Disclaimer/Note: I do not own Gundam Wing, or any of the characters in this story (unless otherwise stated). The young man in this prologue, for example, belongs to me. I do not own the series' creator, mech designer, or PHYSALIS, and I'm not making any money off this story. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original concepts in this story are original (duh) and belong to me, or have had all rights handed over to me. Do not steal. This story is AC (Alternate Continuity), takes place (for the most part) almost five years after Endless Waltz, and contains: violence, language, angst, flashbacks, acts of terrorism and subsequent political brouhaha, religious references, twisted senses of morality, an obnoxious timeline, and is more or less unbeta'd. Enjoy.

Better Than Nothing:
Prologue — Still Nothing

"We start, then, with nothing, pure Zero. But this is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present pure Zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure Zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility—boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom."— a pause in the reading, smoky brown eyes sweeping downward to read the name, origin, and date at the bottom —"Charles S. Peirce, Logic of Events, 1898 A.D.. . ."

He laughed, cold and without voice, a soundless movement of the mouth. His full, bottom heavy lips twitched up into a spasmodic smile, and the young man set aside the paper. "Amazing, this being. . . To think that such a redundant, though remarkably gifted, man could have grasped this almost Holy Truth. . .ha. And in such a time when man itself was only beginning to breathe, to reach higher, to condemn its own laws and strive to find what lies beyond the knowledge that they were first given? One might cry out blasphemy. But I am, unfortunately, forced to ponder the implementations of this: for, if a man, a human entity born of flesh and blood, and with a purely human mind, could take hold of knowledge that few of my own Creators have begun to realize, what does this say of them? Does this forsake their godhood, proof against their divinity?"

"Hn. I think not. Perhaps it implies that while small things may captivate small minds, those very same 'small minds' may come to take unto themselves a higher understanding; for instance, one which a God may not have taken due to trivial matters that wish to block this Truth, instead. For, if this were not the case, an omnipotent entity, made from a Holy material by mortal and mindless hands, would contradict its own existence, thereby destroying itself in the very moment that it was first conceived. That then would cease the existence before it ever had a chance to be, leaving one with an unquestionable answer that could never be proven. Or asked, for that matter," he sighed then, flicking aside an immaculately stacked set of tabloid articles, pictures devoid of eyes coming loose and floating downward from the edge of the metal desk where they joined the black grease pen that had fallen earlier.

"I have too much time on my hands, don't I. . .?" fingers brushed over hiragana that had been scratched into the steel surface, more of his strange, religious ramblings scrawled across the desktop in his uneven handwriting. The familiar musings had long ago burned scars into his mind, and now they rested there peacefully, deep indentations like inverted Braille that he was loathe to disturb. When he touched those holy passages, it made his skin burn and blood boil, like the power of the Almighty was rushing through him. He pulled away before he lost himself in reverie, turning in the swivel chair just as the hinges on the knob-less door to his room squeaked in protest. His eyes widened and his naturally dark skin went pale as it opened, his breath catching in his throat at the sight of the new arrival.

An old man stood in the door way, one gleaming and synthetic hand clutching what seemed to be a simple and innocuous wooden cane, had he not known better. He had too often felt that cane across his back and chest to think of it as harmless. The old man's other hand—a three-pronged claw that clicked together as if possessed by a life of its own—was held up, the sleeve of his white lab coat falling to expose the wiring to the elbow where it then shadowed too deeply for him to tell what resided there. Sometimes, he would wonder if the old man even had an arm there, or if it was all those harsh and ugly metal fixtures. Had the old man ever been fully human? His head dropped, brown bangs hiding his face from view as he tried to regain control of his expression. A lack of control was considered a weakness, and weaknesses were dealt with by force. Through the hang of his hair, he watched the old man shuffle into the room, his thick and heavy prosthetic legs moving slowly, dragging with each step as though he had a bad limp.

"You probably do," he heard the old man murmuring, the comment coupled with the ever-present clicking of the claw-hand and the faint grating of the legs on the white concrete floor. "Though I had hoped that you were trying to do something more productive, Zero-zero." The old man laughed after that, his voice raspy and coarse, rattling like loose shrapnel in the reworked cartilage of his damaged trachea. The metal claw came to rest lightly on the young man's head, 'fingers' tangling in the unkempt hair. Perhaps it was meant to be a reassuring gesture, but the young man had to hold back a shudder at the cold and impersonal feeling of it.

He was afraid, and had always been afraid, of this old man, this great and powerful Creator who had shaped the only world that he had ever known. The young man was awestruck, and trembled at the possibility of the God's wrath. Had he done something wrong? He could not remember the results of the last test and had lost count of the number of failures and successes he had had during training this month. The great Creator never came to see him anymore—at least, not since the Accident—so he had given up on keeping track of his progress or recording his transgressions.

Creator liked the New Version, Zero-one, better, anyway.

"Oh, don't worry, Zero-zero. I'm not mad at you," Creator said, pulling his 'hand' back slowly. Zero-zero swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes closed. Would Creator be angry to know how scared he was right now? He knew that he should not have been feeling fear, and that fear was a sign of weakness, a mistake in his careful programming. They all tried so hard to delete that useless humanity from his system, but it always seemed to creep back in and to hold onto some delicate backup data processing unit with a desperate tenacity. He often wondered if anyone else in the facilities ever experienced these strange and uncontrollable waves of emotion, but all the stoic men in their pristine white lab coats remained untouched. Their faces were masks of resolution, their eyes clouded by reason or hidden behind tinted glass and protective goggles.

The old man turned away, the grating sound becoming the only way for the young man to know Creator's movement. Creator stopped by the knob-less door, said his full designation—"Subject XXG-ZSP-00"—softly, and watched him rise to his feet with his head still down. Zero-zero followed him out of the door and into the white hall where it was sterile and clean, the faint scent of disinfectant still clinging to the walls. He was only vaguely familiar with this outside world, the area beyond his room and the hallway leading to the training simulators and infirmary seemed more like legend than reality. Of course, a part of him knew that the facilities he had grown up and spent the majority of his lifetime in were only a few relatively small buildings on a far larger colony, that colony being only one out of the cluster that made up L-1. There were hundreds of thousands of people populating it: living, breathing, dying people who worked hard jobs and liked to keep their weather system operating the same way every year, so that it rained just often enough to appreciate the warm spring and snowed each winter. Maybe it reminded them of an Earth they had never seen or of countries that they only vaguely knew from history textbooks.

Zero-zero wiped his sweaty palms off on his jeans as he followed Creator down the long hall, shaking his head a little as if to clear of idle nonsense. Now was not the time to let his mind wander and thoughts draw lazy, speculative circles. Surely, if Creator had come for him again after all these years, it must mean something. Perhaps Zero-one had failed, and he was being chosen to complete the mission instead. He had always hoped that they would return to him, the Prototype, the Beta Version with his twitches and jitters and miniscule glitches. This could be the answer to all his prayers.

Then again, there was one other option. Creator could have prepared a bed in the infirmary, if that was where they were headed. Zero-zero would be strapped down by old, worn leather bindings, a swatch of thick gauze shoved into his mouth while a doctor shoved a clear syringe into his superior venacava. It would not be long before the sweet nothingness of death washed over him and he was terminated. They would dispose of the body he left behind, and no one would ever know of or mourn his passing. He would fade from existence as if he had never been, and yet he had been denied the blessing of True Nothing—the sanctuary of pure Zero—by the simple act of his birth.

It did not seem fair that he would go so quietly and meekly into the void without first having expelled the passion God had gifted him with, but if that was his destiny, then so be it. Zero-zero clenched his fists and lifted his head to stare resolutely at the hunched spot between Creator's shoulders. No matter how frightening the mission may have seemed or how much it went against his fragile mortal instincts, if he was ordered to die then that was what he was going to do.

He imagined that it was the one thing he could not fail to accomplish.