Chapter 53: Near the Ark
Chapter 53:
Near the Ark
Near the Ark
A
FTER EURO-II UNEXPECTEDLY
broke off its pursuit of her Eva-0.0, Ayanami Quatre had brought the Kaji-vessel as close to the Ark as her Eva could bear.
Still holding her captive in his arms, the Kaji-vessel surveyed the situation and muttered, “Did someone make contact? On the moon side, no less? I just hope the data wasn’t destroyed…”
He turned to look at Quatre, who was wearing a black plugsuit.
“You’re holding up well, puppet,” he said.
After he’d correctly identified Quatre as the manifestation of a deeply buried emotion from her principal, Trois—specifically,
terror
—she’d surrendered total control to him, of herself and her Eva included. She didn’t know if this was a power he possessed as Seele or if the control came from somewhere else. For now, it just was.
Quatre had calmed down considerably from before. She watched the half-buried glass structure slowly spin into and out of the rocks.
“Is that…a projection?” she asked.
“The Ark is split into two existences so that it might survive unharmed throughout eternity. The two parts don’t exist in parallel but rather through a tuning of the probability distribution that renders the Ark impervious to physical interference.”
“But you said someone made contact?”
“The Ark stores the consciousnesses of all living creatures from the very first life, through the birth of civilization, and all the way to the Great Flood. A matching consciousness can touch the Ark—as data, a tool for writing into the memory, a thinking reed. Like a pen.”
Ripples formed on the mirror-smooth surface of the Ark, and the Kaji-vessel clicked his tongue.
BATHUMP, BATHUMP.
From far away, Shinji’s heartbeat stirred up ripples in the glass.
“Ikari-kun…” Quatre said, “are you crying?”
Quatre’s mutant Eva-0.0 flapped its black wings and took to the sky. Perched atop its shoulder, Quatre and the Kaji-vessel watched Armaros and Super Eva clash.
“What the…” the Kaji-vessel said. “The black colossus lost a wing? How could that possibly have happened?”
Super Eva roared, but it was more mournful wail than wrathful, and Quatre reacted strongly.
“That’s laughable,” she said. “Ikari-kun, aren’t you the one who chose this world?”
While she was under Kaji’s control, her expression had remained blank. But now her face broke into a grin, and she began to giggle.
“Heh heh heh. That’s funny.”