"Approximately two-hundred-and-eighty million years ago."
{Note: As a rule, I don't alter Nagato's dialogue outside of anything gender-specific. However, I will point out that the "and" shouldn't be there.}
So began Nagato's explanation, a cosmic mystery of electro-magnetic waves. If I had to break it up and boil it down, it would be as follows.
It was the Permian or the Triassic period when [that thing] descended to Earth, and at the time, there was nothing in the world for it to possess. Losing its basis for existence, it settled into hibernation for its self-preservation until an information accumulation body with which it can exist on Earth appears.
"It did not have the means to exist on the Earth. Freezing all action, it settled into slumber."
Before long, humans were born unto the world, and humans gave birth to computer networks. Though imperfect, utilizing that primitive (according to Nagato) digital information network as a seedbed was feasible. But it was insufficient, and the thing remained at a half-awakened state. However, an incident occurred which prompted its awakening. Instead of an alarm clock, floating in the net was a single detonator. It carried information that could not be measured by normal numerical values. Data that does not exist in this planet. An alien world's information data. For the thing, that was the physical medium it had been anxiously waiting for.......
{Note: ... Is it just me, or does that seem like it'd be the backstory for a Big Bad in a video game?}
Nagato ended his speech without flourish.
Nagato, who was doing something with the president's home computer, displayed the SOS Brigade online site, and projected the damaged SOS Brigade emblem on the monitor as he spoke.
"The invocation sign drawn by Suzumiya Haruki was the catalyst. It became the door."
"...It was this SOS Brigade emblem, from before, this thing, this summoning magic circle or something?" {Note: Trying to make sense of this makes my head hurt.
}
"Yes." Nagato said while nodding. "Converting this SOS Brigade crest into Earth standard, it holds approximately four-hundred-thirty-six terabytes of information."
It can't be! That image wasn't even ten kilobytes! Nagato calmly replied,
"It does not correspond to any unit on Earth."
"Amazing odds, aren't they? Because, even though it was a symbol that he had just happened to draw, it was a perfect fit. He truly is Suzumiya-san. Astronomical figures are as nothing."
Looks like Itsuko is seriously impressed. However, I was seriously afraid. But what was I afraid of?
Most of the things Haruki does come from mere ideas. Forming the SOS Brigade and assembling its members was like that. Asahina-sempai, who was perfect as a mascot character, Itsuko, who had transferred schools, and Nagato, who was there from the beginning. And as it turned out, Asahina-sempai was a time traveler, Itsuko an esper, and Nagato a pseudo-alien. He's already accomplished more than enough. Itsuko would probably say it wasn't by chance, spouting some nonsense like it was because Haruki desired it. Even though I'm starting to believe just a little, I'm still not buying it. Because I, myself, am a simple, ordinary human being. That alone should be enough counter-proof. By Itsuko's theory, it would be strange if there were no electro-magnetic wave profile hidden within me. Though there was supposed to be...
If there was another side to Haruki's actions I had thought meaningless, what then? He, himself, does not know the consequence. Like his own original letters, which he had casually pictured in his head, becoming some kind of message for aliens somewhere. Like a cat hitting a keyboard and
turning its owner into a bizarre superhero with blue skin producing meaningful sentences. What kind of odds were there on such things?
That delinquent of a guy named Suzumiya Haruki, who easily
bursts through the heavens breaks through the walls of probability and statistics, and unconsciously arrives at the correct solutions; I'd be better off if he had me join the SOS Brigade because he considered me some kind of errand girl. Yeah, that's it. That's totally better than thinking that I could have such an idiotic and enigmatic alter-ego. So... do I? Perhaps my background is that there is some kind of unpredictable and unusual ability within me that I do not know about. {Note: Aside from being the master of the a--pull and actually getting two of the biggest introverts to open up, nothing that I've seen yet...}
Is that why I was chosen? A secret me that I don't know about, frankly, does not exist.
What scares me is the next point.
Who am I?
I shrugged, in an imitation of Itsuko. Ah well, as she says it. I'm the one who understands my own part the most. The long and short of it is, I am the SOS Brigade's only conscience. There is no mistaking that one. My nature differs from that of the other three brigade members. I'm in the SOS Brigade for the sake of persuading Haruki to live a normal high school life. Aside from stopping his unlawful club activities, it's my duty to make him freely disband the brigade. If you really think about it, that is the fast-track to arriving at a peaceful world. No, it is the only straight track.
Rather than changing how Haruki thinks of the world, changing Haruki's inner world would be simpler and wouldn't bother anyone else.
Then again, had I not given him that strange inspiration, there might not even be an SOS Brigade. So let's see, um, it's a case-by-case thing. Show it somehow, huh. But I don't know what day that will be, and why I'd have to do such a thing.
Let's put that aside for now.
"So in the end, what was that kamadouma, really?"
If I didn't ask this right now, the story will never end. In a tone that seemed to be saying that he was really exhaling carbon dioxide, Nagato answered,
"Information life-form."
"Relative of your patron?"
"It branched off in the distant past. Though their origin is identical, these evolved differently, and went extinct."
Or so they though, but here was a survivor. It didn't have to hibernate on Earth, of all places. I wish it could've gone to bed somewhere around Neptune. It could've frozen itself so it could've fallen asleep.
To think the development of the internet would become a pseudo-demon's breeding grounds.
I figured it was mainly only good for weird fan fiction where the characters in a popular series all have their genders reversed. I suddenly thought of something. Going near the bed, I asked the petite upperclassman,
"Asahina-sempai, up to what extent have the computers of the future progressed?"
"Eh..."
Asahina-sempai opened his lips and froze. At any rate, it was probably prohibited, so I wasn't expecting anything, but someone else answered."
"Such primitive information networks will no longer be in use."
Nagato said, not sensing the atmosphere. Pointing at the PC, he said,
"For organic life-forms at the level of earthlings, inventing a system that does not depend on storage media is simple."
Nagato's gaze moved horizontally. When it got to him, Asahina-sempai grew pale.
Is that so?
"That is... Umm..."
Faltering, Asahina-sempai looked down.
"I can't say..."
In a whimpering voice, he said,
"I can't affirm or deny it; I was not given the authority. I'm sorry."
No, that's okay. No need to apologize, really. I don't particularly feel that I want to know ――― Hey, Itsuko, why are you making such a disappointed face, is there something you don't like?
To save Asahina-sempai, I decided to change the subject. Hmm, what could there be, ah yes.
"Something's strange."
After waiting until I had gathered everyone's attention on myself, I continued,
"I was present when Haruki was drawing that stupid portrait, but nothing was awakened. Why didn't that thing appear around the time Haruki finished the picture?"
The one who answered was Itsuko.
"As for the clubroom, it's because it had already been transformed into differing space for some time. Varying types of elements and force fields are battling and negating each other, and in contrast, it becomes just about normal. I guess you could say it's at the saturation point. Since various things have already met the fusion capacity, there is no room for further integration."
What a theory. In other words, the Literature Club room has become some kind ot terrible den of evil? I hadn't noticed at all.
"That's because ordinary people do not have such unnecessary sensors attached. That may be, but as it is, I think it's harmless. Probably."
Ah well. However, though it's good if prevailing temperatures would just cool down, I wouldn't want to be acting strangely or clawing at my throat before I knew it. {Note: ... What?
}
"No need to worry, everything will be all right. Nagato-san, Asahina-san, and I are dutifully working hard so that won't happen."
Are you sure this isn't happening
because the three of you are working hard?
"If it would help you sleep better, I'll gladly take you home with me."
No thanks. That would probably only make things worse.
Smiling, Itsuko said, "Ah well," then inclined her head as she turned up both palms.
I turned my eyes back to the computer screen. As I looked at the broken down symbol of the SOS Brigade, I felt uneasy for some reason. Manipulating the mouse to move the cursor, I scrolled to the bottom of the page.
"Geh?!"
The access counter was displayed. It had somehow returned to normal, and was banging out the number of visitors. The last time I had seen it, the number wasn't even three digits. Now, our SOS Brigade Site's counter had... Ones-tens-hundreds-thousands...... Turned to almost three thousand. How could this be? Where did it get such exposure?
"It placed hyperlinks on various locations."
Nagato quietly said.
"This information life-form did that in order to multiply. Exceedingly primitive. Its method was to copy its self-information into the brains of people who saw the sign, and create restricted space. It required as many humans as possible."
"So then, the people who had seen it... The almost three thousand of them, will end up the same as the president?"
"Negative. The data of the summoning crest had been damaged. The number of people who had viewed the correct information source is not many."
Though I had been thinking that the server was likely out-of-order, that might have actually helped.
"How many people? Those idiots that clicked such a dubious link and looked fully at that marking."
"Eight people. Five of whom are North High students."
So in that case, eight more people are trapped in ocher-colored space? In spaces governed, not just by kamadouma, but all sorts of metaphors? To help them ――― well, we'll probably need to go. Itsuko asked Nagato for the addresses of those people (I wasn't surprised that Nagato knew those things somehow), and it seems like Asahina-sempai is also intending to follow the pair. If that's the case, then I guess it wouldn't do for me to not go as well. Though Haruki did the worst of it, the one who had discharged this magic-circle-like thing on the net was me, so I'd better clean up my own mess.
And also for the sake of clearing up this guilty feeling.
Setting aside the victims from North High, it seems like we'll have to catch a ride at the Shinkansen somehow for the three other people that had to be rescued.
So.
It's the beginning of the exam break. The remaining act became nothing but waiting for summer vacation in the clubroom.
As for Haruki, when I had informed him that the club president had come to school,
"Hmm. Really."
Was all he said before flying out of the room. He's probably eating his heart out at the cafeteria right about now. Itsuko and Asahina-sempai have yet to come.
By the way, in the case of the Haruki-devised SOS Brigade symbol, I had fixed it by pasting on Nagato's retake. I was able to skillfully upload it this time. Why was that, I wonder? It should be okay for people who see this to stick their eyes onto it from now on. It almost doesn't differ from Haruki's clumsy illustration, but if you compare them carefully, you'll see that "ZOZ Brigade" is displayed. Having that as the only difference, it was at the brink of whether strange things would or wouldn't appear.
An epigram for the moment: I want to impulsively click the link to an unknown address, but how?
Thinking about such things, I gazed absent-mindedly at Nagato, who had been reading a technical book lined with numbers at the table's edge. Watching Nagato's face, I happened to think of something.
Though I don't know when this person noticed Haruki's summoning image, could he be the one who destroyed the data?
One more thing; there was Kimidori Emori-sempai, the one who brought this case to us. Just a while ago, when I went to inquire at the Computer Club's room, I heard that the club president had no boyfriend. She said so herself, seeming healthy, though she was troubled about having no memory of the past several days. Not all having the appearance of having lied, she was decidedly agape when I had mentioned Kimidori-sempai's name. The president wasn't some versatile entertainer who could give such a real performance.
I was suspicious.
Was Kimidori-sempai's coming to the SOS Brigade really, truly, for a request? If you think about it, the timing was too perfect. Haruki did his prank drawing, and I had pasted it onto the site. Then some people who had seen it were taking to some information life-form in some different dimension. After inquiring about the story from the visiting Kimidori-sempai, we turned towards the club president's home. And then, somehow did some exterminating.
It was a picture-perfect scenario. The one in the heart of all this was always Nagato. Though that all-purpose alien terminal having done something to Kimidori-sempai, which resulted in him having brought his case to us, would have been an elaborate method, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Perhaps he had thought about staging a pretend-client to relieve Haruki's boredom even just a little. If it was an incident of this level, Nagato could have finished it off by himself without having to involve any of us. Hasn't it always been like that? Without saying anything to anyone and keeping silently behind the curtains, could he have been preventing these strange things before they happened?
A breeze blew in through the window, tossing Nagato's hair and the pages of his book. His white finger pressed softly down on the margin, his white face lowered; unmoving except for his eyes, which chased the book's letters.
Or... Could it have been Nagato's wish to involve us? Living in a dreary room for years, an alien-made organic android. Only seemingly emotionless, could it be he also has them?
Those feelings of loneliness one has when secluded.
2008-08-19, 08:33
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