Between Dream and Reality
"It was long. At least not just ten seconds or so."
It really had been more than ten seconds. I heard a clicking sound. Unlike the Lambda Lilion I'd seen before, a cluster of golden gears protruded from her head like horns, spinning away.
"That's why that video was 23 hours long—the flow of time is different."
Video? Oh, right, the corrupted file I sent her last time. I'd figured someone like Lambda Lilion might be able to do something with it, and apparently she had.
"Wait, that thing was really 23 hours long?"
"Indeed. It was a file filled only with static, no picture or sound, but it contained exactly 23 hours, 4 minutes, and 11 seconds of footage."
Then Lambda Lilion pointed behind me with her finger. In place of the iron door marked with yellow-and-black diagonal warning stripes, there was now just a flat, blank white wall.
"That place resembles the afterlife."
Before I could even ask what the hell this place was, she beat me to the explanation.
"If it's not exactly the afterlife, then you're saying it's hell, right?"
If it wasn't the afterlife, hell was the only option left. Not the place the dead go to, but where they suffer. Though contrary to common sense, it was the victims who suffered instead of the perpetrators.
"People usually think of the afterlife as a world where the dead reside, but the reality is different. The afterlife isn't a single place—it's a single event. The moment after death."
I knew what she meant. I'd experienced it myself—opening my eyes in my mother's womb right after dying. For me, the afterlife hadn't been a place either.
"Hell, on the other hand, is like a filter installed at the entrance for a purpose. An intricate tool designed to squeeze out souls. But Abelian, that place back there isn't hell."
As she said that, Lambda Lilion approached. Her body—half human, half golden gears—stood out starkly. I'd expected her to say something or pass on some message, but instead, she walked right past me and placed her hand on the wall where the door had been.
"It's a space where the afterlife—that singular point—was forcibly expanded into spacetime."
Forcing myself to parse it, it sounded like they'd jammed an empty space into nothing. A black hole singularity came to mind. In terms of being irreversible once you crossed it, maybe not a bad analogy.
More important than the principle, though, was who had created that place.
"A product of Grey Ark Research Institute?"
She'd mentioned horrific experiments, so maybe the incident from sixty years ago was connected to this place.
But Lambda Lilion fixed her cross-shaped pupils on me. Seeing the countless gears clicking inside, I knew it wasn't mere silence. That was as far as she was going.
"Grey Ark lacks the technology for that. Pristine Comprehensive University doesn't have it either. No, putting it that way, you wouldn't understand."
Click-click. This time, the physical cluster of gears sprouting from her head like horns made the noise. It sounded almost like laughter, though her doll-like face remained expressionless.
"Humanity hasn't reached that point yet. Even necromancy—technology that interferes with death—only toys with the entrance. Hell itself is beyond reach."
Swoosh. Her thin, slender finger pointed at me.
"Once you eliminate the suspects capable of it, you're the only one left."
News to me.
"This is my 'hidden power'?"
I looked down at my hands, but felt nothing. Instead, only the roaring, laughter-like whir of gears filled my ears.
"It is power. Madness and atrocity at the same time. An invader that upends the world's fundamental principles without context, dooming those who can't adapt to new laws."
I got why she called me the villain. And that she was overestimating me. No, I understood what she meant. Like Cortes arriving in the New World, she was labeling me an invader from another world.
"But doesn't that require one side to have the upper hand? Tech-wise, my old world was actually behind."
This place relied on magic, but excluding AI, it felt far more advanced than my previous civilization.
"Usually, you'd be overwhelmed by reality and reduced to a 'disorder.' Even if you eventually assimilated and got 'treated,' the traces would linger forever. But not only are you refusing assimilation—you're spreading your ways."
"Fair point."
I conceded. I wasn't blindly denying it. Logically, she was right.
"But spreading thoughts or ideas is totally separate from creating weird spaces like this, isn't it? Or do I really have some special ability?"
Honestly, since I reincarnated, wasn't I entitled to something? I tamped down my secret excitement and waited for her answer.
"What are you talking about?"
Her tone dripped with genuine disbelief, making me realize I'd spouted nonsense. Right. Reincarnated or not, I hadn't brought anything special with me. Still, what was wrong with a little hope? A status window would've been nice.
I grumbled inwardly, but Lambda Lilion didn't end it there. She continued.
"Imagination becoming reality. That's what magic is."
In a completely unexpected twist, she pinpointed exactly where I'd gone wrong. Not just me—most people in this world now saw magic as part of science. More precisely, magic theory was this world's science. Yet she was saying that view missed the fundamental principle. Or from a fantasy perspective, maybe it hit the core?
"Am I... a grand archmage?"
Even as I said it, I knew it meant I was definitively lacking something.
"A mage who consorts with demons, yes?"
"Cowardly, just stating facts!"
She wasn't wrong about borrowing demonic power, so I'd nodded along. Rephrased, it was mockery: not a grand archmage.
"So why the curt answers? Because I'm an 'assistant' who you really mean as an info-gathering probe?"
She did have multiple assistants... I was about to ask if she planned to support me like she'd said earlier or just use and discard me, when Lambda Lilion shook her head once, doll-like, left to right.
"No. I've not fallen so low as to withhold answers from one who asks. But even exchanging messages via pad is risky—information through machines is always dangerous. Remember: a single stray record in a machine could cost you your life."
Aigoo. I'd searched weird stuff in the library just in case, but the pad was risky too? Terrifying.
"No special functions on the pad you gave me? Or something with your 'all-knowing' nature?"
She'd called herself a god. Sure, she'd mentioned plummeting to rock bottom, but after seeing her turn half-gears, she just looked like she was wearing a weakling mask to me.
"That pad is a standard model with no special functions. I could summon myself here because this place is slightly detached from reality."
"One character per server, huh."
"If infinite instances were possible, I'd still be a god."
She'd thrown in the game analogy because she figured I wouldn't get it otherwise, but she understood it perfectly. Come to think of it, were there online games here? I'd check when I got out. I'd forgotten about the internet world after so long away.
"Ugh. Nothing resolved at all."
I looked around. Just the stark white underground facility. The dead were gone, and I hadn't gained much from it. At best, Irene Fraggit's weird parting words?
"Tell me what happened inside. That's your duty."
Lambda Lilion stared straight at me, demanding contract fulfillment, unconcerned with my reverie.
Right. I hadn't recounted what happened inside yet. I started explaining everything after we'd separated.
Inwardly, I realized her theme wasn't "god" but "fallen." Not an unpaid all-purpose cheat servant, just a knowledgeable, capable person. Well, connections to strong folks weren't bad.
Yeah. As I thought that, I narrated aloud. Summary: went in, exchanged names, told them their act sucked and to get lost to their next lives. Looking back, yeah, I'd been a jerk. Was that why she seemed godlike? Or detective-like? Whatever.
I described my brief time in the afterlife. Lambda Lilion's exterior gears didn't budge, but inside her cross pupils, they spun furiously. The sight of massive machinery meshing in geometric orbits with clicking sounds was eerily visible.
"Sending on the resentful dead, stagnated in the afterlife's gap, wasn't that a good deed?"
Strange thing to say.
"No sympathy or comfort there. Telling a filthy homeless guy to get lost from your doorstep because he's gross—how's that good?"
That gore-flick scene wouldn't appeal unless you had niche tastes.
"Didn't you invoke 'humanity'?"
"A kid dying like that is wrong no matter how those brats acted. Next life is a good thing, so I kicked their asses out without a guilty conscience."
They'd cursed me out and left, hating the method.
"Very well. If you say so, I hope it turns to evil someday."
Implying it wasn't evil now. Tsk. Guess the world wasn't that great. Advanced societies shouldn't always be "good." Or did failing space travel and lacking AI make us superior? Whatever. Superiority's worthless anyway.
"So, what now?"
I posed the fundamental question. The incident started with meeting the dead and ended with them leaving. What next?
"Return to your room and enjoy the weekend."
Lambda Lilion summed it up neatly.
"Send info per our contract when you find something odd. If this space lingers, we'll talk without the pad. Otherwise, wait—I'll find another way."
Do my assistant duties, in other words.
"Will it linger?"
"Places that served their purpose vanish."
"Got it."
I glanced at where the door had been. The boundary was gone; outlines blurred, everything fading gradually.
"Good morning."
Lambda Lilion bid farewell.
"It's morning. Time to wake up."
With the cheerful wake-up music, I opened my eyes. The ceiling of my room in Choir Dormitory came into view, a soft bed against my back. My body felt refreshed, sunlight streaming through the window. Night had passed; morning had arrived.