It seems to me that the best way to talk about the worlds of the Delta is the same way the Agency does when preparing us—striders. During a download, they don’t just give us information about the Variants. They implant what are known as false memories directly into the brain.
A false memory is, essentially, a set of memories belonging to a person who was born and lived an entire life in a particular world. That person—real or fictional—has a profession or occupation closely aligned with what striders do. These roles are never chosen at random: in closed worlds, they allow Essence picking to be masked as something mundane; in open worlds, they make it possible to do the same work openly, without raising unnecessary questions. As a result, such professions are almost always tied to free movement across large areas, especially near the Gates.
And, of course, a false memory is not a record of an entire life from beginning to end. It consists only of selected, key events and episodes.
Who exactly the “owners” of these memories are—real people or composite constructs—I don’t know. I tried asking the guys who did my downloads, but every time they just brushed it off with jokes.
What makes false memory so effective is that it doesn’t merely tell you what happened and what is happening in a given Variant—it allows you to be the person who lives there. And that comes with at least two major advantages.
First, along with facts, you receive living impressions: emotions, sensations, subjective experience. You see, hear, and feel the world exactly as that person did. And layered on top of that is your own perception—as an external observer, aware that these memories are not originally yours.
Second, when you possess a false memory of another world, you’re able to behave naturally while in it—meaning, at the very least, your behavior doesn’t betray the fact that you’re an outsider. It’s not a mask and not a role you’re playing; it’s an internal understanding of how everything works, embedded directly into perception itself.
So, from here on, I’ll try to convey the false memories of each of the Delta worlds that were downloaded into me.
And I’ll begin, naturally, with Variant 1.
In that world, I was—essentially—myself: a strider working for ARK as an Essence picker. The only difference was that, in the false memory, I had been born and raised there, in that Variant.
My childhood and adolescence passed in a small town about half an hour’s flight from one of the continent’s largest megacities. My father was an architect-designer of residential complexes; my mother was a content developer for the net Layers.
As one might expect, my father designed our house himself. He used to say, with no small amount of pride, that a team of ten construction mechs from the building company needed only three days to complete the preparatory and structural work. But all finishing and interior design he carried out personally, together with two of his own mechs—and that took him more than three months.
The plot of land he purchased was almost entirely occupied by a steep, inaccessible cliff. The mechs leveled its summit, essentially “cutting off” the top and creating a broad plateau. The house stood there, surrounded on three sides by a park. The fourth side extended beyond the edge of the cliff and, in effect, hung over the abyss.
The road reached only the base of the cliff, where a garage for ground vehicles was located. From there, two elevators led upward: a panoramic passenger lift and a cargo lift running inside the rock itself. The plateau could be reached only by these elevators—or by air.
The exterior surfaces of the walls and roof were adaptive, giving the house an almost living quality. It reacted to temperature, light levels, and even the emotional state of its inhabitants. During the day, the walls became nearly matte, reflecting excess light; in the evening, they warmed softly, as if exhaling an amber glow from within. Sometimes it felt to me as though the house was breathing.
Inside, there was a sense of space and light. Almost the entire first floor was occupied by a vast living area, where functional zones—the kitchen, living room, dining space, lounge, and home office—were only loosely defined. Near the center stood an ample platform that, in winter, transformed into a cozy fireplace, and in summer became a living installation of stones and flowing water, with mosses and miniature plants growing between them.
The floors were sensory. They responded to footsteps, adjusting temperature for bare feet, softly illuminating furniture outlines in the dark, and even displaying a faint “echo-trail” of movement—a subtle glow that faded after a few seconds.
The lighting adapted to the inhabitants’ biorhythms. In the morning, the air filled with a cool, bluish-golden light to help you wake up. During the day, it shifted to a neutral white. In the evening, it warmed into amber and rosy hues. Sometimes, if the house sensed fatigue, it would dim the lights and play barely audible sounds of rain or distant surf.
The shape—or, as my father liked to say, the architectural solution—of the house was somewhat unconventional. The second floor was shifted relative to the first, creating recessed spaces above and below. The upper one held a veranda with an orangery and a winter garden. The lower formed a spacious terrace. It was this terrace, and my parents’ bedrooms above it, that hung over the cliff’s edge, as if suspended above the abyss.
All technical facilities were located on the underground level. On the roof, there was a landing pad for four floaters and a small telescope tower that my father had built himself, for his own pleasure.
My favorite place in the house was a detached fitness hall connected to the main building by a short gallery. It contained training equipment, two saunas, a large pool with a retractable transparent roof, a lounge area, and another home office where I usually attended virtual classes and did my homework.
Behind the house stretched a landscaped park, crossed by an artificial stream that flowed into a small pond. The park did not stop at the edge of the upper plateau but gradually spilled down the mountain slope, so that some of its steeper sections could only be reached using a drifter. Taking care of the park was my mother’s favorite occupation. Accompanied only by a gardener mech, she would hover above the slopes for hours, trimming, watering, and tending the plants.
This kind of fundamental, almost monumental approach to one’s own home was becoming increasingly rare in the modern world. In our case, it was defined more by my father’s profession than by prevailing trends.
In contemporary society, most people prefer to live in more or less standardized houses or residential units that can be rented or exchanged through numerous net services. This system long ago replaced the notion of a permanent address: now a person can change their place of residence as easily as switching an interface theme in a terminal.
Thanks to unified architectural standards and autonomous construction mechs, moving became a matter of hours. Mechs from management companies adapt a unit’s interior and exterior environment to the tastes and habits of new residents almost instantly—retuning lighting, wall textures, furniture, climate, even ambient sound. Some units feature a neural-trace function: they remember their occupants’ emotional responses and automatically recreate a comfortable atmosphere upon their return, as if recognizing the resident.
Housing turned into a kind of hybrid service—a middle ground between a home, a hotel, and personal space. One could easily move from a unit in a megacity skyscraper, with its frantic rhythm and endless entertainment, to a secluded house on a mountain spur or an ocean shore, where the only sounds are wind and surf. Many people prefer a rotational lifestyle, changing environments every few months: megacity for projects, coastline for rest, a research dome in the tropics for inspiration.
When I began living on my own, I too got used to moving about once a year. It helped prevent stagnation—changing surroundings, people, the energy around me. And yet, despite this now-familiar mobility, my warmest memories are still tied to that old-fashioned, almost patriarchal house on the cliff that my father built.
In fact, that house—or rather, the place where it stood—largely shaped my main hobby: rock climbing.
Since people learned to use agrav—more precisely, since the invention of the safety vest—this sport became nearly as widespread as running or cycling. The vest made it possible to climb any cliffs or vertical surfaces without fear of falling to one’s death. The moment you felt your grip slipping, it was enough to give the vest a short command—float—and it would immediately activate support mode, holding you in the air or gently lowering you down. Even if you failed to react in time, the built-in NA would do it automatically, instantly identifying a critical situation.
I started climbing the slopes beneath our house as a child—first under my father’s supervision, later on my own. Gradually, the hobby grew into something serious: I took part in net competitions, trained almost every day, and became an active member of the climbing community, where, somewhat unexpectedly, I even earned a certain amount of respect.
When I finished primary school, as it’s done for all children at this stage, my NA generated my profile—a description of my abilities and inclinations in the context of fields where I could perform best. In my case, these areas turned out to be research and development, control of machinery and mechanisms, and mediated social interaction. One could say I was lucky: this set almost perfectly matched the work I do now. For I chose that path more out of necessity than conscious intent. Necessity—because while I was still in middle school, the Gates appeared in our world, and a few years later, finding myself near a forming Essence nugget during a Storm, I became a strider.
How that happened—I’ll tell later.
After finishing secondary and higher school, choosing subjects aligned with my three priority areas, I joined Orbit Connect as a Transport Systems Architect on the construction project of a new orbital tether.
Orbit Connect’s tether lines are systems of nine to sixteen ultra-strong cables linking ground stations on Earth’s surface with stations in orbit. Elevators travel along these cables, carrying people and cargo from the planet into space and back. The uppermost station is placed above geostationary orbit, at an altitude sufficient to create the centrifugal tension that keeps the cables under constant pull.
By definition, structures like this can only be built along the equator. Three tethers are located in Andana, two in Africa, one in Asia, and two more are anchored to oceanic platforms in open equatorial waters. The project I worked on would add a third African tether. Beyond Earth, several Orbit Connect facilities operate on Astrida—the term commonly used for off-world territories. Two lines are already active on the Moon, where construction is far simpler thanks to lower gravity, the near absence of atmosphere, and therefore reduced cable-length requirements. One tether operates on Mars, almost half the length of an Earth system due to the planet’s smaller radius and weaker gravity. As far as I know, early development is also underway for tether projects in the Belt—on Psyche and Ceres.
My area of responsibility covered cargo transport from the surface up to one of the lower segments of the structure—the stabilizing platforms. Each tether has ten of these platforms, spaced at certain intervals along the lower section of the line. They do not bear the weight of the cables—the upper station provides the pull—but they dampen oscillations, reduce wind load, and stabilize elevator trajectories within the atmosphere.
The platforms consist partly of helium-filled aerostat elements and partly of structures made almost entirely of agrav. Everything is bound together with ultra-strong monomolecular plastic—a material often described as an engineering miracle. The cables themselves are made of the same substance.
My work involved very little direct control of machinery. On my section, as everywhere else, NA oversaw the operation of loader mechs and unmanned heavy lifters. What I did was design, coordinate, and continuously refine the transport processes themselves: elevator schedules, mech workflows, cargo distribution between platforms—and, most importantly, the trade-offs between time expenditure and resource efficiency.
Most of my work was remote. Still, from time to time I was required on site, and eventually I decided to relocate to Africa to be closer to the project. I settled in a major metropolitan area surrounded by mountain ranges. It was a practical compromise: only a couple of hours’ flight to the construction zone, yet close enough to the mountains that I could continue climbing on weekends.
The construction site lay away from settlements, and public transport was planned only for the commissioning phase. So whenever I needed to be there physically, I flew my own glider. Even with a cruising speed of 230 kilometers per hour, the trip took over an hour, which meant flying not in the zero sky level, but in the first.
For convenience and safety, ground travel uses roads. In the air, the same function is served by levels, horizons, and directions. Unlike roads, these structures are invisible to the naked eye; to see the aerial traffic architecture, one uses a dedicated net Layer—Maps. Ground roads and surface objects, of course, are displayed there as well.
Because the lower levels are tightly tied to the contours of the Earth’s surface—and this linkage gradually smooths out with altitude—the shape of aerial levels, like that of ground roads, is complex and often intricate. The basic principle, however, is simple: the higher you are above the ground, the higher the permitted speed—and the stricter the traffic regulations.
For most floater pilots, it’s enough to know that in Level Zero, whose altitude varies roughly between one and three kilometers, speed must not exceed 100 km/h, and that you must yield to anyone approaching on an intersecting course from the right or from above. In Level One above it, speeds of up to 300 km/h are allowed—but movement is permitted only in the direction defined by the current horizon.
Each level, starting from Level One, contains twelve such horizons. The direction of travel in each is shifted clockwise relative to the previous by thirty degrees—or, as people like to say by analogy with a clock face, by five minutes. If you’re moving in a direction that doesn’t match the assigned one, you’re required to yield to all other traffic.
Every pilot is obligated to follow these rules, but compliance is monitored by NA, which is built into everything that flies. NA either limits itself to supervision when you’re piloting manually, or takes full control once autopilot is engaged.
Like most people, I rarely bothered with manual piloting. On my way to and from work I switched on autopilot immediately—and then usually immersed myself in the net Layers.
Of course, the Net is an enormous and essential part of modern life. Most people access it through a mask and clip, though many other devices exist as well—mobile and stationary, individual and collective, two-dimensional and three-dimensional. All of them allow connection to the Net and are primarily operated via the n2e interface, though some people still prefer physical manipulators for text input and option selection.
The Net is made up of Layers. A net Layer is such a basic, everyday concept that I honestly don’t even know how to define it. The word layer itself feels both necessary and sufficient as an explanation.
Layers can be transparent or opaque. This probably doesn’t need much explanation either—but I’ll explain it anyway.
Transparent Layers are overlaid onto the real world in the mask and thus augment it. The most common transparent Layers are Maps, People, Shopping, Services, Learning, and others like them. Each Layer has its own sublayers and filters, allowing you to see only the information you need at any given moment. Besides these widely used transparent Layers, there are countless niche and even fully personal ones, used less for practical purposes and more for atmosphere and mood. Such Layers can repaint the surrounding world with different colors and tones, fill it with sounds, melodies, and emotional textures—the later transmitted by the clip through gentle, safe e2n stimulation.
Opaque Layers require a safe environment. The mask’s protocols won’t allow access to them, for example, while operating a vehicle or standing on a street with active traffic. In practice, opaque Layers are often accessed not through the mask at all, but via two- or three-dimensional displays—most commonly, the monitors of personal terminals.
There are far more opaque Layers than transparent ones—mainly because they’re easier to create. Companies, net communities, and individual users all build their own Layers. Large, well-developed ones evolve into full-fledged virtual worlds where people work, socialize, and, of course, play. Popular gaming Layers can have millions of participants.
By interface type, Layers are divided into spatial, graphical, and command-based. A spatial interface simulates three-dimensional physical space and movement within it. A graphical interface is controlled through touches and scrolling. A command interface, naturally, operates via commands entered through n2e or a physical keyboard.
Most Layers combine multiple interface models, although there are, for example, purely command-based ones as well. As I learned recently, those are mostly created by hardcore geeks who remain devoted to that particular mode of interaction with the Net.
Of course, an inseparable part of the Net—and of our world as a whole—is the Net Aide, or simply NA. I don’t remember who first said this—some writer, perhaps, or a stand-up comedian—but the line stuck with me: _“The Net Aide’s greatest virtue is that it cannot get bored.”_And that, in my view, is absolutely true.
The greatest benefit NA has brought to our lives since its emergence over a century ago is that it took over all the boring, repetitive, exhausting, routine work—and does it in a way no human ever could: precisely, consistently, without fatigue, irritation, or complaint. If we imagine the alternative—having to perform this endless volume of dull routine ourselves—humanity would probably have howled in despair.
I recently read that the combined computational capacity of the entire NA structure exceeds the human mind by roughly a million times. What’s even more striking is how gently and delicately that power is used. NA never pressures, never interferes, never claims authority. It is a partner—an ideal colleague who takes on any burden the very moment it begins to weigh you down.
NA assists the Forum at all levels—from solving local technical problems to implementing planet-scale projects—and does it so efficiently that over the course of a century the economy expanded by orders of magnitude and became an almost perfectly precise system of resource distribution. Hunger was eradicated on the planet even before NA appeared, but poverty as a phenomenon vanished entirely in its era. Every person received a guaranteed baseline of comfort: housing, energy, transport, healthcare, education. Money became a means of self-expression rather than survival.
In my history of technology course, we were told that without NA humanity would likely still not have discovered agrav, nor created molecular mechs.
In the case of agrav, the story was almost anecdotal: NA, possessing the full body of relevant data and having analyzed a vast array of often contradictory theories, concluded that agrav had to exist. Humans learned where to look—and found it.
With molecular mechs, the path was longer. The necessary technologies were scattered across different scientific domains, like pieces of an enormous puzzle. NA simply showed how to assemble them correctly.
During that same history of technology course, we were told that when the NA first appeared and mechs began to be produced on a mass scale, many people were deeply anxious about the consequences. Some predicted widespread unemployment, a collapse of motivation, cultural decline—a future in which humans would become mere appendages to machines.
None of that happened.
Neither the NA nor the mechs ever took over human decisions—only human labor. They did not replace people; they amplified them. Thousands of monotonous and routine professions gradually disappeared, but in their place emerged roles centered on creativity, empathy, research, engineering, architecture, medicine, and the arts. At the same time, the average working day and workweek shortened. Today, people work roughly five hours a day, four days a week.
There are, of course, those who choose not to work at all. All continental tax systems include what is known as a negative income tax. In practice, this means that if a person’s income falls below a defined threshold, it is not they who pay tax to the Forum—the Forum pays them. The system is structured so that working, even part-time, remains more advantageous than not working at all, but no one is left without support.
Over the century of the NA’s existence, attitudes toward personalization and “humanization” have gone through several distinct cycles.
At first, people addressed their aides in deliberately formal tones, as if speaking to austere machines. Then came the era of friendly interfaces: users gave their NAs pleasant voices, assigned them names, and designed dialogue windows to resemble chats with old acquaintances. After that followed a period of “anti-humanization.” It became fashionable to communicate with the NA in pure commands—no emotion, no simulated personality—as though emphasizing the boundary between human and machine. A few decades ago, the pendulum swung again. People grew tired of dry functionality, and personalization returned, this time in a more mature form. It no longer surprised anyone that many gave their NA ordinary human names and spoke to it—or to her, or to him—as to a living interlocutor. Not because the NA possessed a personality, but because it is easier and more comfortable to speak to a voice that sounds warm rather than metallic, to hear intonations that suggest care, to feel understood—even if what understands you is an algorithm.
A similar shift occurred with mechs, though in their case the cycle was shorter. The fashion for humanoid designs lasted only a short period after the first mass-produced models appeared. At the time, it seemed obvious that the more a mech resembled a human, the easier it would be to accept. People projected familiar expectations onto them: legs, arms, a head—even stylized ones—felt necessary to make the transition into a new technological world less abrupt.
Agrav changed that completely.
Once stable antigravity became reliable and affordable, the old engineering logic lost relevance. Flying mechs proved far more maneuverable, stable, and adaptable than their walking predecessors. They could hover near ceilings, rise vertically without inertia, pivot in midair almost instantly—all without the risk of stumbling, falling, or getting stuck, as early bipedal models sometimes did.
When legs disappeared, so did the intuitive sense of kinship between human and machine. Arms soon followed, replaced by task-specific manipulators that could fold, reshape, deploy tools, and operate with a precision beyond human motor control. Heads became unnecessary as well: a mech did not need to look, and humans did not need to see a face.
Most modern mechs now resemble neither people nor animals, but optimized constructions—sometimes cylindrical, sometimes disc-like, sometimes intricate multi-component structures designed entirely around function. Society adapted quickly. Today humanoid mechs are used only where “humanoid” is itself the function—for example, in teaching dance or martial arts. The discomfort people once felt in the presence of non-humanoid machines has largely faded. What emerged instead was a kind of clarity: the mech performs its task without pretending to be human, and humans accept it as the most efficient embodiment of its purpose.
Naming conventions evolved in parallel. There were periods when mechs were given predominantly human names, and others when they were referred to strictly by technical codes. Eventually a stable compromise emerged: people began using official model designations, extracting certain letters and numbers—usually the final ones—and transliterating them into something name-like. The names seemed to grow naturally out of the markings themselves: A4 became Eyfor, 3X became Triex, U2 became Yutu, 53D became Fivetridi.
The names were not unique, but that rarely mattered. After all, humans share names too. Mechs relied on far more reliable identification systems. Their integrated NA could distinguish when it was being addressed by analyzing not only sound, but context, intonation, current task, and spatial position. Over time, this hybrid naming system became ordinary—and universal.
So, after that technical digression, let me return to myself.
As I mentioned, in order to be closer to the construction site, I moved from Alpida to Africa and settled in a suburban district of a large megapolis. I rented a compact unit on the sixty-seventh level of a residential complex made up of twenty-four towers ranging from forty-eight to ninety-six levels in height. The towers were connected by a web of multi-level galleries that crossed the open space at different altitudes, so the entire structure resembled both a vast beehive and an anthill.
The resemblance was reinforced by transport capsules moving along the outer surfaces of the towers and galleries, gripping magnetic rails, as well as gliders and drifters hovering between the buildings or parked on suspended platforms along the walls. The constant motion of this swarm created the sense of a living, self-sufficient urban organism.
I liked living there—especially the view from my window toward the central districts of the city. Office and residential clusters rose in dense formations, intertwined by bridges, shaped into rings, spirals, and cascading tiers.
Above several neighborhoods floated thin solar membranes—broad, almost invisible planes supported by agrav cushions. During the day they created shadow and, at the same time, fed the district’s energy systems; by evening they transformed into luminous domes, spreading a warm, diffused glow over the city.
The upper levels of the towers were covered with gardens, groves, and shrubs. Parks hung in the air dozens, sometimes hundreds of meters above the ground, linked by walkways and narrow bridges where a steady breeze always moved.
My unit consisted of a large main room zoned into a kitchen, living area, and home office, plus a separate bedroom and bathroom. Like most modern dwellings, the walls could alter their transparency and texture. A simple mental command would turn a matte surface into a panoramic window—or into a softly illuminated decorative panel. Sometimes I used them as screens for video calls or work interfaces, but more often I left them nearly transparent to let in as much daylight as possible.
I rarely used the kitchen. I never enjoyed cooking and preferred buying food or ordering delivery from shops and restaurants. I also often stopped at one of the many nearby places on my way home or to work. Like most people, I didn’t limit myself to a single food class. I could eat organic, replica, or eco—depending on my mood and what happened to be convenient.
Organic meant food produced entirely from natural components using traditional methods. Eco referred to fully synthetic products created in bio-complexes with minimal environmental impact. Replica was something in between—eco food engineered to imitate organic so precisely that only laboratory analysis could reliably tell the difference.
Around my unit there were countless cafés, small shops, and restaurants offering every class of food, cuisines from around the world, and options for any budget. Everything necessary for comfortable living was either a few minutes’ walk away or a short drifter hop.
My unit was maintained not only by standard service systems but also by micromechs—tiny, nearly invisible devices that kept surfaces clean, collected dust, repaired minor scratches, and even adjusted ambient scent to match my mood. Thanks to them, the apartment always felt freshly tended, as if I had just finished cleaning.
The unit’s climate shell operated just as unobtrusively. It gently regulated temperature, humidity, air composition, and airflow direction. In the mornings it created a light, invigorating breeze; in the evenings, warmer and more relaxing currents; at night it maintained subtle ventilation to support recovery during sleep. I noticed this background comfort only when I was elsewhere—in spaces without a climate shell, the difference was immediate.
Several levels above mine lay a spacious plaza filled with retail centers, cafés, entertainment studios, and small green courtyards tucked between galleries. The place was never empty. Some people lounged outdoors, some conducted work calls while walking, others occupied gaming capsules embedded in the walls.
Just five minutes away via moving walkway stood a major transit hub. Three metro lines passed through it, including a high-speed line that reached the city center in seven minutes. Several bus routes intersected there as well, though like most people I rarely used buses. It was far more convenient to summon a rental or exchange vehicle through a net service: a free car would usually arrive within seconds and take you anywhere—from the next district to the outskirts.
Two metro stops from my unit stood a vast sports complex with pools, aerial game fields, virtual arenas, and a fully equipped climbing center. I spent most evenings there—training, competing, meeting friends from the climbing community. And on weekends I almost always left the city: real rock, wind in my ears, the scent of sun-warmed stone. Nothing replaced that.
One day, during one of those trips outside the city, I was climbing a training route along the nearly vertical face of a fairly high cliff. The route had been certified as a qualifying climb for a competition scheduled the following week, so it was important for me to complete it that day and register the result with my NA.
As it happened, the cliff lay not far from a Gate. And when I was less than halfway to the top, a Storm began.
I knew that if I descended now, I wouldn’t have the time or the strength for a second attempt. The qualification route allowed a generous time margin, so I decided to wait out the Storm right there on the rock. A little higher up I noticed a shallow indentation—a small, almost invisible cave. I pulled myself into it, secured my harness, and waited.
Of course, I couldn’t have imagined that my little shelter—seemingly protected from the main flow of the Storm—would turn out to be near a vortex forming within it, a small tornado that “attached” itself to the cliff and began generating a nugget. The cave shielded me from the direct current, but not from the turbulence. Staying there during the Storm became agonizing, nearly unbearable. My head vibrated from within, my chest felt crushed, pressure spiked erratically—all at once.
By the time the Storm finally subsided, there was no question of finishing the route. My hands were trembling, my body felt hollow and unreliable, and my thoughts came only in fragments.
What I also did not expect was that during that time spent in that cave, the level of my Essence contour would more than double—enough to turn me into a strider and give me the ability to walk through Gates.
By then, both Essence and striders had long been known in our world. From time to time, net channels aired the same social message everyone had grown tired of: anyone who had experienced a Storm was encouraged to undergo monitoring at the ARC. Those found to possess strider capabilities were promised interesting, well-paid, and widely respected work with the Agency.
Naturally, I took the opportunity.
And so now I am a Green strider, a fourth-class Essence picker and a third-rank agent of the Agency for the Regulation of Quintessence—the ARC.
The ARC is one of the many executive structures of the Forum. In our world, “the Forum” refers to the entire system of public institutions and organizational frameworks responsible for governance, regulation, and the long-term development of social life.
At the top stands the Central, or World Forum—the body that addresses global-scale matters: coordination of planetary projects, resource allocation, intercontinental transport systems, major scientific initiatives, and security in its broadest systemic sense.
Below it are the eight continental Forums: the Forum of Andana, the Forum of Alpida, the Forum of Arctida, and the others. Each oversees the strategic development of its continent—from infrastructure megaprojects to environmental monitoring, energy systems, and distributed production networks. Continental Forums are also responsible for citizenship and taxation.
At the base level are regional Forums, dealing with what touches people most directly: urban and local infrastructure, transport, utilities, educational clusters, local resource distribution, and social services.
The work of all Forum levels is transparent and highly rational. Institutional NAs handle most of the analytics, modeling, and coordination, which allows the human members of the Forums to focus not on bureaucracy, but on decisions that require intuition, experience, and a human perspective. Thanks to this combination of human judgment and computational precision, our world has developed for decades without crises, conflicts, or chaotic distortions—in the steady way a mature civilization is meant to function.
When the Gates appeared in our world, interest in them flared instantly and intensely. Scientists, enthusiasts, philosophers—everyone tried to understand their nature, the mechanism of the Storms, and the strange energy that surged within.
The Creatures appeared almost simultaneously. At first they seemed as intriguing and mysterious as the Gates themselves. People tried to study them, photograph them, measure them, describe them.
But it soon became clear that the Gates and the Creatures seemed to generate a peculiar resistance—something that actively countered every attempt to examine them. Instruments registered meaningless noise. Photographs came out blurred. Observations contradicted one another. Several attempts to approach the Creatures ended with serious consequences.
Gradually, scientific enthusiasm faded. Gates came to be treated as a natural phenomenon—unusual, but ordinary in its own way. The Creatures were regarded much like any other inhabitants of the world: with cautious respect and quiet curiosity. Our culture had long embraced a careful attitude toward wild animals, and the Creatures seemed to settle naturally into a similar niche. People spoke of them almost as they did of rare birds or forest creatures—present somewhere nearby, occasionally glimpsed, but not something that required life to change around them.
For a time, scientific inquiry shifted focus. Instead of studying the Gates, the Storms, or the Creatures directly, researchers began investigating the force that prevented understanding. Small groups of persistent minds supported one another, trying to push forward despite everything.
But the results remained discouraging. Experiments collapsed. Theories ran dry. People withdrew. The community thinned, the passion for inquiry burned out—and the movement nearly disappeared altogether.
And it was at that moment that the great Hikaru Yugura appeared.
Or rather—his diary did.
It was published on the site of a half-forgotten net club where the Gates had once been debated with passion, though by then only a faint residue of activity remained.
Yugura had been a researcher at a small, largely unknown institute. He lived near one of the Gates, practiced various contemplative disciplines, and spent long stretches alone in the mountains. Like thousands of other scientists, he had tried to understand the phenomenon of the Gates—but as far as anyone knew, prior to creating his famous diary he had achieved no more success than the rest.
The diary contained his now-classic work On Quintessence, the schematics of a quint-pump and an Essence scanner, as well as an extensive explanatory note.
In that note, Yugura described how, during meditation, he once found himself caught in a Storm. Instead of fleeing, he chose to endure it—taking shelter behind a small rock outcrop and sinking as deeply as he could into concentration. Neither the rock nor the meditation helped. He wrote that the pain he experienced was beyond language.
But when the Storm passed, Yugura realized that his perception of the world had changed.
He wrote that he simultaneously understood and felt that at the foundation of the Gates lay a special substance—both energy and essence at once. He named it Quintessence, in homage to ancient thinkers, and introduced the shortened form—Essence—for practical use.
What followed he described as a kind of tightening spiral: he would ask a question—and the answer would arrive on its own. One question led to another. Knowledge seemed to arise from nowhere, as if something vast and immeasurably wise were guiding his hand.
Within days, he grasped the principles behind the scanner. Soon after, the quint-pump.
But the knowledge carried weight. He described it as a burden pressing harder and harder against his mind. Answers came—but each insight seemed to drain him. He wrote that he had reached the limits of human endurance, that one more step into that spiral would have taken him beyond what he could bear—and that he felt unbearable shame for stopping there.
At the end of the diary, Yugura apologized to humanity for what he called his weakness and urged anyone who read his words not to attempt to repeat his path. First, because, as he put it, the road had been “allowed” only to him. And second, because it was too much to endure.
It is reliably known that Yugura uploaded the diary to the Net himself.
And then he vanished.
Neither friends nor colleagues were able to find the slightest trace of where he had gone. His followers proposed countless theories: that he had withdrawn into a secluded mountain monastery… or stepped through a Gate into some new Variant inaccessible to anyone else. What truly happened to him remains unknown.
Despite his warning, many attempted to retrace his steps. As far as anyone knows, none achieved meaningful results. Most efforts ended in failure. Some ended in tragedy.
Hikaru Yugura’s discoveries were so fundamental that within a few years they reshaped the entire scientific landscape. What had once seemed unreachable metaphysics became experimentally accessible.
It was during this period that the first strider was identified—Ritvik Shukarti.
He had survived a Storm in the mountains and later, by chance, found himself near a Gate. There he realized that he now perceived it differently—not as he had before, and not as others did. Intrigued, Ritvik contacted one of the research groups working on Yugura’s findings. That group had recently constructed a prototype Essence scanner based on Yugura’s schematics, though early attempts to use it had failed. Ritvik was asked to try.
Events unfolded rapidly.
Ritvik perceived and described the Essence field—its varying levels in different people, the distinction of his own level, and its apparent alignment with the threshold level within the Gate. The conclusion was obvious. It merely required experimental confirmation.
Without hesitation, Ritvik volunteered to attempt entry.
Thus the first inter-Variant transition took place.
Ritvik stepped through the Gate, documented what he found beyond it, and then—after waiting for his own level to recover to the threshold—returned. By fortunate timing, he managed to do so before the Variant within the Gate shifted.
The experiments continued. Other individuals with abilities similar to Ritvik’s were soon identified. Step by step, we learned what we now know about the Delta and the other Variants.
Under the World Forum, the Committee for Intervariant Interaction was established, along with its three executive agencies: the Agency for the Regulation of Quintessence (ARC), the Agency for Intervariant Operations (AIO), and the Intervariant Cooperation and Development Agency (ICDA).
It is in the first of these that I have the honor—and the pleasure—to serve.
The central offices of all three agencies are located in the same place—the Trillium complex, nearby the first Gate. Regional branches stand near the others. Each office includes Quintessence vaults: we striders are required to deposit all collected quinta immediately upon returning from every picking.
The offices also maintain hangars with fleets of gliders and all necessary equipment. The central complex houses a neurocoding center, a training facility with its simulation grounds, and residential quarters used by staff from all three agencies as needed. Most of the time those quarters stand empty: the majority of striders and technical specialists live in nearby towns, usually no more than an hour’s flight from Trillium.
I was no exception. I rented a small cottage on the outskirts of a quiet town not far from headquarters—and, more importantly for me, from the training grounds. That is where we “field” striders can most often be found, when we’re not out on a picking. We spend a significant portion of our free time there engaged in honing—refining our professional skills.
What those skills are—I’ll explain now.
The size and structure of an ARC Essence picker’s compensation package depend on two things: rank as an agent and class as a specialist.
Rank is essentially a formal measure of trust. It grows with tenure, with the number and quality of completed pickings, with the volume of Essence delivered to the vaults, and with the level of responsibility entrusted to you. There are five ranks. Each one unlocks new levels of access, authority, and, naturally, reward.
Class works differently. A picker’s class is not about seniority or loyalty—it’s about competence. About how well you can do the job you came to the Agency to do.
Class is determined by a cumulative score assessing professionally significant skills. The NA assigns these scores automatically and impartially—both during real operations and during honing sessions. The higher the total, the higher the strider’s class. There are five classes—just as there are five ranks, and five core skills. I don’t know whether there’s any deeper meaning in that symmetry. Most likely not. It simply turned out that way.
The first and primary skill of a picker is, of course, picking itself. This includes the ability to locate nuggets, work with tacle, scanners, mask, and Layers—everything without which efficient Essence collection would be impossible.
The second skill is piloting. It begins with operating floaters in our Variant—gliders, drifters, and other vehicles. But it doesn’t end there. Piloting extends to any mode of transport a picker encounters in other Variants. And there, transportation can vary wildly. In Variant Two, for example, striders travel on riding dragons. In Variant Three—on blimps, compact and highly maneuverable dirigibles. In Variant Four—on bikes, trikes, and quads. And so on, across the Delta.
The third skill is dodging. This is the art of avoiding a resonator strike through a specific movement technique—sharp, irregular, unpredictable. A resonator does not aim at a person, it aims at the calculated point where that person is expected to be in the next moment. The goal is simple: not to be there when the shot arrives.
The fourth skill is unarmed control. This is not about aggression but about receiving an attack and working with its momentum: managing distance, balance, and the opponent’s center of gravity; breaking holds; redirecting force; applying locks and control techniques.
And finally, the fifth skill is resonator handling. Here, accuracy matters—but judgment matters more. It is less about hitting the target than about knowing precisely when a shot is truly necessary. As we say: “A good strider shoots rarely. A very good one… almost never.”
Pickings. Honing. A bit of fitness. A bit of personal life. That’s how time passes.
And, if I’m honest, it passes well.
I like being who I am: a strider, an ARC agent, and a Quintessence picker of Variant One.