The World We Live In (1)
Now that fairly large fragments were falling right before Shirone's eyes, Zet spoke.
"This world is made of particles."
It was obvious.
"And the outside world is made of antiparticles." "Of course, that's relative to this world's standards. Matter and antimatter define each other as being and non-being." Zet continued calmly.
"Particles are split into photon-signals and quantum-signals. Photon-signals process the Law; quantum-signals process the mind. Of course, to me they appear as errors."
Shirone understood.
"If that's how we exist, which entities have higher status? It depends on how much weight they occupy in the whole system. The measure for that is energy."
Existence is energy.
"Also, energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. So energy can be called mass."
Mass is...
"How fiercely something persists through the flow of time — that's the question. Terms like heavy or light are just definitions imposed by human senses; in reality..."
Zet clenched his fist.
"Simply existing."
The background folded around his fist and fragments and dust gathered toward it.
"We call that gravity. And if this gravity grows so, so strong that it exceeds the universe's tolerance..."
When Zet opened his palm, a tiny dot became a black sphere that sucked in the surrounding dust.
"It breaks through the world's veil and goes to the outside world."
It was a black hole.
"You can make one. A singularity of zero volume and infinite density."
"...Yes."
Even Metatron, the archangel of Existence, and Shirone could create singularities.
"It's not a special property. It's just some matter reaching the universe's limit. Nothing can become infinitely strong. When an existence surpasses its limit, the universe can't handle that signal and spits it out beyond the veil."
Zet extinguished the black hole.
"So you can create it, but you can't go in. To be precise, you can't get back out."
A space that even trapped light.
"Time ends at a singularity. Beyond it lies a world of antiparticles. So the outside world has imaginary time."
"A god's perspective."
Zet nodded.
"If particles are the concept of being, antiparticles are the concept of non-being. Thus particles normally exist and their annihilation is but an instant. Antiparticles, conversely, normally don't exist and their birth is extremely brief." That explained why observing antiparticles in the universe is so difficult.
"Particles and antiparticles undergo paired creation and paired annihilation to produce matter and energy. That's the mechanism that gives birth to our universe."
Shirone chewed on Zet's words.
"The means by which a god can exert influence on this world is also antiparticles. Saying 'still' or 'even now' is meaningless — it's imaginary time. Imaginary time means space is also less than zero. That is, it acts beyond the speed of light. In other words, it reverses time and changes the Law."
Shirone pictured the pyramid of truth.
"That's an OOPArt."
It was why relics of ultra-ancient civilizations seemed to appear without cause.
"Yes. It's the will of a god applied beyond time and space. This signal is called the tachyon. It's an imaginary signal born in the world of non-being."
Shirone exhaled a cold breath.
"The world of non-being."
If the antiparticles that make up the outside world are the concept of non-being, then the world we see from there is...
a grand illusion.
"Do you want to meet God?" When Shirone looked up again, Zet sat in a reverent posture like a venerable monk.
"To meet God you must cross the world's veil. That means you can never return." In school, Shirone had returned to reality through Miro's spacetime.
He had also mimicked divine thought to return to the Undercoder in High Gear.
But all those returns had been possible because reality had a higher status than the outside world.
"This time is different. To return to reality you must know the antiparticle signal."
Zet got to the point.
"I will teach you."
"Huh? But how...?"
"I'm an error outside the main system. I can't exceed permissions, but I can read. I can access the core and transmit the tachyon's recitation."
The ability to turn every existence into an illusion.
"You probably won't attain enlightenment from the recitation alone, but it's indispensable if you want to meet God. If you go to the outside world in this state, you'll be crossing a river you can't come back from."
Like Nane.
"Of course the same goes for me. Viewing the outside world is an unforgivable error, and I will be disposed of soon."
Shirone asked again.
"Why go this far? You live in this world."
"Who knows. Maybe because I'm an error." Zet glanced out the window.
"Ever since I realized that the many 'mes' out there and the 'me' here were different, I've had this thought. This miraculous error, this feeling that will never come again... Shouldn't I pass it on to someone?"
Shirone felt a lump in his throat.
"But if you do that, you'll..." He couldn't bring himself to say it, though he had to confirm.
"You'll die."
The Zet out there was different.
The annihilation of the single 'me' that had awakened to mind would be indistinguishable from human death.
"How will you die?"
Zet rested a hand on his knee and bowed his head slightly, as if accepting a class leader's duty.
"I think I'm ready." Feeling his chest grow hot, Shirone forced his voice steady.
"All right."
He knelt before Zet.
"I will receive your teaching."
"...You'll have only one chance."
Silence stretched, and red characters began to appear on Zet's facial screen.
"Data output."
Ikael felt a thrilling euphoria.
"It's moving. We're overriding the Law."
The seven archangels gathered then were almost all the concepts that had birthed the early universe.
"One more step."
Ataraxia unfolded brilliantly.
"Surge!"
As the spiritual bodies flared, the Law that had been twisted snapped rapidly back into place.
That was the sensation.
Zet output the data at tremendous speed, his voice nearly a roar.
"Don't miss a syllable. Not one."
Shirone, kneeling, clung to his wavering consciousness.
The entropy was enormous; the informational weight rivaled the blueprint of the universe.
A groan escaped him.
"Huuuu."
Zet's voice wasn't harsh, but the syllables were bizarre sounds no civilization had ever produced.
"I don't understand."
Shirone, who had attained the Ultima state and could decode any signal, found it wasn't the form but the meaning he couldn't grasp.
"It's a completely different concept. Not even something humans could remember."
Had he not known how a god thinks, the information that would have vaporized him in a second poured in without end.
"Aaah——!"
Just as his eyes threatened to roll back and consciousness slip away, Zet's voice cut off.
"It's over!"
Shirone snapped back and repeated the recitation he'd just heard at the speed of thought.
One, two, twenty-three, three hundred twenty-eight.
Having engraved the syllables into his mind as whole forms, Shirone raised his head to look at Zet.
It might have been an illusion, but Zet looked peaceful.
"Did it transmit properly?"
Shirone straightened and answered.
"Yes. All of it."
"Good. I enjoyed it."
After hearing the farewell, Shirone shook his head.
"Don't leave yet. You need to analyze the signal with me. Fortunately, nothing from the main system—"
At that moment, with a tremendous roar the ceiling collapsed.
"Danger!"
Shirone rolled across the floor clutching Zet and looked at the rock that had fallen beneath them.
'Huge.'
The Law-world shaking meant Ikael had done it.
Shirone checked Zet again.
With the main system down, his indicators no longer glowed.
"Stay with me. Stay conscious."
All Zet units were likely in the same state, but Shirone couldn't leave the room.
"I didn't even get to say thank you."
"What? What is it?" Marsha looked around.
Operators and the Zets battling them collapsed at once and the great pillar lost its light.
"It's done! Shirone pulled it off." The backstory was complicated, but irrelevant now.
"Can you do it? Can you do it now?"
With no time for answers, Lollipop Mark snapped an Undercoder interface into place.
"We only need the code table."
A self-powered hologram picked up an initialization signal from the main system.
"It's working! I don't understand a word of it, but at least now we can build something."
Like gibberish alphabet strings in human terms, but knowing the protocol meant the data itself could be used to attack a system.
With Zet disabled, the whole mining team rushed over and watched Lollipop's work.
"Hack it! Hack it!"
"Hold on."
Having penetrated the database through multiple routes, Lollipop Mark swallowed hard at the file sizes.
"Uhm... how long will this miracle last?"
"Who knows. Ten minutes? An hour? What's the issue?"
"I've found data I really want, but downloading the whole thing will take two hours and fourteen minutes. If it reboots in that time, our side will be attacked."
"No, no. Only pull what's necessary."
"That's the problem. The language system is different, so we don't know where the needed info is. But..."
Lollipop spun the hologram.
"I can read this filename: Omega 999."
"What? That's our words?"
"Yeah. I think that before the future world changed in some strange way, the records that remained were preserved as they were. Anyway, the last file that's readable is Omega 999."
Records after that weren't written in human language.
"Hmm."
An operator propped his chin with his hand.
"It's a binary choice. Risk everything and download the whole thing, or quickly grab the urgent pieces."
Knowing how valuable future-world information was, Marsha looked distraught.
'I want it all. It's such a shame.' Lollipop said.
"Let the mining team's leader decide. The system could recover at any time."
"This is insane."
She sighed deeply.
"Get the urgent stuff first."
"Roger."
Lollipop Mark pressed the hologram's button and the gauge began to fill rapidly.
All the history unfolding in reality—the Omega 999 files—began streaming in.