Color Illustrations

There is nothing eternal in this universe.

This is a truth. It is a great, fundamental principle that will never change.

I’m not really talking about something abstract here,

“If there’s a beginning then there’ll be an end.”

Calling this simple fact a truth might be a bit over-the-top actually.

Just like how we’re born meaninglessly and die worthlessly.

This universe too will fleetingly burn out someday.

While expanding at a speed faster than light, it’ll consume an unfathomably enormous amount of energy to reach an ending referred to as the heat death of the universe. Contrary to what one might expect from the name, it’s said that all of the greatly expanded universe will eventually approach absolute zero in temperature.

It’s inevitable that we’ll meet our demise someday. Whether it be Man or the universe, all changing things meet the same end. This is one of the fundamental roots of thermodynamics. It needs no proof, as it is a completely self-evident relationship of cause and effect.

—However, can’t one think of it this way?

If it’s true that nothing could possibly be eternal, then even that truth, itself, couldn’t possibly last forever.

Most likely, that’s what “he” thought.

Followed by:

“If that’s the case, we only need to restore it.”

—The world allows contradictions. All phenomena that seem subjectively inconsistent are nothing more than the result of two contradicting truths. The discipline we know as science is a scripture that continually updates its text by constantly adopting the newest conjectures—it’s nothing but another form of religion. The real problem is on a whole other level: Our universe, itself, is actually completely illogical. At the very least, “he” thought the universe was incomplete, the study of physics flawed, which... If that’s the case, what harm could there be in me tampering with this absurdly enormous base mechanism and turning it into a completely different moving part?

For example, just by doing that, wouldn’t this universe continue to uneventfully turn on a set of physical laws completely different from the current ones, like how non-Euclidean geometry was established without any contradictions?

There were many who mused of such things throughout history. Yet, unbelievably, what brought those musings into reality was just a single person who was stupidly talented.

His name was “Y.”

The Earth had reached the end of its lifespan and was about to succumb to heat death. He was the aberrant genius who had recreated the planet with only gears on a world stage. The ultimate clocksmith who had created this Clockwork Planet. With a joke of a theory he had accomplished a feat so prodigious that nothing before or after could match its greatness. It was a legend that couldn’t even become a myth, it was simply too unrealistic. However, reality wouldn’t let one deny it. The Earth, which had died, was still being kept alive by gears even now:

Click, clack, click, clack—like turning the hand of a clock. A thousand years after...