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savemidoriproject · 6 years

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Chapter 23: [Dimension γ → W1 | Worldline 1β → 1β.1] – Antisolipsism

“Where the HELL have you been, Ryan?”

Come to think of it, coffee time is an awfully uncreative name for a café – was what I was thinking when Ene’s grumpy voice pierced my heart. The presence of multiple people, however, didn’t leave any space in my mind to retort back at her.

“Well, not that I was worried about you or anything, don’t get any wrong ideas!”

“Haha Ene, we all know you were awfully worried about him.”

Mark was carressing her head with an innocuous smile as I tried to recognize the people that were gathered in the café: Ene, Mark, Reina, Saijo-san with his round glasses, Christina from the patisserie… and a fashionable-looking man wearing a grey, round hat that I didn’t recognize.

“Ryan, just in time. I believe I have two people that I’d like to introduce to you.”

Saijo-san raised his glasses with his hand and gave me an antique smile.

“You’ve met Reina already at the conference. She is the daughter of Kirishina-san, the head of JS Constructions, and also a close friend of Midori. She will be helping us out with corporate relations involving Mayu-san.”

Reina’s green eyes shimmered brightly as she waved her hand at me. So I guess Saijo-san has updated her about what has been happening up to now…

“And this is Han, Christina’s husband. Christina and Han are our matter-data archivists.”

I see, so he’s with Christina. Han took off his hat and gave me a small bow with a gentle smile.

“Nice to meet you, Ryan. I’ve heard a lot about you from our colleagues. I work with the archivists at the Imperial Library.”

The Imperial Library? That was the one I visited with Midori… the huge, dome-like bibliographic maze made entirely of glass. I still have the copy of the book that she gave me…

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, by C. G. Jung

“What exactly do archivists do?”

Han pointed at me like an actor as he answered my question with a histrionic tone.

“That is a great question, Ryan. We collect matter-data, of course.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Han, I’m sure he already knows that part. Tell him the most important part of it.”

Han shrugged off Christina’s pseudo-frustration with a large laugh.

“Hahaha, of course my dear, I was about to elaborate more. We not only collect matter-data, Ryan, we also make copies of them, modify them, and reconstruct them.”

The last word hit a switch in my head.

“Oh, so you are a reconstructionist, like Saijo-san used to be.”

“Haha, no, not exactly. Reconstructionists are another sort of beasts. Archivists like myself specialize mainly in collecting and copying matter-data, and making small modifications. We aren’t exactly capable of extensive reconstructions—”

“—which is why we need your help, Ryan.”

Ene interrupted Han’s enthusiastic explanations with a more urgent tone. Her teddy bear wasn’t with her today for some reason… She gave a long sigh before answering my unasked question.

“This worldline has undergone a definition metacollapse. Dimension M does not make sense when there is no Midori in it.”

Ene and her jargons, as usual.

“So, unfortunately, ordinary meaning injections are not gonna cut it. Embedding mind data into objects is not gonna be enough. We need something much, much more extensive… Can you imagine what it would be?”

Ene was already off on her own line of theories, and I knew from my experiences that almost all of her questions are rhetorical in nature when this happens. As expected, she didn’t even give me one second to lull over her question.

“We have asked Christina and Han to make multiple copies of Dimension M – nine, to be precise – and let them evolve in time by modifying the initial conditions via ordinary meaning injection. In other words, we’re taking a statistical ensemble approach—”

“Oh Ene, he’s not gonna understand if you keep throwing theoretical nonsense at him. What Ene actulaly means to say is—”

Han raised his hand at Ene’s grumpy face to buy time for himself.

“—we now have nine Dimensions, which I named W1 to W9, with different ‘Midori’ in it. And your job, Ryan, is travel to these dimensions and prevent her from getting, well… killed by YMMR personnels.”

An awkward silence occupied the room. Christina stepped in to relieve the tension.

“And once that’s done, we can merge those nine Dimensions with Dimension M, and our reconstruction will be complete.”

Everyone in the room was staring at me… waiting for some sort of response.

“So… why is it called Dimension W?”

Han answered with an awkward laugh.

“Oh, that’s because, W is a flip of M, you see?”

His laughtered died quickly into the pre-existing silence… and after a moment of hesitation, I asked my next question, with a certain amount of dread.

“And these nine Midori’s… do they know who I am?”

After another few seconds of silence, Mark answered me with a concerned smile.

“No, Ryan. She hasn’t met any of us in any of these Dimensions yet.”

“I see.”

I nodded with an oxymoronic sense of relief.

“Welcome.”

A tired-looking part-time worker greeted me with a half-hearted bow as I entered the convenience store. Shinjuku, midnight, Dimension W1. Newspaper, newspaper…

YM Corporation proceeds to privatize the military in response to the terrorist group HADES – A foreseeable chain of corpocratization ahead?

The situation was exactly the same as back in Dimension M. YM Corporation, Japan’s leading weapons research & manufacturing company, is attempting to take control of the government against its rival JS Corporation, a powerful conglomerate with multiple companies across finance, constructions, and electronics…

At the center of this chaos was Midori.

I put down the newspaper, put on my augmented-reality visor, and exited the store into the middle of the busy metropolis.

“Do, let’s begin now.”

“Right away, Ryan. Please follow the highlighted pathway. The destination is 15 minutes away.”

“How much time do we have left?”

“The first divergence point occurs in 30 minutes.”

Aparently Do was still busy cleaning up the mess against YMMR’s MIME system from our last operation. So it was SDo who was helping me out this time. Ene managed to hack SDo into Japan’s entire infrastructure network this time. I started sprinting through the streets and the alleyways indicated on my glasses, all the while constantly checking the 30-minute countdown…

Before long, I was standing in front of JS Corporation’s main building. 15 minutes left.

“Do, temporarily disable the surveillance cameras around the entrance.”

“Not a problem.”

As I approached the entrance, I crouched and waited a few minutes for the security guard to turn around toward the surveillance screens. At that moment, I rapidly sneaked behind his back and knocked him unconscious.

“Deactivate all the elevators and send them to the first floor, and lock all the exits on every single floor. Which floor is Midori at?”

“She just entered Elevator C on the 34thfloor.The culprit is in the machine room on the 40th—”

“She got on the elevator?!”

10 minutes left. I was one step late… Was this a predetermined event? My plan was to completely prevent her from getting on the elevator. I now had to either intercept Elevator C and drag Midori off, or neutralize the culprit on the 40th floor first before anything happens.

The second option was too risky. If the culprit successfully breaks the elevator…

My body was already sprinting up the stairs, not allowing my mind even a second of hesitation. In an endless series of identical looking staircases, Mizuki-san’s voice echoed inside my breathless heartbeats: “Midori must not die…”

I’m just doing my job. That is all. No errors allowed.

“Do, stop Elevator C at whichever floor it happens to arrive at the same time as I do.”

“Based on the current velocities, the intersection will occur on the 19th floor.”

So I was running up almost as fast as the elevator was moving down…

15… 16… 17… 18…

I burst open the metal door. There were three elevators on each side. The farthest one on the right was open, spilling pale white light into the dark hallway.

Midori was standing inside the elevator with a confused look that quickly changed to that of fear and suspicion upon seeing me run up to the elevator. Her green checkered dress was the same as before.

Why is it that something inside me is starting to hurt upon seeing her?

“You need to—”

The elevator suddenly started shaking dangerously, and Midori crouched down, covering her head with both of her hands.

“Ryan, please hurry. We have 3 minutes left.”

“Midori, you need to trust me. We don’t have time, get off now!”

As she slowly looked up at me with her teary eyes, I grabbed her right hand and pulled her out.

The elevator door closed instantly, followed by a loud screeching noise…

“First divergence point overcome. The Worldline has shifted to 1β.1.”

Do’s detached report of the situation failed to reach my mind. The only thing in my mind was the vivid sensation of Midori’s fragile, trembling body.

“Who are you?”

Top floor lounge of the main JS Corporation building. Midori and I were the only ones there. The entire lounge was dimly lit by lamps placed here and there, along with empty sofas and small coffee tables. Her bangs were partially covering her bottomless eyes, now staring thoughtfully at the coffee cup that she was holding on her lap… as if to detect the precise boundary at which the thin veil of steam disappeared into the thin air.

For a melancholic reason, it took me some time to answer the question…

“My name is Ryan. I came from another Dimension.”

Midori gave me a confused look, raising her eyes while sipping on her coffee.

“Was that really the best line that you could come up with for your introduction?”

I put my cup down and crossed my arms to answer her rhetorical question.

“Well, perhaps you can just play along my lack of imagination, considering that I just saved your life.”

Her eyes were shaded with melancholy again… and an overwhelming sense of déjà vu inundated my mind.

“Of course, I am thankful… but this isn’t the first time that this kind of incident happened. I have always been targeted by personnel working under YMMR Corporation.”

“Where were you trying to go by yourself so late at night?”

After a slight hesitation, she answered my question while turning her gaze away toward the city lights across the wide window standing next to us.

“I… was trying to sneak out by myself to go to the Imperial Library.”

“Hmm… Couldn’t you have just ordered them online, or have someone deliver—”

“I— That’d be quite… boring.”

She uttered the last word with a certain kind of heaviness, as if something inside was preventing her from finding the right word.

“Ever since I was little, every single aspect of my life has been meticulously monitored and scheduled.”

Her long eyelashes were now pointing downward, coloring her eyes with a distinct hue of melancholy. Before I knew it, I found myself also staring into the city lights.

“The view is great here, isn’t it.”

Midori turned her gaze toward the window again.

“But… they’re just reflections. Reflections of city lights…”

But… they’re just reflections. Reflections of car lights…

“I see… Did you know that the present is always being meticulously monitored and scheduled by the future?”

As I turned to Midori, a pair of bottomless eyes stared back at me.

“Why is that?”

Her question pulled me in, almost like a vacuum that was hungry for another soul.

“To prevent the future from changing.”

“Did you come here to prevent the future from changing as well?”

“Basically.”

“Does that mean that there are other people who are trying to change the future, then?”

“… Yeah.”

“So… if you didn’t save me at the elevator, what would have happened to your future?”

I turned around and stared into the empty night sky.

“… It would have disappeared.”

Chapter 23 Soundtrack

Go to Chapter 22: Memorification | Chapter 24: Endless Hotel | Chapter List

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savemidoriproject · 7 years

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Chapter 22: [Dimension M → γ | Worldline 1β] – Memorification

From the moment she disappeared, it never stopped raining once – as if the entire universe wanted to flood everything that was in sight. It started pouring down like a waterfall, and the stormy wind blew the rain into the café, until shutting the door with a loud thud, amplifying the tension amidst the loud splattering on the windows and the cozy lamp lights of the café.

I started feeling dizzy.

“What… Where is she? What just happened?”

A confused fragments of questions came out of Reina’s alarmed voice. Saijo-san put the tea pot down with a sigh, raised his glasses, and picked up an antique-looking receiver afixed on the wall.

“I’m afraid the worldline has diverged in the β direction now. I will contact my fellow reconstructionists. We must start gathering memory primers and initiate meaning injection as soon as we can before Midori’s mind data starts decohering significantly.”(*1)

“What does that supposed to mean?”

As he was about to dial the numbers, Saijo-san turned and answered me with an unease.

“Well, mind data is a type of matter-data. In this case, the projection of Midori’s mind data into real-space has been severed. This means that it currently remains dispersed as a form-data in the world of ideas. In order to remain stable, all matter-data must exist as a dual pair with its corresponding form-data. This pairing is mediated by a special type of data called eidos. If this pairing remains broken for too long, the core data structure starts to decohere… like a fraying edge of a fabric.”

“So… you’re saying that there is a problem with Midori’s eidos data?”

Saijo-san turned back to the receiver again, staring grimly at the dialing pad.

“Yes. Her eidos data has essentially been destabilized by the mind data overload.”

With that, he started dialing a number… After staring back and forth at me and Saijo-san, Reina stood up and slowly approached me.

“Ryan… What on earth is going on?”

I didn’t know how I was supposed to answer that question. It was just like the time when Midori and I fell into Dimension H for the first time… A pair of crystal clear, green eyes was staring at mine with apprehension. A wave of fatigue suddenly inundated my eyes, and I forced a smile to push it away.

“Just… some military-corpocratic-metaphysical mess, that’s all.”

Reina’s mind was most likely confused with a ton of questions. It was the same for me, after all. She walked toward the window pane, grabbed her blonde hair with both of her hands on her right shoulder anxiously, and stared into the rainy sky.

“I’m sure Midori would have loved this rain. Just when I thought we were getting back together after so many years…”

Her words slowly disappeared amidst the heavy sound of raindrops. Saijo-san started speaking to someone over the receiver.

“Hello? Han, it’s me. We’ve got an urgent situation, as you’re probably aware by now. Is Christina there?”

Christina... I somehow had a feeling that she was going to be the same person as Chizu-san’s daughter that I had met at the French patisserie. This wasn’t the first time that people around Midori have turned out to be connected in unexpected ways. The universe really seemed to revolve around Midori…

“I see. We must start acting quickly before the divergence factor becomes intractable. I will bring everyone with me there – Mark, Ene, Ryan, as well as Reina. Make sure everything is ready. See you then.”

As Saijo-san put down the receiver, the splattering sound of the rain seemed to echo with increasing reverberation, and the peculiar cloudiness in my mind aggravated the dizziness… Could it be that I have a fever or something?

“Look, Saijo-san. Frankly, I really need to take a break now… I’ll meet you at your coffee time in Dimension γ early tomorrow morning.”

No… It must be that I was just tired. I just came out of an intensive operation, so it was understandable. Reina and Saijo-san’s concerned looks somehow failed to register in my mind completely, and I found myself turning around, opening the door, and entering the forest of rain.

As soon as the door closed behind me, the rain completely consumed my body and my mind. I couldn’t think of anything else. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. It was as if my mind wasn’t able to properly digest the fact that Midori wasn’t here anymore.

Singular normalcy, and abstraction thereof.

Somehow, what she had said… that time at her private library in her green, checker-patterned dress… seemed to have been inverted over the chain of events.

Singular abstraction, and normalcy thereof.

The boundary between what was real and what was not was becoming unclear. I could almost hear Ene saying, “The question of whether something is real or not has no cognitive value.” Such marked noncognitivism.(*2) If it has no cognitive value, then what value does it have? Are you going to apply the same mannerism to Midori as well?

The question of whether Midori is real or not has no cognitive value.

It didn’t matter if it has no cognitive value. Even if everything was a mere projection of predetermined data, that fact was still incommensurable with the palpable and irreducible phenomenology…

I must have sounded like a Cartesian dualist(*3) just now... Ugh.

Before I knew it, I was standing in front of the giant tree at the center of the familiar mini park. The image of Midori standing in the rain staring at the tree invaded my mind. The tree no longer had any yellow leaves. I felt a slight shiver run down my body. It was late autumn now, after all.

Can you hear me becoming an endless rain?

Midori’s voice echoed in my mind with such clarity… almost as clear as her dark brown, lucid, bottomless eyes. I pulled out my annihilation gun and pointed it at the sky. But I didn’t know what to do. I was not aware of the actual mechanics behind meaning injection… Not just yet, at least.

My arm dropped back down. I turned the switch to the portal function and shot a portal in front of the tree.

Dimension γ. Akihabara. Evening. I was standing next to the JR entrance. It wasn’t raining here at all. Only Dimension M seemed to have been affected by the endless rain. Several people were staring at me with a wary gaze. It must have been very unusual to see a stranger completely soaked in rain on a completely rainless day. How long had it been since the last time I was here? Somehow I felt a wave of relief after witnessing with my own eyes again that there was, in fact, a spacetime in this multiverse that had remained constant and unchanged.

The problem, however, was that I was not.

As I entered the main street, I was reminded of the time when Ene appeared in front of me out of nowhere, along with Mark. Was Ene okay? I’m sure Mark was taking good care of her… There were many things that I was hoping to clarify with her, after all.

The fact that I was having these thoughts must have meant that my life was no longer the same. For the first time in my life, I was irreversibly entertwined with other people. A strange, uncertain feeling permeated my heart that refused to be defined in a singular, cohesive manner.

Was that a good thing?... I just wasn’t sure anymore.

As I continued to indulge myself in this aimless chain of reflections, I realized that I was already standing in front of my all-to-familiar house. Normal, ordinary, completely unremarkable. It’s been ages since I was here. None of the lights were on. I guess my parents were not here. Nothing unusual. I highly doubted that they were here, actually sleeping in their bedroom. That would have been highly unusual.

I scrambled through my completely soaked backpack and found the key. Somehow everything started to feel like an exercise in futility. Why on earth was I digging through my bag and searching for the key when I could have just used my portal gun? The very definition of normalcy was starting to break down.

“I’m home.”

Absolutely no sound. Hermetically sealed silence seeped into my ears. The thickness slowly made its way down my heart, blocking my airway and making it difficult to breathe.

That was when I realized that there was a giant vacuum inside of me. Where Midori used to be.

A terrible nausea was about to overthrow my mind. I quickly forced my body to move, to engage in some sort of action to distract my mind. That’s right, let me take a shower first and make a cup of coffee. I dragged myself to the bathroom, turned on the radio at a loud volume, and threw myself into the hot rain shower.

“And coming up next is the episode from username Azalea001! We have her here with us today over the phone. Ms. Azalea001?”

“Good evening! Am I seriously on the radio? Ahh, this is so exciting!”

“Hahaha, yes you are indeed, Ms. Azalea001! So what is the outrageously funny story that you have to share with us today?”

“Well, it’s the story about this dream that I had the other night, you won’t believe it!—”

As hot water enveloped my body and meaningless radio talks filled the air, my mind gradually started to calm down and recover its lucidity… If one had to pick three most uninteresting topics of conversation, they would most certainly be about the weather, someone else’s relationships, and someone else’s dream.

I realized that I was missing the conversations I had with Ene and Midori.

It seemed like the external world was going around perfectly fine in its business-as-usual mode. There were people out there, living a perfectly normal, ordinary, unremarkable lives, and the radio was even broadcasting the whole world about this fact. Why would anyone want to broadcast about people living a perfectly normal, ordinary, unremarkable lives? The only wretched conclusion my fatigued mind could draw at that point was that there were way too many people, and way too many worldlines, for any of our lives to have what Midori would describe as an “ontologically objective and intrinsic meaning.” Metaphysically, and physically, for that matter.

And absolutely no one seemed to care about what Ene would describe as “decentralization problem.”

Since when did I start borrowing other people’s expressions so much?

I put on my sweater, turned on the kitchen light, and started brewing my coffee, only to be reminded of Midori’s love of coffee. Just about everything in my life now seemed to be colored with her sensibilities.

As I sipped on my coffee and the thick aroma permeated my mind, it became clear to me that saving Midori wasn’t a simple personal matter. Midori wasn’t just a person. She constituted an entire sensibility, an entire philosophy… an entire universe.

Midorism.

I tried collecting my fragmented thoughts. I first need to get some rest, and I will work with Saijo-san and everyone else to bring Midori back and reset the worldline back to normal.

Actually, I needed to get something to eat… I was craving for something sweet, which meant that only one place was in my mind.

“Welcome. Just one person?”

As the waiter bowed with a generic smile, I couldn’t help but feel melancholic upon his question. As I followed the waiter to an empty, dimly lit booth in the corner, I noticed that the dessert café was almost empty now. It was quite late in the evening, after all.

“Pancake specialty, with a cup of Kilimanjaro, please.”

“Sure.”

The waiter wrote down the order and left with another bow. I noticed that a small café music tune was on. The illumination from the lamp light above the table only managed to highlight the emptiness and meaninglessness of eating a pancake alone at a café late at night.

“You don’t happen to be musing about the meaninglessness of eating a pancake alone at a café late at night, are you?”

The voice of a girl startled me from behind. I instinctively grabbed my DASER and turned around to find a small girl with a long black hair wearing a navy blue one-piece dress patched with small white floral patterns… holding a teddy bear.

I responded to Kana’s rhetorical question with another rhetorical question.

“How did you know that I was here?”

Kana sat down in front of me with an expressionless face and placed her teddy bear next to her. She looked at me with a faint smile.

“You can put your DASER away. I am not going to just randomly launch VMS portals and ruin a nice dessert café like this.”

She raised her hand toward the waiter.

“I would like to have the same as him, please.”

For some reason, I had a vague feeling that it was okay to trust her words for now.

“Aren’t you too young to drink coffee?”

Kana gave me her characteristic look of melancholic annoyance.

“Is that really the first thing you wanted to ask me?”

The waiter brought two cups of Kilimanjaro to our table.

“Would you like any cream or sugar?”

Kana coldly shut down the waiter’s suggestion.

“I can handle it black. I’m not a kid.”

The waiter apologized with an uncomfortable smile and walked away.

“You didn’t have to be like that.”

Kana sipped on her coffee, pretending to not have heard my comment with her eyes closed. She put down her cup on the table, still holding it with both of her hands, as if trying to absorb the heat.

“Do you understand the gravity of the situation right now?”

The question only managed to confuse me even more.

“If the situation is so grave, why on earth are you eating a pancake with me right now? Aren’t you supposed to be our enemy? You work for YMMR.”

“Enemy, huh… I’m sure Ene would say that word has no cognitive value. Anything that she deems inconvenient seems to lose cognitive value, apparently.”

Before I could ask more questions, the waiter came to our table with our pancake specialties. Kana’s eyes widened slightly.

“Ohhh. You’re treating me this time, of course.”

My mind couldn’t help but overlap the image of her eagerly picking the fruit toppings with that of Midori… The absurdity of the situation only managed to render the memory more pronounced.

“What do you want from me, Kana? I don’t have enough energy at the moment to entertain a frilly-dressed girl who works for a paranormal military base.”

Kana brought a piece of pancake to her mouth, while looking at me with a look of amusement.

“But… that’s exactly what you’re doing right now. I’m sure this is what people refer to as self-fulfilling prophecy. Actually, self-defeating prophecy would be more accurate in this case.”

I gave out a long sigh, and decided to start cutting my pancakes before they turned cold. Kana momentarily put down her fork and grabbed her coffee again.

“The fact that Midori disappeared means that the only remaining evidence of JS-YM transactions no longer exists. That’s a problem for both JS & YM Corporations, you see.”

What she just said completely chased away every single bit of appetite that I had.

“I’m sorry. Am I supposed to give a shit?”

Kana stared at me with her expression unchanged. I couldn’t help but raise my voice.

“Why, isn’t it good for YM Corporation that Midori is gone? I thought you guys wanted to run her over with a truck.”

Kana responded to my cynicism with her arms crossed.

“That actually wasn’t the intention of YMMR. YM Corporation isn’t as unified as you think. Opposing factions are constantly struggling for control. Besides…”

She put on a faint smile before continuing.

“… powerful notwithstanding, YM Corporation is still under the umbrella of the Japanese Conglomerate Federation.”

She raised her hand toward the waiter and asked for a refill of her coffee. Upon taking another sip, her eyes turned darker and more lucid than before. I slowly put my fork down on the table and spoke up after a brief pause.

“Does that mean that you and Inaba are working under Mayu-san’s instructions?”

Kana’s eyes grew slightly bigger over her coffee cup, followed by a smile.

“You’re a smart one. I can see why Ene wanted to work with you.”

She continued to hold her cup close to her chest. Just what was her relationship with Ene anyway?

“The truck incident was indeed the catalyst that triggered Mayu-san’s motion toward the JS-YM merge. I have to say, her strategy for defusing Nagisa-san and the HADES threat has been quite promising so far.”

Kana rested both of her elbows on the table and leaned forward. Her small and delicate face made her look like a Japanese doll.

“I want to help you reconstruct Midori.”

For some reason, I was not able to read this girl’s expression… Her thoughts were hidden under a veil of melancholia, but of a distinctly different kind from that of Midori.

“Did you honestly think that I was going to just say yes?”

“No, of course not. Let’s go with the old-fashioned give-and-take then. I’m sure you have many questions for me, don’t you?”

Her gentle smile only managed to entangle my mind even more. I couldn’t figure out what her exact motives and feelings were.

“Okay. My question is simple: Why?”

Kana slowly put her cup down and started staring at the steam... After half a minute or so, she answered with a distinct hue of emptiness.

“I want to reconstruct my memories with Ene.”

Quiet café music continued to stroke the heavy silence ever so meaninglessly.

(*1) Reference to quantum decoherence (*2) Reference to noncognitivism (*3) Reference to dualism

Ch. 22 Illustration

Ch. 22 Soundtrack 1 | Ch. 22 Soundtrack 2

Go to Chapter 21: Chronostasis | Chapter 23: Antisolipsism | Chapter List

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