x/Etherheads posted by u/UniversalToadwisp • 1 hour ago
Ether is Fascism
During the Fourth World War in 2143, humanity unearthed something that outlived nations: Ether. At first it acted like a killer toxin — fatal to ordinary humans on contact, strangely harmless to everything else. Its structure refused classification; scientists argued whether it was element, compound, or something beyond chemistry. Who coaxed Ether from the wreckage of particle accelerators is lost to history, but everyone agrees on one detail: the know‑how vanished with the old world.
By the early twenty‑third century, Ether had become myth. Grandmothers called it the Batter of the Universe; sermons called it a Shard of God; merchants labeled it life or its inverse. No reliable record explained what Ether actually was — only broken experiments and permanent scars.
What survives are two forms: trace Ether carried in human blood and Conquered Ether — refined residues harvested, traded, and weaponized since TOTEs first surfaced and began hunting demons. Conquered Ether no longer kills like the raw substance once did, and it doesn't reliably open the fabled Third Eye. Whether raw and Conquered are the same, and whether either is worth the cost of the wars fought over them, drive everything: conquest, worship, commerce, sabotage. Ether is scarce power—healing, longevity, reality‑bending, a throne. Whoever controls it shapes the future; everyone else becomes a footnote.
Worse: powerful TOTEs and Threaders cushion themselves in luxury, selling favors to the wealthy or angling to join their ranks. People still starve while the elite hoard immortality and rule. Ether didn't end inequality — it fossilized it.
Tripp POV
I was driving east toward Region One, phone propped in the dash, scrolling a feed that had no business being called news. The x/Etherheads post was the kind you nodded at and then forgot. I had seen a dozen takes on Ether that morning alone—religion, economics, revolution. None of them knew what it felt like to have it in your blood.
I tightened my grip and willed the car to cruise the lane. Most people called me a material specialist on paper—the AFF registry, the public record that made you employable and forgettable. It was a label that bought me a paycheck and kept me out of the active roster. Privately, I'm a little closer to a reality specialist. I had opened my Third Eye with that the job label difference mattered. The registry decided whether you were a hired hand or a weapon.
A shimmer caught my eye in the rearview. The golden doorway hovered above the backseat like a bad sticker on a windshield. Something—small, winged—flicked through it: a demon‑bat the size of a pigeon, eyes like smudges of coal. It breathed a little puff of cold smoke as it tried to land on my headrest.
Five meters was my influence. I thought of the bat's acid-sack and the thought tightened a fraction, like puckering a string. The creature convulsed, its stomach corrosive and suddenly too hot for its own flesh. It arched once and slumped, tumbling back through the door into some thin slice of void. The doorway blinked and thinned until it vanished.
I laughed then, a short, embarrassed sound, and checked the lane markers like a man surprised he hadn't crashed. Quiet was safety. If the AFF ever learned I wasn't a mere material specialist—if they discovered I could push reality even a little—they'd drag me back to service. They'd make me useful in ways I'd seen: the loud, brutal sort of usefulness that ended friends and futures.
I coasted into a rest stop in Region 47 and let the car settle. The engine ticked like a small animal cooling. Soul‑power was cleaner than Conquered Ether to me—controlled, reliable. Conquered Ether was currency: messy, addictive, reserved for the bred and the bought. Those born into elite lines used it as inheritance, mutating their genes and their privileges at once. They disgusted me more for what their privileging did to everyone else than for what they were.
At some point in my career—you learn this between drills and med‑checks—I realized I'd never been a true material specialist. Everyone's gift after opening the Third Eye wears a label: Material, Biological, Elemental, Psychic, Reality, Organic. They mixed and blurred, but the AFF loved categories. I leaned toward Reality. Small things obeyed me when they had reason: pebbles rolled, a glove dried after rain, a signal hummed louder. Nothing flashy. Nothing to put on a millionaire's yacht.
I parked under a cracked lamp, reclined the seat, and let the rest stop breathe around me. Region One waited, and with it, people I could be with and plans I could keep. For the first time in a long while, sleep came easy.