Aether Psychosis
A sudden rush of anxiety gripping the sailor’s heart on a quiet night at sea. A hint of nostalgia as the travelling merchant sells cloth to a woman whose perfume reminds him of his wife’s. The soldier’s pounding heart as mail finally reaches the trenches.
This feeling had long been the companion of those who chose to leave their home behind. Taken for granted as the price to pay to push the human boundaries further and further, it did not always have a name, despite being the inspiration for a number of songs and poems.
But as the human world expanded and travelling times and distances grew ever larger, so did the range of emotions procured by wandering into the unfamiliar. Sailors, merchants, soldiers, then later colonists and aethermen found themselves to be explorers, not only of unknown lands on Earth and beyond the sky, but of the human soul as well. Their emotional experience found itself at the core of many new questions. Was the human brain destined for this? Had we evolved enough to bear the weight of oceans crossed, lightyears overcome, or the oppression of overwhelming isolation? How far off could the human mind venture before it dislocated?
After the first Jump Gates opened, men did break; off-world but also back home, where thousands of ordinary people felt a deep sense of alienation in the face of such sudden and profound prospects. Many advocated for putting a halt to extraterrestrial colonization for fear that the existential dread would break something fundamental within humanity. Some warned about knowledge forbidden to the soul, others of incomprehensible horrors springing forth from the confines of the universe. Depression and delusion spread throughout the world at an alarming rate before receding, and rising again with every breakthrough in aether exploration. Those episodes came to be known as the Concord Tides.
They would get bad enough that the International Council of Aether Settlers (ICAS), known for the usual recklessness of its position, felt the need to emphasize the bravery and determination of those who jumped into the aether. To that effect, a verse from French poet Joachim Du Bellay was adopted as a motto meant to capture the newly-found depths of homesickness: nunc miseri ignotis caeci iactamur in undis.
Now, miserable and blind, we are tossed in unknown waves.
As far as vocabulary goes, it also evolved to reflect this shift in human perceptions. “Homesickness” alone was not sufficient; “aethersickness” was coined but did not gain traction; the German “Heimweh” was sometimes used, but never to a great extent.Though the the point of origin for the word in question is still debated, it is said that it was popularized by Polish journalist Anna Misiąg. In an article recounting a dragon hunt on Concord Minor, she describes her experience of hearing the screech of one of the beasts after it was shot down.
Wydało z siebie odrażający krzyk, będący odgłosem szczerego bólu i gniewu, który obnażył części mojego umysłu, o których istnieniu nie miałom pojęcia. Te mroczne miejsca nie powinny mieć dostępu do ludzkich myśli. W zaledwie kilka sekund wróciłom na Ziemię, a następnie ponownie znalazłom się przed zwłokami istoty. Oto, co krył w sobie ów krzyk: lata świetlne odosobnienia i samotności, niezgłębione poczucie braku przynależności.It produced an abominable cry, a sound of pure pain and anger that revealed parts of my own mind I did not know existed. Dark places that, in my opinion, should not be accessible to human thought. I was sent back to Earth in spirit, then found myself in front of the creature's now dead body again, all within seconds. That is what that cry contained: lightyears of isolation and solitude, the soundless feeling of belonging nowhere.
Misiąg’s piece was translated into German and English and featured in Concord Minor’s most prominent newspapers. This is where the German term “Seelenschrei”, “the cry of the soul”, was first used to describe the aether’s homesickness. As for the English word, it took a bit of a detour. First, the German Seelenschrei was translated into French, “cri de l’âme”. This was borrowed into English and anglicized into cridlum or cridlam /ˈkɹɪd.ləm/. In literature, the form creedloom /ˈkɹiːd.ləm/ is sometimes seen, a hypercorrection from the assumption that the term was formed as “creed loom”. It competes with the more medically-oriented aether psychosis.
Despite the many names we have tried to cast onto it, the cridlum feeling remains. It whispers to our souls about what lingers in the shadows beyond the known universe.
Time will tell if horrors do dwell there.
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