Chapter 8: Mutual Acknowledgement
Chapter 8:
Mutual Acknowledgement
Toji understood BLS as Basic Life Support, a course he was obliged to take to prepare for emergency situations.
Fuyutsuki corrected him. “This BLS stands for Biological Structure, a structure made of multiple theories. It gives form to a person’s crude thoughts—in this case Ikari Shinji’s—and layers it on top of the physical world.”
“Hence BLS Layer,” Toji mused. “Got it.”
Shinji couldn’t exist outside the Eva’s dream. He was like a ghost who haunted a particular classroom. Maya was growing sick of being asked about the phenomenon, so Fuyutsuki had taken it upon himself to give it a proper name.
“Writing our reports should be a lot easier now. Having to mention ‘the pilot’s dream’ to the U.N. every time is a bit iffy.” Toji bowed his head politely before following up with another question. “So, the Shinji inside Shinji’s dream…what is he, really?”
“I suppose you can think of him as an icon of the BLS stationed in reality. An avatar, if you will.”
His dream altered the properties of the BLS layered classroom. For starters, it denied entry to those unacquainted with Shinji. However, it could summon anyone who was known to him from a great distance, using their shallow dreaming state. Anything they were wearing would immediately be converted into the school uniforms of Shinji’s mother’s time.
Mind invaded matter in the BLS. How could Shinji know what his mother had worn to school if he’d had no memory of it? This phenomenon corroborated the theory that residual thoughts of Shinji’s mother, Yui, remained inside the Eva. It also suggested that she was responsible for the creation of the layer. Toji had even met Yui under the guise of the dead Rei Cinque within the BLS.
Currently, Six was sitting at a distance from the others, observing her Type-N robots and their search patterns on the display. She turned and asked, “What was that about Shinji and BLS?”
“Don’t say that out loud, Six,” Toji replied. The grade-schooler raised her eyebrows and returned to her display.
“Have you found her yet?” Toji asked. She shook her aqua-colored hair. They were still looking for Mari, pilot of the U.S. Eva, Wolfpack, who’d been put under the care of Nerv Japan in Hakone…and had escaped on their watch. As much as Six wanted to go out and find her herself, if she did, she might be added to the list of missing persons.