Chapter 10: Transference
Chapter 10:
Transference
A WORLD CALM and warm
A sky
The object my mother and I unfolded sways in the breeze
We sit on the edge of the porch
Watching
If everything is coming to an end—
Says the person I perceive to be my mother
—we’ll need to fold that back up and take it inside before twilight.
Why?
This power is too great.
But just as it took two to unfold it, it can’t be folded alone.
You need to find someone to help you.
But I have you
Can’t we fold it together?
I have to leave my existence here.
The white world turns even brighter
The image of my mother fades into the light
Goodbye.
Mother, what are you going to do?
There’s somewhere I want to go.
And then…
In this moment
I realize her presence has been with me all along
Without form
But many times my savior
And now she’s leaving
Shinji, I leave everything in your hands.
My thoughts are hazy as I begin to cry
Pitifully
Shamelessly
I cry
The roar in Cage Two had changed.
Hm? Toji thought. Is the sound starting to vacillate?
The all-encompassing rumble ebbed and flowed like waves against a shore.
Aoba noticed Toji’s expression and said, “The wavelengths are converging.” He looked down from the command deck. “We’re almost there! East side, adjust by .01.”
The eastern group pulled their rope in unison.
The ever-present, pulsing rumble scattered little parts from the chest plate, which despite being the first piece of armor the crew had attempted to install, was now the only piece still out of place. The rest of the restraint armor had been attached amid the tumult.
“West side, adjust by .002 to .03—slowly now!”
Toji had joined the line of workers on the west, and he added the strength of his artificial arms.
The pounding, waterfall-like noise changed tenor and began to oscillate between quiet and loud. But with each cycle, it grew quieter, until it had faded nearly to nothing.
In unison, the teams took a deep breath, then—
Thud!
The sudden sound, loud but singular, elicited startled cries around the room.
Pinned down within the quantum wave mirror, Eva-01’s chest vibrated as if something were bouncing around inside it.
Aoba snapped his fingers. “That’s the spot! We’ve got it perfectly centered. Secure the mirror! Mathematically, this is as close as we can get. The interference wave is less than five trillionths of the amplitude.”
Thud!
The sound shook the room. Everyone turned and look up.
“He’s born. I’m glad he came back.”
“What did you say?” Maya asked Toji, who’d almost sounded like he’d been making a prophecy.
“Hm? Did I say something?” Toji appeared to snap out of a trance.
Maya scanned the Eva’s internals, but after being battered by soundwaves, the scanning array’s resolution had been reduced by more than half, and the resulting image wasn’t clear.
“But he’s still…”
Thud!
Maya jolted in surprise as everything around her rattled and shook.
The scanner array produced a picture of the Eva’s interior in disjointed fragments.
Its internal structure was re-forming. The divisions were beginning to stabilize.
Thud!
New boundaries were being set—here the skeleton, there the muscle.
When Shinji had first piloted Eva-01 into battle, its eye had regenerated when Shinji looked at the reflection of its exposed body in the windows of a tall building. Now the Eva’s entire body was like that—not a mere imitation of the human form, but a reflection of humanity itself.
Evas weren’t organic in nature, and no blood flowed through them. But when they were cut, they sprayed blood, and they even decomposed like organic matter. Due to quantum teleportation, every part of their massive, hundred-meter-tall bodies was connected—as if they had a nervous system—and the giants could respond with the same agility as humans.
Thud!
“This seems less like an interference wave and more like…”
Evas didn’t have hearts, but the remains of Eva-01’s S² Engine pulsed like a heartbeat.
The torrential river of energy, now tamed, that had brought rebirth—and very nearly destruction—beat within the Eva’s chest.
Thud!
The sound was still plenty terrifying.
Outside, Eva-02 was struggling against an Angel Carrier’s assault. A great number of civilians had likely been caught in the battle, not to mention SSDF soldiers.
And yet, the personnel in Cage Two were excited and smiling—some even laughed. There was no logic to their behavior; it just was.
Thud!
The rhythm was primal; the rhythm of new life.
Thud!
The sound was like fireworks launching close by. Swept up in the excitement, Toji howled, “Listen to it go!”
Thud!
An engineer started drumming the handrail with a spanner in time with the beat. Soon, everyone had joined in—not just the engineers but the scientists, too. Everyone found something to make noise with.
Fwump! Fwump! Fwump!
This was the sound Asuka had heard.
In the command center, Misato heard it, too.
“What is that?”
The commander was in a separate building, one that had been hardened against explosions and earthquakes. The sound shouldn’t have carried into that space, and yet there it was, both distant and close.
Thwump! Thwump! Thwump!
As the engineers and scientists reveled, new organs came to life within Eva-01—larger bones, stronger muscles, and, finally, a small human figure.
Rei Trois lifted her head.
“The scent is changing… Someone is crying… Is it…Ikari-kun?”