(Longing)
The few remaining days continued ticking away, like melting wax coming apart, ever more losing its shape, passing away without leaving a trace.
Time continued to pass me by without much that was worth mentioning, split between experiments at NERV, futile pursuits at school, and the ever-present, suffusing quiet of my own lodgings.
Sometimes someone talked to be briefly, surface, passing words – Horaki-san, or Ikari-kun, or the Commander.
For most of it I remained undisturbed.
By all accounts, everything was quite on track as it was expected to be, rife for the purposes of project E and the instrumentality project. Whatever waves of anomaly might have been introduced by the unexpected introduction of the Third Child were evening out.
I read, I contemplated, I attended to my duties, I preoccupied myself with speculations, only looking to get through every single day, to just endure it, to simply make it through to the promised day of decoration.
I believed not the stirrings of what could have been change when they appeared, yet I could not so easily settle back into the simple flow of fate when they were proven to be just as insignificant in the grand scheme of things as I expected.
There was a sensation somehow, as if there were some sort of urgency - something I had forgotten, or, something I needed to do.
But this made no sense.
There was nothing required of me at all,
nothing but to keep playing my part.
To continue going through the motions.
Next up was another Harmonics test.
We arrived. We suited up.
Little about it was new, little about it worth retaining in consciousness.
Even the presence of the other two pilots was no longer worth mentioning, having melded all the way into my usual image of this room.
Between all the calibration sessions since, this version of it must be impressed even upon the braincells of the clones down in terminal dogma, and familiar to their unseeing eyes.
We were greeted as usual by Major Katsuragi, the only difference being the second stripe on her collar. She and the other pilots arrived together, and together they would leave.
And why should it be otherwise?
I wasn't here to be talked at.
It was probably less unpleasant if I wasn't. Less likely to again draw the Second Child's ire or set off another of her tirades, really.
I ought to be glad if nothing much was asked of me, other than my barest presence.
If there wasn't much of a reason to feel the concrete edges and corners of the harsh, uncaring machine that surrounded me.
What other way would one even expect it to be?
What reason would it possibly have to care.
Just get through it, just get through it…
All things considered I was really glad,
to be thus unconnected to everything.
To regard the voices and exchanges that were physically beside me as just distant happenings, let them fade into the background aside from the one thing which I was here to do.
Considering what the only real alternatives were.
I took my seat in the simulation plug.
I concentrated, hard.
There was some kind of relief in this, at least.
The focus drowned out every other thought.
I was not really too compatible with EVA 00, and her circuitry hosted many bugs that were evened out in the latter models – besides, there was no compatible human soul in here to bridge the gap.
The only reason she moved is that I was not so far from what she was as an ordinary human.
Still it was quite taxing on my powers of concentration once the technicians started cranking up the harmonics as far as they would safely go.
I could feel, long before the technicians would pronounce it, when the experiment was coming to a close. And indeed, Lt. Ibuki's voice came over the intercom little sooner than I had expected it:
"Plugs Zero and Two are just short of the contamination zone. This is the limit."
Just zero and two? Then what about Ikari-kun?
I could not see them of course, but I could picture how Dr. Akagi might now be looking over her subordinate's shoulder to ascertain the numbers herself, as I had often seen her doing:
"Plug One still has some room though. Try lowering the graph depth another 0.3 points."
Dr. Akagi had not explicitly ordered this, but, I could tell that one of the technicians must have flipped the switches for myself to be pulled back up.
I felt the relief of the strain upon my mind and soul before my vestibular system had a chance to pick up upon the motion of the machines lifting my seat back to the entry platforms.
I'd imagine that the Second Child must be on her way up as well, whereas Ikari-kun was almost certainly on his way further downward.
"He's almost at the contamination zone." reported Ibuki now.
"And he's still putting out values like these? That's seriously impressive…"
Dr. Akagi's right-hand technician was inclined to agree with her:
"His harmonics and synch rate values are closing in on Asuka's…"
"He must possess some kind of natural gift…."
One of the maintenance workers – I did not know his name – went even further:
"It's like he was born to pilot an EVA!"
How ironic. He might be the one person among our number who was not. Yet it seems that the pale imitations of man could not yet keep pace with the works of fate and mother nature in their random, capricious whimsy.
And it was bittersweet in another way as well, which only Major Katsuragi thought to consider:
"Except that he hates doing it. I doubt that hearing about this 'gift' is going to make him happy…"
I was rather inclined to agree – if it was a gift, it must have come from some rather wicked gods.
I would not wish this loathsome burden on the worst of my enemies, even if it was all that justified my existence. And unlike me, Ikari-kun used to have a life of his own, that he was brusquely taken from, even if it does not seem to have been as an especially happy one from what he had told me.
He did not seem to think that there was anything better waiting for him anywhere out there.
Yet still the fact remained that he could live, somewhere in the world out there, before falling to dust before long. Him and the Second Child both.
Instead, we were all here, suffering the pressure of these foreign entities on our fragile little minds, being worked until we break.
We had not had any casualties thus far, but who knew how long this would yet last.
On the surface, our situation looked to be more advantageous than it ever had been:
We now had three fully functioning Evangelions, and, judging by today's results, what might be considered three fully trained pilots.
That's how I had mostly noticed the passage of time as of late – by means of Ikari-kun's progress.
He'd been one of the more novel, changeable elements in all this.
The days might blend together yet more if he soon reached a plateau.
Then again, it's not as if there was a whole lot of time left to keep track of.
Even this harmonics test had soon come to an end, no doubt heralding again the inevitable parting to our paths, our going back to each our own separate lives after little more than a slight, tangential brushing:
"Good work, you three. You can come out now."
The hatch opened, baring our seats to the open space of the testing hall.
It was time for the debriefing.
The Second Child did not even wait for Dr. Akagi to tell us our results, but rushed forward to the monitors to sight the gory details herself, having no doubt familiarized herself with the significance of the graphs and numbers herself in all her years as a pilot, in search of every possible method to improve our result.
But the Doctor and the Major were not much bothered by this – I had reason to suspect that it was mostly Ikari-kun whom they wanted to say things to.
Dr. Akagi addressed him straight away: "You've done very good work today."
Yet the subject of all these glorious exaltations proved entirely oblivious – I don't think he'd even had the intercom channel open during the experiment, perhaps having worried about getting distracted, or being too self-conscious to endure the technicians looking at him while he tried his best to concentrate.
"...what did I do?" he asked, by all appearances sincerely confounded.
I think the instruments around him still confounded him every bit as much as they had from the very first day – it might as well be powered by pure science fiction magic as far as he was concerned… and, as I noted with sobering awareness, it was probably quite convenient for NERV for this to remain this way, if this would keep him doing as he was bid.
He wasn't like me, who couldn't leave, or like the Second, who had made piloting her whole life.
Although, since he did not account himself or his life before as anything especially precious, I wondered how long it would take until EVA had devoured him as well.
He may now have cast his being into EVA 01's gullet without a second thought like the Second had done it, but there was no doubt that it had its hold over him.
Some lure that he could not resist; An offer he could not refuse.
I just hoped that it wouldn't extinguish the parts of him that made him like he was.
An unlikely hope, given that he was exposing his very heart and soul every time that his spirit touched that of EVA 01, the waveforms of their very being lining up into a concordant harmony with every session.
"Your harmonics levels are up eight points from last time. Those are impressive numbers."
"He's still 50 points below me, though!" remarked the second, coming back up to us once she had inspected her numbers to her satisfaction.
"Still, eight points in ten days is a big deal."
"Really? Cause I don't get it!" she turned back around to us with a cold smirk on her lips:
"Gee, it must be soooo nice to be lavished with praise like this."
Soon, however, even the veneer of goodwill was exhausted:
"I'm going back to the apartment! Idiot!"
Try as he might to smile and let it slide despite her obvious passive-aggression, the final eruption of unbridled harshness caused him to visibly flinch.
He was too busy worriedly gazing at the door she'd disappeared through to have much appetite left for conversation, and for the most part continued to resemble a small, deflated heap of misery until Major Katsuragi escorted him out of the room, too absorbed in his distraught feelings to think of waving at me in departing like he usually did.
Seeing how hard he took it only seemed to encourage the Second Child to scorn his attempts at a truce. Did she not realize what a precarious position we might be put in if he decided to leave again?
Once again, I wondered why she had to be like this.
Intellectually, I very much understood why, but still, why – existentially speaking?
Still it was what it was.
There would not have been much time left for talking anyways, even if Ikari-kun had been in the mood for it – between Matriel's attack, the blackout and all the ensuing investigations and repairs, the thorough testing of EVA 00's new specifications had ended up on the back-burner for a while, but it would nonetheless need to be done.
The EVA had performed well enough in the battle proper, but being forced to rely on numerous emergency fail-safes that had been thought to exist largely for psychological reasons had once again reminded everyone involved how small NERV's margins of error could be.
Dr. Akagi had always been a pessimist both by nature and conviction, and believed not in leaving anything up to chance – It was expected that the thorough testing regime she had prepared for would be keeping me occupied for most of the day.