Aether Irving

Aether in her neutral pose

Aether Irving is a character and one of the Contestants in Exit/Corners. She is intended to be a love interest for Ink. She claims that her Contact is her father, who is apparently somewhat abusive.

## Personality

Technically speaking, Aether does not display much of a personality. She usually remains calm, but is the most easily frightened out of everyone in the group, screaming when she finds Beth's body. Possibly aside from Ink, she appears to be the kindest and most submissive member of the group. She often tries to intervene during arguments and the Contestants' attempted suicides at their Corners, but this usually ends up failing as without any real personality to attach to her, Rae sees her as being an equivalent to Ink's girlfriend, as they wake up in the same bed for unexplained reasons, while everyone else also sees her nature as too gentle to force a change.

While the contestants do not find her frightening, there is an unsettling aura of mysteriousness that Ink can feel around her, due to her seemingly having no personality and always wearing her hoodie, which can be seen as suspicious as she has never been seen without it. Additionally, she has said the exact same sentence to him as the narrator, with Ink recalling this if he answers back with a similar sentence to his original reply. Further adding on to this is her apparent clairvoyance: she is able to pick up random details without being told, such as the name of Rae's contact, Tiana, detect how people are feeling and memories corresponding to this, and seemingly respond by saying things that they would want to hear.

In reality, Aether is an AI. She is programmed to have a personality that would attract Ink to fall in love with her, explaining her mysteriousness and general lack of personality. When Sean forces her to shut down in Chapter 28, she is unable to do anything; she cannot walk or speak and is entirely susceptible to Ink forcibly dragging her out of the hotel. Despite this, she displays a single sign of recognizing Ink and her trust meter with Ink will still increase.

## Background

Aether states that she is a freshman at Bellbridge U, and a psych major, although she has not chosen her course yet. She also states that her Contact, her father, is slightly abusive. Little is really known about her background, as her father's name is not revealed, and she does not in any way describe her kidnapping or her life at Bellbridge U, only that she attends it and is a psych major with no course.

In reality, Aether's entire background was fabricated, as she is simply an AI that is part of the CORNERS simulation program. She was created by Tiana and Sean as part of the program. She was specifically designed so that Ink would feel a connection to and fall in love with her, and as such they consider her his Corner (Aether herself having no Corner). In fact, Aether is technically Sent, as Sent was an obsessive prototype of her which explains why Sent reveals that they have fallen in love with Ink. Other than her personality (or lack thereof) and background, and possibly her appearance, everything about Aether, including her clairvoyance, only exists because she is what the contestants imagine her to be, due to the way negative space works in the CORNERS program. The abusive father she had talking to her as her Contact was actually Sean, and it is implied the reason her hood is never lifted until Tiana removes it in Chapter 26 is that her head and what is inside of it could have revealed that she was an AI to the contestants. In fact, the name "Aether Irving" was chosen by Sean and he expresses concern that it may have been on the nose enough for Ink to figure out that something is unnatural about her. Nonetheless, no one discovers the truth behind her, not even Aether, until Sean reveals it.

## Story

At the start of Exit/Corners, Aether wakes up in the same bed as Ink, both a bit shocked. After having a small chat, and deciding that they could not have been together the previous night due to neither of them going out, Aether decides to pretend they're detectives, letting Ink decide to be either a detective or the sidekick. After leaving the room, they meet Rae and Beth. Following this, Liza arrives and Sent shows up on the computer to tell his contestants about the puzzles, explosives and the Four Elements Hotel.

As they progress through the hotel, Ink and Aether grow closer, and begin to develop feelings for each other. They are unable to express this, however, as Beth is found dead first. After Ink revealed that her death was a murder, she was the prime suspect as she claimed to be alone checking each room, which would have easily given her enough time to kill Beth. However, Ink quickly deduces that Tiana is involved with the creation of Exit/Corners, which leads her to hold Aether at knifepoint. When the contestants are forced to allow her to take Aether, she removes her hood to look at her head because of her alleged clairvoyance.

As Ink chases after Aether, he finds that Tiana has taken her to a laboratory, where they later meet Sean, who is still alive and Aether's "father", as she is actually an AI created by Tiana and Sean, and that like the entire hotel and everything outside it, she is mostly "negative space" as some of the traits she displays actually only exist because the contestants believe they do, and that Aether is Ink's Corner as she is designed to attract him. As Aether and Ink refuse to believe that she is an AI, Sean forcibly shuts her down, leaving her empty and unable to do anything. Ink then attempts to escape the hotel with her, and after Rae and/or Liza leave (if they came along) she shows a sign of recognizing him by attempting to speak and say "Detect" or "Side" (depending on whether Ink chose to be the detective or sidekick in Chapter 1). However, after Ink turns away for a moment, she disappears.

In the secret ending, earned by unlocking everything in the "Paranoia" section of the Standings by inputting all alternate puzzle solutions, Sean is killed when Ink opens the thread he had seen. Aether then shows back up to tell Ink that it is not his fault, and that Sean would have died sooner or later. Ink recognizes that the AI speaking to him is not Aether, which she confirms, although Aether was paradoxically her. She tells Ink that she is unable to leave as an AI and that she is there to help him escape because that is what he believes she will do. She tells Ink to imagine that there is no floor, and Ink, doing so, falls into the void the same way he does in the normal ending.

Regardless of how Chapter 28 ends, Aether causes an (intentional) error in the Standings screen. In Chapter 26, her Trust with Ink will always be set to max (and can sometimes be more than max), and after Chapter 28 it will increase so much that it extends past the screen and conceals Beth's portrait, seemingly because she is an AI and the CORNERS program has crashed, overflowing her Trust value.

In Chapter 29, Nolan Thatcher reveals upon Ink's questioning that while Aether and her data still exist, the instance of her in Exit/Corners was terminated with Sean's command and her memory of that instance became irretrievable when it crashed, meaning Aether would no longer remember Exit/Corners or any of the Contestants if she were loaded again, much to Ink's disappointment.

## Trivia

* Aether's clairvoyance has led to several theories, including some suggesting she is not actually human, but rather, she is Sent. This also led to speculation that either she or Ink would be the one without a Corner.
	+ These theories both turned out to be true, as Aether is (technically) Sent and has no corner due to being a part of the CORNERS simulation program.
* Aether's name, as mentioned by Sean, is an early hint that she is the one that does not fit among the five Contestants. "Aether" is said to be the fifth element of magic (playing into the name of the Four Elements Hotel). One of the music tracks in the game also seems to reference her name, being titled "Aetherling".