The World We Live In (4)
Delta Headquarters.
Kittra of the Parras Kingdom stared impassively at the Exoverse condensed into a black sphere.
"A singularity with no volume and infinite density."
If Mu was the zero-space that contained all possibilities, then existence itself was only an illusion.
"Do you defy God's will?"
Seven archangels had rolled back the Law, yet pyramids still stood across the world.
If the number 100 is the result, the number of ways to make that 100 is infinite.
All the angels had done was remove seven-eighths of the causes.
"You can't change the outcome."
To God, probability is only 0 or 100 percent.
Until all eight source concepts were gathered, God still had an overwhelming victory.
When blue light shone into Kittra's eyes, the pyramids' magnetic fields began to expand.
At the same time, that same blue light flared in the eyes of those caught in the field.
They were people who had lost themselves inside bubbles of expanding quantum fluctuations.
"Kill Maya."
In Omega 999, a single name became the most important Law in the universe.
At the sun's core, the seven archangels felt the universe's Law shifting.
It would bring about the same result, albeit by a different route.
"How...?"
"Ikael," Satiel said, "they bypassed what we enforced. They can change it by any means."
"Still, they kept their hearts. If that's true, the ordinary angels won't lose their status." Would that really be so? Personally it was a relief, but on the scale of the cosmos nothing had changed.
In the end, it meant they had failed to defy God, and God intended to close this world.
"Nothingness. You can't stop what doesn't exist." God's breath seeped through every substance and every seam in the Laws.
If the universe were a box, a single hole would let air fill it entirely.
"The only way is to shut it completely. Unless every being refuses God with a single will..."
It was a game God would ultimately win.
Having absorbed the phoenix's essence, Amy rode the solar wind to where Shirone waited.
"Shirone."
Inside the Miracle Stream's shield, the moment she extinguished the incarnate of fire, Amy found herself naked.
"Ah!"
She scrambled behind Shirone, blushing as she covered herself.
"Don't look back."
Shirone lifted one corner of his mouth.
"I can at least make you some clothes." That would have been fine, but seeing the workload the Shirone Sphere would require left him speechless.
"No, it's fine. They'd just burn again anyway." Amy was briefly entranced by the cascade of matter pouring from Shirone's hands.
"It's incredible."
"Yeah. Mom reversed the Law, but the world of the Apocalypse didn't change. It means God's thought goes beyond human categories. Maybe this is... the last way I can oppose God."
Shirone didn't say "we."
He assumed she understood—that unifying humanity would be far harder than the Shirone Sphere.
Amy wrapped her arms around Shirone from behind.
"Stay strong, Shir."
Her chest swelled as if her soul were pressing through his back.
"Let's not just try to make ourselves happy," Amy said.
After Pisho's funeral, when it was just the two of them, she had said the same thing.
"...Huh?"
Hot tears streamed down Shirone's face, the same as back then.
"Don't worry. The man I love is only you. I will never change."
Shirone cried in silence.
Feeling his sob through his whole body, Amy recalled long-ago days.
"Remember? When I first met you."
She had found a rustic boy lost in the back alleys of Creas city.
"You had it rough back then. I was awful too. I even told you to take your clothes off—"
"—ha ha."
"But that night I went home and told my father I'd go to Magic Academy." It was the day Shirone first succeeded with magic.
"That's how we met again, and we went through so much. Sometimes I wonder—if I hadn't met you that day, what would've happened? If I'd been whimsical and gone to the ice cream shop, if I'd been ten minutes—no, five minutes later to the alley. If I'd said one different thing..."
Looking back, human fate was chilling.
"I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't be able to hug you from behind and say this."
Shirone fell silent.
"If I had lived another life, I would've lived it that way too. But Shirone, I—this me—believes that moment was a miracle. A miracle that changed my life."
So then...
"I would never change it. Even if I turned back time a thousand or ten thousand times, I would never change that moment for any future."
Shirone bowed his head.
"I must remember this moment." He still did not know why.
But if a world's beginning and end were already fixed, what people could do was ultimately...
"Shirone, I won't forget you. I will love you, even if I have to pierce every probability in the universe to find you."
To throw one's heart with everything one had.
≪ O 99
...Huh.
Turning, Shirone brushed Amy's tear-soaked cheek.
"You have to remember me. I'll come find you. Even if I have to search the whole universe, I will come."
Shirone knew nothing of what would happen in six hours.
Only that it was Omega 999.
At humanity's terminus as ordained by God, they had vowed a farther future.
The two of them looked toward the sun.
"I'll be back."
He didn't know what was happening in the core, but Amy could help.
"Be careful."
"Don't worry."
Amy cupped Shirone's face and kissed him gently, then summoned her fire incarnation.
She moved away from the Miracle Stream's shield and smiled.
"No one can kill me." Through the magic of spontaneous combustion, her body instantly transferred to the sun.
"Right."
Feeling Amy's warmth for a moment, Shirone tightened his gaze.
"Mika."
- Construction progress: 42.0148 percent.
"I have to make this succeed."
For perhaps the first time, the thought crossed his mind that humanity's integration might be impossible.
The tower of Delta Headquarters.
Perched at its very top, Shirone watched the crowd gathered at the main gate with sorrowful eyes.
"It never ends."
After Gis's press conference, Rodenin's citizens split into two camps and began to protest.
"No, it's not like that."
Look beyond what's visible and nobody intended to listen to anyone else.
"Let us punish Gis, who tarnished Jaive's honor, under kingdom law! This is the citizens' right!"
In the democratic monarchy of Jaive, the capital's citizens wielded considerable power.
"Who tarnished anyone's honor? Spreading division with unproven claims will only hand the advantage to the Temple!"
"Don't think you can bully people into submission with that threat! A king whose morality has crumbled is unfit to represent the people!"
Voices hurled accusations and the uproar echoed into Delta Headquarters.
Albino stood by the window and watched hundreds of torches blaze at the main gate.
Rupist said, "It went exactly as Gis wanted. Those flames look like the citizens' rage."
"Rage is dangerous. Emotion is visible. And what's visible can be controlled."
Albino continued, "From the start, the content of the press conference didn't matter. Once the signal is sent, those who receive it react one of two ways: agree or disagree."
"That's how they split people."
"Binary thinking is like human destiny. If it's not right, it's wrong. But the 1.5-generation of humanity is different. They have an extra option."
Albino said, "Right, wrong, or no absolute answer."
"There are no absolute answers in the world. Everything is contradiction. People fear that, so they cling to being 'right.' The 1.5-generation accepts contradiction. Even if they don't understand or can't accept it, they just act. They focus only on solving problems."
"In a sense, it's an emotional deficit."
"Very cold. They've evolved to the apex of a civilized ecosystem. By now they'll carve up the big prizes—money and power—and toss whatever's left to the citizens. The joy of victory, citizens' sense of accomplishment—nutrientless scraps."
"That's a noble value."
"Haha. It's like slapping a 'best' sticker on something nobody understands and selling it. Honestly, I don't know how any of that makes life happier. But if people buy it, they'll sell it."
Rupist, lost in thought, asked, "What if the citizens had stayed silent after the press conference?"
"Gis would've been desperate. You can't predict mass reaction. But it's hard—the pre-empirical-stage integration; that's what Ultima is."
"I see."
"As a fallback, the viceroy could bind the citizens together, but the purge is over, isn't it? A declaration is always the last step."
The citizens argued without end.
"Let's wait. At least until the Temple ceremony finishes, withhold judgment."
Even within Gis's faction, moderates and radicals split.
"The lady is dead. How should His Majesty feel? Let's restrain ourselves for now."
The moderates split into sentimentalists and rationalists.
"This isn't the time for that; it's frustrating. We should hold back considering the current state."
The sentimentalists split into the outraged and the sympathetic.
"How can you say that? Don't you have children? Are you some kind of psycho?"
"Anything else? Done talking?"
Shirone could only watch the citizens fracture with a sad look.
"There's no right answer."
Only those who search for it and those who charge forward with the wrong answer remain.
In a system where the fastest to arrive plants a flag and rules the rest,
They would now—
They would be toasting at the top of the world.
"My, Your Highness Gis. Congratulations." In the bath Arachne had prepared, Jaive's allied leaders gathered.
Gis stepped into the tub and said, "Ha! What could possibly be so bad? It's a relief to have the aching tooth pulled."
The leader of the Pleasure House straddled the bath's edge, bare-breasted, smoking a long pipe.
"Mr. Raymond surprised me with his loyalty. I heard he called his wife's name before he died."
The king of Iron laughed uproariously.
"Puhahaha! Why? Afraid he'll go to hell? How could such a man be king... Ah, whatever."
Gis's eyelids trembled.
"Ah, good. I feel lighter, lighter."
Predators of civilization who let emotion not interfere with getting what they wanted.
"Your Highness, accept my love." But the cold, calculating minds of the so-called 1.5-generation of humanity were aimed at something
"Heh heh, sure. Who shall I ask?" instinctive, animal, primordial.
"Ah!" That was precisely the world of Omega 999 Shirone was looking at.