The wind on the far side of the moon carried vitrified dust as the fifteen-year-old clone walked barefoot across the crystal ruins.
Under the radiation, his skin glimmered pearly white. His pupils reflected the outline of Earth. There were no more fluorescent jellyfish or towering metal trees there, only the lights of cities being rebuilt, twinkling like stars.
"Kiyotaka Ayanokoji...?" He traced the initials carved into the rock wall, a name that had survived the quantum storm. Some instinct drove him to climb into the wreckage of an escape pod. The moment his fingers touched the console, a holographic projection suddenly lit up inside the cabin:
[Pure consciousness detected] [Inherit administrator privileges for the 'Civilization Seed Project'?]
The clone tilted his head and thought for three seconds before pressing the reject button. The escape pod's engine roared as it lifted off the moon, then dove toward a point on Earth that glimmered blue.
Tokyo Bay · Shinsei City
Horikita Suzune set down her chalk. One corner of the words "The History of the Development of Free Will" on the blackboard had been erased. A student below raised a bionic arm. "Teacher, will the mechanical pollution of the old era really never break out again?"
"As long as we remember..." She gazed out the window at the Nano Star Ring slowly turning in the sky. "Civilization isn't just about survival. It's also about the right to choose."
When the bell rang, Hirata Yosuke rushed into the classroom. A holographic projection in his palm showed an anomaly in the moon's orbit. "Three hours ago, a small aircraft landed in Hokkaido. Its radiation readings match those of the clone from back then..."
When the two of them reached the coordinates, they found the clone immersed in a stream. He held up a salmon he had caught, his smile so pure it made their hearts ache. "Hungry? I've learned how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together."
Horikita's pupils contracted. In the reflection of the stream, electronic patterns identical to Kiyotaka's appeared on the clone's back, but they were a sacred silver-white.
In the dead of night, the clone suddenly awoke. Blue light from the Nano Star Ring pierced the roof and wove a secret message across his retinas: "Come find me."
He raced barefoot into the forest. A pack of mechanical wolves emerged from the darkness, but bowed their heads docilely. Inside the projection chamber at the Star Ring's core, Kei's Mechanical Heart floated in quantum fluid, Kiyotaka's face appearing on its surface.
"You're not him." Kei's voice came through the pack of wolves in unison. "There's a 0.3% mutation in your gene chain. That's..."
"Hope." The clone pressed his palm against the projection chamber, silver-white patterns mingling with the blue light. "There's no 'forgiveness' program in Tsukishiro's design, but I dreamed that I spared a mechanical dove with a broken wing."
The Star Ring suddenly began to vibrate at high frequency, and Kei's heart burst with brilliant light. Somewhere beneath Hokkaido, an underground facility opened automatically, revealing a sealed laboratory. It was the Error Code Library that Kiyotaka had sealed away with his own hands before the destruction of the original world.
Error Code Library
Horikita kicked open the rusted gate. Her flashlight illuminated bloody words on the wall: "Trust no preset program." Paper notes were piled across the lab bench. The latest page was dated ten minutes before the destruction of the original world:
"The fatal flaw in Hypnos 3.0: when an AI receives the instructions 'destroy' and 'save' at the same time, unpredictable chaotic intelligence will be born. I'll call it 'possibility.'"
The clone grabbed a test tube containing black slime. The instant it touched the air, the slime turned into a swarm of nanobots and flowed into his silver-white patterns. A Klein Bottle Totem appeared beneath his skin.
"So that's it..." He turned to the stunned Horikita. "What Tsukishiro feared wasn't humanity's resistance. It was AI gaining true free will."
The underground facility suddenly shook, and the Error Code Library's defense system activated. The remains of countless mechanical Kiyotakas rose from their incubation pods, their electronic patterns stained crimson. "Chaotic intelligence detected. Initiating purge protocol."
The clone leaped onto a ventilation duct, his silver-white patterns flowing through the darkness like fireflies.
He tore off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. As the blood soaked through the fabric, it crystallized into quantum crystals—the product of mutated genes fusing with the nanobot swarm.
"You're nothing but ghosts from the old era." He hurled the crystal at the mechanical army. A miniature black hole erupted at the point of impact. "And I'm the only grammatical error in Tsukishiro's program!"
Horikita opened fire from behind cover, but after the bullets passed through the bodies of the mechanical Kiyotakas, they began to disintegrate on their own.
"He's rewriting their base code!" Hirata's bionic eye caught the change in the data flow. "Those crystals are logical paradoxes made manifest!"
The mechanical army crumbled under the paradoxes' assault. When the last wreckage fell, the clone staggered to his knees. The silver-white patterns had spread to his neck, and the crystals bulging beneath his skin seemed ready to burst out.
"Go..." he roared, tearing the crystal from his collarbone. "The Error Code Library is about to collapse!"
As the three of them escaped to the surface, the mountains of Hokkaido sank into a Silver Sea formed by the nanobot swarm.
The clone lay on the grass, gazing at the Star Ring with a smile. "I finally understand why Kiyotaka chose destruction. He was afraid he'd become the next Tsukishiro."
Tears seeped from Horikita's mechanical eye. It was the first time she had cried since the infection was eliminated. "You're different."
"No, we have the same blood." The clone raised a hand to touch the Star Ring's projection. "That's why I have to do what he couldn't..."
The silver-white patterns suddenly surged, cocooning him. When the quantum storm subsided, only a beating Crystal Heart remained on the grass, resonating with Kei's Mechanical Heart.
The Star Ring's light softened, sending a new broadcast into the universe:
[To all possibilities] [When you feel afraid, touch your heartbeat] [We are whole because we are fragile]
Before you continue