Chapter 18: Two Souls
Chapter 18:
Two Souls
Two Souls
“S
HE’S TROIS,”
Maya said.
“Are you sure?” asked Shinji. “But she…”
“The ID chip implanted in her arm confirms it, and so does the sync signal in her brain. And just to clinch it, so does her genetic tag.”
Maya and Shinji had taken Ayanami to the tuning room, which held specialized medical equipment for maintaining the Ayanamis’ unique physical and mental conditions. The girl in question was wearing a white gown on the other side of a glass window, where she’d been hooked up to a body scanner.
Despite all the evidence, Shinji was still unconvinced, but he didn’t say anything.
“She’s not Cinq,” Maya said. “She’s Trois… Physically, that is.”
Until not long ago, there had been four Ayanamis. Three Unit-0.0 Evas had been placed in orbit as part of an anti-Angel search-and-destroy network established after the Battle at Nerv HQ. The foundation of that system was the mental mirror link shared between the four clones.
On Earth remained the one bearing a soul, Ayanami Trois, while the three soulless ones—Quatre, Cinq, and Six—piloted the three orbital Evas. But as the four acclimated to their coexistence, the soul seemed, to a certain extent, to be shared among them.
In order to keep their consciousnesses from becoming jumbled together, the three in orbit were left in a half-asleep state. Then Armaros had embedded its Q.R. Signum into Ayanami Quatre, and she’d either formed or was bestowed a self-identity that compelled her to go fugitive. The spark of self-awareness, formerly only present in one Ayanami at a time, now manifested itself in each Ayanami, and their mental link was disrupted.
Then, on a voyage to the moon, one Ayanami—Cinq—died.
“Their link is faint and intermittent,” Maya explained, “but Cinq’s death hit Trois the hardest. She’s the primary, after all.”
Shinji nodded in understanding, and Maya continued.
“After Quatre asserted herself as her own person, what happened to Cinq and Six? They formed their own identities. So, tell me, Shinji-kun, what of the soul’s original bearer, Trois?”
Shinji thought for a moment and then said, “She…didn’t seem to change much.”
“Didn’t, or
couldn’t
? How do you think she must have felt, seeing other versions of herself blossoming around her and coming into their own?”
“How do I think she felt?” Shinji repeated, hoping Maya would fill in the answer for him.
She didn’t, or at least, she wasn’t going to right away. “Think about it,” she said.
Whatever the answer was, simply hearing her say it wouldn’t unlock any understanding; not until he’d truly contemplated it himself.
After a little while, he offered, “Could she have thought herself worthless? And that Cinq wasn’t the one who should have died? Did she overwrite herself with Cinq?”
“I’d give that answer fifty out of a hundred.”
“But how could that alter her physical height? It doesn’t make sense, right?”
“It’s not impossible. Psychological trauma can result in real and immediate physical symptoms. But I’d expect a sudden growth like that, and its reversion, to come with considerable pain.”
Ayanami’s height wasn’t what concerned Shinji the most right now.
Sensing his impatience, Maya continued. “The boundary that separates the girls’ consciousnesses is fairly weak. Rather than a deliberate transfer of her personality, this could be more like a multiple-car pile-up as a result of the sudden shock. Or maybe Trois became so critical of herself, she made herself
believe
that she became Cinq. I think the most likely scenario is that it’s a temporary delusion. But…”
“But what?”
“She could become either one. Those girls aren’t just twins—or quadruplets. Every Ayanami
is
her.”
I should have talked with Trois more,
Shinji thought.
He felt suddenly overcome with regret. Hadn’t Toji and Quatre told him?
When he’d learned three years ago that Ayanami was a clone of his mother, he hadn’t known how to face her. In all other contexts, everyone said that he’d become a lot more positive and sociable than he’d been as a younger teen. But when it came to Ayanami Rei, he didn’t know how to relate to her.
I’m so much worse than all those people who tried to get her attention by buying her clothes.
When Shinji tried, he’d picked out a simple dress like one his mother had once worn, faint in his memory. Trois rarely showed any emotion in her expressions, but that time, she’d become visibly upset.
Have I really been seeing her for who she is?
“We can’t just tell her to get out of there,” Maya said. “After all, Cinq is Rei, too. And because Trois is such a subdued girl, she might still be in there, only not coming to the surface. Let’s just keep an eye on her.”
In other words, it was up to Rei.
That same day, in several locations at the bottom of the sea around Oceania, the boundary between the tectonic plates burst open and released a terrific volume of sulfides. With all the other plates pushing underneath the Eurasian Plate, the opposite boundaries were stretching, weakening, and tearing apart. Earth’s inner mass continued disappearing without pause.