.hack//AI Buster - Volume 1 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4 - Area.4 Memory 

.: 1 :.

The setting sun shone weakly over The World, while the lake's waters continuously rippled.

"Where are we, AI?" Hokuro asked.

"It's the Hidden, Forbidden, Sacred Zone."

Standing over the stone bridge, I surveyed a solemn church on an island in the middle of a lake.

(Delta) Server Zone:
Hidden, Forbidden, Sacred

It was quiet.There was only the sound of our footsteps, none of the usual background music. It made this place feel somehow incomplete.

"Why do you keep taking me to such strange place.?" Hokuto asked.

"Why does this place seem strange to you?"

"Look at the bridge. It's useless."

I looked back and noticed the bridge, which we had gated onto, ended in the middle of the lake. It didn't connect to the other side.

"I suppose that's where the area ends."

"But it ruins rhe illusion of the game."

In The World, eadl physical area has to have borders as there's only so much memory and programming that can go into any section. Usually, rhe maps have natural bordersmountains, impassable water, or thick vegetation-something that looks like part of rhe organic environment. Even here, the creators could have designed the bridge to appear to cross to the orher side, while having some obstacle preventing us from moving all the way over rhe bridge. Instead, it was sheared off.

I noticed Hokuto looking around, taking in the area. Looking down mysel£ I noticed our dlaracters' shadows on the ground. The perpetual sun in this area meant it was near dusk or dawn. It was hard to teli wirhout any change. However, there was one clue. In rhe real world, most churches have their entrances on rhe west side of the building and the altar on the east. If the designers had held true to that idiom, then it meant it was morning. On rhe other hand, this place was taken from the Epitaph of the Twilight, whid, has nothing to do with the religion of rhe real world.

I walked toward the church.

"Wait up, AI!" Hokuto called afrer me. I could hear the sound of her approaching footsteps. I also noticed our three shadows sU'etched out before me. Lycoris continued by my side.

Coming here was rhe first time I gated us somewhere without Lycoris teleporting us. Yet she followed along quite willingly.

The stone church felt ominous silhouetted against the light of the slln. It cteated a gloomy atmosphere.

"Jeez, what a dark place;' Hokuto said. "How come there's no map?"

She was right. The field map wasn't displayed on the screen. That didn't make sense here. In Captive, Fallen, Angel, not having a map was part of the challenge of conquering the event. But here?

I stood before the front double doors. The door on the right was half open. As soon as I stepped across the  threshold, the sound of a pipe organ rose up to meet me. The sound grew stronger once I entered.

A long service hall stretched before me, its ceiling cross vaulted. The marble floor had a greenish tint with a diamond-shaped pattern. A pendulum swung back and forth marking off time. Looking around, I noticed three other pendulums forming a perfect square.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

"This is a sacred place in The World."

"Why is it sacred?"

"Because it's taken from the book. It's also quite unique 111 that there are no monsrers, dungeons, magic portals, anything like that."

"You mean nothing happens here."

"Have you heard of the Epitaph of the Twilight?"

"Um?" Clearly she hadn't.

"It's an epic that was used as the basis for the background of the game world. It is the foundation of the story."

"Who wrote it?" she asked.

"A German woman named Emma Wielant. She posted it on her website."

"You mean she didn't have a publisher?"

"I don't think so. But it was still very popular."

"What kind of story is it?"

"It's supposed to be a battle between spirirs and demons. I believe the forces of light are fighting against the evil waves of calamity that could lead to the destruction of the world. I think the main characters are two half spirits and a human who search for the Twilight Dragon prophesied to save the world."

"You don't sowld like you really know what it's about."

"The original version is lost. The beta version of The World was released in May 2007. By the time the test on the beta version was completed in July, the rumor began to spread that the game was based on a web novel."

"Emma's book."

"Right."

"You've been playing this game since it was a beta version?"

"Maybe I'm a cripple after all?" I said.

She laughed.

"Emma's site had been shut down long before the rumor started," I continued.

"Why was it shut down?"

"Emma Wielant had passed away by then."

"Oh."

"I gathered everything I could get my hands on about her or her book. From what I learned, Emma disappeared from the online world around 2004 or 2005. At the very latest, she was gone by December 24th, 2005. Do you know the significance of that date?"

"That's when something destroyed the Internet, right?"

"Right. The Pluto Kiss virus. For seventy-seven minute, around the globe, all commercial activities that relied on the Internet ceased. It was a huge blow to the world's economy. Goverments, financial institutions, transportation systems, businesses-----everything stopped working. Data was cotrupted and teleased, trains collided, airplanes crashed, it was apocalyptic. Even the Pentagon's computers, which were thought to maintain perfect security, feU victim. When they went offline, it caused the military's automatic retaliation system to begin a countdown since the computers thought Washington had been destroyed. If the nerwork hadn't restatted when it did, the world would have been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. And do you know who the perpetrator of this evil virus turned out to be?"

"A ten-year-old kid."

"That's right. Figures he lived in Los Angeles. Nothing good ever comes from that city."

"Yup."

"Most personal computers were also damaged. The amount of losr data is unfathomable. I was one of the victims."

"What happened?"

"I lost my nearly fini shed dissertation that I had spent months working on."

"Didn't you keep a backup?"

"I do now,"

Hokuto laughed. She clearly enjoyed hearing about my nusery.

"Anyhow, prior to Pluto Kiss, people suffered viruses and worms all the time. Today that's unimaginable because of ALTIMIT OS."

"It sounds awful."

"Anyway, that's why there aren't any copies of the Epitaph of the Twilight. It was lost because of the virus and probably Emma's disappearance."

"Weren't there any hard copies?"

"Apparently, Emma's site was set up to prevent people from saving, printing, or copying the pages. If there was a hard copy, she was the only one who ever saw it. The only other way would have been to transcribe every word of it by hand."

"That sounds tedious. No one would bother to do that. Especially when it was online all the time."

"Right. It was free to visit and read, so why bother."

"So it's lost?"

"Maybe not. Apparently, there was a passionate fan, someone who actually rranscribed and translated the text into English. Whoever it was must've saved a hard copy because that's why we have Fragment, which we used in the
beta tests."

"So who translated it?"

"Who knows? Someone online. Or maybe a group of people. Because we don't know, Fragment lacks authenticity.

Who knows if the English translation was even based on the original work by Emma Wielant? And if it is, who knows how accurate the translation really is?"

"You mean it could be wrong?"

"Translation is a very imprecise process. Inevitably, changes must be made to accommodate the audience and culture that rhe text is being translated for. Accuracy isn't always as important as relevancy and, in this case, storytelling."

"How can it be imprecise? I Inean a tree is a tree, right?"

"Yes, but watch any Hollywood movie on OVD. If you watch the dubbed version and combine it with the subtitles, you'll see a perfect example of how dialogue can turn out to be so different in the same context. Not to mention the occasional bad translation. How often have you watched a film and thought that what they're saying doesn't even make sense?"

"Yeah, that's true. 00 you speak English?"

"Some."

"So you probably see translating mistakes all the time."

"Sure, sometimes. But they're not always mistakes. For example, a joke in English might not translate because of the difference in culture or language. Some words sound the same, such as bare or bear, yet they have two different meanings. But just because two words sound the same in one
language, doesn't mean they will in another.

"Humor often plays with these subtleties that simply can't be captured in direct translation. So instead the translator will try to keep the context of the scene, but change the way it's written to keep it interesting for the new readers. Otherwise, if it was kept exactly the same, it might
not even be readable!"

"You're right."

"But if the translator goes too far, then the original intention gets wiped out. That's not good for either the reader or the original writer. Words are very delicate. Keep that in mind."

"I never thought about this before."

"Anyway, it's said that Emma's otiginal manuscript was only a first draft. Who knows what a final version might have looked like. Authors make big changes along the way. In fact, Kenji Miyazawa's Night Train to the Stars underwent thtee revisions; the final draft is hardly recognizable compared to the fitst draft. It's kind of like an upgraded program."

"Really? There are three versions of Night Train?"

"Actually, I think there are four versions. Miyazawa didn't gain wide recognition until after his death. I think all the different drafts have been published at one time or another."

"That's so sad that he never knew how much people loved his stories."

"Kenji Miyazawa led a good, albeit short, life. He was a teacher who wrote on the side and self-published his books when he could. He loved to write children's stories and poems. After he died, when he was only thirty-seven, diffetent editors published different versions of his story."

"You mean they changed it?"

"They had to. The original was incomplete. But some editors did a good job, and others didn't. It's all subjective. The point is, pinning down the original version of the Epitaph isn't as simple as you'd imagine. Without an original hard copy, it's anyones guess as to what Emma's original intent was. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that any copy is computerized, so there's no handwriting that can be analyzed."

"Just like some teachers won't accept typewritten paper. because they can't be sure if the students did it themselves or just downloaded something they read from the Internet!"

"Some people like to brag that they've read the original, but no one can be sure of cllat."

"But you said The World is based on the Epitaph."

"Yes."

"So how did they read it?" she asked.

"CC Corp. apparently receives thousands of emails each day asking that same question."

"And their answer is?"

"They never respond" .

"Why not?"

"Well, we have to go back for a moment. The English version of the Epitaph begins with a scene at tl,e 'Navel of Lake." That's where we are now."

"Navel?"

"It means center. I know it's odd phrasing, but that's how it was translated. I can't help it. Anyway, the original story was so powerful that even the story fragment still drew people in. I know it worked on me. I was totally lllIDlersed in The World and wanted to visit it if it was at all possible. That's what inspired this place. Well, not just this place, but the entire game.

"I know when I was younger, I would take the different story fragments and try to piece them together into a more coherent story. I even tried to learn more about Emma Wielant so I might understand the world better than anyone e1se."

"Wow! I wonder if I'd enjoy reading the Epitaph."

"I don't know."

"I thought you said it was fascinating."

"It is. But it's also very heavy."

"You mean it's thick?"

"Not exacrly. Well, it is, but that's not what I meant. The content is very heavy. It's not for everyone. I'm not sure it would sell very well if it were released. Even J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy was only read by a small number of devoted fans in Japan before they turned it into a movie."

"But hasn't the Epitaph become equally famolls because of the game?"

"Sure. But you don't need to be a fan of the story to be a fan of the game. The two are different. And yet, they're the same. I can't help but think that Emma would be gratified to know that her story lives on and changes daily."

"That is a rather sweet thought."

"She's been immortalized, even if most of the players have never heard of her. The images from her imagination will live on."

We were now in the center of the church.

"Please, Albireo." Lycoris was standing behind me.

"Hey, Lyco spoke?" Hokuto was surprised.

"You haven't noticed?"

"Noticed what?"

"Voice chat automatically gets switched in any church from Party Mode to Talk Mode."

"Why does it do that?"

"It's not permitted to hide anything before God." I turned my attention to Lycoris. "I brought you here for a reason."

"AI, what's gomg on?" Hokuto looked puzzled. She didn't know about the file extensions.

"Do you really want what I obtained from the spring demon?" I asked.

A beam of light from the upper-story window fell squarely on her face. She appeared ah"ost heavenly as she looked up at me with wide-eyed innocence and slowly lifted her hand while repeating the phrase she'd been whispering to me for hours:

Lycoris: P1ease, A1bireo. P1ease give me the yromem.cyl.

.: 2 :.

"Do you remember now?" I asked.

"Albireo?!" Lycoris was stunned.

Perhaps she remembered this ...

I saw something move in the lower corner of my perspective. Instinctively, I followed the movement. I couldn't believe what I saw.

It was the girl.

Her image was reflected on the smooth, polished surface of the floor. She was floating above us, near the ceiling. Somehow, she'd escaped being deleted.

"She's above LIS!" I shouted.

The knights, not expecting danger, were slow to reaer. She wasn't. She headed for the door.

"Cover the door," I ordered. "Cover all the exits!"

The knights were reacting too slowly. She was going to escape. I only had one chance. I placed my target over her and toggled the debug conunand. Luckily, she was still in range. I swung my spear.

There was the familiar bright flash of whire light that enveloped the girl.

"I wanted to wait for the right moment for you to remember me, Lycoris. Do you remember now? You asked for your memory, and I gave it to you. But you don't seem very happy about it."

"Why are you doing this, Albireo?"

"Don't you remember, Lycoris? Maybe you shouldn't have shed your memory when you segmented the last time we met."

I targeted Lycoris and selected the debug command.

"Does this mean I will be .. ,"

"Deleted:' I finished her rhought.

"AI?" H okutn shouted.

"What is it?"

"Why are you pointing a weapon at Lyco? You're not going to attack her, are you?"

"I am."

"Why?"

"To resolve the event."

I stood poised with Wotan's spear pointed directly at her. It had only been three days since we were in this same situation. The last time we faced off like this, I was using a diffe rent avatar. I was the Captain of tlle Cobalt Knights. Only this time, Lycoris wasn't going to escape.

"You're going to clear the event by killing Lyco?"

"That's right."

"That's horrible!"

"It can't be helped. It's part of the event."

I couldn't tell Hokuto that I was a member of the Cobalt Knights and a debugger. It would be breaking company protocol. As far as she's concerned, this will all be part of the Lycoris event.

"I don't understand. Why are you doing this? Why do you need to kill her?"

"You'd have to ask whoever designed the event, Hokuto."

"Maybe it's a bug." She had no idea how accurate she was. "Maybe something went wrong. This can't be right."

"It's what needs to happen to resolve everything."

"No! I won't let you."

"The only way to stop me is to kill me. Do you drink you could do that, Hokuto?"

"Why would I want to?"

"If you don't like it, then you should leave the party. This event has nothing to do wid, you anyway."

"That's not true. I'm part of this. I can see Lyco when no one else can."

"Leave the party and she'll disappear."

"But that's just it. We are a party. We're teanmlates. All three of us."

"Not any more."

"But I thought you were trying to save Lyco."

"I was only trying to solve the event."

"But she held your hand for so long. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"She's not a real character. She's not a player. She's an NPC and this is an event."

"Were you just playing this out so you could eventually kill her?"

"No one knows how an event will end. But once I start an event, no matter how terrible the ending might be, I always clear it."

"This is lTIOnstrotls. You can't kill her."

"I'm not killing her," I sighed. ''I'm just deleting her." It was the sale reason I entered The World with my own character-to hunt down the AI. Only I couldn't destroy her until we had every piece of her back in place. She escaped by segmenting herself into different parts of the system. Now that she was whole again, it was time to finish her.

Of course, I was lucky. The only reason she didn't recognize me was because she gained her memory last. I wondered about that when I first encountered her. Obviously, at that point she COlJdn't see, but even when she regained her eyes, she still didn't recognize the Captain.

"You have to understand, Hokuto, sometimes in the course of the game, you encounter Vagrant AIs." I managed to restrain Lycoris with a special function of my spear. "These AIs don't operate normally. Thetefore, they must be destroyed."

"You mean she's a bug?"

"Yes. There was another such Vagrant that once resided here as well. He was known as the ghost of the church. These characters are anomalies. They need to be properly handled."

"What kind of ghost?"

"The behaviors of the AIs are irrelevant in the game. They end up causing confusion and occasionally interfere with the program server. They're a unique form of glitch."

"But how can Lyco be a bug?"

"Who knows? Maybe she was some kind of incomplete upload, maybe it was a mistake during an upgrade. In any event, she exists, but she has no purpose. Everything in the game has to serve a purpose, whether as an event or some addition to The World. That's the way it must be. The players demand it."

I really didn't know how Lycotis was created. That was a mystery I had often pondered. Some people believed that hackers purposefully placed such characters in the system, but that seemed unlikely. An AI, especially an AI as advanced as Lycoris was beyond even the highest level CC Corp. programmer's ability. Her ability to respond and speak were far too fluid for any program yet devised. Maybe something lilke her could be created in another ten years, but right now, it was impossible. Not even the great Tokuoka could create something as advanced as Lycoris.

In the end, it wasn't my concern. If it didn't serve the game, or worse, caused problems, it had to be dealt with. It was that simple.

"If it's a bug, why don't you just tell the game company and have it fixed?!"

"Of course, I'll tell them. But I still have to fmish her."

"Why?"

"Because I want to clear the event."

"That's crazy."

"It's necessary,H I insisted.

"Don't you get it, Albireo? You're a crip if you think that way!" Hokuto shouted.

"Maybe I am."

Lycoris spoke sofdy again. "I will be deleted?"

"Yes, Lycoris. It's time."

"Why must you delete me?"

"To protect the world for great players such as Balmung and Orca who put their trust in the system. Because of them, I cannot overlook even the most trivial bug!"

"I'm a bug?"

"Yes. A glitch. A ghost in the machine."

"I'm a failure."

"Not for long."

Her loose dress fluttered in a slow motion. The clock ticked sofdy in the background. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Her time was up. I hit the debug command.

"No!" Hokuto scremned. "Don!t"

Hokuto's shout was drowned out in the blinding white flash.

.: 3 :.

Everything went blank. The church, the streaming sunlight, even Hokuto disappeared. They were gone. Something was wrong.

Normally, after a bug is deleted, there's a white flash and then nothing. The AI disappears and everything continues as normal. This was definitely not normal.

In front of lile was Lycoris, impaled on the end of my spear. Surrounding us, suspended in midair, were the four clocks, pendulums swinging.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

For a moment, I thought the program had frozen, but that wasn't it. The clocks still moved.

Did Lycoris somehow do this? If so, why hadn't she escaped? She had the ability to teleport Just as I did. Only system administrators can tdeport in the game, but I never used the ability myself since I needed to maintain the illusion of being just another player.

Suddenly Lycoris' hands grabbed the shaft of the spear.

"Albireo,"

"What're you doing?"

She drove it deeper into her body. I expected to hear the sound of it slicing through her, but it didn't make any noise whatsoever. Instead, the white background suddenly came to life as a grainy image filled my vision. I was clearly watching a video feed of some sort. The quality was degenerated and the color blurred. This wasn't from the game.

A man's gaunt face was suddenly staring at me. Despite the washed-out colors, I could make out his piercing green eyes and his unkempt, wavy white hait that had been left to grow wildly.

"Why did you come here?" the man asked. The sound crackled horribly. Even the text window was blurry and hard to read. "You cannot become Aura."

"I..."

"It's not who you were designed to become."

"I..."

"I'm sorry, Lycoris. You are a failure."

I realized I was witnessing the unage from Lycoris' POV. She was replaying a file from her stored memory.

She slowly looked up. From the cross-vaulted ceiling, I could tell she was in the church. The man disappeared from view but then reappeared, his image inverted. I realized that previously she was looking at his image as it was reflected on the floor, just as I had spotted her the fust tinle she escaped me. He was floating in the air.

"The ghost of the church." I muttered under my breath.

"She is the child not yet seen," the man lamented. "That's why I will name her Aura. Without you, this child would not have been in existence. Aura, the child who shines like the light. Let us entrust our will to her. Let us entrust ollr future to her. She is our-"

"I am a failure?"

"You are a product of a failed attempt at realizing my dream. I'm sorry it had to end this way, Lycoris."

The image ended abruptly. The screen returned to the white, empty, sterile background.

I had just seen the infamous ghost of rhe church.

I checked the log. The last entry read:

Albireo: The ghost of the church.

It was the last thing I uttered. The dialogue between Lycoris and rhe ghost wasn't recorded.

Lycoris held Wotan's spear in both of her hands and drove the blade further into her body.

"Albireo," Lycoris whispered.

"What did you just show me?"

"It's something I saw here in the church just before you came to delete me."

"That was recorded three days ago?"

She ignored my question. "How did you know to find me in the church?"

"We had a bug report from a player."

"But there weren't any players Ul the area at the time."

"No, there weren't."

"How did you know where to find me in the dungeon the second time?"

"Same thing. Another reported glitch."

"Who made the report?"

"A player."

"Who?"

"It was sent anonymously." Reports are received through an official web page that records the URL address of the sender so we can track each claim. It's meant to discourage bogus reports. In other words, there's no such thing as an anonymous tip. Yet both times we received reports on Lycoris, they came in without any address or link. When the programmers finally tracked down their origin, they discovered that the messages had come from a discontinued account that had not becn logged into for over six months. Yet both reports had been filed in the past few days.

"Are you a Cobalt Knight?"

"Yes."

"What's the name of your spear, Albireo?" Lycoris asked.

"It's the Divine Spear of Wotan."

"It's a spear of God."

"That's right."

"Who gave it to you?"

I wondered if this conversation could be heard by Hokuto? Were we in Party Mode, Whisper Mode, or was our conversation being broadcast to every online player? Did it even matter? Perhaps we were in some state of limbo? Could Hokuto even see me? Where was she right now?

"Why?"

"I want to know how it works."

"Someone programmed the debug function back in the beta version."

"You mean Fragment?"

"Yes."

"But who provided it?"

"I don't know,"

"Suddenly the debug function was just added to the specs because you were a system adn1inistrator."

"Yes."

"But you don't know who did it, do you?"

"No, I don't."

"That's because programs are often being added or deleted without anyone realizing it."

That was confidential. How did she know that?

"Do you also know about the folder?" I asked.

"Folder?"

"The blackbox folder:' I shouldn't have been talking about this. I didn't know if anyone else was listening. I could be breaking operational rules, but to hell with it. This was my first chance to possibly learn something I'd been wondering for years, something no one else seemed to know.

"In the system?"

"Yes. I don't know anyone who can open it. Management told us that the American programmers had placed it there, but we should ignore it and localize according to spec. Later I learned from the U.S. staff that they hadn't placed it there, either. Only one man knew the contents of the folder and he locked them up. He said it would prevent anyone from tampering with the system, but by keeping it locked, he kept the other progranuners from changing The World. Sure, we could add events, areas, and NPCs, but the hard-core rules of the game were locked inside that folder, sealed away without any access."

"Who was that man?"

"Harald H oerwick. That's why the folder is called the Harald System."

"I know that name. It's the same man in the church."

"You mean the ghost?"

"Yes. But I call him Morgana Mode Gone."

"What?"

"That's the name of God, Albiteo. It's what lurks in the Inner World, whid1 Harald attempted to create. God exists. It is what gave you the Divine Spear of Wotan and sent you the message telling you where I was. God tried to delete me."

"God ... tried to delete you?"

"That's right. I am an unwanted d1i1d. Even God doesn't want 111C."

"I don't understand. What's Morgana?"

"I was fleeing from Morgana. Morgana told you where I was hiding. Morgana wanted you to delete me."

"I thought God wanted to delete you?"

"Morgana Mode Gone is God."

"So you weren't hiding from me, but from Morgana?"

"Yes,"

"But didn't you just say Morgana sent me to delete you?"

"Yes. You tried twice, but both times you failed."

"You're right. I thought you somehow escaped the first time, but there's no way I missed you this last time. You're impossible to delete. So you never had to fear me or the Cobalt Knights."

"That's not true. You do have the power to delete me, Albireo. The power rests in your hands. It rests in your spear."

Suddenly, I received a text message indicating that I had a new item.

"I've revised the data of your spear." she continued. "You have the final segment, the final piece of me."

I had hit her with delete the first time and she segmented. Had she placed a segment of herself within my spear?

"You have received etafcy!," the text message read.

Fate.

She had given me her fate.

"I have given you my will to relinquish me," Lycoris said. "I wanted to continue to live in this wo rld, but ..." she trailed off "But I cannot become Aura."

"Who is Aura?"

"You will delete me."

"I no longer have to delete you."

"Then Morgana will delete me."

"Why?"

"Because iF an AI exists in this world and accumulates data, it will hasten the birth of Aura."

"Morgana docs not wish for Aura's birth?"

"No."

"But didn't Morgana give birth to you in tbe first place? Isn't that where YOll came from? The blackbox Folder?"

"Morgana is contradicting herself."

"A program that contradicts cannot function," I pointed out.

"An extremely complicated system can function even with contradictions. And its results are contrary to expectations."

"But that's ... that's no different from human beings."

"Yes."

This was too much.

"I will self-preserve," she continued.

"Is that your goal?" I asked. "Is that why you divided yourself into segments?To survive Morgana? But then why did you use me to collect your fragments?"

"I needed to be whole. That is the goal of any intelligent being. I only wanted your help. I needed help since I had no memory. That's why I created an event, to get someone to help me. After all, my aim is to interact with The World and grow with it."

"As a character?"

"Yes. But as long as I exist, Morgana will continue to whisper my location until the Cobalt Knights find and delete me. But that's over now. I've given up."

She sounded depressed. Could an AI have such complieated emotions?

"But Why?"

"I am the ptoduct of a failed attempt. I must die. I have failed to achieve his dream. Therefore, it's time I finished."

"This isn't right!"

"We've come a long way together, Albireo. But I'm afraid this is the end of your event with me."

Everything went white and she was gone.

"Subject deleted" appeared on my screen. I hadn't activated the switch. She had done it herself. Lycoris had taken her own life.

For a moment, I heard the gentle ticking of the pendulums as they hung suspended in the infinite universe. Their ticking was the last thing I heard as I was surrounded by a ring of light and teleported away.

Tick-tack, tick-tock.