Fine Tuning (1)
Where Bardvelve had vanished, a vast pit of unknowable depth yawned.
Shirone, who had been watching that darkness, turned to Nane.
"Why did you come here?"
Nane, equally lost in thought, smiled and stepped forward.
"I have legs too, don't I? I can go anywhere."
"Don't dodge the question."
Shirone said sharply.
"A leg won't move if the heart doesn't. You've been unmoved by everything so far—why come all the way here now?"
"There's… something strange over there." Nane pointed toward the inner keep of Bukjeon. "A being whose cosmological constants differ from this world's. It means fine tuning has been applied."
"Fine tuning?"
"There are limits to what can occur in a cosmos. If you create a world where a small ball moves, you can't set that ball's speed, mass, and direction to infinity."
"Because that would exceed the bounds of creation."
"Exactly. If you convert all properties into numbers, the limits of those numbers will match precisely the limits set by the world. The entity closest to those limits is Imir."
Nane raised a finger.
"Of course, in raw destructive power you have things like a supernova or a black hole, but they're slaves to natural cycles. Overall, Imir wins. Free will's stat is overwhelmingly high."
"So a child could burn a mountain… you mean?"
"Yes. But the new humans sit outside those values. Physics, sensation, mind, logic—anything could be fine-tuned. They won't be easy to stop."
Shirone had grasped some of this through Bardvelve as well.
If not for Nane, the fight would have been harder. The same went for Nane. Yet the question remained.
"Why help me? Wasn't closing this world what you wanted?"
"The situation changed. In a closed world I would be the only righteousness, but you opened the ceiling. Once it's open, the truths here lose their absoluteness. Even as Buddha, I don't welcome that."
Nane headed for the inner keep.
"Come. We need to confirm something before we decide. You should see it with your own eyes."
A horrific truth.
—
When Borbor opened her eyes, both hands were tied to ropes hanging from the ceiling.
Blinking, her vision filled with dozens of locust-faced men.
"Kiii. Comrade's… enemy."
No special weapons—only jaws and claws—but they were menacing enough.
Borbor felt bitter.
'I'm alive.'
If life is pain and death is terror, what is it to die and then be brought back?
A locust-man stepped closer.
"Don't think this will be quick."
Larger than the others, he looked like a leader. He thrust his hideous jaw forward.
"I'll tear you apart. Watch your flesh slide down our throats, you inferior beast."
'Again…'
Every human death would be solitary.
'I have to keep living.'
A lonely life. No matter how desperately she lived, whether she vanished now or later, nothing would change—life like digging at empty air.
'It's annoying to die; living isn't sweet. This isn't some honeyed world.'
"Bark! Bark for me!" The locust-man jabbed a claw into her side, and electricity flickered across Borbor's eyes.
Her expression didn't change.
"Heh! You're holding up. How about this?"
Flesh split and bone scraped; a scream tore from Borbor's throat.
"Aaaaaaa!"
The locust-men burst into laughter.
"Nice! That's a good sound!"
Flush with amusement, the leader drove his claw in deeper.
"Now! How about this? Thi—!" He cut off mid-word when he saw Borbor's cold, unchanging eyes.
'What—?'
Reflected in her pupils was the insect's face, as clear as day, utterly expressionless.
As the leader slowly tilted his head, Borbor's head tilted at the exact same angle.
'No, no way.'
He was bewildered.
'It feels like I'm mimicking this beast.'
Borbor—who could not find identity without borrowing another's emotions—spoke.
"Gouge out my eyes."
The leader couldn't tell whether the voice had been his own or hers.
"O-okay!"
At the point where the boundary between self and other had dissolved, he reached toward her eyes with both hands.
"I'll pluck them out!"
"W-what—?"
The other locust-men stared in horror.
"Hey! Wait! What are you doing?!"
As they shouted, the leader grabbed his own eyeballs with his claws.
"Aaaah! Die, filthy beast!"
Borbor echoed the cry.
"Aaaah! Die, filthy beast!"
With a wet sound the locust's eyes burst; the leader staggered, holding thick globes in his hands.
"Hah! Hah! I did it! I avenged myself!"
"What the—?!"
The locust-men gaped. Borbor slowly turned her head.
"Next."
When the door opened, Shirone and Nane found a plain-looking girl waiting.
She ripped at someone's arm, and the rims of her eyes were dark with tiny lights set into them.
Shirone got goosebumps.
'I don't understand.'
Not even Shirone, who had Omega, nor Nane, who held the Akashic Records, could define her.
"She's definitely peculiar."
Nane smiled and approached.
"No law could have produced something like this. A being that's strayed from truth—what are you?"
The girl chewed the flesh she'd torn and answered.
"A god."
No proof was needed.
"From the moment I existed, everything's beneath me. So hand over your limbs nicely."
The instant Piri finished, an unfamiliar killing intent filled the hall.
'A calamity.'
The reason Yahweh and Buddha could divide philosophy was that a closed world defined terms.
'Philosophy is for humans and defined by humans. Other beings shouldn't define it.'
Nane unfolded his Sermon Sword and advanced.
"Let's see what you can do."
Shirone shattered a Hexa and raised Hand of God, but Piri remained untroubled.
"Hmm, you want to fight me?"
"Is 'fight' the right word? Is there any point where you and we conflict?"
"Right…?"
Piri, having just finished tearing flesh, tossed aside an arm stripped to the bone and stood.
"Come at me."
As her smile split grotesquely, Shirone and Nane surged forward.
'Please…'
Shirone shouldered Hand of God over his shoulder, clenched his teeth, and swung.
'I hope something survives.'
In the silence after thunder, the city of Bukjeon flared into a blinding light.
Rumble—rumble—
Five hundred meters above, Aslaiker and Gaitan watched the battle below.
It wasn't their place to intervene.
Gaitan, holding the fainted Borbor's wrist, spoke gravely.
"She has unusual eyes."
Aslaiker nodded.
"Hmm. It looks like she accepts photon signals and reconceives them as quantum signals. She ignores causality." Mountains were sheared clean.
Perhaps Piri imagined a pair of gigantic scissors and was slicing the landscape.
"An ability like someone fused Yahweh's subjectivity with Buddha's objectivity. And yet…"
The one being overwhelmed was Piri.
"What a marvelous pincer attack. If even a small psychic gap had opened between them, it would've been over. Ironic—Buddha best understands Yahweh."
Aslaiker's pupils traced a magic circle and the scene on the ground magnified.
"…It's over."
Piri's condition was terrible.
One left eye gone, both legs severed below the knees, her right arm grotesquely broken.
"You—how…?"
Because she ignored this world's signals, any wound appeared abnormal to her.
"You can speak, can't you?"
Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of human language sounded to Piri like animal noises.
"Can you hear me?"
Only Shirone and Nane, who were approaching now, used logical language.
"In that case, it's an honor."
A gigantic sword was born behind Nane, and Shirone unleashed a Miracle Stream.
The Hand of God seized the Sermon Sword and, from the apex of the sky, aimed down at Piri.
"No, this can't be."
She refused to accept it.
"You are cattle! You cannot harm the leader of the new humanity—me! This is a lie!"
"Sermon."
Nane spoke.
"Sim-sim." Shirone intoned.
A red flash from the heavens cleaved the world, heedless of time.
"Guhk!"
Piri's dying scream was cut off; the sword severed her throat and her head tumbled along the blade's path.
"I-it's… a lie."
Even in death she could not admit defeat—Shirone understood that.
"She was strong. If another like her appears, I won't be able to handle it."
"This was a setup, Shirone."
"A setup?"
"If their goal was simply to subdue you, they could have made an unimaginable monster. But that would require redesigning everything from the universe's origin. To annihilate you while keeping this world intact is a second-stage filter. One step further and they'll erase all humanity."
Only then did Shirone—perhaps because it was Nane—finally realize the source of the unease.
"What are you thinking? Why did you come to Bukjeon? You said you wanted to check something."
"The world opened. So I must find the answer to one question. Tell me straight, Shirone—am I Nane who swallowed Anke Ra's dream?"
Nane looked back at Shirone and asked.
"Or is Anke Ra the one who swallowed Nane's dream?"
What didn't matter in a closed world now mattered above all. Nane's smile softened.
"I will go out into the outside world. If I remain human there, then perhaps I can still smile."
"Maybe I could even become a god with a heart. I would end sentient suffering."
"Nane—"
Perhaps, in that outside world, what the two of them wanted would be the same.
"But."
The smile vanished.
"If I'm a program, then the human called Nane won't exist. If that happens, I'll need you to watch over things. And—Amy."
Nane swallowed the rest, but Shirone already understood.
'I opened the outside world, but Nane could have closed the opened ceiling again.'
If Nane killed Amy—
What he chose was, in the end, his heart. He accepted eternal annihilation.
"I'd rather go. It's the world I want to protect. So it's right that I go."
Nane shook his head.
"Only the one who swallowed Anke Ra's dream can pass the filter. If you leave the photon realm, humanity will perish. I won't waste the last chance."
"But—"
"I opened the spirit domain. The suffering I caused, I will end."
"Now who goes first—"
"Please."
Nane turned; his body burst into light and countless Sermon Swords shot outward.
As Shirone heard those swords fly to the ends of the universe and return, he asked,
"You won't regret it?"
With his eyes closed, Nane smiled faintly.
'I will.'
The face of the one person he had never been able to let go of until the very end flickered in his mind.
'Attachment.'
He would leave with a heart.
The moment Nane opened his eyes, the Sermon Swords collapsed inward like folding space and pierced his body.
"Ughhhhh!"
Light blasted from Nane's pupils and whitened the entire world like a blank sheet.
'Let's see. What's out there?'
When the landscape regained its colors, Nane had vanished without a trace.