Planet AuroraPlanet of unknown size and location. The highly intelligent inhabitants devote their culture to aesthetics, believing that every aspect of life is art. Though this may seem impossible to form a stable society at first, the Aurorians have maintained a thriving society even after the Age of Cybernetics. The people are humanoid in appearance, with large eyes and long, slender fingers. They are strangely beautiful, which can explain why Ruby nearly fell in love with one of them.
The natives of Aurora also have a group-mind intelligence, ergo, if one knows, all know. Unlike the planet Dong-A-Long, Aurorians can live separated from the planet and still communicate with the populous still on-planet.
Three people of Aurora have played a significant role in the life of the female Terran detective, Ruby, an inhabitant of the planet Summa Nulla. An Aurorian named Monet visited the planet during the time era Ruby 1 took place. He allowed Ruby to travel with him to Casino City, a location in the Utopias. From there, they parted. Ruby tried to meet him again when she learned that Monet knew about the place titled the Black Star in order to learn more about it, but when Ruby arrived where she expected to find him, in the Hall of Shadows, she found him dead. Ruby barely escaped his assassins (the Slimies, as it turned out) with her skin and reported his death to the Aurorian Embassy. This is the last we hear of Monet -- for the moment.
Shortly after this tragedy, Monet’s sister, Moonbeam, an Aurorian warrior, meets Ruby and tells her about her plans to revenge Monet by killing off the last of the Slimies. The two have a huge shoot-out with the foul creatures and succeed -- however, Ruby’s final "I think..." after Moonbeam asks if they have truly snuffed them all leaves an ending screaming for a surprising sequel.
In the beginning of Ruby 3, Ruby encounters an individual whom she immediately mistakes for Monet, back from the dead. He is an Aurorian, but it is not Monet. The alien introduces himself as Man Ray, one of Monet’s closest friends, a representative of the Aurorian Embassy. Man Ray hires Ruby to find the source of the dark force entitled Zumzamin, which is increasing rapidly and originating chiefly from Summa Nulla. The sudden increase is dubbed "a threat to aesthetics" by the Aurorians, and Man Ray is voted the person to report the incident to a person who can find out why.
Near the end of Part 1 of Ruby 3, Man Ray attends the Digital Circus with Ruby to help in the assault upon Magnifico, City of Malls, the location where Zumzamin is the most powerful. Surprisingly, even though he is very skeptical at first, Man Ray appears to gain a sense of humor, a characteristic uncommon among Aurorians. When he appears for the last time at the final celebration of the circus, he invited Ruby to visit his home planet, and comments on Ruby’s own home world.
During the time Ruby is in the Invisible World in Ruby 3, she discovers Monet did not actually die in Ruby 1. When she first meets him, she thinks that he is a Time Suspender, one of the humans who knows the secret of eternal life, but much later, after she falls madly in love with Monet, Monet leaves her and she nearly has a nervous breakdown, she is told by the bartender at the Astral Bar and Grill that Monet is really a Twilight Master, a person who serves both sides -- a typical occupation, perhaps, for a planet whose inhabitants see the Middle Path and no separation between dark and light.
Even though Ruby is very frustrated, she manages to go on, and asks herself why people spend so much time on relationships anyway, and as the bartender says: "He showed you it is possible to give yourself to someone without losing yourself."
They know how to suspend time.
The Time Suspenders.
Time…Suspenders? That sounds like something to hold my pants up.
Well, maybe they’re snappy dressers.
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