This is a work of fiction based on an online game I play called EVE. You can find out more about it by clicking on the banner to the right of this article.

The Icarus Effect

Brother Ivannois knew he could not advance within his order until he had attempted and lived through the Icarus Effect; a dream state induced by a triple dose of the Sooth Sayer Booster. He had already transferred his pod to a tricked out Condor, a very fast and nimble ship. He was told that he should use the fastest ship he could afford and one that maneuvered as best as he could withstand; it would all add to the effect and make survival easier. He tipped the booster into cerebral feed two.

The ship was ejected from the station; he invoked the booster for the first time.

The contraband fluid coursed through the tubes feeding the cerebral implants and he slipped seamlessly from consciousness to a light trance, ships sensors feeding his heightened awareness. Every ship outside the station became known to him, his sense of their movement and trajectories became an intricate dance. He moved the ship with but a thought now, a thought to dance with the ships around him. In his diminished awareness he knew he had to continue the experience to the Icarus Effect. He willed his disembodied hand to boost again, something not normally done.

The second dose of Sooth Sayer hit his brain and the ship he was in was gone. Ivannois was floating in space, aware of all the ships, stations, asteroids, planets and even space junk that moved and surrounded him. He shot from ship to ship to junk to container floating in space with the ease of walking, easier in fact. He examined each for their queer beauty and moved on, finally making a huge jump to explore the moon that the station he’d left orbited.

In preparing for this experience he had rigged a special circuit that would deliver the final dose of the booster if he was too far into the experience to remember. The third and final dose hit and his living dream-world became his reality.

Spaced shredded. Ivannois was no longer in an open reality, but one where the very folds of the universe could be experienced. He was ripping his way through psychotically hued ripples heading toward the undulating and pulsating sphere that was a moon. He could feel his hand grasping the folds and pulling him along; his feet were kicking as if swimming, impelling him forward, and the wings on his back steered him to his destination, cutting through gossamer sheets of space; wakes of rippling light from his travels could be seen behind him. As he looked something new caught his eye, something scintillating.

He turned his back to the moon he was heading for and stopped to appraise the gem in the cosmic kaleidoscope he was now part of. He began to reach for the radiant object, his desire now fixed on it. Ivannois was convinced if he could possess the glorious object he could completely escape from the universe and find a permanent Nirvana of his own. So strong was the feeling he flung his unfettered body at the star unmindful of any ill effect.

The chromatic display of folded space as he approached was strong and blinding, but that mattered not in the least to Ivannois whose fascination overwhelmed any remenents of his caution. He felt in his heart that all his questions would be answered as the miasma of light and complex space surrounded and overwhelmed him. The universe faded to white…

Brother Ivannois awoke several hours later, the pain in his head so tragic he could barely stand it; but that was nothing compared to the despair he felt for not reaching his utopia. He read the ship logs and found that the ship had automatically returned him to a safe spot when the ship entered into the corona of the star and the armor plating began melting off.

Brother Ivannois sat in his pod and wept.