Phaeron

A Phaeron is a citizen of the Second Dominion who has heightened sensitivity to the Empyrean Verse to the point of being able to interact with it while still in mortality. Phaerons have the ability to communicate with the Celestials, an ability that is little understood, respected, and feared even by the practitioner themselves.
In reality, Phaerons are aware of their own eternal, timeless existence within the Empyrean and their mortality is merely an expression-and-becoming of that existence. It could be said that Phaerons exist in both Verses simultaneously and walk the very fine threads that unites them as if they were a tightrope walker and existence were a trapeze act. This "other" existence is the divine soul of the person within the Empyrean and is called the True Self. 
Popular culture within the Second Dominion deems Phaerons to be "half-way ascended", or 'with one foot in each verse'
The term originated on the very first voyage of the Second Dominion fleet to Tau Ceti after a quiet peace had descended upon Earth following the overthrow of the iron-fisted Anthroperium. Tau Ceti was the first system to be officially colonized and experimented with under the Second Dominion.
Phaerons were discovered by Joshua and The Watcher, as Phaeronica welcomed them by name into Sol System when they passed Pluto. They discovered that over the past several centuries, spacers had been evolving a culture completely separate from that of Earth: while the Anthroperium was dogmatic and overtly religious, space was to be anarchic and scientific to a fault.
== Technology ==
During the Twilight Age, many adherents of Architecture formed insular communities gathering around individuals displaying apparently miraculous abilities. These communities became the strongholds of spacer civilization and came to define them culturally. At the Temple of Architecture on Kamijing, a series of experiments and trials were undertaken that resulted in the creation of the technology now known as the synaptic halo. It was engineered from Wilhelm F. Keigel's so-called psychic radio technology.
The synaptic halo allows Phaerons to communicate with one another in a closed loop network, forming a collective group mind while retaining their individuality. By the time of Advent, the Phaerons have engineered the network so that a Phaeron can simply think another Phaeron's name and hold conversation.
It appears as a hard ring of iron around a person's head, worn like a cap, with various stable wires and electrodes leading into the temporal lobes, cerebellum, and the pineal gland. These are attached to a small backpack or are fully integratable with a vacsuit's computer system.
Category:Second Trilogy
Category:Characters