Approaching Calamity (4)
"I'm going."
There were too many unknowns, but if he hesitated he wouldn't reach the heart of the incident in time.
'I'll go see what kind of bastard this is myself.'
Shirone's nose curled like a predator's at the thought of an uncertain target.
"Ggrrr!"
A strange headache struck from a memory that shouldn't have existed, and at last his eyes snapped open.
'It worked!'
The time device that controlled the twenty‑four hours vibrated, tearing down the barriers between past, present, and future.
As his senses inverted, memories surged as if flowing backward.
He met Maicon, lay down in bed and slept, made love with Rua on the beach, danced.
'This is twelve hours.'
The memory of drinking at the party registered as reality, and village chief Begpa drew near.
"Puhahaha! You really… Kirik. Delightful… mage… kigigigigi!" The auditory scene Shirone had pulled from past into present caused cognitive dissonance.
'Wrong.'
The memory had been artificially manipulated.
The implanted information clashed with the facts stamped in his brain, and his senses twisted.
"Shi—rone—?"
Begpa's face overlapped in retinal afterimages and looked like a demon.
"Kiaaaa!"
At last the fabricated memory dissolved, and the moment his five senses registered only reality—
"Die, Shirone!"
A two‑meter grey monstrosity, not human, glinted with ink‑black eyes and reached out a hand.
"Ugh!"
He widened the distance with teleportation and scanned the white sand; there wasn't a single human in sight.
"What is this?"
A triangular, mantis‑like face; two skull‑plates spread flat like fans.
The body was mummy‑thin, the knees reversed, the arms scrawny, a golden gauntlet strapped to one wrist.
'Not an exact match… but familiar.'
What confirmed that impression most strongly was the massive aircraft hovering above the Mero cliff.
"Terafos?"
That fact struck like a blow.
"We are the Terafos battle unit. You have betrayed Terafos' expectation."
The alien lifeform that spoke in human tongues stepped on the sand with birdlike split talons.
"What do you mean I betrayed your expectation?"
If this moment was already a past he'd experienced…
'What the hell did I go through every morning before I even stretched in bed?'
'I don't know.'
Even though he'd traveled back by time vibration, the implanted memories still blocked him.
"Answer me. What did you do to me? The chip in my head? Why did you inject those strange memories?"
The alien halted its heavy stride.
"…From the future? Much faster than our prediction. But that changes nothing."
Dozens of Terafos surrounded Shirone.
"You have lost your qualification as humanity's representative. At the moment you transferred the realm of Yahweh."
"I didn't transfer it. I don't remember because of you, but I know that much."
"A convenient belief. Consider what your actions will do to humanity going forward…"
Dozens of palms pointed at Shirone.
"Watch from the mire of oblivion."
The Terafos gauntlets activated and fired razor‑edged sonic beams.
Shirone shouted.
"...I—"
He tried to speak, but his voice vanished the moment it would have left his mouth.
'They caught the sonic wave!'
Ambient noise collapsed toward absolute silence, and his chest tightened as if it would burst.
Meanwhile the Terafos voices thundered, vast and majestic.
"Uphold the order of the cosmos!"
It felt as if someone else was shouting inside his brain; Shirone couldn't even think.
'Incredible.'
He prided himself on a flawless mind as an Infinite mage, yet the Terafos were masters of waveform, too.
"Block their retreat!"
The sonic waves shredded the scenery and became blades, aiming for Shirone's neck.
"These bastards!"
Any goodwill he'd once had for the Terafos was gone.
Enough!
Homing Photon Cannons individually locked onto Terafos soldiers and shot forward.
Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting!
Intangible ripples spread before the Terafos, and flashes of light blocked the assaults.
"Do you think that's enough?!"
The ground rolled like a wave and the air solidified like iron, crushing Shirone.
"In this universe—on a planet that occupies only one slot—on a lifeform that arose not long ago… you think you can define truth?!"
The Terafos roared.
Even with his head clouded, Shirone gritted his teeth and brought his hands together in a circle.
'Elemental Photon Cannon.'
A powerful electric charge coalesced between his palms as he drew phenomena out through spoken magic.
"...!"
Whatever happened next—
"Let me speak too!"
The Elemental Photon Cannon tore through the sonic barrier and shot forward in a tremor.
Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting!
Electricity tangled with the wave barrier; several warriors convulsed and collapsed.
"Hah. Hah."
Breathing hard and relieved, Shirone wiped sweat from his chin and raised his hands.
Dozens of electric spheres floated into the sky, targeting all Terafos combatants.
"You don't understand. As you can see, I am Yahweh. And even if I left room, why attack me?"
"Still unbeatable, are you?"
The Terafos dodged the answer and glanced at one another, then reached toward Shirone.
"Go to sleep."
The chip implanted in Shirone's head activated; his brainwaves fired regardless of his will.
"Uaaaaa!"
Endless tinnitus and a crushing headache surged.
"Forget, human. You can never defeat evil. We will judge you."
"Ggrrr…"
Kneeling and clutching his head, Shirone mustered every ounce of strength and raised his face.
"No one can judge another."
"Yet you judge evil, do you not? Have you not annihilated countless demons?"
"Don't be absurd. I only do what I believe is right. If many believe, it becomes law. But that doesn't give anyone the right to judge others."
"That many is your limit. We are Terafos, overseers of the entire universe. Human notions of justice are only a tiny minority to us. We are the law." The Terafos advanced with outstretched hands.
"Truth exists everywhere, of course. We believed Yahweh to be such. But you broke the rules."
As they closed in, Shirone's consciousness shook uncontrollably.
'No! Hold on!'
He didn't want to wake to a pleasant morning.
"Uaaaaaa!"
There was no time.
Even now the world would be trampled under demonic footsteps.
'This is the last chance.'
For a final gamble, Shirone shoved his index finger into his ear.
"What the—"
A cold machine tore through the skin.
'Lucky— not too deep. But…'
Holding it and slowly pulling, wires connected to his brain sent sharp stimulation.
"Grrr!"
His pupils rolled upward and his brain's functions left electric afterimages on his retinas.
"Are you trying to kill yourself? Let me be clear: remove that device and you will die."
He didn't have to hear it to know it was true.
'I have to keep it together.'
Plink. Plink‑plink.
Wires slid out ten centimeters; he did not want to imagine how long they were.
A chill ran through him, as if every thought and even his soul were being drawn out.
"Uaaaaaa."
Shirone's mouth opened against his will as the chip's terminal structure stimulated his entire brain.
"Dead—?"
The Terafos fell silent.
Blood trickled down the wire connecting brain to hand and dripped.
'Huh?'
Shirone experienced something strange.
'What is this?'
All the world's scenes overlapped in temporal order and hung before his eyes.
He turned and saw another version of himself frozen, still clutching the wire.
Time did not flow.
'Because the full twenty‑four hours have been completely unfolded.'
It was probably a side effect of the resonance his brain had entered.
In other words, his brain was damaged enough that it no longer perceived the flow of time.
'So this is really dying.'
Far off—roughly three hours later—he saw himself lying dead, nose bleeding.
'There has to be a way.'
Shirone approached the other self who was pulling out the chip, reached both hands in, and spread them left and right.
Hundreds of Shirones overlapped in the world of thought and perception, fanning out left and right within a single second.
'Damn it!'
He repeated the motion.
At one‑tenth, one‑hundredth, one‑thousandth of a second, something other than himself appeared.
'Eek.'
Between the dominoing Shirones, a dark red sphere quivered grotesquely.
'I'm not present in this timeslot.'
It was 0.666 seconds.
'If you slice time into tiny fractions, there are timeslots where nothing exists…'
Why?
'Why is there such a gap?'
To a human who believed the universe was flawless, this defect made no sense.
'Because something needs it.'
If the world is made of information, then air could be a specific signal necessary for life.
Roughly seventy‑eight percent nitrogen, twenty‑one percent oxygen, and the less‑than‑0.1 percent mix of other informational elements.
'Time is the same.' Specific segments of information within an instant must somehow affect the world.
'I'll go deeper!'
Shirone gritted his teeth and kept tearing into time.
'More! More! More!'
He dissected time.
Acceleration set in, and timeslots expanded even before he could spread his arms.
Many Shirones fanned out left and right; occasionally odd things passed through.
'I can't stop.'
He had already split time into astronomical fractions; turning back was inconceivable.
Proportionally it was tiny, so he kept digging.
"Come out! What's there?!"
Toward the end of time.
Perhaps because obvious death awaited, Shirone focused solely on that.
'It changes.'
In that near‑infinite instant, Shirone's form began to blur.
"Hah! Hah!"
Terror surged, but curiosity beyond life kept his arms moving.
'It's coming!'
He felt certain the end was arriving.
What streamed past left and right were forms beyond description.
'No. Impossible!'
Humans, this world—entirely unlike anything a mere brain image could conjure.
He was afraid.
"Uaaaaaa!"
Tears streaming, Shirone finally reached a place where nothing streamed left or right.
The end of time.
"Ah, aaahhh…"
There was no form there.
The Terafos screamed.
"This is impossible!"
Following Shirone's moving hand, the wire connected to the chip pulled free.
The problem was that it passed right through his flesh.
"Was what the Chief Justice said… right?"
"Ugh!"
Shirone's pupils returned, and he completely removed the long dangling chip.
"Phew."
The Terafos fighters froze.
"How can a human—"
A state impossible to sense.
Like a quantum, the terminus of the universe existed only in an unsensable form.
"The tenth sense—"
The Terafos called it muta (無態).