Chapter 6: The wishes of Haruhi Suzumiya

The lamp had vanished.

Those who were chanting the mental reinforcements stopped right there as they were mystified, downright confused. It was supposed to be impossible, with nothing short of a miracle able to save Haruhi from her predicament. It was supposed to be foolproof, unstoppable even...

So how did it go wrong?

They all had relocated from the auditorium to the SOS Clubroom, not out of a desire for privacy - the school was shut for the weekend - but out of a mutual sense that this was where they needed to be. The lamp was there, an odd little object filled with signs that Haruhi was inside. They were overjoyed about possibly finding her, yet there was something else that got them anxious: what would she do when got out of the lamp, what would she be? Was this a situation that could just be wished away, a fever-dream of sorts that Haruhi would discard as a delusion or hallucination? Or would it, quite literally, be like the metaphors with genies and bottles, resulting in a situation that could not be reversed? It was a heavy moment, with them all being somewhat afraid. Kyon was closest to the lamp, which now sat at the head of the table on Haruhi's personal desk, and he could not help notice just how perfect, how clean and shimmering it looked...

"Who shall rub it?" Yuki asked, breaking the silence. "By tradition, the vessel of a genie must be rubbed to release them."

The other three exchanged nervous looks.

"What do you think Koizumi? You're the one who has a private-line to her headspace..." Kyon suggested. "Don't rub it, just tell us what kind of vibe you're getting from it."

Cautiously Kozumi approached the lamp, stood behind it and reached out with both hands, holding them open-palmed just a few inches on either side of the golden object.

"There's definitely a pocket of Closed Space contained within the lamp," he said, eyes closed in concentration. "And Ms Suzumiya is being stored within it, I can feel her mind."

"What's she experiencing?" Kyon pressed, hoping against hope that the blissful calm Koizumi had previously described, so different and wrong for Haruhi, had faded the moment they'd gotten the lamp out of the hands of whoever had done this to here. Maybe their Brigade Chief was in their now, raging at her confinement and eager to get out…

"She's… excited," Koizumi said, and their hopes lifted almost immediately to be dashed. "But not in the way we know. It's more like anticipation, an eagerness to do something, to perform some kind of task…"

He couldn't bring himself to say it, so Yuki said it for him.

"To serve." It was blunt and to the point. "Haruhi Suzumiya's data signature is displaying significant abnormalities, extreme deviations from observed norms. "Unexpected radicals have collapsed, behaviours have settled into predictable, quantifiable expressions…"

"What, what does that mean?" Mikuru quavered, hand clutched to her mouth. Yuki turned to face her, and in a monotone that still managed to convey crushing despair, shattered everyone's hopes.

"Haruhi Suzumiya now conforms to a template very similar to that of a Human Interface. Basic goals and behaviours have been encrypted into her, and errors and subroutines… emotions and desires... that compromise the fulfilment of those directives are been suppressed." Yuki looked down and behind her, into her corner, where the headpiece she wore the night before sat on her usual chair. "If I am like the genie of the ring, she is now the genie of the lamp - greater and more powerful than me, but magnified from the same pattern."

"No!" Mikuru whimpered, and then did something very unexpected: she grabbed hold of Yuki's hand with her own. "You're not some unchanging doll Ms Nagato, Yuki - you've changed since we first met, you've grown, and helped me grow. Maybe it's the same for Ms Suzumiya, maybe we just need… to talk to her."

Yuki blinked, but then proved Mikuru's point by slowly curling her fingers to return the gesture of comfort. "Thank you, Mikuru."

Was Mikuru right, did they just need to coax Haruhi back out of whatever shell she had been tricked into retreating? "What do you think, Koizumi," Kyon asked, turning from the two girls to the esper, hands still frozen on either side of the lamp. "You can enter Haruhi's closed spaces… could you make contact with her without us having to summon her?"

"I can try," came the answer, and Koizumi's fingers flexed nervously, before he slowly brought both index and middle fingers to rest on the golden metal. "Okay, Ms Haruhi…"

Suddenly his eyes flew wide open, new colour washing over his brown irises, transforming them into a familiar gold, and then his mouth opened and he spoke with the voice they had longed to hear all morning.

"Find within this vessel a spirit of magic, a loyal servant as no other…"

But there was something wrong. It might have been Haruhi's voice, but the words coming through could never be Haruhi's. There was energy there, but the energy of a singing chord, not her useful wildfire passion. It was almost a monotone, tinged with seduction and promise.

"Her will to serve your will, your joy her own. Call upon her and she shall submit, your every wish her commandment to fulfil."

Kyon was horrified, and Mikuru was beginning to whimper, on the verge of sobbing. And Yuki at her side tightened her grip around the other girl's hand.

"Come forth and claim this creature, the genie of the lamp!" Koizumi finished, and then lurched back with a yell, his own voice returning and eyes returning to normal. Kyon reached for him, only to be waved off, the esper crouching over as if about to be sick, arms and hands trembling.

"She's gone," he heaved. "There's, there's nothing left!"

Hearing that Kyon froze, the world pulled out from under him, and with a cry Mikuru tore away from Yuki and fled from the clubroom. Unsupported, Yuki's hand bell back at her side, and she stood there like a puppet hanging lifeless in its strings. Kyon wanted to hold her close and comfort her, wanted to run to support Koizumi, charge out after Mikuru and promise her everything would be alright.

But he couldn't move, couldn't breath, or think. It was like everything had just drained out of him, and all that stood here now was an empty husk, a hollow shell. Haruhi was gone, or at least everything that made her Haruhi. That was impossible. Haruhi was a force of nature, even before you factored in her strange powers and abilities. Saying she was gone was like saying that gravity was now optional, or that time had stopped, it was just plain wrong, to claim that something so vital and essential to the world had ceased to be.

But for Kyon, time might as well had stopped. Since the moment Haruhi entered his life she had become its anchor, and now he had been cut adrift and hurled onto the rocks. Life was over, and he felt dead, might as well be dead.

And then Mikuru hurtled back into the room, sweating as if she had just run through a tanning salon, several small somethings clutched in her hands.

"It's not true!" she declared, with a ferocity none of them had seen before. "Haruhi can not be gone!"

"There's nothing we can do Ms Asahina," Koizumi weakly insisted, now leaning sideways against a wall. "She was tricked and manipulated but ultimately she did this to herself."

"Then she can undo it!" Mikuru declared, slamming the contents of her hand on the table. "We just have to find the right words!"

Slowly, stiff as a rusted gate, Kyon turned to see what she had managed to scrounge up, and saw several coloured bits of paper. Tanzaku - wish totems hung on bamboo trees during Tanabata. The nearest one of the bunch was red, and written on it…

I want the world to revolve around me...

He picked it up, and stared at it. He knew this, and glancing down saw other familiar bits of paper, green, blue, lilac and yellow.

Reformation… I wish my sewing would improve… Family harmony... Give me Money...

"These are the Tanzaku Haruhi made us fill out for Tanabata last year," he said at last. "I though they ended up in the garbage."

"Y-yes!" Mikuru said, and suddenly the sweat beading on her clothes made sense - she had time-jumped into the heat of last year's summer to recover the slips of paper. "I thought, since Haruhi thinks she's a wish-granting genie, we could give her some wishes that remind her of us, of herself…"

"Ms Ashahina…" Koizumi slowly crossed over to them, stunned. "I thought you could only employ time-travel with authorisation from your superiors..."

Suddenly Mikuru looked bashful again, reverting from a fiery disciple of Haruhi to the bumbling ball of moe they all knew. "T-that's true, normally a release from classified-information is required for use of the classified-information, but in emergency circumstances the classified-information contingency allows me to make use of classified-information at my own discretion." She looked up abruptly, and for the first time Kyon got a glimpse of the poised and capable time-agent he knew she could someday become. "And this is definitely an emergency!"

The shocked silence at such a display from the meek girl was broken by the sound of a pen scratching across paper. While the two boys had been distracted by Mikuru, Yuki had crossed to the table, recovered her two lilac tanzaku and struck two neat lines through her requested wishes of Reformation and Unity. Then, their attention fully on her, they saw her flip over the two pieces of paper and without any hesitation wrote:

That Haruhi Suzumiya remain unpredictable

That Haruhi Suzumiya remain free

She straightened up and offered out the pen she had produced. "Haruhi Suzumiya is more important to me than any wish. I want her to know that."

Koizumi looked from her unwavering eyes, to the pen, and to the two green tanzaku with which he had asked for Family Harmony and World Peace. Then, with a familiar smile returning to his lips, he accepted the pen and bowed slightly. "That's a most excellent idea, Ms Nagato."

"Yuki…" the artificial human said, and nodded her head fractionally. "Just, Yuki."

He returned her nod, and then after a moment's contemplation struck out his own wishes and on the reverse side wrote - For Ms Suzumiya to remember why she created the SOS Brigade - and - For Ms Suzumiya's SOS Brigade to continue saving the world through fun.

"Those are beautiful Koizumi," Mikuru clapped her hands together, and accepting the pen herself transformed her rather everyday wishes for improved cooking and sewing skills to now read 'Please let Ms Suzumiya take us on more adventures' and 'Please let Ms Suzumiya keep challenging me to grow'.

Then at last it was Kyon's turn, and for a moment it seemed impossible to sum up everything he felt and wanted and hoped for in this moment. He looked at the two wishes on the front, demanding money and a big house where he could wash his dog. Then, with great care, he wrote 'I wish for Haruhi to be Haruhi' on the back of his first blue Tanzaku. The second proved more challenging, but deep down he knew what needed to said, the one message he hoped could break through to the wild, amazing, crazy and all-powerful girl sealed up in the lamp. After all this time, the moment had come to play his trump card.

'I wish for Haruhi to know that I am John Smith.'

"I don't understand?" Mikuru said, leaning over his shoulder. "Who is 'John Smith', Kyon?"

He tapped the pen thoughtfully on the table. No point in hiding anything now.

"You remember the night after we hung these tanzaku, when you were instructed to take me back in time three years, to the first hours after Haruhi's powers manifested, but not told why? And how you were put to sleep on arrival by your superiors and didn't get to see what happened next?"

Mikuru's eyes widened and she nodded, while Koizumi, always fascinated when it came to time-travel, drew in close with baited breath, and even Yuki turned, her full attention directed at Kyon.

"Well, turns out I was sent back in time to help Haruhi break into her old Middle School, and draw this huge bunch of hieroglyphs on the playgrounds. And along the way, apparently I inspired her to eventually attend school here at North High, because I promised her that there were 'interesting people' here."

Mikuru let out a gasp at the revelation of this particular piece of self-fulfilling prophecy, while Koizumi laughed and muttered something under his breath. Yuki, for her part, tilted her head, as if considering something.

"It was dark, and we couldn't really see each other's faces - when she asked me what my name was, I called myself John Smith, and possibly suggested something about saving the world through fun. And since then, I've kept that to myself, because if I ever needed to convince Haruhi about the truth of all this, the truth of her powers, that's all I needed to do - to reveal that I travelled in time as the mysterious John Smith that she's searched for since."

"I am here," Yuki declared, and when they looked askance at her she clarified. "The design that Haruhi Suzumiya branded on the grounds of East Middle School - it meant, "I am here"."

She had picked up the first of Haruhi's own red tanzaku (I wish the Earth to rotate backwards), and silently held out a hand for the pen. Receiving it her hand blurred over it like the stylus of a printer, and when she lifted it away, Kyon recognised a perfect replica of those strange sigils inked into the backside of the paper. Then Yuki reached for the second wish (I want the world to revolve around me) and penned on it a similar, but subtly different design.

"What does that mean?" Mikuru asked, voice almost reverent.

"I am me," Yuki replied, then turned both over to regard the two wishes on the front. "These should not be touched. Haruhi Suzumiya's own wishes might help wake her"

"Agreed / Yes / Right," they each chimed, and regarded the ten slips of paper. Each had their names on the front, and struck by a moment's inspiration, Kyon grabbed the pen and inked an 'SOS' onto the matching part of the reverse faces. Ten wishes, eight sacrifices, and two statements written in a language Haruhi herself had drawn whole-cloth from her own mind. All calling to her ego, her pride, her spirit, everything that made her Haruhi, unique and irreplaceable.

"Now," Kyon chewed his lip, the group turned as one towards the lamp. "We just have to get these wishes to her, and this time I don't think a bamboo tree is going to do it."

"Then I guess I'll have to," Koizumi said, his regular smile for once belying a trace of nerves. "Ms Suzumiya is contained within the Closed Space of her lamp, and I'm the only one here with the ability to access Closed Space." The esper was already pulling off his jersey and rolling-up his shirt sleeves, and had taken the ten tanzaku into his hands and was moving towards the lamp before Kyon caught him by the shoulder.

"Koizumi… Itsuki, just touching that thing did a number on you. Are you really going to risk jumping into it?"

"The phase-space of Haruhi Suzumiya's lamp is atypical from the phenomenon termed 'Closed Space'," Yuki added. "It demonstrates characteristics in common with Data Jurisdiction Space, over which she would exercise active and conscious control. Entering such an environment would expose the data of Itsuki Koizumi to the possibility of severe corrosion."

"You mean he might die?" Mikuru asked, horrified, and Yuki gave a small nod.

"Yes," she stepped over to them and Kyon, still holding onto Kozumi's shoulder, saw her look the other boy in the eyes, and with thumb and forefinger take a light hold of the esper's shirt - was that her way of expressing concern? Koizumi must have picked up on her unspoken subtext too, because his expression warmed slightly.

"Thank you Ms Na...Yuki. I know it's dangerous, but Ms Suzumiya would take the same risk for any of us, wouldn't she?"

The truth behind that question seemed to settle over all of them, and then Yuki let go of him and stepped back. "Understood."

"Please be careful, Itsuki," Mikuru added, and Kyon seconded that with a serious nod.

"Yeah, don't get distracted by whatever you see. This is just a quick in-and-out. We only want Haruhi to assimilate our wishes, not you, okay?"

The esper's mouth tightened subtly, another show of nerves, and he nodded in agreement. Alright then - Kyon let go of his shoulder, and Koizumi stepped into the same spot from where he had taken hold of the lamp. Closing his eyes, the tanzaku clutched in each hand, he stepped forward towards that lamp…

...and vanished. Kyon let out a slow breath, glanced over to see the two girls' eyes fixed on the lamp, and wondered if both the time-traveller and the data construct were using whatever sci-fi tools they possessed to count how long had passed since Kozumi vanished, right down to the millisecond. All he had was the Mk1 analogue brain. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand.

The was a snapping sound, like the crack of a whip of thunder, and suddenly Koizumi reappeared, hurled backwards from the lamp and surrounded by a corona of white light. He crashed into the window behind him and rebounded off the glass with a yell of pain, leaving a spider-web of fractures lashed across the panes like crazy paving.

"Mr Itsuki!" Mikuru yelled, and the three of them lunged for him, Yuki vaulting over the table to catch him before he hit the ground. Kyon flinched on seeing his expression, lying limp in Yuki's arms - Koizumi's usual easygoing grin had become blissfully rapturous, like some martyr in a state of grace. "What happened in there, are you hurt?"

"Out we come, bloodied and squalling," the esper replied, head turning towards Mikuru but apparently not seeing her. "With the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction."

"What, what's that mean?"

"A quotation from 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead', a play by Tom Stoppard," Yuki clarified, blinking in her closest approximation of surprise. Kyon felt much the same way - he vaguely remembered the confusing play, and that Koizumi had been part of a group that put on a performance of it for last year's Culture Fest.

"A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly," Koizumi declared, smile fading and staring around him in a daze. "And from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher."

Now that did trigger a less confusing-memory for Kyon, well, marginally less-confusing. Discussing the nature of Haruhi, Koizumi had once expressed the opinion of some in the Organisation that the universe was just a dream conjured by the mind of some god-like being, in this case Haruhi. He'd vacillated on his own opinion when Kyon had pressed him on it, but now had the look of a man who had indeed seen the face of God.

"More Tom Stoppard?" he asked, and Yuki nodded. "Is this what you were warning about, data corrosion?"

"Incorrect. Loss of data integrity would have left nothing of Itsuki Koizumi to return to us," her hand slipped under Koizumi's head, where the back of his skull had cracked against the double-glazing. "He is merely suffering from a mild traumatic brain injury and temporary cognitive dissociation…" she looked up, and seeing the confusion on their faces spoke again. "He's concussed, and not sure if he's back in the real world or not."

"Reality," giggled Koizumi. "The name we give to the common experience." Then he saw something that caught his eye, and finding himself restrained by Yuki when he tried to sit up, settled instead for pointing wildly towards the desk. "Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace!"

Looking, they all saw Haruhi's lamp, vibrating and twitching on the table-tob, as if being battled around by a poltergeist. As it did, light began to trace along the intricate scrollwork scribed on its surface, like henna tattoos crossed with a circuit board, little pulses which drew together and then pushed out, the pattern shifting. Now, instead of just bearing a resemblance to the designs Haruhi had created for the logo of the SOS Brigade, the logo itself unfurled over the amethyst oil cap in golden lines plated onto the gemstone.

"A shift has occurred in the data-phase of the lamp," Yuki said calmly. "Though the nature of this change in relation to the disposition of Haruhi Suzumiya is impossible to quantify." Well, she had wished for Haruhi to remain unpredictable…

"Uncertainty is the normal state!" Koizumi enthused, and gestured with his hands, holding one palm up while making a 'rubbing' motion. "Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in."

He was right. The only way to know if their 'SOS wishes' had reached Haruhi would be to let this genie out of the bottle… the lamp.