ÄON or Time Management Frank Krugmann
ÄON or AION is the Greco-Latin expression for the path of the world. At the same time, the term can also mean eternity. ÄON is thus a symbol for the end of time. In the same way that man's mortality gives meaning to time, a glance into eternity makes it impossible to even think in temporal terms. His birth behind him, his death on the horizon, time rushes through man's fingers. No matter what he does, it costs time and only brings him nearer to his end. ÄON inverts the game: the user gathers time instead of incessently losing it. The compulsory progression of the path of the world is interrupted and subjected to new rules. Time appears in the form of beads which users can gather, trade or waste as they like. It can, however, occur that the player has to give up a part of his time collection or he is unavoidably catapulted out of the application and has to start again from scratch. Additionally, there are niches in which time stands still, and forever at that. Once started, ÄON can be played endlessly. The user's performance is also never evaluated. The structure of ÄON is comparable to that of a black hole. Energy is located in the middle (the main choice). Energy keeps the whole system from collapsing and assures that the borders of what is happening are never exceeded, which would mean that the user is irrevocably lost forever. Photons (event worlds) are located around the center which are, in their own right, so complex that they form their own individual universes. The user is constantly confronted with fragments from the individual worlds and it becomes necessary, sooner or later, to react to them. With each reaction the user risks endangering the system's balance. In ÄON, every attempt to move away from the center of the system ends where it began. In reality a state of being has, however, been left behind and the user enjoys insights into the environment of a state of being which is not identical to the old one.