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The door to the Swallow’s Cowry Shell closed. On the other side of the window Keena was waving at him. Akuto waved back. He followed the instruction manual and flipped the switch. Gas poured out and filled the capsule. The window clouded up and Keena gradually faded from view. She breathed in the gas and went to sleep immediately, but Akuto kept waving as long as he could see her face. Before long, a notice appeared on the console saying that the cold sleep process was complete. He glanced at it, and then backed away.
“Now, on to the next step,” he said to himself, and then went over to the Robe of the Fire Rat, which had been placed in the corner. All he had to do was stand in front of the antenna portion and flip the switch.
“Akuto.”
Suddenly, he heard a voice.
“Huh?”
He turned around and saw Korone sitting up in her futon.
“You seemed to be having a lot of fun a moment ago.”
“H-Hey, you don’t have to put it like that. I thought you were asleep! That’s not very nice,” he said, turning red.
“I’m sorry. I simply wanted to be a witness to humanity’s end.”
“Well... maybe it would be good if there was somebody left who could talk about it.”
He was kind of annoyed, but when he thought about it, he realized that it might not be such a bad idea.
“Alright, take care of the rest here.”
“Of course.”
She nodded, but then spoke as if she’d remembered something.
“Um... Do I not get a kiss?”
“...Are you serious?”
“No.”
“I figured,” he laughed. He stood alone in front of the Robe of the Fire rat, and flipped the switch. Suddenly, he vanished.
○
Korone looked out the window. No one was left. If she shut down her motors, there would be no sound here at all. Once she shut down, she would last a thousand years or until someone woke her up. If, when that happened, mana-based civilization still existed, she could be completely rebuilt. Failing that, her data could be read as long as there was electricity. She made one final attempt to access to the gods. They had nothing particularly important to say.
“We simply failed in our mission. Everything will disappear.”
Those were the gods’ words. No matter what she asked, the answer was the same.
“Everything will disappear.”
It’s not a bad phrase, she thought to herself. But both she and Keena would remain, for a millennium at least.
“When everything disappears, what is left?” she whispered. If nothing else, her data would be restorable even after a thousand years. Or would the whole universe disappear with Keena’s death? No answer was forthcoming.
“For the gods, everything will disappear.” she said, and looked out the window.
Yes. For the gods, everything would disappear. She was just a terminal on the network. She didn’t have a self, like the gods did. The asteroid was close enough that she could see the energy coursing over its surface. From this position, it seemed like it was half the size of the Earth. It probably wasn’t actually that big, but it was still obviously big enough to destroy the planet. It felt less like an asteroid, and more like a huge ball of energy. Like a sphere full of churning, molten hot liquid.
A call came in. It was from Hiroshi.
“Korone... are you listening?”
“Yes.” Korone answered.
“I’m about to stop the asteroid...”
“The odds of that working are precisely zero,” Korone said coldly.
“I know that... but you didn’t have to say it.”
“No... If you know it, shouldn’t you not be trying?”
“I have to. I promised.”
“I see. You promised. But that won’t change the result, you know.”
“I know... but I wanted someone to hear me, in the end.”
“Very well. Let us converse.”
“I’m about to create a plasma ball and slam into it. Can you see me?”
“I can.” Korone zoomed in her vision. There was a small dot of light in the asteroid’s path. It was Hiroshi.
“Here I go! Here I go... You know, I don’t actually know what to say at a time like this. Am I just supposed to shout really loud? I can’t think of anything...”
“Hiroshi.”
“What?”
“If nothing else, in the end, you were a hero.”
“Thank you... ah... uwah...”
There was nothing left on the line but static. Hiroshi’s light was silently absorbed by the light from the asteroid.
“Goodbye,” Korone whispered softly.
The asteroid got closer and closer to Earth. The torrents of energy on its surface spiraled out like tornadoes and wrapped around the planet. From the Earth, it must’ve looked just like the scene of destruction that Boichiro Yamato saw. Perhaps in the torrents, the minds of alien beings could be seen. But even they soon lost their meaning. The asteroid itself soon crashed into the planet, shattering its crust.
Korone heard no sound at all. But as the crust rose up in a wave and fell, tens of thousands of people must have been screaming. The explosion from the impact swelled up, rippling like a living thing, and tearing away the planet’s atmosphere. The shock waves traveled through its core and erupted on the other side. In their wake followed tidal waves and pieces of the Earth’s crust. When the waves faded, all that remained were clouds of dust and boiling oceans.
“And thus the world met its end...”
Korone thought about reading a poem, but her network link was dead. The Earth’s gods were long gone.
“And so this and that happened, and then the Earth ended.” She decided to say it in her own words. “Silently, without sound, but with a big boom.”
When she saw that the Earth was nothing but a ball of boiling magma and water, she got into her futon.
“Goodnight, everyone,” she said to no one in particular, and the station’s power turned off.
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