Mass Adjustment (1)
Marsha asked, "What do you mean by that?"
"Apocalypse is where the final information of the future—what can be reached from the present reality—accumulates. It isn't a physical accumulation, of course."
"Right. In an ordinary house you might find things a year old and things twenty years old. Mining is collecting the oldest relics to reveal near-future information. Sometimes you actually have to dig, though..."
"Yes. In that sense, the fact that the building housing a digital Ra is Fairy Biomimetics is significant. In the Demon War the elves sided with humans. The elf chieftain Ennox considers his people a failed race."
Only humans keep dreaming without end, endlessly craving, and fighting without rest.
"She knows that races that can't assimilate into human society eventually become livestock."
Chief among them are the fire clan.
"Ennox and the elves are still fighting. And this stele shows their outcome."
"The fairies won, then."
It wasn't a good result for humans either.
"Why haven't they appeared? Giants I can understand—Ru's command makes them obedient, so they don't move—but..."
"Fairies are the same. When Ikael stepped down from the position of archangel, their centripetal force vanished. But now we know what they're aiming for."
Fairy Biomimetics, Inc.
"They want to become human," Shirone said.
"In a way completely different from the elves' universal love."
The angels' cries were mournful.
"Ah—why is this happening... angels?"
Those who had lost their pure concept, their radiant cores, showed no nobility.
Only self-worth fallen to the ground.
'Why are they sorrowful?'
Yuriel looked up at the sky Shirone had left.
'Losing a concept doesn't mean we've ceased to be ourselves. So why?'
There had always been a perfect standard.
Angels, born with an intrinsic concept, have no moral conflict about their actions.
'Even a fallen angel... if the crime was committed within one's own concept, it's still within that concept.'
For angels, the radiant core was more than power or ability; it was the standard of existence.
It would take a shock of that magnitude to call it a fall from status.
'Then what about me?'
Yuriel asked herself.
'Even if I lost my radiant core, even if I have no standard of existence, can I still choose?'
She could not kill Ikael.
That the archangel of destruction hesitated before destruction was clearly a matter of the heart.
'I defined myself by my own standard, not the universe's.'
A radiant core does not perish.
"Ah, Yuriel."
The angels gathered around Yuriel's brilliant radiant core floating above her head.
"What should we do now? Should we perish? Or continue to exist? Where should these hands, these feet... move?" Yuriel looked down at the angels' abject expressions.
'They've never done anything like this before.'
They'd never had to choose something for themselves.
"Let's go."
Yuriel turned.
'I can't go to the human world where Satiel lived. They wouldn't endure it.'
Like newborn infants, taken to humans who deal in uncertainty, something terrible would happen.
'They'd be prey, essentially.'
Trailing behind listlessly, the angels asked, "Where are you going?"
The archangel who still had a radiant core rose toward the sun, and humans became their natural enemies.
"Crown."
The leader of the fairies' seventy-two ranks.
Ashur's signal-made giant ship stretched out into the vastness of space.
Shirone was on the bridge.
'Reyel should have arrived by now.'
Ashur's ship was fast enough to reach the sun in a day, but light-speed was a different order.
'Not speed, but concept. The unit of the signal that composes the universe.'
The mind is faster than light, but superluminal is still just the nothing between signals.
'There is no substance faster than light.'
Even at that speed it would take roughly ten minutes to reach the sun.
Ashur came aboard.
"I'm sorry."
While Shirone had been watching outside during Ashur's recovery—he'd used his Signal to the limit—he apologized.
"It's fine. Warp wasn't possible anyway. If it weren't for you, Ashur, we wouldn't even have tried."
If even a sliver of doubt remained in the mind, quantum phenomena wouldn't activate.
From the Omega experience they could get close, but this time confidence hadn't come.
'No creature has ever entered the sun. Even if there had been, it would have been the same.'
It was an unknown beyond even control of a star.
"Going straight would be fastest, but superluminal travel carries many risks. We'll detour by a safer route."
"Yes. Please." When they went down to the passenger area, Ikael and Amy stood side by side at a window.
Ikael's face was dark.
"Are you worried?"
Though she'd betrayed Heaven for Shirone, the angels were still precious to her.
"Yes. But it'll be fine. Yuriel remains. He'll take good care of them."
Amy asked, "You said it's the angels' homeland. What is it like? This is my first time going to the sun."
Sensing her concern, Ikael smiled.
"It's beautiful. From a human standpoint it's a bit of a harsh environment, though."
"A bit?"
Shirone's eyes narrowed.
"Hoho. The sun's light is a network that travels the ends of space. Without light there are no senses; without senses, the world doesn't exist for humans."
"Everything comes from the sun, then."
"Yes. That is 'Ra.' And the being that controls all those suns is the Unceasing Sun—the incarnate Akashic Record, Anke Ra." The eternal Ra.
"If any lifeform born because of Ra came to Amy's planet, it might find the environment harsh. But for an angel like me, the sun is the coziest refuge, a place of rest for the mind."
"So angels can withstand the sun."
"Of course we can't."
Ikael pursed her lips and shot a sidelong glance.
Amy went quiet at the girllike expression, and Ikael's lips twitched into a smile as she continued.
"Even conceptual beings like angels can't withstand the sun's enormous energy."
That was why the Twelve Apostles couldn't come.
"But radiant cores aren't destroyed—they're absorbed. That's why angels can go to the sun. In other words, the sun itself can be seen as a gigantic radiant core."
Shirone seemed to understand.
"A collective of mental bodies. But could humans like us endure it?"
Miracle Stream could provide defense, but there would be limits. If Satiel responded hostilely, it could be dangerous.
"That's why Amy came along," Ikael said.
"With Amy as an incarnation of fire, she can endure the sun's power. In terms of the Law, it means the system won't crash; it's compatible."
"You really think so?"
Shirone had confidence; even without it she would have followed. But the opponent was the sun itself.
'Me walking on the sun?' Amy's eyes unfocused at the thought, and Ikael stroked her head.
"Don't worry. If it's at a level that affects angels' conceptual bodies, it means you're close to Ra's status. You can look forward to it. It's truly beautiful."
Amy turned to the window.
A star the size of a gold coin glittered at the far edge of space and waited for them.
The sun was awe-inspiring. Seeing a fireball a hundred times the size of humanity's planet from a mere thousand meters made one realize how splendid the world was.
The overwhelming light blinded them; any living creature would have long since melted.
"Clearly the operation has changed."
The conceptual angels accepted the pale thermonuclear world as it was.
Reyel transmitted consciousness through the radiant core.
"The universe has been tuned. To raise a few pyramids on a single planet."
The change was so minute no instrument could measure it.
A tuning located at the point reached by piercing half of a half of a half with a tiny attack.
The angels called the change in that area—
"Feeling."
Satiel frowned.
"A minuscule change so small even angelic senses can only feel it. But it's definitely different..."
It was a grand adjustment.
An explosion on the sun's surface sent pillars of fire thousands of kilometers into space.
A spectacle of light.
The newborn light would cross the vacuum and trigger countless events across the universe, but...
"Hmph."
That light carried no angelic authority.
"I won't accept this. I will restore the angels. Start by changing the core."
"Can we? Even if all the archangels gather, it will be difficult. Above all, even if we access Ra's core, to reverse this change..."
They would need amplification.
"Ikael."
The fact that nothing could be done without her fed Satiel's anger.
"We have no choice. It's only the two of us left. An angel that has a mind... hm?"
Satiel turned to Reyel.
"But why do you still have a radiant core? Have you ever broken the Law?" There was no answer, and the triangular Mara Luna hiding behind Reyel tensed.
'It's all your fault.'
When Satiel decided to be archangel, the other archangels left her side.
No matter how much she screamed, her voice failed to move the world.
'Reyel stopped walking.'
— I am the archangel! I will set everything right! I will punish the traitor Ikael!
Reyel, who had listened to her anguished screams all night, sighed and turned away.
"Luna, let's go back."
"Reyel—Satiel has no authority to lead the archangels. Why do you bow?"
— I am the noblest! I am the archangel!
"We've known each other a long time." Luna could never forget Reyel's face as she looked toward Satiel at that moment.
"I didn't want to lose even you."
"Reyel..."
He had chosen for himself.
Satiel didn't ask further.
"Ah. Well, whatever. With you here it'll be a bit easier. You are the archangel of light, after all."
"Right. Let's go in."
As the two angels inclined their conceptual bodies toward the sun, Luna's face contorted.
"Ugh! Reyel..."
"Return to subspace. This is our home. Mara cannot withstand this place."
One more meter here and the body would melt.
"No. I will follow."
The moonlit Mara Luna was a goddess of madness. Her obsession with Reyel exceeded imagination.
"Luna."
Reyel touched her achingly beautiful face.
"I command it."
"Reyel, my lord." Luna wiped her cheeks, her body blurred, and she vanished into subspace.
Reyel turned.
"Let's depart."
The two angels, their conceptual bodies aflame, plunged toward the sun at tremendous speed.
'Ah.'
Satiel felt infinite solace.
'Ra. My home.'
The angels' bodies evaporated in an instant, and two radiant cores plunged into the sun's embrace.