Ua-kEsa: Gatherer. That was the role EUe had chosen to take. It was like euthanasia, only nobler, and far more valuable to society. The Ecumene ran on the dreamshards' power, and unfortunately, dreamshards didn't last forever, and somebody had to go harvest new ones.

EUe had figured he might as well be one of them.

The dreamshard in EUe's chest burned like a hot poker against his skin as he wove a web of not-light into a sphere, many yards wide. Uka-yen and hUen-dE joined webs of their own to his, sharing the burden of what was to come.

The Great Dream was the realm of the gods, and it was not a place where mortals were meant to tread. It was Idea's kingdom, the place where the lEs dwelled, the fire in whose shadow the world was wrought.

The orange sand rustled beneath EUe's talons as he stepped into the Great Dream. Bronze dunes swept out from the back side of the Door to a distant, dark horizon. A moribund star hung over the dunes, darker than a dying ember. Ravines of dull light riddled the star's surface, separated by strips of browns and blacks.

As far as anyone knew, the bronze dunes continued without end. It was a world of sand, beneath the darkling star, barren, and devoid of life, yet filled with something like it, all the same. Standing with the Door at his back, EUe could count seventeen stars twinkling in the unfathomable distance: tiny pinpoints of light in an otherwise impenetrable darkness. Not even the Capital, with all its technology, drowned out the stars as much as this.

EUe wondered how hU-U-te and the earliest generations of Gatherers that followed him must have felt when they entered this mystic realm for the first time. At first glance, you would think the Great Dream was a sepulcher for dead space and time, but it wasn't, though it took detailed study to see why.

If the Great Dream appeared empty, it was only because it was a place outside of being.

Even in the days of barbarism, it was known that the body's senses brought knowledge of the world by perceiving the lEs that gave reality its essential qualities. A feather, for instance, had the lEs of its color, of its shape, its structure and function, and above all, of its featherness. A feather could not be a feather without the lE of featherness to anchor its essence within the gods' dreams and make it so. The only metaphysical reason two people could look at a green feather and know that it was a feather which was green was because of the lEs that anchored those concepts and made them real. lEs were what gave reality its many vivid details.

But what about the lEs themselves? Where were they? What did they look like? What would the realm of lEs look like?

The answer? Nothing—or as near to it as you could get.

It might have seemed like a paradox at first, but it made perfect sense in hindsight. Though the Gods dreamed the world into being, there was no one to give their reality its form, leaving it dark and barren. As EUe had been taught: if the world was substance without essence—which it was—then the Great Dream was essence without substance, and together, they brought balance to the cosmos.

While all of this metaphysics was very intellectually appealing and pretty, it had an extremely important practical implication: the Great Dream was an impossibly dangerous place for twEfE to go. To step inside it meant breaking away from all of the lEs that made you you: your body; your memories; the very fact of your existence in space and time. From the instant you set foot in the Great Dream, a vacuum even colder and emptier than even outer space itself threatened to pull you apart at a metaphysical level. That was why Gatherers were needed, and why Gatherers needed dreamshards. The shards' power kept you in communion with the Gods whose lEs kept you warm, comfy, breathing, and existing. The danger was so great that Gatherers had to have small dreamshards surgically implanted into their bodies just to keep them from blinking into non-existence—as did the web of EUe's not-light. It did more than just keep the three of them from dying; it gave their bodies their flesh, and their minds their thoughts. It gave them air to breathe, heat to stay solid, and pressure to keep from sublimating into the void.

Still, despite their barrenness, there was motion among the dunes. Dreams—hlea.

Whose dreams?

The dreams of the living.

"I know many see only desolation in this place," Uka-yen said, in a soft voice, "but to me, there's something sublime to its simplicity."

The old bird wasn't wrong: they really were beautiful.

The dreams were ghostly storm-clouds; billowing, glimmer-studded curtains—aural mists—that reached and moved, as if with a purpose, as they faded in and out of existence all across the sandy expanse. Granted, none happened to be visible at the moment, but that was to be expected. Dreams only appeared in the presence of untapped shards. As Gatherer scholars had long since come to understand, it was the shards' latent power that gave the dreams enough lEs to physically manifest.

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The trek across the dune was a strenuous one. EUe's talons sank deep into the sand with every step, straining the muscles in his core.

None of them dared to even attempt to fly. It was just too dangerous.

As they walked, EUe noticed Uka-yen's breathing was getting haggard. He wondered how many more harvests the old bird had in him before the Great Dream finally claimed him.

"Are you feeling alright?" EUe asked.

Uka-yen turned to his companions with a soft coo.

"Have you ever worried about what the future might hold?" he asked. The color of the eye-sized scales on the backs of Uka-yen's arms, hands, and fingers had faded from their normal, dark brownish-green. They were pale and jaundiced, and crumbled at the edges.

"I think that's one part of all this that will never change," EUe replied. "It never fails to boggle my mind that the minutes we spend standing here become decades out there," he added, pointing at the Door.

Blurred motion streaked across the portal. The view of the Temple of the Door twitched as time ran wild.

Many volunteered to be Gatherers, but only a select few ever got the role. Becoming a Gatherer was a death sentence. Journeys into the Great Dream drained a person's life force, aging Gatherers in the process. With enough forays into the Great Dream, a Gatherer's body became sickly and weak, until the day they finally joined the dreams in dissolution. Scholars hypothesized it was a consequence of the time dilation. An hour or two in the Great Dream could be the better part of a century on the other side of the Door, and the more you exerted yourself, the more time the Great Dream took away. The draining of one's life force was said to be the universe balancing its accounts, taking from the Gatherers what it had given to the twEfE through the dreamshards.

It happened to everyone.

To EUe, it had only been a year since he'd become a Gatherer, but through his forays into the Great Dream, the world had advanced nearly two centuries into the future.

"When we return," hUen-dE said, "I'm sure there will be plenty of new diversions for you two to occupy yourself with. The entertainments of the future should be more than enough to keep you from getting bored."

Uka-yen flicked his tail feathers dismissively. "I appreciate the pep talk." His reply was flat and disingenuous.

hUen-dE clacked her beak. "Have some nectar in your blood. You are morbid beyond words." She flicked a wing at EUe. "Both of you are."

Uka-yen looked up at the darkling star. "Some of us have good reasons to be."

hUen-dE narrowed her eyes and put her hands on her hips. "Is there something you're not telling us, old bird?"

Uka-yen stayed quiet for a long while before he responded. He gave EUe a sidelong glance. "I know EUe is aware of this, but I wonder if you are as well, hUen-dE. I would expect you to be, given your devotion to your duties. And yet, your disinterest in anything beyond those duties is enough reason to make me doubt."

"Expect me to be aware of what?" the female asked.

"That the Ecumene will be sending colonists to UlU-twE-E," Uka-yen said. "The project might be underway by the time we return. It's exactly as I expected: the atmospheric isles and our lunar settlements were just a dress rehearsal for our people's next great leap forward."

hUen-dE nodded in approval. "A healthy, ambitious society needs to grow and advance if it wants to survive."

"I'm worried about the consequences," Uka-yen said. "What will become of the Ruby Ecumene once our people are spread across two planets? A journey to the moon is just a day's trip by airship, even though the distance is greater than anything any explorer in history has ever traveled. But, just to go from our UlU to even the third rock from the sun? That takes years."

Again, hUen-dE nodded. "Yes, and I'm confident that one day, people like you will find a way to close the gap."

Uka-yen chuckled bitterly, quivering his tail feathers. "Yes, that could help, especially if it happens soon, but… even then, it might not be enough."

"What do you mean?" EUe asked.

"Did you ever stop to think about what might happen if those colonies on UlU-twE-E end up growing apart from society here on UlU?"

"No, sir."

"With enough time, separation guarantees change. twEfE living on two different planets could very well come to see themselves as two separate peoples. In fact, I'm willing to bet on it."

"That would never happen," hUen-dE said. "The Ecumene's unity is absolute."

EUe gestured with his wings. "The ancients never thought peace would happen, but it did."

"Think about it," Uka-yen continued, "two worlds or more, but only one with the Door to the Great Dream through which to gather the dreamshards on which our mutual civilizations depend. How does an equation like that spell anything but disaster?" The old bird shivered. "The Race Wars would return, and this time with the powers of the shards on both sides. All the miracles of modern technology would be turned to evil purposes: biological weapons, replicators, automated warriors, orbital planetary bombardment! The list is endless!"

hUen-dE took a single step back, raking up sand with her talons. "Kwekek! You're both kwekek!"

She pointed accusatively at EUe. "Is this your doing, EUe? Have you managed to corrupt one of our people's greatest minds with your weakness?" She shook out her feathers, her arms trembling. "I'm done with this talk. Gatherers shouldn't say such things. If you'll excuse me, I have my duty to attend to."

hUen-dE turned away in a huff and stormed off, weaving up a shield of not-light around herself as she stepped beyond the range of EUe's protections. She stretched her wings before starting to hike up a nearby dune. She left echoes of herself behind as she moved, trailing in a wake of light that faded behind her before dissolving into dream-mist. That was the Great Dream for you: a silent, dreamy enigma.

Not wanting to get separated, EUe followed after her, with Uka-yen following not too far behind. However, as EUe started to trek up the next dune, Uka-yen gently grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.

EUe turned to face his senior. "What is it?"

"There's more I'd like to say…" Uka-yen said. He gazed up at hUen-dE, watching her climbing talons kick up sand. "…and I don't think hUen-dE would take kindly to it."

hUen-dE stopped and turned around, likely having sensed the gap growing between them. "Get moving!" she said. "Time waits for no twEfE!"

Uka-yen cupped his hands at his beak. "Coming!" he said. He turned to face EUe. "Just… let's not rush, that's all I'm asking for."

And so they didn't. Instead, they hiked up the dune just far enough and quickly enough to close the distance with hUen-dE to the point that she'd stop nagging them.

Now, EUe was certain: Uka-yen was acting suspiciously.

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