Disclaimer: I don't own digimon
And Last So
that's how it ended. I don't suppose we need to say more about the
uneasy peace that has dominated the world ever since. You can read the
papers to see more about that.
Since this is the first time this story has been released on a large scale, you probably want to know more about us, those of us who helped shape this world that you now live in. We tried to stay out of the limelight for so long, but now I guess I've put us back into it.
To start with, we finished school. Barely, but we did. By barely I mean that we were constantly in trouble. It was a decision that Tai and Matt made early on that we should try to keep our role in the War quiet, and try to keep us from being a public spectacle. That worked for a while, after all, accounts of the War were confused, and it was easy for key people to conveniently "forget" the names and faces of their leaders. But the story could not hold up forever. After all, whenever an emergency broke out in the Digital World, we were among the first to get the call. It was inconvenient for a while, since we were being called upon as citizens of a sovereign nation, and minors to boot. Eventually the United Nations formally established the Inter-Dimensional Expeditionary Force as a permanent military body charged with guaranteeing safety and peace on the border between the Real and the Digital. That gave us excuses for leaving class, but it got us a lot of unwanted attention from our peers. Still, our teachers did not give us any leniency, so our continual absences almost finished us.
We also made the decision that we would live our lives as normal people as often as we could. That meant that we were supposed to get jobs, go to college…that sort of thing. Everything almost crashed at that point, when Matt decided that he was giving up music to be an astronaut, and Tai declared that he was going into politics, in particular that he was going into diplomacy. Izzy, who was collecting college degrees like seashells at the beach, agreed to help tutor the two of them. Between him, Ken and the rest of us, we managed to get Matt and Tai both through college without them failing spectacularly.
So, eventually, we managed to settle down. I became a freelance writer and novelist, Kari went into teaching, Matt got to fly his spaceship out to the frontiers of space, and Tai learned how to mediate disputes between digimon and humans. Ken went into forensics, and became a forensic detector, Yolei and Izzy worked with computers (not that there was any doubt of that), Cody became a defense attorney, Davis opened up that noodle cart he always talked about, Joe got that doctor's degree (to his father's relief), Sora opened a fashion company, Mimi got a cooking show, but we never went our separate ways. Eventually Tai and Matt and Sora got things all settled out between themselves (I won't tell that story now…it deserves an epic), and, strangely enough, they all live in a single household. It seems that no matter how much they still fight with each other, and even if two of them are married in all but name, they can't bear to be apart from each other. Strangely enough, Izzy decided to live with them as well, which just goes to show you, friends are forever. They have a suite of rooms on the upper floor of our apartment building, right above the moderately sized apartment that Kari and I share, one for Matt and Sora, one for Tai, and one for Izzy. We have two spare bedrooms, which is lucky for us, because we often have visitors. Joe and Mimi, who, strangely enough, are still shy around each other, live down the hall from us in one direction, while Ken and Yolei live on the other side of the hallway, in an apartment with a balcony that Ken uses to launch Stingmon off of. Cody lives on the second floor from the bottom, opposite Davis. So in the end, we all ended up in the same place, at least the same building.
I suppose that I should explain why only Ken and Yolei got married. It all started with their wedding. They got hitched right after college, but it was a disaster. Not that they noticed, they were too dreamy to notice anything.
First, Cody, who had just begun working with a respectable law firm (Hisa Legal), got an emergency case. It was someone who needed to be defended, and Cody's knowledge both of martial arts and the Digital World were central to the case, and you know Cody. His sense of justice and honor demanded that he keep an innocent man out of jail. This meant that he had to skip Ken and Yolei's wedding, and the next time he saw them, he apologized for nearly an hour straight before we could shut him up.
Next it was Matt who had problems. They got a sudden window for a space flight which had been planned for months. He had less than forty-eight hours notice (thanks partially to the fallibility of the engineering department) and had to cancel his travel plans at the last minute so that he could go into space, where he had been dreaming of going. This, of course, meant that Tai and Sora were a complete wreck. After all, they always are when Matt goes into space.
In the moments before the wedding, Joe got a call at the last minute and had to go run away to deal with some sort of emergency medical problem. This left Mimi in a bit of a snit. Of course, this set a bad tenor for the whole thing.
Halfway through the wedding, a group protesting the presence of Digimon on Earth came to bombard the new Digital/Human ambassador Taichi Kamiya with all sorts of political drivel. Tai got short tempered, and started yelling back. It was only when they started throwing things that everything got messy. In the end, Davis got arrested on account of the fact that the police officer arriving at the scene considered Imperialdramon a deadly weapon for assault purposes. Fortunately, once we got Cody to stop apologizing, he had the services of an excellent defense attorney. I don't think Ken or Yolei noticed any of this, but the rest of us did.
Gennai and Adam, both of whom were there, hiding out in the back, pointed out that the whole things was a little silly. After all, why rush to marriage now? When I pointed out to Adam that we were really sort of impatient, he gave me the Look. Then he told us that he had been engaged for fifty years before getting married, and we might want to consider going through the same path. Besides, we might be able to get divine sanction of our marriage if we performed it at the right place and the right time.
I think that was when the effects of the burden we had taken on ourselves began to show. The thought, the idea that we would be virtually immortal, that we would be young long after everyone else we knew was dead and forgotten, had not begun to sink in until then.
Given that, Kari, Mimi and Sora got together and agreed to wait. They said that they didn't want to get married until there was no more baggage hanging over them, and that meant until we had left Earth. I never really realized how much effort it must have cost them to come to that conclusion. But, the rest of us agreed. I think there was not much romance within the group for a while anyways, the thought of tying the knot for all eternity can daunt even the staunchest heart. Even if it didn't, that was about when the Halifir war broke out, so we were all busy for a while.
But, generally, life settled down. About once a week (or once a day on bad weeks), Matt, Tai and Sora will have an explosive argument. The subject changes from week to week, but the format seems to remain the same. Everyone else knows how much they like fighting, and understand that they occasionally need a break from each other. But for Kari and I, the sound means that we're about to have company, usually one of the Troublesome Trio come down to our apartment to rage and rant about his/her horrible friends, drink most of our herbal tea, and then charge back upstairs. To add to this Joe and Mimi live off to the side. They have a system for when they fight. Instead of yelling and screaming at each other, the angry one comes down to us and takes up temporary residence in our spare rooms. Kari and I just sigh and let them help with the cooking. Izzy wanders through occasionally too. He's actually spending a lot of his off time living in Citadel with that girlfriend of his, so we don't see him as often.
One time my brother and Tai and Sora had a huge fight. I remember it because I could hear it through the ceiling. This is a sure sign that sooner or later three people will be banging on my door. Sure enough. First Sora came down, face redder than her hair, pulled Kari aside, chatted with her angrily for a few moments, and then stalked back upstairs. Next Tai came down, nearly incandescent with rage. He muttered angrily, pounded on the wall, put his goggles on (always a bad sign) and went back upstairs. Then it was Matt's turn to come ask me for advice in that quiet voice that means that he was about to do a volcano impression. About an hour after he went back up, Sora was back down, half-crying, half-trying-to-rip-things-into-tiny-pieces. She stayed for about two hours and then went back up, only to be replaced by a very angry Matt, who wasn't talking to Sora, and who was about ready to throw Tai out the window. It took another hour of our weekend, and most of Kari's supply of tea to calm him down. About another hour passed before there was another knock on the door. Kari rolled her eyes and I sighed and went to open it. Instead of one of the others, there was Izzy, looking haggard and rumpled, clutching his laptop tightly, with an interesting bruise on his forehead. He looked at us and exclaimed:
"I simply cannot function in that madhouse a moment longer!"
I don't know what came over me, but I just started laughing. This started Kari laughing, and after he had gotten his breath back Izzy joined in. By this time, we were laughing just because everyone else was laughing, which drove us to laugh ourselves into that exhaustion you get when your lungs hurt to even breathe.
Of course at this time, Ken and Yolei dropped by, found our door open and us sprawled over furniture, lying quietly. Yolei screamed and Ken immediately told Wormmon to call the police station. I turned over to comfort them, caught sight of his face, and started laughing again. Of course, this set of Kari and Izzy again. Ken and Yolei stared at us for a while before they started laughing, and then Ken bent over to help me up, started giggling, was bumped by Yolei and went headfirst over the coffee table. I was laughing so hard tears were running out of my eyes and Izzy was banging on furniture with his fist. Kari attempted to occasionally get up, but she kept falling down again. In the middle of this, Tai, Sora and Matt, still glaring at each other, burst in to see if we could settle there argument, and spent a lot of time looking confused. It took a few minutes for Kari to regain control again, and she went to the refrigerator, and calmly, and with great solemnity, squirted an entire container of aerosol propelled whipped cream into their faces. Of course, this started us off on a general uproar, which is when Joe walked in on us. Kari took a picture of the look on his face, which is still enough to send me into gales of laughter.
So life is still interesting. But now it's coming to a close.
I went down to the Monument after writing that last chapter. I haven't been there in a while. But it never changes.
When my father was elected mayor, he began the construction of the Monument. He did it by expanding the landfill that Odaiba is built on, and more than doubling its size. It was a massive project, but it gave us something to do with all that rubble we pulled out of downtown. Then it was covered with grasses and trees and marble walkways and staircases, like some multilevel castle on the edge of the sea.
Here is where the tombs are. There are massive memorials that cover the ground, on which is written names and dates where those who laid down their life in the liberation of Tokyo are recorded. Each nation that has come, that had sent its children and its adults to die, had built their own monument, a little piece of home. It was lauded by critics as the greatest collection of international art ever created, a little piece of art from a thousand little cultures. Villages deep in the African savannah sent hand-carved pieces of art to sit aside million dollar mausoleums that were constructed by huge first-world countries. It was strangely haunting and beautiful, and always full of tourists, who remained oddly respectful of this monument to the dead.
There were many places that I visit from time to time. My grandfather has a monument here, a small carving of his motorcycle on a nearly invisible corner. It is well worn by the sea winds, but I still run my hand over it every time I visit. Jun has a monument as well, a simple eternal flame, to respect her last words. Beneath it is written the simple message:
May she always be warm
There are graves here for people I helped bury once, long ago, people I knew. Some of them I remember briefly, as fleeting faces or the faint sound of a voice that one cannot remember properly, and then they are gone, evading my memory and diving into the unyielding surface of history once more, and I cannot follow. Sometime I knew them only for minutes or seconds, sometimes I had stood with them for days and hours, and sometimes I don't have either image or sound of voice to put with a name. I sometimes see wonder and fear in the faces of the children who, not understanding death, play among the monuments to the fallen and look into pictures carved of faces that will never smile again. Still, even as they brush around me, ignoring my eternal grief which has frozen my face like a rock, I am aware that those faces of stone are smiling now, and may be smiling for all time.
Perhaps children understand death better than we think.
I am reminded here of something Adam once told me, from a comic book I think he said, about life. You each get a lifetime, no more, no less. But some of them are less than others, even if they accomplish more. Here, on the boundaries between the living and the dead, it is sometimes hard to hold onto one's optimism.
All the graves get visitors, and it is rare for them to ever be without flowers. Even the tongue-in-cheek memorial to Jim's Arm that the ghostbusters set up has its yearly ritual sacrifice of coffee grounds. If Jim (whose prosthetic arm matches his real one so well I sometimes have to think to remember which one is which) notices this, he never says anything.
Almost all the graves get visitors.
There was nothing left of Chikara Hida. His memorial is a huge statue between the roadways of the newly re-built Rainbow Bridge, a statue of an older man with a katana in his hand, gazing forever at the Phoenix that is the city of Tokyo. No man can cross onto Odaiba, even by subway, without coming under the shadow of the guardian at his eternal watch. Sometimes I see Cody standing at the base of the statue, looking up at it, but he never leaves anything. He doesn't need to.
But one grave is never visited. In a shallow spot at the entrance to the harbor there is a statue made out of polished marble. It is isolated, alone in the water, a single outcropping in the middle of the pounding hands of the ocean. But it is tradition that every time a military ship from any nation passes into the harbor, that they dip their flag in salute to the old man of the sea. And thus, in death as in life, Hideo Ishiguro is alone and unreachable, beyond humanity, forever awaiting the changing tide.
Perhaps he might have liked it that way.
One more structure never gets visitors of the casual sense, but that one is not a memorial. It is a triumph of modern engineering, a massive pillar of concrete and steel that rises almost a hundred stories into the air, supporting a beacon of light that illuminates the entire world, as far as Tokyo is concerned. It was built armored floor after armored floor, growing ever upwards until it touched the very sky. It is ominous and comforting all at once, and people come from around the world to stare at it.
A home. A fortress. A beacon.
The IDEF Lighthouse.
Of the thousands of men and women who have marched to war under our banner, I will say nothing. Of the hundreds of times I have escaped death while wearing that uniform, I will not speak. The Lighthouse is headquarters to something bigger than any of us ever expected. And even if we have gone our own separate ways in some sense, we still live in that monstrosity half of the time. Yolei and Izzy spend almost all their waking hours there, monitoring the flow of data from the real world to the digital world. Armies protect it, men have died guarding its secrets, and we walk there like we are gods, yet it endures. And it will endure long after I and the others are gone.
We are tired. I already look younger then my children. Soon, too soon, I will look younger than my grandchildren. I have no wish to stay here and watch my family decay into death. I have no wish to watch all that I have helped build topple in the next political power struggle. I have had adventure after adventure in worlds so strange as to beggar description. To me the Earth is a favorite place, but it is no longer home.
The war goes ever on and on. Light and darkness are never far separated, and I must continue to struggle lest we be overwhelmed. So I am going. We are going. That is why I am writing this story now. Already the others have gone away, gone home, abandoned this world for the joys of others. Already we mourn our children, who we love more than life, as dead. I am the last, the others have already gone. Even Willis and Michael are gone, ages ago. Willis doesn't even bother to age himself anymore, they left with most of the other first-ranked digidestined.
I don't know why I wrote this, to tell the truth. It was never about money, or fame, or pride, or anything. All I can say is that I told you this to tell you the truth. So that you will know that one day, gods and angels walked the earth as men. So that you will understand that children with dreams ascended to the heavens, and that everyone who walks this earth can follow in their wake. Maybe all you need to know is that there are heroes out there, somewhere.
This is not the last story we ever had, but it is the last one you will hear, for the others are beyond you. For most of you, we will part ways at the end of this book, you to yours and I to mine. But some of you will be inspired to chase after me and the legend I have created. To those I give this message. I am far away, gone into the mists of time. The way after me is difficult and long and hard, and I will not make it easy. But should you wish to chase me, then come after me. To those who follow, they will be the heroes and champions of tomorrow. I give them my best wishes. I will be waiting someday, somewhere.
Once, when I was a baby, two monsters came to Heighton View Terrace, and nearly destroyed it. On that day, I set foot into the world of adventure. Sometimes I came home and rested, but always I set out again. Now it is time for me to wander again.
The old heroes are gone. You will have to make your own heroes now.
Walk forever in the Light.
Takeru Takaishi
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on:
Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
-dA
Since this is the first time this story has been released on a large scale, you probably want to know more about us, those of us who helped shape this world that you now live in. We tried to stay out of the limelight for so long, but now I guess I've put us back into it.
To start with, we finished school. Barely, but we did. By barely I mean that we were constantly in trouble. It was a decision that Tai and Matt made early on that we should try to keep our role in the War quiet, and try to keep us from being a public spectacle. That worked for a while, after all, accounts of the War were confused, and it was easy for key people to conveniently "forget" the names and faces of their leaders. But the story could not hold up forever. After all, whenever an emergency broke out in the Digital World, we were among the first to get the call. It was inconvenient for a while, since we were being called upon as citizens of a sovereign nation, and minors to boot. Eventually the United Nations formally established the Inter-Dimensional Expeditionary Force as a permanent military body charged with guaranteeing safety and peace on the border between the Real and the Digital. That gave us excuses for leaving class, but it got us a lot of unwanted attention from our peers. Still, our teachers did not give us any leniency, so our continual absences almost finished us.
We also made the decision that we would live our lives as normal people as often as we could. That meant that we were supposed to get jobs, go to college…that sort of thing. Everything almost crashed at that point, when Matt decided that he was giving up music to be an astronaut, and Tai declared that he was going into politics, in particular that he was going into diplomacy. Izzy, who was collecting college degrees like seashells at the beach, agreed to help tutor the two of them. Between him, Ken and the rest of us, we managed to get Matt and Tai both through college without them failing spectacularly.
So, eventually, we managed to settle down. I became a freelance writer and novelist, Kari went into teaching, Matt got to fly his spaceship out to the frontiers of space, and Tai learned how to mediate disputes between digimon and humans. Ken went into forensics, and became a forensic detector, Yolei and Izzy worked with computers (not that there was any doubt of that), Cody became a defense attorney, Davis opened up that noodle cart he always talked about, Joe got that doctor's degree (to his father's relief), Sora opened a fashion company, Mimi got a cooking show, but we never went our separate ways. Eventually Tai and Matt and Sora got things all settled out between themselves (I won't tell that story now…it deserves an epic), and, strangely enough, they all live in a single household. It seems that no matter how much they still fight with each other, and even if two of them are married in all but name, they can't bear to be apart from each other. Strangely enough, Izzy decided to live with them as well, which just goes to show you, friends are forever. They have a suite of rooms on the upper floor of our apartment building, right above the moderately sized apartment that Kari and I share, one for Matt and Sora, one for Tai, and one for Izzy. We have two spare bedrooms, which is lucky for us, because we often have visitors. Joe and Mimi, who, strangely enough, are still shy around each other, live down the hall from us in one direction, while Ken and Yolei live on the other side of the hallway, in an apartment with a balcony that Ken uses to launch Stingmon off of. Cody lives on the second floor from the bottom, opposite Davis. So in the end, we all ended up in the same place, at least the same building.
I suppose that I should explain why only Ken and Yolei got married. It all started with their wedding. They got hitched right after college, but it was a disaster. Not that they noticed, they were too dreamy to notice anything.
First, Cody, who had just begun working with a respectable law firm (Hisa Legal), got an emergency case. It was someone who needed to be defended, and Cody's knowledge both of martial arts and the Digital World were central to the case, and you know Cody. His sense of justice and honor demanded that he keep an innocent man out of jail. This meant that he had to skip Ken and Yolei's wedding, and the next time he saw them, he apologized for nearly an hour straight before we could shut him up.
Next it was Matt who had problems. They got a sudden window for a space flight which had been planned for months. He had less than forty-eight hours notice (thanks partially to the fallibility of the engineering department) and had to cancel his travel plans at the last minute so that he could go into space, where he had been dreaming of going. This, of course, meant that Tai and Sora were a complete wreck. After all, they always are when Matt goes into space.
In the moments before the wedding, Joe got a call at the last minute and had to go run away to deal with some sort of emergency medical problem. This left Mimi in a bit of a snit. Of course, this set a bad tenor for the whole thing.
Halfway through the wedding, a group protesting the presence of Digimon on Earth came to bombard the new Digital/Human ambassador Taichi Kamiya with all sorts of political drivel. Tai got short tempered, and started yelling back. It was only when they started throwing things that everything got messy. In the end, Davis got arrested on account of the fact that the police officer arriving at the scene considered Imperialdramon a deadly weapon for assault purposes. Fortunately, once we got Cody to stop apologizing, he had the services of an excellent defense attorney. I don't think Ken or Yolei noticed any of this, but the rest of us did.
Gennai and Adam, both of whom were there, hiding out in the back, pointed out that the whole things was a little silly. After all, why rush to marriage now? When I pointed out to Adam that we were really sort of impatient, he gave me the Look. Then he told us that he had been engaged for fifty years before getting married, and we might want to consider going through the same path. Besides, we might be able to get divine sanction of our marriage if we performed it at the right place and the right time.
I think that was when the effects of the burden we had taken on ourselves began to show. The thought, the idea that we would be virtually immortal, that we would be young long after everyone else we knew was dead and forgotten, had not begun to sink in until then.
Given that, Kari, Mimi and Sora got together and agreed to wait. They said that they didn't want to get married until there was no more baggage hanging over them, and that meant until we had left Earth. I never really realized how much effort it must have cost them to come to that conclusion. But, the rest of us agreed. I think there was not much romance within the group for a while anyways, the thought of tying the knot for all eternity can daunt even the staunchest heart. Even if it didn't, that was about when the Halifir war broke out, so we were all busy for a while.
But, generally, life settled down. About once a week (or once a day on bad weeks), Matt, Tai and Sora will have an explosive argument. The subject changes from week to week, but the format seems to remain the same. Everyone else knows how much they like fighting, and understand that they occasionally need a break from each other. But for Kari and I, the sound means that we're about to have company, usually one of the Troublesome Trio come down to our apartment to rage and rant about his/her horrible friends, drink most of our herbal tea, and then charge back upstairs. To add to this Joe and Mimi live off to the side. They have a system for when they fight. Instead of yelling and screaming at each other, the angry one comes down to us and takes up temporary residence in our spare rooms. Kari and I just sigh and let them help with the cooking. Izzy wanders through occasionally too. He's actually spending a lot of his off time living in Citadel with that girlfriend of his, so we don't see him as often.
One time my brother and Tai and Sora had a huge fight. I remember it because I could hear it through the ceiling. This is a sure sign that sooner or later three people will be banging on my door. Sure enough. First Sora came down, face redder than her hair, pulled Kari aside, chatted with her angrily for a few moments, and then stalked back upstairs. Next Tai came down, nearly incandescent with rage. He muttered angrily, pounded on the wall, put his goggles on (always a bad sign) and went back upstairs. Then it was Matt's turn to come ask me for advice in that quiet voice that means that he was about to do a volcano impression. About an hour after he went back up, Sora was back down, half-crying, half-trying-to-rip-things-into-tiny-pieces. She stayed for about two hours and then went back up, only to be replaced by a very angry Matt, who wasn't talking to Sora, and who was about ready to throw Tai out the window. It took another hour of our weekend, and most of Kari's supply of tea to calm him down. About another hour passed before there was another knock on the door. Kari rolled her eyes and I sighed and went to open it. Instead of one of the others, there was Izzy, looking haggard and rumpled, clutching his laptop tightly, with an interesting bruise on his forehead. He looked at us and exclaimed:
"I simply cannot function in that madhouse a moment longer!"
I don't know what came over me, but I just started laughing. This started Kari laughing, and after he had gotten his breath back Izzy joined in. By this time, we were laughing just because everyone else was laughing, which drove us to laugh ourselves into that exhaustion you get when your lungs hurt to even breathe.
Of course at this time, Ken and Yolei dropped by, found our door open and us sprawled over furniture, lying quietly. Yolei screamed and Ken immediately told Wormmon to call the police station. I turned over to comfort them, caught sight of his face, and started laughing again. Of course, this set of Kari and Izzy again. Ken and Yolei stared at us for a while before they started laughing, and then Ken bent over to help me up, started giggling, was bumped by Yolei and went headfirst over the coffee table. I was laughing so hard tears were running out of my eyes and Izzy was banging on furniture with his fist. Kari attempted to occasionally get up, but she kept falling down again. In the middle of this, Tai, Sora and Matt, still glaring at each other, burst in to see if we could settle there argument, and spent a lot of time looking confused. It took a few minutes for Kari to regain control again, and she went to the refrigerator, and calmly, and with great solemnity, squirted an entire container of aerosol propelled whipped cream into their faces. Of course, this started us off on a general uproar, which is when Joe walked in on us. Kari took a picture of the look on his face, which is still enough to send me into gales of laughter.
So life is still interesting. But now it's coming to a close.
I went down to the Monument after writing that last chapter. I haven't been there in a while. But it never changes.
When my father was elected mayor, he began the construction of the Monument. He did it by expanding the landfill that Odaiba is built on, and more than doubling its size. It was a massive project, but it gave us something to do with all that rubble we pulled out of downtown. Then it was covered with grasses and trees and marble walkways and staircases, like some multilevel castle on the edge of the sea.
Here is where the tombs are. There are massive memorials that cover the ground, on which is written names and dates where those who laid down their life in the liberation of Tokyo are recorded. Each nation that has come, that had sent its children and its adults to die, had built their own monument, a little piece of home. It was lauded by critics as the greatest collection of international art ever created, a little piece of art from a thousand little cultures. Villages deep in the African savannah sent hand-carved pieces of art to sit aside million dollar mausoleums that were constructed by huge first-world countries. It was strangely haunting and beautiful, and always full of tourists, who remained oddly respectful of this monument to the dead.
There were many places that I visit from time to time. My grandfather has a monument here, a small carving of his motorcycle on a nearly invisible corner. It is well worn by the sea winds, but I still run my hand over it every time I visit. Jun has a monument as well, a simple eternal flame, to respect her last words. Beneath it is written the simple message:
May she always be warm
There are graves here for people I helped bury once, long ago, people I knew. Some of them I remember briefly, as fleeting faces or the faint sound of a voice that one cannot remember properly, and then they are gone, evading my memory and diving into the unyielding surface of history once more, and I cannot follow. Sometime I knew them only for minutes or seconds, sometimes I had stood with them for days and hours, and sometimes I don't have either image or sound of voice to put with a name. I sometimes see wonder and fear in the faces of the children who, not understanding death, play among the monuments to the fallen and look into pictures carved of faces that will never smile again. Still, even as they brush around me, ignoring my eternal grief which has frozen my face like a rock, I am aware that those faces of stone are smiling now, and may be smiling for all time.
Perhaps children understand death better than we think.
I am reminded here of something Adam once told me, from a comic book I think he said, about life. You each get a lifetime, no more, no less. But some of them are less than others, even if they accomplish more. Here, on the boundaries between the living and the dead, it is sometimes hard to hold onto one's optimism.
All the graves get visitors, and it is rare for them to ever be without flowers. Even the tongue-in-cheek memorial to Jim's Arm that the ghostbusters set up has its yearly ritual sacrifice of coffee grounds. If Jim (whose prosthetic arm matches his real one so well I sometimes have to think to remember which one is which) notices this, he never says anything.
Almost all the graves get visitors.
There was nothing left of Chikara Hida. His memorial is a huge statue between the roadways of the newly re-built Rainbow Bridge, a statue of an older man with a katana in his hand, gazing forever at the Phoenix that is the city of Tokyo. No man can cross onto Odaiba, even by subway, without coming under the shadow of the guardian at his eternal watch. Sometimes I see Cody standing at the base of the statue, looking up at it, but he never leaves anything. He doesn't need to.
But one grave is never visited. In a shallow spot at the entrance to the harbor there is a statue made out of polished marble. It is isolated, alone in the water, a single outcropping in the middle of the pounding hands of the ocean. But it is tradition that every time a military ship from any nation passes into the harbor, that they dip their flag in salute to the old man of the sea. And thus, in death as in life, Hideo Ishiguro is alone and unreachable, beyond humanity, forever awaiting the changing tide.
Perhaps he might have liked it that way.
One more structure never gets visitors of the casual sense, but that one is not a memorial. It is a triumph of modern engineering, a massive pillar of concrete and steel that rises almost a hundred stories into the air, supporting a beacon of light that illuminates the entire world, as far as Tokyo is concerned. It was built armored floor after armored floor, growing ever upwards until it touched the very sky. It is ominous and comforting all at once, and people come from around the world to stare at it.
A home. A fortress. A beacon.
The IDEF Lighthouse.
Of the thousands of men and women who have marched to war under our banner, I will say nothing. Of the hundreds of times I have escaped death while wearing that uniform, I will not speak. The Lighthouse is headquarters to something bigger than any of us ever expected. And even if we have gone our own separate ways in some sense, we still live in that monstrosity half of the time. Yolei and Izzy spend almost all their waking hours there, monitoring the flow of data from the real world to the digital world. Armies protect it, men have died guarding its secrets, and we walk there like we are gods, yet it endures. And it will endure long after I and the others are gone.
We are tired. I already look younger then my children. Soon, too soon, I will look younger than my grandchildren. I have no wish to stay here and watch my family decay into death. I have no wish to watch all that I have helped build topple in the next political power struggle. I have had adventure after adventure in worlds so strange as to beggar description. To me the Earth is a favorite place, but it is no longer home.
The war goes ever on and on. Light and darkness are never far separated, and I must continue to struggle lest we be overwhelmed. So I am going. We are going. That is why I am writing this story now. Already the others have gone away, gone home, abandoned this world for the joys of others. Already we mourn our children, who we love more than life, as dead. I am the last, the others have already gone. Even Willis and Michael are gone, ages ago. Willis doesn't even bother to age himself anymore, they left with most of the other first-ranked digidestined.
I don't know why I wrote this, to tell the truth. It was never about money, or fame, or pride, or anything. All I can say is that I told you this to tell you the truth. So that you will know that one day, gods and angels walked the earth as men. So that you will understand that children with dreams ascended to the heavens, and that everyone who walks this earth can follow in their wake. Maybe all you need to know is that there are heroes out there, somewhere.
This is not the last story we ever had, but it is the last one you will hear, for the others are beyond you. For most of you, we will part ways at the end of this book, you to yours and I to mine. But some of you will be inspired to chase after me and the legend I have created. To those I give this message. I am far away, gone into the mists of time. The way after me is difficult and long and hard, and I will not make it easy. But should you wish to chase me, then come after me. To those who follow, they will be the heroes and champions of tomorrow. I give them my best wishes. I will be waiting someday, somewhere.
Once, when I was a baby, two monsters came to Heighton View Terrace, and nearly destroyed it. On that day, I set foot into the world of adventure. Sometimes I came home and rested, but always I set out again. Now it is time for me to wander again.
The old heroes are gone. You will have to make your own heroes now.
Walk forever in the Light.
Takeru Takaishi
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on:
Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
-dA