Introduction: A Certain Maintenance Worker’s Monologue, Part 1

My name is Daian Fortuner. This name is all I have. Nothing else is mine, and there is nothing else I control. It is the same as having no life or death. This place, which used to be known as the Holy Tower, is deep underground, beneath the mountains.

Once upon a time, a god resided here. I am sure of it. There can be no doubt. A perfectly complete being once existed here. This god was made that way. And I was made to serve it. But the god is no longer here. Thus, my life has no meaning, and a meaningless life does not even deserve death. My role never changes. I inspect and repair the tower. The purpose of my existence is to maintain this place, lost by my master and home to no one.

One day, I was wandering the tower as usual. Despite being deep underground, the walls themselves emitted light, so I walked corridors that shone as if in daylight. I inspected the illumination and air conditioning within the tower, and discovered no problems. However, one of the apparatuses in Plant 2 had deteriorated over time and required replacement. I also checked and adjusted the power reactor on the lowest level.

I am well aware that no one will come here again. But I was created for this purpose so I perform these actions. It is like a human child pumping its lungs even though it didn’t come into this world with the purpose of breathing.

The stock of consumables was running low. I needed to use the plant to replenish it, but it was a pointless gesture. I was keeping the place ready for people who would never come. How long had I been doing this?

When 31,030,072,029 seconds had passed, I noticed an immense change in the earth’s crust. I had never experienced such a massive earthquake before. By my assessment, several mountains on the earth’s surface had crumbled.

However, this was of no great concern. A few months earlier, the tower’s internal electronic calculators predicted such an event. Furthermore, given the tower’s strength, I determined that the earthquake was not a problem.

But expectations are often overturned. The estimation of the tower’s strength rested on the premise that the tower was whole. The calculations for that estimation did not take the section of the tower damaged on the day of its burial into account. The area deepest underground.

Since it was always underground, to describe it as buried is strange. In any case, this area is usually outside my administration and inspection. However, this was an unusual circumstance. In a case when there might be survivors, it is possible for me to enter the affected area for a limited time.

Survivors? The idea was ridiculous. There was no reason to suspect survivors. No one could have survived in the regions even deeper underground than the tower, buried a thousand years in the past. There was no way... But I was interested. Even if no person was there, something may have been.

I had performed maintenance for what seemed an eternity. A human-like sense awakened within me. You might call it a whim. Yes, it was a whim. I passed through a hole opened during the earthquake and descended deeper underground. That underground area’s automatic repair functions were not operational and there were no maintenance workers, so it had remained dark and unused for a millennium and had fallen to ruin.

I advanced inside. No life readings. Still, I advanced. And further yet. No life readings. Nothing was there after all. But what area was this? I repeatedly used my sensors, but still no sign of life. However, former living things were all around. Countless human remains. A multitude of skeletons inside cases. Many, many... Tens... No hundreds, all lined up.

A graveyard? At first, this is what I thought. I cannot experience death, so it was of no personal significance to me. However, humans treat and lay to rest the remains of their dead, and they do this in various ways.

It did not make sense to me. As enshrining something forever is impossible, it is better to recycle it for the benefit of the ecosystem. But that wasn’t the truth of this place either.

I decided to try counting the number of cases housing the bones. One, two, three... fifty... one hundred... And more. I reached one thousand... And I continued counting.

Even a single floor of the tower was vast and spacious. But that was not all. There was a deeper floor, and another beneath that. Each floor held one thousand cases with one thousand skeletons. And there were ten underground floors. One thousand multiplied by ten equals ten thousand sets of bones, bones, bones...

When I reached the bottom floor, I finally understood the purpose of this place. More precisely, I found a control device that was still running, if only barely.

This was no graveyard. It was the opposite. It was what had become of people who had clung to life. The cases were cryogenic chambers from the European Empire that had fallen to ruin thirty billion seconds, or one thousand years, earlier.

People say it crumbled overnight, but the truth is they had a little more time. After the disappearance of their god, the empire’s disintegration accelerated, causing its people to gather their remaining power and entrust their hopes to the future.

Entrust? Hope? That was just wordplay to beautify the truth. They were unable to avoid the destruction, but they believed their god would return, so... No, that is not right either. The only thing they could think of doing was to rely on a being who might return.

They were pitiful, miserable and comical... Like me, as I tend this tower to which no one will ever come. Unlike me, however, they would die. And that meant they could not wait for their god.

I estimated that the control device could only preserve their lives for one hundred years. I did not know if they thought their god would return within that time or if they had only been able to scrounge together enough power for one hundred years.

The control device, however, had determined that the god would not return within that time. If it could preserve ten thousand people for one hundred years, then it could preserve five thousand people for two hundred years. Or it could preserve twenty-five hundred people for three hundred years, or twelve hundred people for four hundred years.

I doubted there had been any criteria for selecting who survived. The device must have selected them at random, then ceased supplying power to the rest. I doubt the calculations were that simple, but each time power ran low, the ark eliminated some of its passengers, directed power to the rest, and extended life a little longer, and a little longer... In the end, however, it had all been for naught.

Hm? No, wait. If it was all over and all had died, then why was the control device still operating? The control device would reach the very end of its power and stop only after depleting the power needed to start it. Which meant...

“Someone is still alive...”

I spoke for the first time in billions of seconds. A voice is for communicating with others. It was pointless for me as the sole unit in a tower with no people.

Was I... excited? Excited at the thought of someone who would break the silence of billions of seconds? One by one, I checked the cases on the lowest level.

Then I found it. At the deepest point, a case was faintly glowing and inside was an infant. Of course. A child, and an infant at that, would require the least power to preserve life.

The baby was asleep in preservation fluid. Its body temperature was low, its heart did not beat, and it did not breathe. The control device had reduced its life functions to the minimum and brought the child to a state resembling death in order to maintain life for the long wait through time.

I operated the control device to open the case. The preservation fluid drained, exposing the child’s skin to external air for the first time in a millennium. Using the revivification device, I might be able to breathe life back into the child. I was under no obligation to do this. My responsibility was the preservation and administration of the tower. However, I had entered this area outside my customary purview and discovered a survivor, so it was permissible to preserve its life.

Static briefly coursed through me. That too was probably a whim. The insignificant whim of someone who had been around for a long, long time.