#disappearancearc

Singular lyricism, and abstraction thereof #Midorism #saveMidoriproject

Chapter 23 "Antisolipsism" next.

"There has to be no meaning... I can't stand to have a meaning." #Midorism #saveMidoriproject

Chapter 22 "Memorification" next week.

Who is Kana... and what could have possibly happened to her "teddy bear alliance" with Ene? #Midorism #saveMidoriproject

“You’re in love with the idea of Midori...  We’re all abstractions in this world, after all.” #Midorism #saveMidoriproject

Ryan and Mark face against the opposing faction and their virtual missile system in the upcoming Chapter 21 “Chronostasis.”

Midori was standing in the elevator with a confused look that quickly changed to fear and suspicion upon seeing me run up to the elevator. #Midorism #saveMidoriproject

Time & Memory has returned after a one-year hiatus, with Chapter 23 “Antisolipsism.”  Ryan must now save Midori in nine different copies of Dimension M to bring her back... while military-corpocratic abyss continues to deepen obliviously.

“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

“Ene and I...  Our theories are incommensurable.” #Midorism #saveMidoriproject

Chapter 23 “Antisolipsism” next week.

「緑の憂鬱」 #Midorism #saveMidoriproject