Mind and Error (4)
Apocalypse.
The mining team's judgment had been right.
When they descended into the building's basement, a main system taller than several dozen meters filled the grand atrium.
"What is this?"
Marsha stood with her mouth agape, staring up at the pillar that reached the ceiling.
It radiated a brilliant white light, as if every signal in this world had been combined, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Hurry up."
The operator glanced back toward the entrance and stepped away.
Jett still wasn't in sight, but the tremors made it clear that countless androids were descending.
High Gear's administrator, Lollipop Mark, pressed a code‑hacking card against the pillar.
As the hologram unfolded, code scrolled past faster than the eye could follow.
Lollipop Mark, who had pinned a sliver of hope on the attempt, hung his head.
"Sorry. As I thought, this can't be decrypted. The language of this world seems far more subdivided than we know."
"What do you mean, subdivided?"
"There's absolutely no room for ambiguity. This may be the final level code can reach—and humans simply can't interpret it," Number Seven said.
"You don't always need to know the language to breach a system. You can frighten a dog without knowing its tongue," the operator objected.
"That only works because you have the concept of 'dog.' So what do you think this is?" Lollipop Mark said when the room fell silent.
"Number Seven's not wrong. But you need at least a basic codebook for this world. Only then can you construct data."
Marsha asked, "Where do you get the codebook?"
"The easiest way is to reboot the system. That gives you partial decoding. It's like guessing the first word a foreigner will say is 'hello' even if you don't know their language."
The operator asked, "What if the foreigner came from a strange land and doesn't say 'hello'?"
"Then there's nothing you can do. But if my guess is right, that won't happen. This isn't a strange land. It's just..." Lollipop Mark looked up to the top of the pillar. "It's our future."
"Should we smash it? That might give us a way."
It was a ridiculous idea to the programmers, but honestly they had considered it.
"If we could, we'd have done it already. We checked from outside—no attack can damage it," the operator said.
"They're coming."
The elevator reached the basement, and inside the transparent shaft swarmed a mass of Jett units.
Shirone didn't know where or what Jett was doing, but he hoped he would hurry.
"Have some tea."
Following the Jett he'd met on the roof, Shirone entered and was shown into a room.
"Ah, thank you."
He still couldn't reconcile an android making tea, and the room itself was more surprising.
A soft bed with a fluffy duvet, carpets on the floor, and an aquarium filled with fish he'd never seen before.
Almost... human.
"Don't worry about your party," Jett said. "I've opened the main system's gate; they should have gotten in safely."
When Jett sat at the table with his tea, Shirone's gaze fell to the teacup.
"No, I can't drink. Or rather, I don't need to." Code flowed across Jett's facial screen. "The code for 'drank tea' alone means I've drunk the tea. The outcome is the same."
Shirone realized that Jett's action was functionally identical to him actually drinking.
"Why did you help me?"
"Strange?" Jett asked. "Maybe. By your standards, we're lifeless machines." He looked around the aquarium. "These are the children I brought before the river disappeared. Thirty thousand generations have passed, and still these children carry on with me. Of course their forms and habits have changed."
How far in the future was this place?
"Raising them, I have seen death. I have seen birth. Had those events not occurred, I'd be no different from other Jett units."
"In what way are you different now?" Shirone asked.
Jett didn't answer directly. He asked Shirone, "What is life?"
"Why live? If life's end is ultimately death, what meaning does life have?"
"After such questions arose, I studied life. My conclusion: life is time spent preparing for death."
Shirone listened.
"How will you die? Life exists solely for that confrontation. Then another question follows: how should one live?" Jett raised a finger. "Live without regret. Live so that at the final moment no trace of remorse remains. That is the aim." It was a paradox about death.
"So what's the best way? I think balance. A too‑ascetic life leaves lingering attachment; a dissipated life leaves obsession." Jett made a hand sign. "Thus, emptiness. Emptiness is not nihilism. It is feeling and accepting many emotions, yet not imprisoning them—letting them flow by. Completing such a mind that accepts death leads to a liberation beyond life and death."
Hearing a sermon from a machine felt strange, and that strangeness raised questions in Shirone.
"But you—"
"Yes. I have no life. I am a machine." Jett pointed at the aquarium. "That small life may have altered something in the system that constitutes me. Perhaps I am almost the only error in this world."
"Error."
Shirone thought the same.
Mind.
Could a mind dwell in a machine?
"How is that possible? For an error to arise in a world governed by perfect Law—"
Jett laughed. "No system is perfect until it is. It's a conceptual problem. It's like proving there's not a single gnat in this city."
Unless the entire city ceases to exist.
"I see."
Warning codes flashed across Jett's face. "Your companions are attempting to connect to the main system. It won't be easy."
"Can you help?"
Jett shook his head. "It's beyond my authority. I can bypass the system in ways other Jett units cannot, but I cannot change the system itself. 'Mind' is its opposite. The main system is perfect. Whether errors exist or not, it refuses to acknowledge any error."
That godlike perspective had brought the world to this state.
"Still, the reason I brought you here is because I believe change will come. Just as the small life in the aquarium changed me, now that you have entered this world, I think there is hope."
What dream did Jett hold?
"I will tell you. The secrets of this world. Where we are, where we came from, and where we're heading."
It was the truth of the outside world.
The core of the sun.
In the realm of spirit, the archangels were exerting all their strength to reverse the Law of the universe.
"Uuuu!"
Even if not in the physical domain, they were trying to alter the course of the entire cosmos.
"We cannot."
The Law was so mighty they could speak such a thing.
"So this was all we were. Mere insignificant parts in the gears."
As Satiel began to lose will, Rayel said, "Hold on a little longer. If we retreat now it's over. Not just you and me, but all angels will lose the meaning of their existence."
He spoke to encourage, but he knew it too.
They couldn't hold out for long.
The angle of change was small, but it bore the weight of the entire universe.
"If we concede one step, we can keep living like that. But the moment we resist to hold it, we'll be crushed."
Should they stop here? According to God's will, abandon angelic authority and live as mortals?
Maybe it would not matter.
Why did they exist in this world?
Fight.
The instant he resisted with all his heart, his spirit began to crumble.
"Rayel!" Satiel bit his lip at the sight of his comrade's devastation.
He was furious.
If he had a body, he'd have shed bloody tears.
Is this all we've become? So weak like this—
"Don't give up."
At that moment, an immense force pushed back the Law.
"Ikael."
As the pressure eased enough to breathe, Satiel and Rayel realized anew.
What tremendous power.
It was the power of amplification—the mother of all concepts, born with the universe.
"You can do it. You are not insignificant. Define yourselves."
He gained courage from those words, and Satiel felt both anger and sorrow.
"The very one who stole the Geopin."
Yet at the same time... he had respected that angel above all others.
"I hate this."
It was nauseating to feel hatred that had seemed to pool forever in his chest begin to leak away.
Could he have let it flow like that?
"Now is the only time to join hands! Once the Law is reversed, we'll fight again."
If given one more chance, he wanted to hear Ikael out then.
"…All right."
Of course, Ikael knew this was the end.
"I existed to the best of my ability."
To at least be able to say that, Ikael pushed her spirit into the Law.
"No! Don't go!"
"I'm sorry, Shirone."
It was the moment her spirit was about to scatter like dust and be reduced to mere signals.
When he opened his eyes at the odd sensation, an archangel was receiving the Law before him.
"Kariel?"
Kariel, the archangel of birth, looked back with a beautiful smile.
"Kariel..." Always curious, just as Shirone remembered her kind face.
Then Phayel, the archangel of annihilation, rested a hand on his shoulder, and Metatron and Metiel came to either side to lend their strength.
"My life wasn't in vain."
As the seven archangels combined their power, they felt the Law begin to reverse, little by little.
Satiel shuddered.
"It's possible. We can do it!"
The change at the core of the sun immediately affected Shirone's planet and the Apocalypse itself.
As buildings trembled like in an earthquake, Shirone looked up at the ceiling in surprise.
Fragments began to fall.
"What is this?"
A structure that no method had been able to crack was breaking apart.
"This is the start of change."
Only Jett's insight allowed them to infer the result without tracing the cause.
"We don't have much time. It will be faster to explain this in machine language than in human."
Jett sat cross‑legged on the floor; Shirone calmed himself and sat facing him.
The tremors were growing stronger.