Tess enthusiastically played with her new and far more modern holo-caster. They had stayed in Jakob’s Bell for three days, taking care of several things before Tess would be off to college after the summer. Aitana was meeting with old friends while Yaga was buying loads of shimmer for her to mess around with.

She had opened up the vambrace and inspected the machinery of her gift. Optronic processors and storage units, their crystal matrices were the medium of advanced circuitry, quantum heterostructures generated beams of light while optoelectronic switching elements processed and stored information on a massive scale. A chip the size of a dime could fit thousands of exabytes of digital data, and the chip in her holo-caster was the size of a credit card.

Yeah.

She had already started work on a few programs, downloading one from the extranet. To Tess it was a thing of beauty, geometries altering and warping the Shor field projected from the core into a mass of blue plasma, a torch of pure flame.

This was why the holo-caster was the most widespread tool in the Orion Bubble, across thousands of worlds, from the smallest asteroid mining operation to the core worlds of clusters with billions upon billions of people. The ability to cast mechanically induced paracausal effects was a potent tool, even if they were much more… restricted than the powers of the soul. A torch of plasma rather than the beautiful and curving flames of the greatest fire channelers, a short burst of freezing cold rather than the terrible beauty of water channelers cruel and lethal use of ice and snow.

A holo-caster was just that, a caster of specific and limited manifestations of paracausal energy. Tess thought it was neat how it was used to amplify and generate tiny amounts of energetic interactions into far greater forces. It was a jack of all trades, able to combine a number of weak effects on the fly to make a lean green crafting machine.

“Hmm… I should call Xinji and tell her what’s up, she was cool.” The diderik had been a nice girl if a little bloodthirsty and meatheady, and Fasah Mogu was a fellow nerd if a bit blunt and uncanny. She had both their numbers and they texted each other across a thousand light years of space.

She made up her own mind, and sweeped her fingers in a circle to open up the contacts of her holo-caster. Her device connected to the interstellar comms network, using the same technology as the Void Rails, cutting through the Spirit World to near-instantly transmit signals. Within seconds she was answered with a ringtone, and a figure popping up from holographic light.

“Hey.” She bounced from foot to foot as she walked around Jakob’s Bell without a care in the world. “How’s your prepping for school on an alien planet?”

Xinji smiled, but it was a rather frightening grin, revealing rows upon rows of teeth shifting and twisting like limbs, and a tendril-like tongue. It reminded her of a dog, the companion animals of the astarans. If they were living nightmare fuel anyways. “It’s good to see you, your mothers are preparing you accordingly for your trials I’m certain.”

Tess nodded, finding a cherry blossom tree to lean on. “They got me a new holo-caster, a much more advanced model. Like what some city slickers might have on Terre or Mara.” She made a so-so gesture with her hands. “I’ve been looking up what courses I’m going to go for. Definitely origonotronics, shamanism, elemental manipulation courses, maybe some of those courses that involve noetics.”

Nous Manipulation was something she had natural experience in as a shaman, because spirits were Connections made manifest, raw spiritual energy given form and purpose. People with enough spiritual power and experience could tap into the connections, sensing anything that’s alive, by tapping into the deepest structures of the soul and spirit.

Xinji chittered loudly, not surprised by her choices. “Personally I’m more in favor of learning better methods of manipulating chi, though mastering the paracausal discipline of Void is tempting.”

“Do it!” She commanded, making a high pitched excited squeal in the process. “Void is one of the most bullshit of the Elements, you really should learn it. It’s a good power to master.” Being able to manipulate gravity and mass was literally one of the most dangerous powers she could imagine, though she was sure some of the higher order channeling powers were just as dangerous.

“If you insist, being able to manipulate gravity does have a lot of combat applications. Many of them.” Tess giggled at the growing interest of her new companion. Her species had a warrior culture, though not everyone was like that because generalizing an entire species is a bit stupid.

It might be more accurate to say the core nations that made up her culture had a shaman-warrior-esque vibe to them, and since they were the most well known, their racial stereotypes spread more easily. But the diderik were a diverse people with many cultures and sub-groups.

I’m just happy to have a friend to talk to.

Tess breathed in deeply, stoking her inner flame with a steady influx of air. Her rūh flowed smoothly, mixing with the energies of the sun to ignite into flashes of heat on her breath.

“There are, but I’m more interested in the scientific implications, on the nice things I can do with a power like that.” She clenched her fists, nails biting into her palms. “I know there’s so much more to channeling than I know, and I want to learn more.”

Xinji flicked her fluffy ears, chuffing in amusement. “I doubt your tiny hands will help much with that.”

Tess blushed. “Hey, my hands are perfectly normal for a human woman of my age!”

“Are they? Or are you in denial?” Xinji teased, and Tess was ready to throw a fit at the audacity of this bitch!

“Oh fuck off! At least I’m not a seven foot turkey!”

“Well at least I’m not a hairless monkey!”

They teasingly screamed at each other from across the galaxy.

---

Tess rolled her eyes as she watched some dumb videos off of YouVid, which was still going strong after more than two hundred years. She had decided to walk into a small boutique kind of shop, one that sold products catering to channelers. Training candles for fire channelers, little twisting instruments for air channelers and more.

The place had an odd scent, a mix of strong cologne and mint swirling into her nose. She had insisted on going down here on her own, because she wanted to see what kind of products they had to offer outside of her small town. The place obviously catered to channelers, businesses including everything from various rúh-enhancing herbal teas and drinks to medical equipment for the measurement of the soul.

A basic channeler shop often had a bit of everything, teas and coffees with various advertisements and ‘special’ blends and ingredients. There were books and guides on mastering one’s powers, how to make use of the Elements in every form. It covered forms of healing, from the life-giving flow of water to the burning engine of fire, the rigidity and solidity offered by earth, and the energetic current of air.

They covered more specialized forms of channeling, certain materials that weren’t strictly of one metaphysical element or the other, or were specific manifestations and sub-elements. Lightning was part of fire, one of the deadliest of the channeling techniques in existence. Like Rodin the Stormbringer, who had generated a bolt 477 miles in length to decimate an entire army.

To be fair though, he did kind of get reduced to plasma in the process.

Metal was refined earth, and was one of the most useful elements in the modern world. Plastic had taken generations to figure out how to manipulate, using a mix of earth and water. Even then it was a rarity, the more unnatural the substance, the harder it became to manipulate.

Tess had only ever learned to channel fire, and she remembered her first time with a vivid and clear memory. Gold and green and violet flames. I was still so little and skinny back then. I remember reading about dragon’s fire, how it was the shaping of fire into the essence of life.

She has tried it for herself and succeeded, and was mesmerized by the colors of the tiny beating flame in her shaking hands. That had been almost fourteen years ago.

The bronze haired girl shook her head, and picked up a book on fire healing. That was the one skill besides her nascent shamanism that hadn’t failed her. The golden, violet and green flames of healing fire had never failed under her delicate hands.

It worked even on plants, providing them light and energy to grow and spread life. It wasn’t as effective as the bio-sorceries of shamans who used spirits of metamorphosis, life, and creation adjacent concepts. People who created monsters and abominations, from walking armies of possessed corpses to custom-made biological weapons and plagues.

Then again I’m not an immoral psychopath, so more power to me.

The spirits clung to her frame, drifted around her wake like she was a magnet. Their voices were quiet, and she could barely hear them speak at all, but if she focused on them, on the essence of their Form, she could hear their words.

She smiled at their whispers, and followed them to a lane. And then with a meep she ducked behind a corner, her face turning a bright shade of red when she recognized the person the spirit had led her to.

It was the astaran girl, a fanged scowl on her face as she examined a few candles. She was wearing a different outfit than from the convention, a purple top that exposed strong muscular shoulders, and a ruffled black skirt that stopped at her knees.

Pretty, was her thought. There was an alien beauty to the girl’s shape and frame, one she was rather enraptured by. Back in her sophomore years she had gotten crushes on boys and girls, she had a lot of love to give back then even if she was terrible at expressing it. The girl coughed, shielding her face from view though Tess could see those golden eyes flick back and forth along various holographic labels.

She lifted a hand to hesitantly greet the astaran when she suddenly heard a crash and a shout of surprise. She whirled around to stare at the disturbance, and her skin crawled with ice and a chill in her blood. There was a college-aged boy who had casually kicked down the smaller lane, destroying thousands of credits worth of goods. He was surrounded by a small gang of delinquents, each of with leering eyes and dark expressions.

The astaran had startled, eyebrows furrowing and nose scrunching up like she had smelled rotten eggs and spoiled milk. Her hands caught with flame, seeping into the space between her fingers. She turned to face them, and shuddered as the ringleader confidently strutted in.

“Lee, you’re going to get out of my store if you know what’s good for ya.” The store owner stepped in from her office, she was tall and built like a brick, kinky dark hair cascading down her shoulders.

“Ahh Missy, don’t be like that. You and I both know how this is going to go. You beat us up, and we get to sick the cops on a big bad channeler abusing her freak powers.” His posse laughed with his ugly, ugly guffaw and she felt her skin crawl as his gaze swept over her body. “So you’ll have to shut up and put up with our antics, and that goes for these ladies too.”

Her nerves were frazzled when the boy's gazes shifted to her and the astaran, whose eyes had narrowed dangerously.

He smiled but it was a cruel, ugly thing. “Channelers have to know their place in this world, and a pretty thing like you, well it’s a waste.”

Her temper flared hot, and Tess knew if she lost control right then and there there’d be melting pools of flesh and bone on the ground. Her channeling was hard to control but power wasn’t one of its faults.

Lee pressed him against her with a lecherous grin, his hot breath provoking a burst of rage. She could see the glint of a gun in his hand, and the situation had escalated outside of her control. No channeling… idiot.

He reached to stroke her cheek, and she bared her teeth as she gently flicked her fingers on a barely visible screen.

Electricity burst forth from her holo-caster, and Lee spasmed and screamed as the electricity attacked his nervous system. Tess didn’t project fire, and instead released pure combustive force to accelerate her fists. Lee was sent flat on his ass, and Tess smirked with a smug little grin.

A thug threw himself with shocking speed at the astaran, and succeeded in placing a knife over her neck. Wind whirled around her hands, but now it was a careful silent dance of air currents.

“Nobody moves or the alien bitch gets cut!” Lee stood back up, grunting as he cruelly smirked. Tess scowled at his toughness, he was benefiting from the powers of the soul without even realizing it. The soul imbued all living things with vitality and might, no matter who or what they were.

“Girlie with the big tits, take off that thing on your arm now.” Lee called her out, and she remembered her parent’s words. Being a hero didn't tend to end well if you weren’t smart enough or clever enough. It was too bad she wasn’t a good listener.

She began to slowly slide off the vambrace, covering up a whisper with her left hand. All the while she felt violated by the stares of Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest.

Within a second she threw the holo-caster at full force, and it released a short burst of kinetic force that sent the knife wielding thug flying. The astaran twisted out of his grasp, gliding in the air with a sweeping motion of her arms.

Tess launched a kick into Lee’s gut, and he doubled over. She smashed his skull into the floor, breaking tiles with his face. The store owner came out from behind the desk, and threw out her own punches, laying the thugs flat out on the pavement. Not literally, but Tess didn’t give a shit.

Her heart hammered into her chest, and she took a breath, trying not to have a meltdown. The anxiety of being attacked was setting in and the bronze haired woman needed a distraction.

The girl.

She stepped forward, casually offering a hand of friendship. “I… are you okay? Unhurt I mean?” Okay was a relative term after being assaulted by a bunch of bigoted idiots.

The astaran turned to her with a look of disdain, though it softened at the wide smile that Tess was giving her.

“I am grateful for your assistance, human.” Tess tilted her head, as she inspected the ticks and body language of the alien. Long ears flickered back and forth, swiveling up and down. First they pointed up, tilting in her direction, then flat and pulled back. Her fangs were flicking back and forth, like she was raking the air. She loomed over her, and it was just confusing for Tess’ brain.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Tess smiled with closed lips, since she was fairly sure baring her teeth would be a bad idea. “That could have been trouble.”

Hope she’s not mad, I don’t want to make an enemy.

The woman bared her fangs, and her hope was dashed. “It wouldn’t have been if you had bothered unleashing your power.”

“I… it wasn’t, it doesn’t work that way… my channeling, it’s not very…” She tried to explain but was forced back by the haunting song of the astaran.

“I don’t want to hear it, and we still have to deal with this mess.” She gestured to the damaged store, and the groaning boys on the ground.

Oh. Shit. Mom is going to kill me.

Tess’ temper flared and she stomped her foot. “Can I at least know your name before you start berating me?”

The astaran leaned back with a scowl and to her surprise she nodded. “Sveta. My name is Sveta.”

“Thank you.” Tess said with her own scowl.

Sveta didn't let her get another word in. “Now after this mess, I hope we won’t meet again.”

Rude.

---

Sveta scowled as she recalled the encounter with those bigots and that stupid protective human. Even if she had needed protection, which I did not by the way. Not using the powers given to her by the Lifesong was foolishness of the highest order. That she had managed to beat those delinquents without her gift told Sveta the human wasn’t willing to put her all into protecting her.

It was an unintentional insult, and one Sveta Astara would not tolerate from anyone much less a human who didn’t understand her culture or her way of life. Especially when she could feel the bonfire of power emanating from the human woman, it was outright galling how she squandered her potential.

She swept aside her long flowing dark hair with a scowl, her fangs flicking in and out in a display of anger and indignation. I will not be pitied.

Her pantherine stride belied her confidence, and frightened off humans, as she postured socially. The astarans had a complex social hierarchy, body language, shifts and twists and warps of their songs, the games they played were a constant part of their lives, and humans were more… brute-force though she had known a few clever humans able to compete with the elites of her people.

She was at a privately rented spaceport, where a fanciful frigate turned space yacht gleamed in the sun with the golden shades of xukrum, the strongest and most durable metal alloy in the Orion Bubble, hyper-compressed alloys of iron, gold, and platinum, crushed down to a sixth of their volume with massive positive mass aspected dark energy fields.

The frigate was one hundred twenty meters long, shaped like a cigar with four towers near the rear of the ship. It was a beautiful ship, a marvel of Astaran Empire engineering. She breathed in, and with only a twist of her arms rocketed a hundred old feet into the air with a blast of wind. An airlock opened for her, and she landed in the ship’s small but still considerable bay where two shuttles were parked.

She was a powerful air channeler but she had been caught off guard by the lowly humans. They had gone from lecherous and disgusting to violently stupid in a matter of seconds, their songs breaking and cracking like glass. It had hurt her ears, made her wince and scream mentally. She still wasn’t used to the chaotic thoughts and souls of humans, her own kind were more static and regular.

I won’t make the same mistake twice.

After all she was not weak and refused to ever feel like she felt with those humans ever again. But that left her unable to stop thinking about that human, the tiny squishy one with a strong and heavy weighed soul. Her song was powerful, an aura that radiated like the sun, and yet hindered by the moon, as if blocked.

She had not used the power of her soul, instead reaching out to technology to guard against the bigots. She had knocked them down with the various mods from an omni-tool… wait the humans called it holo-casters didn’t they?

It did not matter.

Sveta sighed, brushing back her black hair as she sauntered into her own room within the deepest and most heavily armored part of the ship. It had been a gift from her ‘loving’ father, an older vessel that had been commandeered and modernized with the most advanced technology.

The FTL drive translated the ship into an alternate frame of reference, increasing the speed of light within the frame bubble. This was the least ‘costly’ of the methods, and her ship could peak at thirty light years per day. It could also ‘shift’ into higher gear by creating a Cofram-White metric, warping space to travel at two hundred light years per day in short bursts.

It wasn’t the strongest ship, one hundred twenty meters amounted to very little when even a modern frigate was more than twice that length, and a standard cruiser was between four hundred and seven hundred and ninety nine meters, while capital ships were well over a kilometer or more.

Though firing a six kilogram slug at twelve hundred kilometers a second was definitely a statement of power. A pointless dick measuring contest mind you, but it was an option.

Her mind went back to that human girl again, the curvy one with the long brunette hair speckled with red, caramel and gold. Dark soulful eyes that shifted to gold under the right lighting, too sharp nails that clicked against her bust, and a smile that was warm and full of a naive life. Those flames that licked at her hands in unlikely colors, breathing in tandem with her own heart.

None of it made sense, not even with hindsight. How could someone so powerful be so weak, so bound and restricted. There was a restraint she displayed that paid to a life of binding down something too strong for others. She was beautiful…

Sveta let out an errant wind blast when the thought registered, and held back a scream of frustration. Stars this is stupid! Her room was a mess now, and she hated the human more for making her stupid.

Sveta steeled her emotions, and knew the two of them would meet again.

Because events always came in threes.

---

Compendium Entry (Technology/Physics): SHOR FIELD METRICS

Modern origonium core technology is dependent on complex and specific modulation of exotic energy to achieve their performance and function. A basic frame bubble can perform many different reality shifts, but beyond a certain point, it comes at a horrendous cost of invested energies. This is largely due to the very nature of the fields generated by activated origonium.

Origonium’s exotic state is theorized to expand the scope of thermodynamics beyond the known realms of the Inner Sphere. The frame bubble is made up of a Structural Hyperreality Field or SHR, later distilled into a ‘Shor’ field by astaran and panadim scientists in the 20th century.

Shor fields are energies originating from higher ‘layers’ of reality, which many believe to be the origin point of every paracausal phenomenon in the known universe. Origonium acts as a bridge to these realities, generating bubbles of altered physics and providing the energy required to fuel powers. An additional fundamental force or forces that is believed to be the ‘cause’ of dark energy, spirit quintessence, and soul substrate. These are merely the outputs, with other effects vibrating ‘up’ into higher layers of existence and realities.

Origonium is simply the easiest way to tap into these energies through mechanical means rather than spiritual. However, ‘artificial’ fields require far greater technological sophistication to shape and manipulate than inherent abilities.

The foundation of Shor field metrics is complex theoretical field mathematics that describes the frame bubble, its interaction with space and time including the known parameters of higher realities and the modulation and shape of the increasingly complex Shor field effects. As the Orion Bubble probes deeper and unlocks more and greater functions of origonium, the mathematics complexity has grown exponentially. Modern formulas can cover walls with a single equation, or cover entire volumes of information for the underlying theories. Shor Field metrics are created through heavy experimentation, computer simulation, and examination of paranatural structures including the soul, and the denizens of the Spirit World. The heavy use of AI agents are common, along with personal augmentation using cybernetic, biological, or metaphysical means.

Pushing Shor field metrics forward is a massive area of interest, often wrought with immense scientific challenges. Modern metrics have many ‘manifolds’ that describe a wide range of non-euclidean field geometries required as a foundation for shaping and projecting Shor fields.

The most well-understood geometries tap into background dark energy, generating a wide array of effects by manipulating mass, gravity, and interconnected constants of physics.

Dark energy is used to manipulate mass and gravity, lightening objects, creating FTL bubbles through several means, whether by increasing the speed of light relative to external reality, creating spatial warp bubbles, or creating short-lived shunts analogous to Void Rails. Centuries of work and research and development have gone into creating new metrics for practical industrial, commercial, and military applications. Humans are currently using 7th Gen Metrics, heavily driven by initial research on deposits of origonium on Terre, and reverse engineering science and technology data from the many alien ruins dotting the Khepri system. The Orion Bubble recognizes 108 major leaps in Shor field metrics since the early days of physics manipulation technologies.

Using modern metrics is incredibly challenging, due to the sheer diversity of possible geometries, ones required to efficiently channel higher energies besides dark energy. All metrics have to smoothly switch between field geometries, using it to generate various forces or fields useful for modern civilization. Many origonium cores are modeled after channeler abilities, mechanized paranatural effects, amplifying or modifying fundamental interactions. Reinforcing armor and shields, empowering channelers, invocations of reality shift.

Active maintenance and monitoring is required, they have to be measured and studied and corrective field changes computed and executed. A significant challenge even with millions of exaflops of processing power. Even a small error could cause immense disruption, generating various lethal or harmful failure states, from gravitational collapse to the destabilization of fundamental particles. Tightening and failure-proofing of this process especially for military-grade equipment is a sizable challenge. Permissible reality shift translations are often heavily dependent on origonotronic hardware and control software.