Life Lies in Motion

"Then it's settled. When summer vacation starts next month, we'll go to the seaside for a holiday."

"Let me tell you a secret—I bought a really sexy swimsuit~"

Li Heng looked at the words on the screen. This really was not a meme; the girl on the other end had happened to use a famous line from the decades-old movie Initial D.

Nothing quite as melodramatic as in the movie had happened, but the ending was more or less the same.

The Earthling Li Heng of the past had died, replaced by a strange Brain Flower.

After sweeping his gaze over the Earth where he had first been born, Li Heng turned his attention to another city thousands of kilometers away.

In the center of the city stood a black building with a delicate, smooth cylindrical exterior: the motionless headquarters of Googol Tech.

In the top-floor conference room, five black stone monoliths floated against a dazzling starry sky, each bearing a crimson number.

Googol Tech's meetings imitated the format of SEELE from EVA. That had presumably been intentional.

SEELE meant "soul" in German, or, in another translation, "all souls."

In theology, it carried the meaning of the "Seat of Souls," referring to the god in mythology who had been torn into countless pieces.

Humans had possessed divinity from the beginning—the soul—but that soul was incomplete.

Each person's soul was merely one part. Only when all were combined could they become a god.

The Human Instrumentality Project in EVA was limited to the billions of humans on a single planet. Googol Tech had borrowed that image, but what it implied was finite humans and an infinite god.

All finite mortals would merge into a part of one infinitely vast living entity. That was humanity's ultimate Instrumentality.

In the memories of the