Chapter 10:
Possibility and Fate
“WHY,” I asked, “can’t I be like light?”
“Huh?”
“I’m nothing like light, am I? It doesn’t go through a process of trial and error like I do. Light travels all paths simultaneously. All the wrong paths interfere and disappear by themselves, leaving only the correct route connecting two points in the shortest time. In a single moment, only the solution remains. There’s no calculation or anything about it. So why can’t I be like that? There’s no way I could ever get to the right answer trying innumerable possibilities in innumerable worlds one by one, unless I’m a quantum computer!”
“You have a point. It’s true I’m not light, but I am sort of a quantum computer. So I’m pretty sure eventually…”
“Yes, I am a quantum computer! With the properties of quanta, infinite ‘mes’ in infinite worlds can cogitate and calculate together! My brain’s a friggin’ quantum computer! So why? Why can’t I pick out the answer I should be able to find in a moment? I know where it is, and yet—”
“I think that’s the problem,” “I” whispered with a sense of resignation. “If I knew the question, I could deduce the answer. But ‘I’ don’t know the actual question. So I can’t find the answer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to answer. I don’t know the problem. See, saving Yukari is the goal, not the answer. If I don’t know the question, there’s no way I could come up with the answer.”
“I don’t know the problem I’m trying to solve…”
I knew there was a problem. I felt I had something wrong. But I didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t figure it out.
✦ ✦ ✦
I tried my best at everything I could.
I spent my time at school with her, and I even traveled with her to and from school. Sometimes I even spent the night with her. None of it stopped Yukari from being abducted. No matter how many parallel world versions of myself I had on my side, no matter how many worlds I visited and gathered knowledge and experience in, I was still just a junior high school kid. I had neither power nor time.
With time, I’d have been able to crush Jaunt. But Yukari was always abducted and killed before I could accomplish that.
I tried every method I could. I told Yukari’s parents someone was after her and got them to install high-level security. But she was abducted anyway. I got her a bodyguard—but she was killed anyway. I told the media about Yukari’s power and made her famous worldwide. All it did was to hurt Yukari and anger Nanami, and Yukari died anyway.
Even when I publicized what I knew about Jaunt to force an investigation, someone abducted Yukari and dissected her anyway. No matter how fast I rushed, no matter how much I prepared, every time I tried some tactic, as if to laugh at my efforts, Yukari was killed, and her brain was stolen anyway. It was like a game. Okay, here’s my turn. Now it’s Jaunt’s turn. There, I lost.
The penalty was Yukari’s death—the price of my powerlessness.
Right now, Yukari was with me, alive and well. Yet I couldn’t save her. I just couldn’t save her. She’d be killed. She’d be killed and I couldn’t do anything about it. She’d be killed as I failed to make it in time. She’d be killed even though I knew about it beforehand.
She’d be killed, implacably forever.
She’d be killed again and again, while I failed to protect her. It was my fault. Trial and error, forever, trial and error, forever, trial and error, forever…
Oh, gods above, please, save me from this living hell.