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Hiroshi was in the forest outside the town, meeting with a man whose existence he’d not once forgotten.
“Boichiro Yamato...”
He’d come here after his death the same way Junko and the others had. He, however, had taken another path. He’d gone into the depths of the forest, as if something was guiding him, and before too long he was standing in front of Boichiro. He didn’t know if it was fate, or if he’d wanted to see the man. But it felt like this was part of what he had to do.
He had lots of questions he had to ask. And after Boichiro’s death, he’d never gotten a chance to ask them.
“I met someone on your team,” Hiroshi said sarcastically.
“From the look of it, they gave you a rough time. They’re a rowdy bunch,” Boichiro said, laughing as if Hiroshi was an old friend. He was calmer than Hiroshi remembered him, and handsome, and there was something about him that charmed the person he was speaking to. Hiroshi had planned on complaining, but was beginning to change his mind.
“They almost killed me. A lot of times. Did you tell them to?”
“Of course not. I knew they were like that, but I couldn’t inspire them to change. All I can do is apologize.”
“I don’t need you to apologize. Did those guys all come here when they died? If they did, I want to find them and give them a piece of my mind.”
“I wouldn’t know. I assume if they did, they’d be too embarrassed to come find me,” Boichiro smiled.
“They should be too embarrassed to talk to anyone.
“Your plan... No, I don’t know if it’s your plan... but they either misunderstood it or deliberately changed it, and did something that sent a bunch of people here.”
Hiroshi decided to be a little roundabout with his words, but Boichiro knew what he meant.
“Yeah. I knew that might happen. And I’d resigned myself to it, too.”
“You sound resigned about everything.”
“Correct. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But I did try to stop this.”
His words just further annoyed Hiroshi.
“What are you trying to say? Just say it,” he said, his voice shaking with rage.
“I’ll explain things in the order they happened. You know that I tried to change history, yes?” Boichiro said, with a self-deprecating smile.
“Yeah, I do.”
“This was because I saw the last great demon king awaken, and the gods come from the outer universe to destroy this world.”
“I know that too. You said that you needed a ritual between the demon king and the Law of Identity to stop that, right? I didn’t really understand the words you used.”
“Correct. And I failed,” Hiroshi nodded, thinking back on the past as Boichiro spoke.
“I know that much. Zero and the other mechanical gods wanted the Law of Identity to save them, so they tried to turn humanity into data, like they were, and send them to another dimension. That way, it wouldn’t matter if mankind was destroyed. And boss tried to stop them and buy humanity time.”
“That’s right. And as a result, the future turned into something different than what I knew.”
“And that was a mistake? Is that what you’re saying?” Hiroshi asked.
Boichiro just sighed.
“It’s hard to answer that question at its core. In fact, this afterlife is essentially the ‘time’ the Demon King bought. It’s not over yet.”
“It’s not?” Hiroshi asked, confused.
“But this place may be the end. Perhaps there is an end without an ending. An ending where time is eternal, like this.”
Hiroshi sighed as well, this time in exasperation.
“Start making some damn sense.”
“I’m sorry. This is how I’ve always been. It’s not something I can do anything about,” he said. “This isn’t the future I knew, but the ending is exactly as I predicted. I know what happened in the history that you know. I attempted to negotiate with The One, their avatar, in order to make a contract with them. I thought they wanted a world where they wouldn’t have to invade other universes as well.”
Hiroshi tried his best to understand what he meant. If he pulled it apart and thought about each individual element, he found he could follow.
“But The One betrayed you.”
“Correct. And the once-calm Republic decided to invade the Empire. All these elements may seem separate, but when you understand that the invasion from the outer universe was behind them, you understand that they were all predicted, and are all connected. The devices left behind by early magical civilization. The plots of the black mages. The faceless power. These were all to prepare for the invasion. And the success of the invasion means that in the end, we failed to change the future.”
“When you put it that way, I guess I understand it. But if this place is safe for us, if it’s the ‘time’ we’ve been given, then are we still safe?” Hiroshi asked. Boichiro just sighed.
“Still safe? What do you mean?’
This time it was Boichiro’s turn to ask a question.
“There’s still a chance to change the past, right? I think it’s simple. Get rid of magical civilization. Or have Earth stop fighting with each other and prepare a plan to deal with the Gods from outer space.” Hiroshi spoke confidently, as he gestured down at the bracelet on his wrist that held the Brave suit.
“This can travel through time, right? Does that work even when you’re dead?”
“You’re jumping the gun. So you want to save humanity, is what you’re saying?”
Boichiro’s eyes went wide in surprise.
“I don’t know, but I’m feeling something like fate. At least the Demon King should be able to save humanity, right?” Hiroshi grinned.
“If that is your will, then very well. But it’s difficult to change the future.” Boichiro shook his head.
“I don’t know about that. You said the future changed when you died. So it’s not that hard to change it if change is all you want, right?”
“No, it didn’t change. In the end, I end up here,” Boichiro said, pointing down to his feet with a sarcastic expression.
“Here?”
“The afterlife.”
“That’s hard to understand. There are so many worlds, you know. Earth. Virtual Phase Space. Other dimensions. The outer universe. The afterlife... did I miss any?” Hiroshi frowned.
Boichiro corrected him.
“That’s a little off. ‘Other dimension’ and ‘outer universe’ are two words for the same thing. We don’t know a lot about other dimensions, except that there’s probably infinite numbers of them. But as for the others, you’re correct. And the Law of Identity is involved in them all. It’s likely that she made them. And that’s why they’re relatively easy to understand.”
“Keena made them? Is that why we can understand them?”
“To me, it’s Rimu Sudo that made them. By ‘understandable’ I mean that it’s easy to explain how this world works. All you need to understand is that our universe was made by the Law of Identity.”
“Is it that simple? And anyway, weren’t we talking about going through time to change history?” Hiroshi asked, confused. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted from this conversation anymore.
Boichiro laughed a little.
“If you’re going to go through time, I want you to understand that our knowledge and our world contradict each other.”
“Aren’t we getting sidetracked again?’
“We aren’t. What is our understanding of time?”
It was an abstract question, but Hiroshi realized it was something critical to the core of their problems. If he was going to start the world over and avoid this ending, he needed to understand what time actually was. And at school, he’d learned the physical definition of time.
He repeated what the textbooks had told him.
“Time is relative. It’s the same thing as space in which matter moves,” he said. ”As speed goes up, the space you can move to increases, and so does the probability that you’ll encounter various events. But matter can only move in one direction. Expressed in two dimensions, it’s like only being able to choose one point within an expanding ripple on a lake.”
“That’s more or less right. One thing cannot exist at multiple points in space at the same time. But here that law doesn’t apply. That’s why I was able to go back in time.”
Boichiro picked up a branch and used it to draw a line on the ground.
“The reason that something can’t exist in multiple places at once is that, in fact, time has a minimum unit size. If it could be infinitely divided, then the paradox of the tortoise and Achilles would be made real.”
He drew a symbol at the center of the line on the ground. And then another at the center of the right side of the newly divided line. He repeated this process 32 times, until the symbol itself was larger than the divided line.
“Imagine this symbol as the minimum unit size of time, and you’ll understand.”
“I can understand that. But what does that have to do with it being possible to go back in time? Doesn’t that make it so going back in time is impossible?”
“Correct. In the model with the rippling lake, the other points on the circle are just probabilities. In other words, they might have happened, but they didn’t. Even if matter returns to the point it was in before, the other matter is no longer there. But the world that we know is not like the lake.”
He erased the line with his foot, and drew another.
“This world is, according to standard physics, impossible. This world is like a video, or a book. It’s linear.”
Boichiro drew several squares above the line, with the number of squares increasing as the line moved to the right.
“Here, all matter exists simultaneously. The past continues to exist. Imagine blocks being piled up on top of other blocks. And these blocks can be rearranged.”
“And that’s why it’s possible to rewrite the past, and change the future.” Hiroshi nodded in understanding.
“Correct. It’s possible to change it,” Boichiro said.
“Then tell me how to use the suit.” Hiroshi pointed to the bracelet on his arm.
“Of course, I will. But as I’ve been saying this whole time, it’s pointless.” He furrowed his eyebrows in frustration.
“You keep saying that. It’s possible to change the future, but it’s pointless?”
“That’s what I said at the start. For some reason, you always come here in the end.” He pointed to the ground.
“In other words, the afterlife.” Hiroshi frowned.
Boichiro’s expression remained the same.
“Correct. And to this place, and this instant. You’ll come here again and again.”