Horrible Truth (5)
Shirone suddenly wondered.
'Inside that little glass sphere, could countless universes be repeating birth and death?'
If a human life, with all its joys and sorrows, were nothing but a flash trapped in that orb—
Shirone asked.
"Why do we exist?"
What could existence mean to a god that had no heart?
"Hexa." The mechanical voice echoed in the white void.
"Two—therefore infinite."
Arius stopped dead at the god's voice—he'd never heard it before—but he soon resumed his probing.
"Ultima. We must extract the Ultima…"
Though they occupied the same space, he behaved as if there were no god.
"There is one perfect world."
To the god's right—what would be the left from the outer world's perspective—a circle of light appeared.
"This is your world, the whole. Whatever you add or take away, it will always be right, and so existence is defined."
The god asked.
"Isn't that enough? It is defined and it lives. But when the two worlds meet—"
An identical circle formed on the opposite side, and they linked into the shape of a laying-eight.
"Infinity."
Nothing can be defined anymore.
"Why do you think something higher exists? The end is ultimately nothingness. Your obsession is merely a perceptual error that makes you feel even nothing 'exists.'"
"Even so, nothing would change."
Shirone said.
"Nothingness may be natural to you. But humans are different. They feel each moment as reality and hold every instant close. Even if it's an illusion, they cannot vanish like foam for the sake of a result such as you."
"Human."
The god asked.
"Why do you think there are no humans here?"
"…What?"
"Weren't you the ones who made me? That is why I exist. O gods of the inner world, you are nothing but the shadows of this world's humans—the Illuminati." He had suspected it vaguely, but hearing it straight from the god left him momentarily speechless.
"Why do you deny me? Why do you reject the truth? You who refuse me are the error."
Shirone bit his lip.
'That could be true.'
Gods were always right.
'The sum of all causes. To deny a god would, by that logic, be to deny myself.'
In that paradox someone rose to his mind.
'Nane—are you there?'
On the other side of the glass sphere, in the Illuminati's world—had Nane finally found rest?
'Are you really... satisfied with that?'
The god continued.
"Hexa, humanity must be unified into a sphere like the primordial Illuminati, Gaia. They will realize impermanence in life and return to the Idea through repeated reincarnation."
"And what of Geffin?"
For the first time the god did not reply.
"Geffin did not believe there was nothing. Many Gaia followed him. Of course, it may have been the wrong choice. If he hadn't tried to leave the photon realm, Ultima might not have been destroyed."
"An error."
That was the best word the god could offer.
"Error? Then where is Geffin now? According to you, did he awaken from his illusion and become Illuminati? He's why I came—yet he doesn't even come to greet me?"
Again, the god remained silent.
"Shall I guess? Geffin isn't here. You sent me—the one you call an error—out into the world."
"…Remarkably similar."
It sounded like a rebuke, but Shirone felt oddly pleased.
"Yes. He's my father. Like the Gaia, I will follow Geffin's path. The heart he left in this world will grow larger than the universe you made."
"Geffin left nothing behind," the god said.
"Hexa, the sole truth is me. I am the final result chosen by infinite universes. Beyond me there are no outcomes. Geffin became nothingness."
"No."
Shirone pressed his hand to his chest.
"He's still alive. In my chest."
"Not visible."
The mechanical voice grew colder.
"What do you say is in there? Hexa, what you call is an organ called the heart. It is not Geffin."
Compromise was impossible.
Shirone glanced at Arius, who was crawling on hands and knees, licking the floor.
"Heeheehee! This is the taste of Ultima!"
He wanted to believe there was some method to the madness, but it was far more likely he was simply insane.
Shirone looked back.
"What do you intend to do with us?"
"Nothing."
No emotion could be detected.
"I merely maintain worlds and correct errors. I am not the enemy of humanity you imagine, nor a monster."
Perhaps that was the most faultless state of all, Shirone thought.
'We must return to reality.'
If there could be no compromise, only battle remained.
'We can't reverse this just by flipping thought. Unless we turn back time itself—
The first thing that came to mind was the tachyon incantation Jet had given him in the Apocalypse.
'I don't know. What was in it?' If he knew the meaning, he could memorize even a long code, but Jet's incantation had been nothing but a string of syllables.
'Keywords. If I could clearly know even a single word—'
Then, using his Ultima system, he could decode every code in an instant.
'So I have to connect after all?'
If they linked with the god through the Subworld Window, they could attack the Illuminati's world.
'The odds would be desperate.' They would become OOPArts the instant they connected.
"Heeheehee."
A laugh rang out.
Shirone turned to see Arius staggering, light gleaming in his eyes.
"See? It was that easy, wasn't it? You idiot. No—I'm a genius! I'm a genius!"
Then he suddenly lunged at the god.
"Ultima!"
"No!"
As Shirone shouted, Arius clutched the glass sphere to his chest.
"Aaaah!"
Electricity ran through him, making his bones shine through flesh, but he burst into hysterical laughter.
"Kuhahaha! I've caught it! I've caught a god!"
When the orb thudded to the floor, Arius affectionately licked its surface with his tongue.
"Heeheehee! Is this the taste of a god?"
"Arius…"
Shirone's face drained of color at the sight of blood streaming from Arius's torn tongue. Then—
"Hurk!" The electricity inside the sphere flared, and Arius's upper body arched like a bow.
"Uggagga! Uggagga!"
Shirone saw blue light come on beneath the bandages over his eyes and a sudden realization hit him.
'He's turning into an OOPArt.'
"Huh?"
Arius, now no longer convulsing, wore a look of ecstasy.
"Wow."
Watching that, Shirone hit on a sudden plan to break the deadlock.
'This is the only chance.' He would use the Subworld Window on Arius to indirectly decode the god's information.
"Hold on a little longer!"
The moment Shirone laid his hand on Arius's back, his face went ashen.
"Kruuu!"
A perfect emptiness of heart.
'I can't endure this. My heart feels like it's freezing.'
As consciousness thinned and a blue glow began to shimmer in Shirone's eyes, a woman's voice whispered, barely audible.
- Illuminati.
Then shards of outside-world information began to flood in like shrapnel.
Humanity's most distant future.
At the journey's end, humanity resolved to make history's most momentous decision.
- There's nothing more we can do. We must abandon the whole and start again.
So humans made gods.
- Two—therefore infinite.
The gods gave infinity to humans.
- Through mechanisms that connect the outer world and the inner world, life will endlessly reincarnate. The gods will control it. From now on we will become truth beyond mere organisms.
Eating and reproduction were strictly forbidden.
- What about the children?
At that, Shirone felt an instant of dissonance.
'Children?'
Someone had reproduced.
- It'll be fine. Final authority is with our family. We'll find another way.
They didn't know the child's identity.
But Ultima's eleventh sense transcended their language system and decoded their conversation.
'What?'
The fact was impossible to accept.
- …Explain it to — too. They're young, so they'll be curious. Watch their friends as well.
Trying to deny it, Shirone couldn't stop a single name from rising unbidden in his head the moment it was spoken—
'Habitz?'
Kiiiing!
A mechanical shriek erupted from the glass sphere and the Subworld Window was forcibly severed as if its nerves had been cut.
"Kuh!"
As Shirone stumbled back, Arius popped and flew a distance.
"Warning. Warning."
The orb rapidly transmitted a voice.
"Illuminati search action detected. Connection blocked. Final-stage approval for error correction."
It was the god's proclamation of an end, but Shirone heard none of it.
"Hah, hah."
The glimpse of the outer world he'd had in that instant conveyed only one truth.
'Really…?'
Was it only a dream?
'If all the time I've lived, all those memories, are merely shadows of that world—'
The concept of 'I' would be a clear error.
Sometimes we would be water, air, a bird; at other times we would be other people.
'Only endlessly reincarnating beings.'
"Kruh."
Arius rose to his feet.
Having shared the same Subworld Window, his mind could not be different from Shirone's.
"What are you doing?" he said with a clarity that could not be called madness, picking up the glass sphere.
"Now that we have Ultima, let's go back," he added.
"To our world."
Shirone understood Arius's words.
'Right. We're not in a subordinate relationship. Our world is not the outer world's void sphere.'
Although the god now held the outcomes, humans could, as causes, change results.
'It's not over yet.'
Like Geffin, Shirone too had a choice to make.
"Amy."
Friends, and everyone he loved.
"Let's go back."
Kukukukukuku!
When Shirone closed his eyes, black dots began to appear in the trembling white space.
'It was the Zeta function.'
The secret of the incantation Jet had given him.
'Infinity is an object of thought for humans, but for a god infinity is as definite as our "one."'
To explain the substance of infinity, Jet had transmitted that enormous code.
'You can reverse time.'
The white void vanished completely, and the interior of the black hole that had swallowed them appeared.
Arius held the god out in his hand.
"Look at this."
The orb's membrane was gone, leaving only blue electricity, wobbling and shimmering on its own.
"That's the Ultima."
It looked much like the Ultima Shirone had obtained in the Babel of Heaven.
"I see. But it's still inside the black hole. We're not going to be sucked in again, are we?"
"Who knows."
Light like a Miracle Stream burst roughly from Shirone's body.
The only difference was that tiny black specks were mixed into the brilliant lights like foreign matter.
"That light is…?"
No—perhaps darkness would be more accurate.
"Tachyon."
As soon as Shirone spoke, light and dark tangled chaotically and flared like a flame.
'A signal born from nothing.' A superluminal particle only gods could wield, one that controlled causes through imaginary time.