The Essence layer appeared in my mask.
Once again I saw the familiar green glow—soft, shimmering, spreading in thin veils across rock, grass, and stone.
“It’s strange how quickly I managed to get used to it,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the iridescent field. “And how quickly I forgot. And now I’m amazed all over again at how beautiful it is.”
Art smiled faintly. He didn’t answer, but from his look I could tell he felt the same.
We turned onto a narrow side trail that slipped away downhill along the slope. The ground was dry; low shrubs grew on both sides, with the occasional twisted tree clinging to the soil.
A few minutes later we switched back to message mode and split up. Art moved left, lower down the slope; I went right, a little higher. We walked parallel to the path, each scanning our own section of the hillside. I studied the rocks closely, the patches of green light, searching for anything larger than the small, shallow clusters that turned up now and then.
“I’m only seeing small ones,” I reported to Art. “Nothing deep.”
“That’s normal,” he replied. “Near trails and open areas there’s a good chance the Reds have already been through. Deeper in, and on hard-to-reach slopes, the odds are better.”
I looked at the map again and noted how enormous our sector was—and how much of it was practically inaccessible.
“With an area this size,” I said, “there’s no way we’ll even cover a tenth of it.”
Art confirmed this calmly, as if long accustomed to the thought.
“In picking, time matters most. The most efficient window is the few days right after an Essence release—that is, under normal circumstances, after a Storm. Within a few days, the vast majority of nuggets disappear. They simply disperse—the Essence spreads out and returns to the background. Only the deepest nuggets remain. They can last longer, sometimes weeks, but even they dissolve eventually.”
He paused, then added:
“What’s interesting is that Storms don’t happen simultaneously at different Gates or in different Variants. It’s as if the whole system were being run from a single center. For us pickers, though, that’s good news. There’s almost always work.”
We kept moving along the trail, gradually leaving the road behind. The path slipped off the mountainside and down into the bottom of a narrow ravine squeezed between two steep walls. Rock faces rose on both sides, mottled with patches of Essence.
I was walking along the right wall, Art along the left. I kept scanning the stone, but mostly found small stuff—just a few amphoras at most.
And then, rounding another bend, I lifted my eyes—and that feeling hit me. The kind a fisherman must feel when a massive fish takes the hook. Or a mushroom hunter, stumbling on the perfect porcini.
Ahead of me, about ten meters up the slope, hung a nugget—huge, the size of a large wardrobe.
I checked the readout immediately:
180q, 178α.
I waved to Art.
“Over here! I’ve got something big!”
He came over, took a look, and nodded with approval.
“Not bad for a start. Congratulations.”
As we got closer, it became clear that the nugget wasn’t resting on the ground at all—it was embedded in a sheer rock face, about three meters up.
I scratched the back of my head.
“Should’ve brought climbing gear. Didn’t think of that.”
Art narrowed his eyes slightly, and a sly smile appeared on his face.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said calmly.
I looked at him, puzzled.
The next second I stepped back. My eyes widened. My mouth fell open.
Standing in front of me, without making a single visible movement, Art slowly lifted off the ground.
He rose smoothly a couple of meters and hovered there, perfectly still.
“What… how did you—” I couldn’t get the words out.
Art drifted back down just as smoothly, as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.
“There’s one more thing I didn’t get a chance to tell you about earlier,” he said. “Agrav. Fully: A-grav. A substance that, unlike everything else, isn’t pulled toward the ground—but pushed away from it.”
He paused for a second, then added:
“The ‘A’ isn’t just a letter. It’s more of a symbol. Like an arrow pointing upward. And everything else,” he went on, “we refer to as V-gravs. Ordinary matter. The kind that behaves… normally.
“Agrav is rare. In its free state, it rises into the upper layers of the atmosphere and exists there as a very diffuse dust. The higher its temperature, the stronger its upward thrust. As the temperature drops, its lift decreases. That’s why, in the cold upper atmosphere, it reaches equilibrium and stabilizes at a certain altitude.”
I listened, hardly believing what I was hearing. He went on:
“In our Variant, agrav was discovered. We learned how to collect it from the atmosphere. There is also artificial agrav, but producing it is extremely expensive and complex. In practice, we mostly use the natural kind.”
He paused, as if considering something.
“Agrav is the foundation of our aerial transport. We have floaters—vehicles with agrav elements or inserts built into their structure. They rise into the air, hover, move freely. My backpack and clothing have agrav inserts as well. When I give the ‘float’ command, the structure of the outfit reconfigures—supporting straps form underneath, the inserts lock into place, the agrav heats up, and I lift off.”
I was still standing there, stunned by the revelation.
“That’s… incredible,” I said at last. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Some things are better shown than explained. And as you can imagine, that isn’t always possible. This just happened to be the right moment.”
He gave a short grin, stepped closer, and gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder.
“Have some water. Catch your breath. I’ll get to work.”
I obediently sat down on the grass, took out my bottle, and drank a few gulps, watching as Art scanned the surroundings to make sure no one was nearby.
He approached the rock, apparently issued a command, and smoothly rose to the level of the nugget. He hovered a few centimeters from the cliff face, extended the tacle, and began extracting the Essence.
He worked calmly, unhurriedly, occasionally glancing around.
When the nugget was fully collected, Art descended back to the ground. We moved on.
All that time, I kept thinking about what it must feel like—to simply rise into the air. What it would be like to be able to fly. I also found myself imagining what flying machines might look like. And then I thought: why imagine, when I could just ask?
By then we had spread out along the slopes again, so I switched to message mode.
“I know I’ll probably see it all myself soon,” I said. “But I can’t help it. Tell me—what kind of flying machines do you have? Or not machines… what did you call them? Floaters?”
I saw him smile with understanding.
“Yes. Floaters is the general term for any transport that uses agrav and can take off. We also have ordinary cars, buses, trucks. Very similar to yours. But we gave up fossil-fuel engines a long time ago—everything runs on electricity or hydrogen now. And wherever we can do without agrav, we try to.”
“First of all because it’s a limited—and therefore fairly expensive—material. Extracting it from the atmosphere is technologically demanding.
“But the main reason isn’t even that. It’s ecology. Agrav binds and holds ozone in the atmosphere. And you probably know how important the ozone layer is. So when agrav is extracted, it has to be replaced with a gaseous analogue that performs the same function.”
“Wait, wait,” I interrupted. “Some time ago there was a big topic in our news: ozone depletion. And the cause was supposed to be aerosols, chemicals… Are you saying the real reason could be that someone in our world was collecting agrav?”
Art fell silent. Either he was thinking about it for the first time—or choosing his words carefully. Most likely the latter.
“Personally, I also believe that the ozone depletion in your Variant is connected to someone actually extracting your agrav. Or having done so in the past. But I doubt that someone is from your world. Much more likely—from ours.”
“That’s impossible,” I said firmly. “Ozone depletion started before the Gates appeared.”
“I know. But there are some indications—unofficial, unconfirmed—that before the current Gates, there were others. Smaller ones. Temporary. They appeared, existed for a while, then vanished. As if the creators of the Gates were running trials. Testing the technology before opening large, stable passages.”
I tried to digest the new wave of astonishing information. Art went on:
“So during that testing period, someone may already have been crossing through temporary Gates. Accidentally or deliberately—we don’t know. But the fact itself seems real. And it explains certain events in your world that are hard to account for otherwise.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Well… you’ve heard of ‘flying saucers,’ haven’t you?”
“Of course. But what do they have to do with this?”
“Quite a lot, actually. Judging by the descriptions and the photographs available, ‘flying saucers’ are our hovers. Hover-class floaters.”
I actually stopped walking.
Art was a few steps ahead. He turned around and looked at me seriously, without smiling. Then he waved a hand—come on—and continued as we walked:
“So now you know what hovers look like. A hemispherical body in the center, made of a material with agrav inclusions, and a circular lower contour with engines arranged along it.
“Hovers are used where speed isn’t the priority, but maximum maneuverability is. Most often they’re flying yachts—very expensive, so they usually belong to extremely wealthy people. There are also research hovers: monitoring weather fronts, volcanoes, migratory flocks… and sightseeing models for tourists.
“In large cities, the police use hovers as well—but only in dense urban areas, where you need full panoramic visibility. They still have plenty of gliders and drifters too—where speed matters more.”
“Gliders and drifters?” I perked up.
“Uh-huh. Gliders are essentially the equivalent of your airplanes or helicopters. All kinds—from single-seat cabs to intercontinental liners. And drifters are more like motorcycles or scooters… just flying ones.”
“They’re small, mostly single-seat. There are even portable drifters—you wear them on your shoulders like a backpack. By the way, my pack has a drifter built into it too, though it’s very low-power. I’ll show you sometime. And then there are high-performance drifters, tuned for maximum speed and maneuverability—like sport bikes.”
“Oh, and yes,” he added, “we still have ground motorcycles and scooters as well. Some people just love them.”
He paused meaningfully, then added with a smile:
“I could, of course, show you all of this right now on the screen. But I think seeing it in person for the first time will be much more interesting.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“So I’m guessing there are flying trucks too?” I ventured.
“Correct,” Art nodded. “You’ve definitely got an engineer’s mind. I hope you won’t change your mind about becoming a strider and decide to go into vehicle design instead.”
The Net Aide gave his last remark a faintly ironic tone.
“So. Cargo floaters come in two main classes: skimmers and lifters. Skimmers are, roughly speaking, flying trucks—platforms or frames for standard containers. Their main job is moving cargo through the air, usually over short distances where ground transport isn’t practical.
“Lifters, on the other hand, work mostly vertically. Think of them as mobile tower cranes. They’re used where you can’t install a crane, or where doing so would be too slow or too expensive.”
I found myself thinking that cabins wouldn’t even be necessary for machines like that. They could just be operated like drones.
Art seemed to read my thought.
“Both types are usually remote-controlled,” he continued. “And more often than not, they operate fully autonomously. The Net Aide coordinates everything that flies—from drifters to cargo platforms. It manages routes, assists in manual mode, and prevents collisions.”
He fell silent, then pointed toward a boulder piled up against the cliff.
“Oh—and this beauty here is mine.”
The nugget was the size of a decent skimmer and was resting right at the base of the rock face. Art collected it standing on the ground, without using agrav lift. When he finished, he turned to me. His expression had grown serious.
“From this point on, we switch to threat mode. I think you understand why, but just for context: a full box is worth about as much on the black market as a good flying yacht.”
I let out a low whistle.
“We don’t take off the mask or the clip again until the box is handed over to the Agency vault,” he went on. “And now I’m activating the scanners.”
In the lower-right corner of my mask, the words appeared:
THREAT MODE
“A threat is defined as the presence of hostile resonators within scanner range,” Art explained.
He took out his resonator and placed it on his open palm. The device was immediately overlaid with a fine glowing mesh, visible to me through the mask. The mesh was green. In the upper-right corner, an icon appeared—a circle with the number 1 inside it, also green.
“This resonator is currently on your clip’s whitelist. That means no threats. Note this: you can see the outline of any resonator, even if it’s behind somebody’s body or under clothes.”
Art hid the device behind his back, but the mesh didn’t disappear—it continued to glow right through his silhouette.
“There are three alert levels. First—yellow. Watch.”
He apparently removed his resonator from the whitelist. Instantly, both the mesh and the icon turned yellow, and a long, drawn-out tone sounded in my clip:
Beeeeeeep.
“This means there’s a hostile resonator in the area—even if it’s passive. At yellow level, your task is to locate it. Stay alert, but don’t panic.”
I nodded.
“Next—orange,” Art continued. “That’s when at least one resonator switches to firing mode.”
In the silence, a slow, pulsing sound emerged—
Beeeeep. Beeeeep. Beeeeep…
The circle and mesh flared amber.
“If you see an orange resonator, immediately look for the nearest opaque cover and get behind it. The key word is opaque. Resonator impulses pass freely through transparent glass, water, and the like.”
“So clothing protects you from the… impulse?” I asked hopefully.
“Unfortunately, no. Or rather—not really. The impulse has penetrating power, with a depth of about five centimeters. I’m not a specialist here—I can’t explain it properly. Something about carrier wavelengths, modulation frequencies, that sort of thing.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“Still,” Art went on, “clothing does create a kind of insulating layer and reduces the likelihood that the impulse will ‘find’ a suitable receptor. The thicker the layer, the lower the chance it takes effect. So clothing—and especially headgear, protective helmets—aren’t protection per se, but they do count as mitigating factors when there’s a threat.”
I listened without interrupting. After a short pause, Art continued.
“Red—”
The signal suddenly accelerated into a sharp, rapid alarm—
beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!
—and the glow turned harsh, crimson red.
“That’s when the lens is pointed at you and the resonator has locked you as a target. I won’t demonstrate—I think the idea is clear. Your response: drop to the ground immediately, preferably with your feet toward the threat. Your most vulnerable area is your head. Once you’re down, crawl or roll behind cover. The odds that the impulse won’t take effect are actually not that bad.”
Hearing that, I felt a surge of relief. I wasn’t a helpless target after all. Survival was possible—and a lot depended on me.
“Short version,” Art summarized. “Yellow—locate and observe. Orange—hide. Red—don’t think, drop and roll to cover.”
He returned the resonator to the whitelist. The sounds faded, the mesh calmed back to green—and then vanished entirely.
“One more thing, just so you know. You’ll only see and hear a shot if you’re wearing both the mask and the clip. The beam is blue for freezing, white for forgetting, with corresponding firing sounds—both unpleasant. Those are just markers generated by the Net Aide. In the real world, a resonator shot is silent, and the impulse itself is invisible. That’s about all you need to remember on this rather unpleasant topic.”
He gave an awkward smile, almost apologetic.
“Got it,” I nodded. “No questions.”
We split up again and moved on.
Nuggets were appearing more frequently now. Some were quite large—several hundred amphoras, with levels of two hundred quints or more. More often they were modest finds, but each one still sparked the same hunter’s—or mushroom picker’s—thrill. At first Art and I tried to keep count, even joked about competing, but before long we were so absorbed that we lost track.
The sun began to sink toward the horizon, and long blue shadows stretched across the slopes. Art said his box was over four thousand amphoras full—more than enough for a single day.
We exchanged a look and, without saying a word, started searching for a place to spend the night.