The Being That Waited Sixty Million Years

There had been a war.

Who fought whom, what was won and what was lost — none of it could be explained in any human tongue. Time and space were no constraint to them. Even cause and effect held no absolute sway. The lifespan of a star, from its birth to its death, was to them scarcely a single instant.

Beings such as these collided, each seeking to bend the other's will. And in the course of that collision, one of them was gravely wounded.

The being fled the battlefield. To shake its pursuers it crossed world after world without number, until at last it found a small star that no one's attention would ever trouble — a frontier planet where not even proper life had taken root, let alone intelligence.

That place would suffice.

The being descended toward the deepest part of the star. Not its physical core, but the source that made the star a star at all. It meant to remain there and slowly recover its strength. A brief rest, nothing more. So it believed.

But the damage it had suffered ran deeper than it had estimated. The moment it entrusted itself to the star's source, the being realized that some part of it had begun to bleed into that source in turn. As the ages passed, the boundary between them grew faint, until at last it became meaningless to speak of the being and the star's source as separate things at all.

That did not mean escape was impossible. Now that its strength had returned, severing the connection would be no great labor. The problem was what came after. The instant it tore itself free, the star's source would be ripped apart along with it — and this small planet would not survive the wound.

So the being chose to stay. There was no reason to erase an entire star merely to leave it.

There was another way. A second intelligence, one not its own. If such a mind found it, and sincerely wished for its freedom, then even the smallest outside will would let the connection be severed without harming the star. But no such being existed on this world — not yet.

So the being looked down the branching ends of causality, and saw that someday an intelligence ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠capable of perceiving it would be born here. Until then — roughly sixty million years. The being resolved to wait. For it, that span of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠time was not long.

"...Something's off."

Ingong straightened up and brushed the dirt from his gloves. He was crouched before an outcrop halfway up the mountain, and he had already spent hours staring at rocks that all looked the same. People assumed a geologist could uncover something extraordinary just by glancing at the ground. The reality was simpler: look at rocks, record them, move on, and look at more rocks. Today was no different.

He made his way back to the spot he had checked a little earlier. "This one seems subtly different, somehow..." He crouched and studied the surface of the stone. Nothing about it was special. Not a gem, not a meteorite. No strange patterning, no glow. It was the kind of ordinary rock he would never have remembered if he'd passed it on any mountain trail.

Ingong pulled off his gloves and reached out to feel the texture directly. His palm met the stone.

That instant —

Ingong's hand froze. "...?" He lifted his head. No one was anywhere in sight. Only the sound of leaves trembling in the wind reached him.

He rose slowly to his feet. "Who... who's there?"

It was not a voice. He had not heard it with his ears. And yet the meaning arrived inside his skull with unbearable clarity. Before he knew what he was doing, Ingong took a step back from the stone.

"Are you... speaking to me right now?"

"Where are you?"

A beat of stillness.

Ingong scanned his surroundings. "Where, exactly..."

Ingong said nothing. The words made no sense — and yet, strangely, none of it felt like a lie. It wasn't that he understood what he was facing. It was the opposite. The mere fact that something was there forced him to feel, against his will, how small he truly was.

And then the being told him why it had come to this star. A war in the unimaginably distant past. How it had fled here, wounded. How it had settled into the star's source to recover, only to be assimilated into it. And how, if it severed that connection by its own will alone, this star would be destroyed along with it.

Ingong could barely keep up. The scale of the story was simply too vast — it refused to fit into any unit of measure he could grasp. Only one thing managed to lodge itself in his mind: this being wanted to leave, and could not.

"So if another intelligent being wished for your freedom... the star could come through it unharmed. Is that what you're saying?"

Ingong was quiet for a moment. Then, belatedly, he understood why the being was telling him all of this.

"Don't tell me..." He swallowed. "Can I actually do something like that?"

"Me? Just... by wishing it?"

Ingong stared down at the stone beneath his palm. It was impossible to believe. He was an ordinary man — nothing more than a geologist who had been crouched in the mountains examining rocks not five minutes ago. And now he was being told that his will alone could free a being that had waited on this star for sixty million years.

"Why... me?"

It was an answer too simple to argue with. It wasn't destiny. He hadn't been chosen. He had simply — found it. After sixty million years of waiting, the first being to satisfy the condition had happened to be him, and that was all there was to it.

Ingong couldn't speak for a long while. It would have been a lie to say he wasn't afraid. He didn't even properly understand what he was talking to. But one thing was clear: what this being asked of him was terribly, almost absurdly simple.

"What do I have to do?"

Ingong let his breath out slowly, then placed his hand on the stone once more. He closed his eyes for a moment. There was no need to manufacture the feeling. Sixty million years. A being that had waited here through a span of time his mind could not even picture — he truly wished for it to walk free at last.

"All right," Ingong said quietly. "I wish for you to leave this star... freely, without breaking it."

In that instant — nothing happened.

No light. No thunder. The ground did not so much as tremble. And yet Ingong felt it. Something was — disappearing. A strange sensation, as though something he had never once perceived in his entire life was quietly slipping out of the world. It lasted only an instant.

And then, from very far away, a final will reached him.

Ingong opened his eyes. Was that it? The moment the thought formed, the departing will touched him one last time.

"...?"

There was no time to ask what it meant. The being was gone. Completely.

Ingong stood there for a long while. The wind blew. Leaves swayed. Somewhere, birds were singing. Everything was exactly as it had been a moment ago. He looked down at his own hand.

"...Was that real?"

"...!"

Ingong whipped his head around. No one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was there. Instead — a small cluster of light hung in the empty air. It had no shape worth the name. Faint radiance simply gathered in one place, shimmering slowly. It was nothing like the being he had just spoken with. Before that presence, he hadn't even been able to grasp what he was facing; an overwhelming weight had pressed on him from all sides. From this thing, he felt none of that at all.

"What... are you?"

"A terminal?"

Ingong remembered what the being had said just before it departed. So I, in turn, shall leave something behind for you. His gaze fixed on the cluster of light.

"What does it do?"

Ingong's eyebrows shifted. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"...How far does 'exactly' go?"

The answer was delivered flatly, without emphasis, which somehow made it worse.

Ingong's expression hardened with every line. But the terminal wasn't finished.

"..."

Ingong was speechless for a long moment. When he finally forced his mouth open, his voice had gone dry.

"So... you're telling me I can do essentially anything."

Ingong studied the cluster of light. It didn't sound like it was joking. He honestly doubted the concept of a joke applied to it at all.

"Any limits?"

Only then did some of the tension drain out of his shoulders. He'd known it. Power like this couldn't come without strings attached —

"...What?"

The scale was nothing like what he'd braced for. "That's... the only restriction?"

"And if I break it?"

Ingong shut his mouth. After a moment, he asked carefully, "Why does a restriction like that even exist?"

"..."

Ingong let out a hollow laugh. Somehow, that made sense. This was a being that had chosen to keep the star whole over winning its own freedom. Of course the power it left behind would carry the same heart.

He looked at the cluster of light again. And still — he couldn't believe it. Changing memories. Touching time. Rewriting cause and effect. Altering reality itself. Hearing it spoken aloud and actually accepting it as true were two entirely different things.

"...Obviously."

Ingong narrowed his eyes. "A demonstration?"

"How?"

A brief silence.

"You can read my mind?"

Before Ingong could get a word in edgewise —

"Hold on—"

The landscape around him vanished. The mountain. The trees. The dirt under his boots. In a single instant it was all simply gone, as though it had never existed in the first place. Ingong's eyes went wide.

Where he stood was now — a vast penthouse, the entire city spread out below it.

"..."

He looked around in silence. The floor beneath his feet. The air against his skin. The night skyline beyond the glass. The distant pinpricks of headlights moving along the streets far below. There wasn't a single detail his senses could flag as illusion.

Ingong slowly looked down at the floor. "This is... actually real?"

The terminal continued.

"Second?"

Ingong raised his head. Across the living room, in a spot that had been empty only seconds before — a woman was standing there.

His eyes went wide. It was a face he could not possibly fail to recognize. In films. In dramas. In advertisements. A face he had seen countless times. A famous actress whose name anyone in the country would know was standing right in front of him.

Ingong couldn't speak for a long moment. And then, for the first time, the meaning of the terminal's words — it reflects your requests into reality — began to sink in, bit by bit, into some deep and previously untouched part of him.

Ingong's gaze drifted slowly toward the actress. A few seconds of silence passed. Then the corner of his mouth curled upward, just slightly.

"Yeah."

What had only ever lived as fantasy, locked away in the back of his mind — was, for the very first time, becoming real.