Chapter 9: From a Great Distance
Chapter 9:
From a Great Distance
From a Great Distance
R
YOJI KAJI,
Aida Kensuke, and their Nerv Japan intelligence team were far from home in Cyprus on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.
The trail left by Seele had unexpectedly led them to this island.
The Human Instrumentality Project had failed. Even assuming that was a good thing, humanity needed to figure out the meaning behind Armaros’ message and what the original purpose of the Project had been. To find those answers, Kaji and Kensuke were tracking the knowledge left behind by those visor-wearing old men. The Dead Sea Scrolls, once a reliable source of answers, had little to say after the Project’s failure.
Kaji’s team was investigating the basement of an old church in an abandoned village. All around them, the people of Cyprus were in conflict. Two factions, one in the north and another in the south, were contesting territory, and the UN’s ceasefire line danced about —north, then south, and back again. The village had been occupied just a few days ago.
“So basically,” said Kensuke, “this makes us looters, doesn’t it?”
Amid Europe’s turmoil, Kensuke had retrieved a lead, however tenuous, that Seele once had a base here—though the word the informant had used was “lair.”
Lair,
Kaji thought with a chuckle.
What, like some evil organization?
The church had connections to the Order of Malta. By choosing this location, perhaps Seele had intended to hide themselves behind legends of a different secretive organization.
The church’s cellar had been used for munitions storage by either the government or the rebels. Rusted ammunition had been dumped in piles all over the space.
Investigating a wall hidden behind one such pile, Kensuke announced, “There’s an open chamber on the other side of this wall.”
“Whoa, whoa, hotshot,” Kaji said. “Did you stop to consider whether that ultrasonic scanner might set off some of this unexploded ordnance?”
Kensuke let out a cocky laugh. “Kaji-san, how can that be your attitude when we’re about to discover a holy relic—or at least, something that’s been secreted away as if it were one?”
The wall held a hidden doorway, which the pair managed to wrench open after some fiddling. They’d expected to find a pitch-dark space, but there must have been an opening somewhere in the stone ceiling, because a shaft of light fell upon a stone table in the center of the room.
And on the table, was…
Whoa, whoa.
“That’s Kiel’s visor,” Kaji said, glancing about for any sign of a booby trap. “Whether or not this was their
lair
, Seele must have at least visited this place.”
Who had brought—or returned—the visor here? Whatever the case, it was a clue.
Kaji hummed in thought. “Well, let’s get to work.”
Five hours later, they hadn’t found anything else substantial. Having exhausted all other ideas, Kensuke was using his scanner on the visor, and Kaji was tapping along the walls.
“This visor looks like it has some kind of data terminal,” Kensuke said, “but it’s odd…”
“What’s odd?”
“There’s no data storage or communication devices…or even a power source. Just an output.”
Kaji turned up a palm. “You probably need to connect another device to it to get video or audio or whatever.”
“Without any kind of input or an antenna?”
“Maybe it uses induction or something…”
“Kaji-san, look!”
Kensuke pointed to the stone table, where the visor had begun to blur like it was an image on a screen. It was fading in a static-like pattern as if it might vanish from existence.
“Preposterous!” Kaji said. He took the visor in his hands. To his relief, he found that he could still touch it. But even in his hands, the visor continued to flicker.
The visor is disappearing,
Kaji thought.
And before it does, there’s only one thing we can do…
Kensuke reached the same conclusion. “Kaji-san, let me try it on.”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. This thing isn’t normal.”
“I want to know
everything
!”
Kensuke’s eyes were serious. He had, after all, been the one who’d discovered this place.
What price did he pay to get this information?
Kaji wondered.
Just before Kaji’s team had lost contact with Nerv Japan, they’d received word that a white German Eva-02 had appeared, with wings strikingly similar to the Allegorica’s.
There were no records of Nerv Japan ever sending a survey team to this area. However, before Nerv splintered apart, each branch had been in charge of actively investigating archeological sites with potential ties to relics. And Cyprus would have fallen under the European branch…
Kaji’s mind put the pieces together.
He made a trade with the Europeans.
He gave up the Allegorica’s technology in exchange for this visor.
He went too far.
Not being chosen to pilot an Eva must have come as quite a shock to the young Aida Kensuke. He’d discarded everything—his relationships, his family, his house, his friends—and devoted himself to the intelligence department, completing missions with astonishing vigor regardless of their legality.
Maybe putting him near me was a mistake,
Kaji thought.
Kaji was no stranger to making extreme decisions. He never viewed himself through the lens of good or evil; he was merely moving game pieces. Is that what Kensuke had done?
I bet he’s feeling that same sense of superiority, too.
Kaji felt as if he were watching his past self.
But what’s the price, and how will it be paid?
“Hey—” Kensuke objected, as Kaji put on the visor.
Information flooded his mind—light, sound, and something unknown, beyond his five senses—overwriting what was already there.
What is this? What kind of technology is this?
The answer came immediately.
The visor held an arrangement of memories, carried on across the wheel of time, to prevent the wearer from making the same mistakes after everything started again from zero.
Too late, Kaji realized he’d made a terrible mistake, and yet…it didn’t come entirely as a surprise.
“I guess this is where I say, ‘poor me,’” Kaji said. They were the last words he spoke of his own accord.
The accumulated knowledge of the Seele of the past—though, that wasn’t what it had always been called—overwrote him. Or…was it mixing with him?
The past? What is the past?
He had many questions, but understood that the answers were all around him. He knew how Seele was passed along. At the very end, only that which was most important to him remained—his love, Misato. Then her image sank down and disappeared.
I’m sorry.
Seele was the steward of the Human Instrumentality Project.
But the Project had already been consigned to the next world, one that was yet to be born, and with nothing left but to wait for the end, Seele no longer had any purpose.
In this waning world, Kaji Ryoji became the new Seele.