Chapter 521
Chapter 521
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 24
Chapter Title: The Greatest Creditor (11)
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****
[In truth, this isn’t a deal or anything of the sort. It’s simply a gift from me to you.]
In the silent expanse of space, the mad scientist’s cyberbrain squeezed words from the dead man’s lungs—words even stranger than that.
[Become a god.]
Madness from a madman. Yet it was no longer something he could dismiss as mere nonsense; it was already bearing down on him.
[The satellite rain I created will peel back the Earth’s surface like shedding a skin, heading toward a new life. Excluding a tiny fraction of microorganisms, all life on Earth—including the hopelessly derailed humanity—will vanish, and our home will revert to its primordial state! And atop that, I’d like you to nurture a new human civilization.]
“You’re out of your mind...”
[Exactly. That state you call ‘out of my mind.’ If modern human civilization universally defines that as ‘correct,’ then escaping it is only natural! Humanity chose the wrong path in evolution long ago, in some ancient moment! Culture, common sense, something more fundamental before that—it’s all wrong! So we must shed it...! Don’t you think so!]
“...Hah.”
[I wanted to do it myself! I dreamed of it at first! But I had to give up soon enough. I was a failure who’d repeated countless failures. The humanity cultivated from genes stored in the server room and seeded on the new Earth would be nearly a blank slate—humanity’s last hope. Tainting them with a failure’s color felt like distasteful greed.]
[That’s why it’s you. The most perfect personality. A madman who’s escaped the old humanity’s perspective, possessor of a twisted mind, and astonishingly, that twist forms a perfect shape, like the final puzzle piece!]
“Heh, heh...”
[You’re a psychopath. You lack the self-love every human naturally has! The guilt from surviving your parents’ sacrifice and your comrades’ deaths excised your own existence from within you. Thanks to that, Professor Park now is a lunatic gripped by psychopathic altruism, finding happiness only in how others reflect him!]
Gedroits’s words were nonsense. Nonsense, yet something that shamed and angered him.
A tale of the essence of the man called ‘Professor Park’—something he knew all too well but could never admit to others.
[You’re not good! The altruism that earns you titles like saint or hero is just the spawn of selfishness filling an empty interior! Twisted into a human unable to find happiness in self-improvement, your inner self became a void. The more you craved happiness, the wider that abyss grew. It’s a miracle you didn’t kill yourself!]
His old shelter came to mind. The revolver always loaded. Several failed suicide attempts, regrettably botched. Ah, so that’s why his inner self was such a mess.
[So, you began caring for others. Like a survival instinct. Unable to find your existence in your empty core, you started drawing in others’ presences. Using their shadows to outline your own contours, reclaiming your lost self within.]
[How astonishing. How perfectly twisted a form! Unable to be happy yourself, you fill your surroundings with happiness! Having lost ‘self-love’—the root of personal happiness—you painstakingly gather happiness reflected in others to feel it yourself.][That’s the true nature of a ‘saint.’ One who acts altruistically out of selfishness. One who finds happiness only in the self included within others’ joy. Despite such profoundly unstable soul, you overcame every trial! When others shatter and break, you hardened further in those trials! Like diamond! You succeeded in establishing that twisted form of self! That firm, warped shape— what else could it be but the ‘key’ the world prepared for us! Project Key-Finder succeeded! The perfect leader for the next generation, a new shepherd to guide near-blank humanity righteously! That’s you, Completed Professor Park.]
“Hey...”
[Want to deny it? Then explain why you don’t smash this reinforced glass right now and crush my little cyberbrain. That body is Andrey Gedroits’s greatest masterpiece. The result of the sole variant virus that grew close to its original target. It was the seed of evolution to create humanity that could adapt and survive any environment. It just needed time to adjust to the extreme cold; by now, you should have the strength to shatter this glass and hold my head.]
[You can’t. Yes. Even if it’s just me stimulating a dead body with electrical signals, and you’d probably be faster if it came to it, you still can’t move. Your mind can’t accept the ‘what if.’ What if Gedroits is faster? What if that switch is pressed? What if everyone on Earth below vanishes? What if you’re left alone!!—facts like that. The people you’ve gathered in your empty inner self to survive. Their disappearance is tantamount to your own. They’re literally your everything down there. That’s why you’re captive to me.]
“...”
Gedroits’s ceaseless explanation flowed smoothly, meticulously, affectionately—like teaching an excellent student.
[The button being pressed. The satellite rain falling. Earth ushering in a new genesis. These are already set in stone. What will happen, happens.]
[My proposal is merely an option on that inevitable outcome. Whether my precious, great, praiseworthy Completed One executes the plan happily or drowned in sorrow—that’s the only difference.]
As if catching his breath, the dead body’s chest swelled greatly, and a voice brimming with anticipation turned toward him.
[Of the ones you love, I’ll save exactly 49 right now. Instead of pressing this button immediately, I’ll give you a little time. You return to that spaceship, receive the treatment I gave you in a human-survivable space to revert to human, recover your body, and head back to Sector 47 with the ship. Then, from there, board the 49 you select and return here. Escaping the Earth where satellite rain falls, to the 50-person long-term space survival base ‘Next Space.’ That’s how you survive.]
[Estimates suggest 55 to 70 years for the reset Earth to recover its environment. You’ll be busy in the meantime. Physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and humanity’s culture, history—mountains of knowledge await. Including what I left, all prepared in the server room. Not a single thing can be wasted. It’s not mere knowledge; it’s the foundation for the new generation’s framework. Preparation to become a god.]
[Time passes like that. When those you love have lived full lives, and Earth’s self-cleansing ends. You, already a genetically distinct being from variant transformation, will be left alone to return to the surface with the server room. Cultivate the myriad gene samples prepared there, restore Earth’s biosphere, rebuild humanity.]
“That’s... too far in the future—”
[It’s possible. Absolutely possible. Because the one executing it is none other than you. The very person who proved you can achieve impossible goals transcending time and conditions!]
Even bodiless, perhaps soulless, reduced to a data clump in a cyberbrain mingled with another’s personality, Gedroits’s voice brimmed with fierce emotion.
It was... something beyond trust, bordering on religious fanaticism. Faith that his sole achievement—sacrificing life, family, existence, birthplace—wouldn’t deviate an inch.
[The Artists’ Union nuclear bunker should withstand the satellite rain’s impact to some degree. Type 3 variants can survive environments where most atmospheric oxygen is gone. You remember Collector and W’s life goals, right?]
“...You prepared even that far.”
[Yes. Collector, that child yearned for her futilely spent life not to be in vain. She hoped for Andrey Gedroits’s plan to succeed. That way, her death wouldn’t be meaningless. She wished for humanity to survive somehow, and the moment you rejected her proposal, she took my hand. W goes without saying. He wanted only a tiny human community left in the world so his consciousness could linger by Collector. A small community starting from gene samples fits his wish perfectly. He followed Collector’s will from the start.]
[They’ll be fine apostles to you, the shepherd. Of course, hardships will follow. Countless unforeseen problems will arise, but I have no worries. Because facing them will be none other than you. You, the sole success born of old humanity.]
[Your body is already a completely different existence from the genes up, due to the variant virus. After 70 years, you’ll still have a long lifespan left. And when that lifespan ends, the memories of nurturing and leading young humanity will be ample. After that death, the true god born. Not to be called by the paltry name of Type 3 variant—a truly completed lifeform born from intense memories of living in deep sorrow and regret, fulfilling duty, rebirthing humanity! The arbiter deciding good and evil, moral and immoral for new humanity!!]
Gedroits was panting. If not for the cyberbrain in the dead body, he’d be in tears by now.
[Thus, old humanity’s fate—rushing only toward destruction—will turn a new page. And at last, I can say ‘I succeeded.’]
Gedroits’s voice swelled with pride, as if witnessing that moment.
Evil-free evildoing. A scientist too brilliant to see the future others missed ultimately fulfilled his sole duty, his sole mission: killing nearly ten billion.
And disgustingly, he understood it, even if just a little.
“I get it... but I can’t sympathize...”
[The moment you understand proves your excellence.]
“Heh, heheh, hehahaha... And if I refuse...?”
Of course, understanding didn’t mean he’d join a mad plan to reset all humanity. He wasn’t that broken.
His hands, stuck to the glass—sans sensation but clinging somehow—now turned toward his own neck.
“If your grand plan is like that, what happens if I just die here?”
If the distant land below was his everything, then in this space, his existence was Gedroits’s everything.
Come now, if you hold my everything, I hold yours too. Gedroits, can you race with the world—our everything—at stake?
The dead eyes in Gedroits’s body stared at him long.
[....No, that won’t do. It really won’t.]
After a somewhat long silence came a dejected reply. A voice sunken sadly, ruefully.
[This is truly... regrettable.]
Click!
“?!”
And without a moment’s hesitation, he pressed the button.
The light from the massive explosion cast his shadow long over the base.
****
---!
No sound, yet some sounds are felt without hearing.
It could be the sound ending a planet’s era, a someone’s world collapsing, or fanfare signaling a task’s end.
The moment countless metals humanity launched into space—and electromagnets capturing them into a small celestial body—began hurtling toward Earth with their propellant’s explosion.
What Gedroits felt was genuine regret. Pure pity for the mental agony his great figure before him must endure.
[I told you. My proposal was just an option on the inevitable result.]
Why hadn’t he understood? This man so brilliant, so wise—even ‘intelligent enough to understand him’—why hadn’t he grasped the meaning in his words? Wasn’t eloquence his specialty?
[The 49 survivors were merely my gift to lessen your pain. I pitied the suffering of awaiting alone in space for decades, so I offered that small kindness! You don’t deserve such treatment! You deserve a happy ending! That’s why I proposed it!]
[Threatening with life? That could never work from the start! Not on you! You’d grieve enough to die losing all loved ones and being left alone, but you’d never choose death! Why? Because I already told you the server room below holds new humanity’s last hope, all resting on your hands!! That sense of duty! Your steadfast, eternal temperament! It’ll force you to live and fulfill your task!]
Gedroits couldn’t stop shouting, even as his cyberbrain’s remaining battery drained rapidly. The world would reach its end, but not this sad one. He wanted his Completed One happy.
[Why make you suffer! Why force you with my own hands to bear that cross!]
But the moment he drew the most dangerous card—suicide—Gedroits had no choice. The duty to keep him alive. The ‘sole survivor’ obligation arises the instant all life on Earth perishes. Before his unforeseen action, Gedroits had to choose his survival.
[Too late now....]
The outcome was set.
Explosion power akin to a small nuke. Propelled thereby, the electromagnets and metallic rings they captured hurtled toward Earth.
Soon piercing the atmosphere. All we built, all history and civilization, annihilated. His Completed One left alone to watch, wracked by indescribable sorrow, desperately clinging to life—not killing himself. For he had duty as last survivor, bearer of reconstruction’s hope.
[I didn’t want it to end like this. Didn’t want to part like this. I wanted to thank you, who’ll fulfill my aspiration, my sole goal. To say thanks for existing in this world, for surviving. That I respect you, wish you well, and part that way....]
At last, Gedroits couldn’t hold back his surging emotions. The dead eyes, receiving cyberbrain signals, squeezed a sticky tear from the tear gland to his eye corner. He’d committed countless sins, but none felt as sinful as now. He’d left incomparable sorrow to the sole true being devoted to humanity.
[I’m sorry. Truly sorry....]
Hoo, hooook.
His ragged breaths came through the communicator. For atonement, Gedroits vowed to receive his emotions till the cyberbrain’s scant battery died, ear tuned to the voice.
Hoo, hoohoo, hoo....
Irregular, sobbing breaths. Gulping them down, holding breath.
Hic, heh, hehehe—
Amid irregular sounds like swallowing breaths, at last the pioneer, realizing the set outcome and his duty, vented his feelings.
“...You idiot.”
In airless space, limited air from the mouth drone allowed only maximally concise expression.
Not sorrow, blame, or curses—but mockery. Relief like relinquishing something, laced within.
“Ah, damn it. I was thinking how to sweet-talk my way back alive, and you just press it. Decisive bastard.”
[Professor Park. Have you not understood my words till now? The satellite rain is already heading for Earth—]
“It’s launched. Even live-streaming the moment—including our conversation—to the people below.”
[Then you accept it? That all this was inevitable?]
“Nah.”
Taking a deep breath, he peeled off the drone from his mouth. Now adapted to space, his voice resonated from his chest cavity, face baring sharp fangs in a grin.
“That assumption. That psychopathic Professor Park clings to duty and lives on doggedly—only holds if everyone below is confirmed dead, right?”
[What...?]
“As you said, they’re my everything down there.”
Teasing the flustered Gedroits, he shook a syringe of turquoise liquid beyond the reinforced glass.
“That means this mystery meat-suit before you means nothing to me.”
Gedroits wanted to understand what he meant. No, he already did—but couldn’t accept it. His drying eyes chased the syringe beyond the glass. The treatment. To revert the near-complete Completed One from Type 3 variant, extend his lifespan.
“How the hell is this body even made? It moves alive in space, but will it live if I revert to human?”
[No....]
“Even staying put, it’ll die in minutes anyway, but it’s urgent now. Plus, this near-99% combat/survival monster variant state isn’t satisfying.”
Tick-tick—
“Fortunately, got a reroll once. Revert to human, die with a bang! Might turn into something else.”
[No, no no no no!!!]
Gedroits screamed.
[What are you thinking! You’re humanity’s hope! The only hope! You can’t gamble everything on that!]
The Completed One was so shocked his mind broke. Otherwise, how could he stake on such slim odds! Not him, Professor Park! Gambling lives hanging on him!
“Gamble? No way.”
Grinning fiercely at his screams—now collapsed, mouth flapping—the Completed One sneered.
“As you said, what happens, happens.”
[What.... did you say....]
“Similar in Sector 38. Happy Blind. Your friend Lishue pulled Orpheus-like doomsday weapon, saying human tech civ must end, tried wiping all wasteland survivors. What’d I do then?”
“Became a savage monster, devoured it all, and died.”
“3rd World? Same. Mutants rampaging to wipe humanity, this body became savage monster, smashed it, died. 4th World? Ditto. System-patched Frankenstein monsters, Warlord-devoured people—still compressed in my chest storage. I’ve realized something. Some things really come irreversibly.”
.
.
.
.
“But how you face what happens is up to each person. Even if outcome’s set, inevitable. Life still flows, right? Unless it stops dead then, that ‘set outcome’ is just a process. What it leads to depends on who faces it.”
[No, what you think is impossible! Please, please!!]
“Yeah, near impossible.”
The Professor spread his arms toward the scientist, like a greeting.
“And magicians forever dream the impossible.”
Pffft!
Sturdy claws rent his chest, ampule liquid flowing toward his heart.
“What happens, happens. As you said. Ruin begins, I’m their sole hope, someday reborn divine. Difference from your plan—”
Crunch!
“....Is that they all happen simultaneously, right now.”
As deep turquoise liquid spread through veins across his body. The claws shattering reinforced glass—reached not for the enemy’s head, but the camcorder he’d set up.
Gedroits had to ask.
In plummeting pressure and chill, the scientist in the dead body wrung the last from his flesh.
[What, are you....]
What exactly.
With all decided, what would he do.
“Why, something tremendous. As you say, if I become such a great existence in the distant future. If I have that potential, something possible then.”
The answer to the question came not from his receding lips, but the screen. Despite silent space, the body-comm-linked camcorder clearly transmitted his voice.
“I will become immortal.”
To Earth. Just like that first day facing the world again, through the forum’s small broadcast screen.
It reached the survivors.
****