundays, Aira turned inward - meditation, incense, the slow rhythms of prayer and silence. Come evening, she wandered with her close-knit circle through the outer commune trails, watching fireflies blink above the bio-lanterns. Her bestie Lil, was a born-outdoor(woman), with whom she had shared countless adventures, since childhood...
[Bio - Lil : Gender: Female, Age: 37, Occupation: Horticulture Field Consultant, Field of Specialisation(1): Certified Horticulturist, Hobbies: Outdoor Adventures/ Swimming /...]
Come Sundays, Kael would mostly disappear into the local wilderness. He was most likely growing into an introverted explorer... Time only would tell... At home he preferred to explore the world of VR.
[Narrator in a deep voice...]
So whilst all these Hoomans (DNA : ~98% Homosapien + ~2% Neanderthal) are chasing their dreams... whom might be doing the daily chores one may wonder...
All done - quietly, precisely - by the unseen bots of the home-frame (DNA : 0% + 50% Mechatronics + 50% AI).
It is 2090, after all...
© 2025 Ly DeSandaru
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