The preparations for entering Recovery Mode took several hours of feverish work. But even when they were complete, there was no way to tell how smoothly the function would go. The team decided to closely monitor every stage of the process, expecting that they’d need to manually intervene at multiple points along the way.
“We’ll start off in Safe Mode and focus on breaking the connections between the records for a while. If things get too out of whack, we’ll smooth them out with the Sifter. Once we’re done, we’ll open up every sector simultaneously.”
Senko went on to explain the process step-by-step in detail, then turned back to his desk. “My system sure is a mess, huh?” he murmured with a little laugh.
A message popped up on the Control Center’s front monitor to indicate that the preparations were complete, and a dialogue box appeared on Naomi’s screen asking him to confirm the initiation of Recovery Mode. As the man responsible for the system’s upkeep and maintenance, it was his job to press the start button.
He turned back in his chair, looking to Senko for final confirmation. With a slightly sad look on his face, the bearded man nodded.
“No way around it, I guess.”
Naomi nodded back and reached out toward his monitor. But just as his finger was about to touch the screen, he hesitated.
Memories flashed through his mind in quick succession. He furrowed his brow; these weren’t productive thoughts right now. Some things were best forgotten.
The time he’d spent inside AllTale was best forgotten.
For the past three months, he’d carried out an operation there. He’d materialized in the simulated world and contacted his younger self. He’d warned the boy of Ichigyou Ruri’s accident and told him how to prevent it. He’d trained him extensively, moved him around the board like a pawn, and helped him save the girl he loved.
And then he’d stolen her away.
He’d had no choice—it was the only way to repair her brain, since he needed the quantum record of her consciousness to complement the undamaged areas. The only way to obtain that map was to pluck the data that composed her out of the system entirely. Retrieving data from a quantum computer wasn’t as simple as copying a computer file. It required close observation of the AllTale system.
But the more closely quantum data was observed, the more the original was altered. It was impossible to produce a perfect copy; the process would inevitably distort and destroy the original data. So, Ichigyou Ruri disappeared from that world when he retrieved her data. It was an inevitable side effect of the process.
With his mission completed, Naomi left the quantum simulation and returned to reality. The world he’d abandoned still existed inside AllTale, of course. What was happening in there right now? How had it been affected by his actions?
He had no idea. The nature of the system made it impossible to observe clearly from the outside. But even if he couldn’t see it now, that world was real. The Kyoto he’d spent three months in still existed. So did the people living there.
The Recovery process would erase it completely.
They would retrieve the quantum data from the system and return the AllTale hardware to its initial state. After repairing the records externally, they would be returned to the system. The simulated world inside the machine would be annihilated, piece by piece, and then rebuilt anew.
When he pressed this button, that world would end. With the simulation shut down, his mission would truly be over.
The kid would disappear along with it.
He’d known all this from the start, of course. His actions would leave a lasting impact on the AllTale system, and he’d assumed they might have to do a full Recovery. This was all going more or less as he’d expected.
He knew that. His feelings now weren’t logical, they were just useless sentiment.
“Naomi?” Senko called dubiously.
Naomi shook his head and pressed the start button.
A long list of steps popped up on the main monitor, and a colored progress bar began to inch forward along the first row. They would need to keep a close eye on things for another ten-odd hours before the automated process could completely take over.
Forcing himself to focus on the task at hand, Naomi looked back down at his monitor. But just then, a hand fell on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you go get some rest, Naomi?” said Senko, as casual as ever. Naomi blinked in surprise; the real work was just starting. “I mean, you didn’t get any sleep yesterday either, did you?”
“No, but that wasn’t work related…”
“I was really happy to hear about your girlfriend, y’know.”
A smile spread across Naomi’s face despite himself, and he nodded slightly. Senko knew all about Naomi’s girlfriend, who’d been in a coma for a decade. From the day Naomi first joined his research lab in college, the two of them had been closer and friendlier than a typical professor and student. The team had slept over at the lab more often than not.
When Naomi graduated, Senko had brought him right into the AllTale Center under his command. The man was more than a mentor or boss to Naomi—he was closer to a father figure.
“Must have been one eeeemotional reunion!” Senko added, sticking out his lower lip and pretending to cry. “Wouldn’t be fair to lock you up at work right now. I don’t want you telling everyone what a nightmare of a boss I am!”
“I think I’m needed here, though…”
“Not to worry. I can handle ten times your workload, anyway.”
Naomi had to laugh at that. It was true, in a sense; he was still a very long way from reaching Senko’s level of expertise and knowledge. But the man rarely focused on any given task for very long. Given his short attention span and tendency to goof off, he usually wasn’t any more productive than Naomi was.
In other words, the extra work was mostly going to fall into Xu’s lap. The way she was scowling at Senko suggested that she knew it, too. That only made him want to laugh harder.
After a moment, Xu let out a small sigh and pointed toward the exit.
Naomi bowed his head gratefully to both of them and took his ID badge off his chest. With a brief apology to the rest of the staff, he hurried out of the Control Center and headed for the elevator.