Chapter 186: Steins;Gate Premieres! (Part 4)
On an empty street devoid of life, the protagonist of Steins;Gate ran as if his very existence depended on it. Yet no matter how far he pushed himself, no matter how many corners he turned, he could not find a single soul.
"What… what is this?"
He kept running. Desperately, endlessly running—so much so that he didn't even notice he'd been treading the same stretch of road over and over again, caught in a surreal loop.
And then, as if emerging from thin air, a familiar figure appeared before him.
Mayuri.
She held out a bottle of soda toward him with her usual warm, unfazed smile.
"Tuturu~ Here you go, Okarin."
"What's going on? Where is everyone? Where did all the people go?!"
"Gone…?"
"They're gone! Everyone who was just here a moment ago… They vanished—right in front of my eyes!"
"Uhh… I don't really get it…"
"How can you not get it?! You were right here! You didn't see it?!"
"I… I didn't see anything…"
"What are you talking about?!"
And just like that—snap—the moment he turned around, the deserted street suddenly bloomed back to life. People filled the road as if they'd been there all along.
Then, with a strange mechanical whir, a bizarre sound echoed from above.
He slowly lifted his gaze.
Perched at the edge of a rooftop was a strange, unnatural machine, so massive and out of place that the building's bricks had begun to fracture under its weight. Crowds had gathered, murmuring amongst themselves as they gawked at the contraption.
"What… what is that thing?" he muttered in disbelief.
But Mayuri, tilting her head in confusion, replied innocently:
"You forgot, Okarin? We saw it on the news this morning, remember? You even said, 'The Organization is finally making its move!' That's why we came to check it out."
"What are you talking about? Weren't we here for Dr. Nakabachi's presentation?"
"Eh? You didn't know? Because of that weird machine, the presentation was canceled."
"Canceled?!"
"Yeah. You were all huffy about it, remember? You were like, 'That coward of a doctor bailed on us!'"
"We… didn't attend the presentation…?"
"Of course not. The whole building's been cordoned off since this morning."
"That can't be right…"
Reality and memory… were no longer in sync.
As confusion and unease twisted across Rintaro Okabe's face, the screen abruptly cut to black—signaling that Steins;Gate's real story was only just beginning.
After a moment of darkness, the screen flared back to life.
The title appeared in bold letters:
"Part 1: Steins;Gate – The Butterfly's Flap of Fate"
The next scene opened in a cramped, cluttered room.
"Hey, you over there! Can you see us?"
The camera zoomed in from a strange, unsettling angle. Okabe leaned close, addressing the audience directly with cryptic, dramatic flair, muttering things that teetered on the edge of sanity.
It was through this strange, one-sided dialogue that viewers first learned the name of the place: the Future Gadget Laboratory.
And it was here that they finally heard the protagonist's real name—stripped of all pretentious codenames and theatrical monologues:
Rintaro Okabe.
Besides Okabe himself, the lab's other members included the girl from earlier, Mayuri Shiina, and a portly man hunched over a device that looked half-computer, half-alchemical relic. This man, known affectionately as "Daru," was actually Itaru Hashida.
The three of them chatted about utterly nonsensical things—delightfully off-topic banter that painted a vivid picture of Okabe's full-blown delusional grandeur, better known as his chuunibyou.
Meanwhile, the television in the background aired a news report about the same mysterious machine Okabe had seen atop the building earlier that day.
Seeing that again triggered something in him.
The entire morning felt like a foggy dream. A dream he couldn't wake from. As he scrambled to confirm events with Mayuri, he found their recollections wildly out of sync.
His memories from yesterday—and even just this morning—were completely at odds with the reality in front of him.
The more he tried to make sense of it, the deeper he fell into confusion.
And yet…
Rather than collapse under the weight of that fear, he embraced it.
He wrapped the unknown in a veil of fantasy. He let the madness settle, soothed by the comforting delusion of his own self-made theatrics.
In other words—he used his chuunibyou to escape.
And so, the story of Steins;Gate… truly began.
"It has to be the work of the Dark Organization. No doubt about it—they've tampered with my memories! Damn them… But precisely because of that… This is the only path to the unknown realm! It is… the choice of Steins;Gate! El Psy Kongroo! WAHAHAHAHAHA!"
With that maniacal chuunibyou laugh, Rintaro Okabe shattered the tense, mysterious atmosphere the film had built so far.
And yet, even as the laughter echoed, the audience couldn't shake the unease sparked by the film's earlier uncanny scenes. The strange disappearances. The machine. The conflicting memories.
. . . . . . . .
"What is this movie? It's so weird! What's actually going on?"
"Right? I feel like I lost track of the plot five minutes in."
"Wait… What if the protagonist's delusions aren't delusions? What if the Dark Organization he keeps talking about is actually real?"
"Maybe… But even if I don't get the plot, I kind of love the world it's showing. There's no magic, but everything still feels like magic—it's more magical than any fantasy we've seen."
"Totally! And that television he has is so cool! It shows all kinds of programs—I wish real TVs could do that someday."
"Yeah! Imagine if we had a TV that played shows all day, 24 hours straight. It'd be amazing—no more boredom ever!"
"It'd be even better if every home had one. Just imagine…"
"..."
Voices murmured and overlapped throughout the theater. Though most of the audience couldn't quite wrap their heads around the film's tangled mystery, they gradually set aside their confusion and began chatting about the more tangible aspects—those curious details woven into the backdrop of the movie.
And indeed, those details were no accident.
Baron Durin had poured heart and soul into making Steins;Gate feel real. He hadn't just filmed in any ordinary location—he'd built an entire set from scratch on the unused lands behind the Imperial Mage Academy.
Everything was crafted with obsessive care, from the tiniest garbage bin on the corner of the street to the enormous screen mounted atop a building. Even the architectural style of the city itself had been designed to differ from local norms.
All of it—every brick, every shadow—was tailored to conjure the illusion of a world from the future.
And in that sense, for audiences of this era, Steins;Gate might as well have been their first true science fiction epic.
Sure enough, the audience had now been thoroughly drawn in by that futuristic aesthetic. Conversations turned speculative—could a world like that actually exist? Could their own future one day resemble the one on screen?
But while most people found themselves intrigued by the sci-fi design and visual spectacle, one man in the theater focused on something else entirely:
Emperor Hubbard.
From start to finish, his attention had been locked onto one object: the television.
Unlike the more fantastical inventions scattered throughout the film, the Emperor knew that this "television" wasn't pure fiction. It existed—or at least, it could. And if it did, it might well reshape the fabric of their society.
As the highest authority in the empire, Emperor Hubbard had long since trained himself to be hypersensitive to the emergence of new technologies. For he understood—such things didn't just shape culture. They could change politics, the economy, the throne itself.
"The uses of that device… might go far beyond what I'd imagined."
Picturing a future molded by the technology he'd just seen, the Emperor exhaled slowly, as if sensing the winds of an era beginning to shift.
Beside him, General Wilhelm offered a solemn nod.
"Indeed. It may not feel like much now… but if a machine like that were to one day become common—present in every household—and if it allowed people to all see the same content at the same time… the influence it would carry would be immeasurable."
"Hmm… And not just that," the Emperor added gravely. "Right now, Baron Durin only uses the television to show his films, so we assume it's for entertainment. But if what the film suggests is true—then its true purpose isn't to amuse, but to inform. It's a tool for spreading information on a massive scale… for delivering what the film calls news."
Emperor Hubbard spoke slowly, his voice laced with both awe and a subtle trace of fear.
"In the past, the general populace was never particularly sensitive to information. No matter how significant an event might be, unless it was passed down layer by layer through the chain of command, most people would never even heard of it."
"But cinema… cinema changed that."
"As a medium that gathers the masses in one place, film greatly accelerated the process of spreading information. Then came the television taverns, making that diffusion more localized and intimate."
He paused, eyes narrowed, thoughts digging deeper.
"But none of that compares to what will happen when televisions enter every home."
"The moment television becomes widespread, the people's access to information will become instantaneous. It won't be passed down—it will be broadcast. That kind of shift…"
He trailed off.
There was a word on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't say it.
Yet General Wilhelm, standing beside him, understood it perfectly.
A weapon.
Yes—a weapon that could not be seen or touched, but one that could crush an enemy's will before a single sword was drawn.
If televisions truly became a household staple, their potential to reshape minds on a national scale would make them a more terrifying force than any army.
No nation could withstand that kind of war. It was the warfare of an entirely different dimension.
A quiet, almost invisible conquest.
That was the true terror of television—a poisoned candy, sweet on the surface but deadly underneath. And unless someone stepped in to place limits on it, the repercussions would be catastrophic.
But most people in the theater hadn't noticed any of this. They were too busy marveling at the novelty. Even the Beastkin Oracle seated in the back only vaguely sensed the convenience of "instant messaging" and the wonders of communication.
Only a rare few understood that any tool capable of changing an era is always, at its core, a weapon powerful enough to destroy the one that came before.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Meanwhile, at the Imperial Mage Academy…
The mages in attendance had an even sharper appreciation for the film's subtle intricacies.
After all, the future depicted in Steins;Gate—that so-called "sci-fi" vision—was, in many ways, just another Tuesday for a magic user.
Instant messaging.
Convenient infrastructure.
Effortless transportation.
These were all things mages had long taken for granted.
And yet… the world shown in the film clearly wasn't a world of magic.
There were no spellcasters, no arcane rituals, no magical duels.
Not once in the entire runtime had a proper "mage" appeared on screen.
But the influence of magic?
It was everywhere.
The eerie machines.
The impossibly advanced devices.
The spatial anomalies and paradoxes.
To any trained magic user, the sensation was deeply disconcerting. As though the film's universe had been twisted—an uncanny parallel of their own, built without magic yet still haunted by its shadow.
Still, beyond that discomfort, what truly held the mages' attention was the plot itself. The layers of mystery. The bizarre sequence of events.
"What exactly happened to Rintaro?"
"That void-like space that appeared around him… could that be some form of spatial magic?"
"But this world doesn't have magic, right?"
"Then how do you explain that scene? And more importantly, when he asked others about it later… no one remembered what happened. The facts themselves changed."
A silence fell among them.
No matter how they examined it, one thing was clear: the reality portrayed in Steins;Gate was not consistent.
It bent. It glitched. It rewrote itself.
And for mages, that made it even more terrifying than any spell.
<+>
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