Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis: Evangelion.
Author's Note: Chapter title is a line from "Death of the West", by Death In June.
Thanks to my reviewers! Only one more chapter after this one, so hang in there!
Violet Shadows, bwuahahaha! Just you wait! Fresh C, it's all part of the mystery… Though I'm sure these following chapters will help clear up a few things. Kknd2, wow! You're on par with quite a bit of your exposition, but remember that Kaji is himself a little unhinged in that last chapter. No doubt even he's confusing himself with his metaphysical attempts at self-realization—but the bigger problem becomes exactly how much of Kaji's little speech be trusted? Ha, more on that later (by "later" I mean this chapter & the next). Is Shinji truly the master of reality?
Reviews like these really make me happy!
EDIT: for some reason the section divisions disappeared. I think I've fixed it now, though.
EDIT 05/02/2010: looks like this site has a vendetta against my formatting. I've tried this again, and everything is looking stable. In another six months I expect these site-mandated divisionary eyesores to disappear YET AGAIN, however, forcing me to YET AGAIN reformat this damn thing.
Tangent 2.0: They're Making the Last Film, They Say It's the Best
"You said so yourself—we're simply hypothetical realities that exist solely for the entertainment purposes of hyperdimensional beings." Gendo finished the statement.
"It's arrogant to assume that we create alternate realities through fiction," the man said. "These realities already exist, just as yours existed prior to the airing of the television show back in the nineties—just as mine existed prior to the drafting of this story in mid winter of 'oh nine—surely, also, just as the writer of this story has a reality of his own that has existed for just as long a time." He took a breath and pointed at the monitors behind him. "We're all aware of these different realities. We all understand their nature as incomprehensible entities that can only be rationalized through abstract methods. This is the whole gig behind artistry to begin with. You could almost say that our very emotions are built off of this—tied into our counterparts across realities, and even across identities within the realities we inhabit. I doubt that's quite what Jung was going with when he put his whole 'collective unconscious' into words, but I guess it's close."
Kaji rubbed his chin. "It almost sounds like you're talking about a holographic universe."
"I suppose in the grand scheme of things, yes. We're only information, after all. What we perceive to be causality is merely an illusion caused by our inability to consciously perceive that dimension which governs us. Matter and energy are simply… byproducts of this. Information cascades through the dimensions like water—matter and energy are simply the easiest manifestations that information takes along its route." The man laughed. "Are matter and energy simply rationalizations that we have come up with to describe information? Or is it that information rationalized itself within these realities as being matter and energy? If that's the case, then hell, we're simply living manifestations of information itself, rationalized as self-aware entities whose arrogance propels us to believe ourselves capable of rationalizing our world. Is information even self-aware? Are we even self-aware?" He laughed harder as he continued, descending into a fit of painfully misplaced humor. "Or—or is that just an illusion as well?"
"Water cascading through a layered reality," Kaji began. "So our singular entities aren't so unique after all…"
"I'm sorry?" The man sniffled and panted, wiping his brow with his sleeve. He sat back in the chair and observed him.
"Your assertion of an informational cascade implies that these multiple universes all exist within a single reality. The analogy you used also implies that these universes are layered. Would this then mean that our singular existences manifest themselves as pluralistic constructs within these separate but interwoven causalities?"
The man frowned as the considered the statement. "Yes, I suppose it would. I'd almost call it symmetrical—a crystalline existence based on the perpetuation of some kind of vast and infinite golden ratio." He sighed and gestured to the monitors. "I suppose calling it 'crystalline' is a little unfair, considering how damaged and flawed it is."
Shinji sighed and opened his eyes. It was night, and the GeoFront glowed with the unexplainable warmth of the womb. John Coltrane recordings played softly over the loudspeakers in the ceiling, and the hum of various mechanical systems threatened to drown out his saxophone.
He rubbed his face and looked through the windows that lined this particular break hovel—little more than a few benches and vending machines indented into a hallway that spanned this side of the building. The metal bench dug into his back uncomfortably. A train glided into a station far below, and the lights in its windows reflected off the surface of the subterranean pool as it arced toward its destination.
Someone kicked the sole of his shoe, and he looked up. A camera crew stood expectantly, but no one noticed them.
Shinji yawned. He stretched and stood up and cracked his back, then he walked over to the windows and resumed his survey of the scenery. The camera's fisheye lens caught him in profile as he leaned forward on metal the railing.
He caught hint of the shampoo in her hair as she passed, sighed loudly, and rested her forearms on the railing directly to his right. He didn't move, and he did his best to keep his breaths quiet and his heartbeat quieter. She cleared her throat loudly and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, fidgeting with her fingers when they found themselves with nothing else to do.
"Misato said she had a few things to finish up on, so she'll be here soon," she muttered, looking down at the GeoFront. Shinji said nothing. She cleared her throat.
After another minute of silence and stillness, she backed away from the railing and wandered over to the vending machines. He still hadn't looked at her. The train far below started back toward the wall of the cavern.
"Akagi's apparently got a date tonight," she said. "It was pretty funny watching her apply her mascara using one of the computer monitors as a mirror. Misato was making fun of her the whole time." Shinji heard her rap her knuckles against the fronts of the machines, and they accompanied some beat that her shoes were softly driving against the linoleum.
"Oh, I hadn't noticed," he mumbled.
"Of course you didn't; she didn't start doing that until after you'd left." It could have been a chuckle, but it sounded more like an indignant snort to Shinji. "I think she might have torn one of her nylons, she looked pretty pissed when she left the lab and she didn't have any on. You should have seen that Ibuki woman staring at her 'sempai' as she left. It was priceless!"
Shinji closed his eyes as he felt his face warm. He could literally feel the camera picking away at his resolve. The crew stood by patiently, faces covered in determination.
The railing vibrated and her scent was back. A pale arm leaned against the cool metal pole, accompanied by a crooked elbow and a light-green short-sleeve shirt. The railing cut across her back and her breasts strained against cotton. He quickly looked back out at the GeoFront. The train was spiraling its way toward the surface.
He heard her open something in a bag, followed by a few crunches. "I swear, you're so boring sometimes."
He made a noncommittal sound. She sighed and continued munching. The camera continued to film. The train was gone.
"Anywhere can be paradise, so long as you have the will to live."
"I just want to see them, one more time."
ZzzzZZZzzzZIP
"—ust want to see them, one more time."
ZzzzZzZZZZZZzzzZIP
"I just want—"
STOP. EJECT. Fishing around all those unlabeled VHS tapes reminds you why you bought the series on DVD in the first place.
PLAY.
"Whah!" Shigeru Aoba suddenly flinched into wakefulness, taking a moment to steady his heartbeat before carefully looking around.
The computer terminal in front of him was well worn but operable, and the holoscreen projected in front of the bridge area looked like it had gotten an upgrade. A few things looked a little sharper than he remembered, and there seemed to be a much brighter atmosphere—but other than that, things looked like normal.
Maya Ibuki was asleep at her terminal, as was Makoto at his. Their heads moved in synchronization to the rhythm of their breathing. Shigeru found it difficult to get the background fuzz from the nap out of his system, and absently noted that it would probably be another twenty minutes before his brain was back on track.
After a few minutes of zoning out, Shigeru Aoba noted another interesting fact about the bridge: the predominant sound—usually, from what he remembered, being a combination of the air conditioning system and the electronics—was the sound of various snores. He took a moment to pick himself out of the uncomfortable chair to look down on the lower platforms—steadying himself on his workstation after finding his legs operating like jelly—and noticed that everyone on the lower levels was asleep.
Sitting back down in his chair and feeling the pins and needles creep into every muscle in his body, he chanced a glance at the Commander's tier—and saw nothing. At his present angle, it would have been impossible to see anything anyhow, so that morsel of information proved quite useless.
For some reason, an image remained burned in his mind upon wakefulness: Rei Ayanami in her school uniform crawling all over his work station. He tried to find a context for the scene, but the harder he attempted to rationalize the image the more the thought fogged into the abstract.
Twenty-some minutes passed, and it seemed as though Shigeru was the only person yet to wake. His body had returned to some semblance of normality—the pins and needles had faded, and the groggy fuzz behind his eyeballs was, as predicted, gone after approximately a third of an hour. His legs were still unstable, but they relearned how to operate themselves the more he used them.
He had decided to get a cup of coffee out of the nearest break room, and had noticed that all of the clocks he encountered along the way kept flashing "12:00". An alarming fact, to be sure, especially considering that something like that only happened when the power went out—and in order for that to happen, the auxiliary backup reserve generators would have had to fail. As it was, those generators were only used after the backup reserve, the reserve, the auxiliary reserve, and the regular generators had all gone offline already.
Last time the power went out like that, it was due to sabotage.
Shigeru filed this little note into the back of his brain as he prepared the coffee he was anxious to consume. After turning the machine on, he passed the next five minutes zoning out. The sputter of the last few drops brought his attention back to the coffee maker.
He returned to the bridge with a cup of liquid black void inside the plain mug. As he sat down in his chair, Makoto started to stir.
"Ugh," the man said. "Ugh, ow. What the hell happened?"
Shigeru sipped his coffee and stared at him dully.
"I feel like I just ran a marathon and got really drunk." Makoto had yet to open his eyes, but he leaned back in the chair and cracked his back. "Ow."
When he did open his eyes and glance around, he had only one thing to say. "Is everyone else here asleep?"
Shigeru sighed and sipped more coffee. "Other than us? Yeah, it looks like."
Makoto stared enviously at the coffee in his coworker's hand. "Man, that looks good."
"If you can walk without your legs turning to jelly, there's half a pot in the break room," Shigeru said.
"Sounds good." Makoto tried to move, but succeeded only in unceremoniously falling to the floor. The chair creaked as he slipped out of it, and proceeded to roll across the platform. "Christ, you weren't kidding."
Shigeru shook his head. Reality was coming back into focus a little better.
"I think," Makoto began, paused, began again, "I think I'll just lay here for a little bit."
Both of them heard Maya suddenly groan and stretch. "Hmmm," she sighed. Her eyes opened with a few blinks, but they were quickly covered by the palms of her hands. "That was refreshing," she yawned.
Shigeru sipped more of his coffee.
Makoto grunted.
She blinked at them after regaining her composure, seeing the coffee in Shigeru's hand. "Is that coffee?" she asked.
Shigeru nodded. "Break room," he supplied.
"That sounds good." With that, Maya effortlessly got out of her chair and stepped over Makoto's prone form, leaving the bridge.
"How did she do that?" Makoto asked.
Shigeru just shrugged disinterestedly and sipped more coffee, leveling his eyes on the holoprojection that hung in the hollow expanse.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Shigeru suddenly asked.
Makoto looked at him, frowning. He was silent as he weighed his words and collected his thoughts.
"The Major," he said, finally.
"That's it?"
"Uh," Makoto's face contorted into a half-grimaced, ashamed-looking expression as he diverted his eyes. It was the closest thing to a blush Shigeru had seen him make. "She was crawling on my computer console," he mumbled quietly.
Shigeru's glance was one that suggested heavy weariness.
"I know," Makoto quickly supplied. "It doesn't make sense to me, either." He was slowly picking himself off the floor. "Ow, my arms are all full'a pins and needles," he grumbled.
"The coffee's good, Shigeru." Maya had returned from the break room with two steaming cups of coffee. "I got you some, since you seem to have a problem moving around," she said to Makoto, who had managed to lean himself against the wall by his console. "I'll just set it down here."
"Oh, how thoughtful of you," Makoto smiled his gratitude.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Shigeru asked her as she sat down.
"What?"
"Well what about you, Shig?" Makoto nodded toward his workmate. "You seem pretty curious about the last thing we remembered. What's the last thing you remember?"
Shigeru's frown became more evident as it etched across his face.
"Rei Ayanami coming for my soul."
It became easier to recollect now. The fog in his brain had cleared, and the context now was clear—Rei Ayanami crawled on his consoles at the climax of the Third Impact—touched him with shining hands—world dissolved in fear and loathing—emptiness and stage lights and void beyond the glare—
Maya raised an eyebrow. "A little dramatic," she mumbled.
Makoto snorted a laugh.
"No, think," Shigeru said. "Just think. What was the last thing you remember, Maya?"
"Nnh," now Maya looked embarrassed. "I'm not sure I want to answer—"
Before she could complete her sentence, a boom mic fell from just out of peripheral vision and landed on her head. It bounced to the floor loudly. "Ow—shit!" Coffee splashed onto her uniform as she jumped in surprise.
For a moment, no one said anything. Makoto was the one to interrupt the silence.
"That looks like a directional microphone."
Shigeru looked upwards, toward the uppermost tier of the bridge. "It was," he said.
It was the siren that woke Shinji up. He had apparently fallen asleep on the stairs of a rail station, since his wakefulness obviously found him on the stairs of a rail station.
A breeze tousled his hair and swayed cable lines overhead. A girl in his dream whispered the words "how disgusting" into his ear. He saw the words "I feel sick" at the bottom of his vision, but they similarly meant nothing to him.
"—FOR THE KANTO AREA. PLEASE PROCEED TO EVACUATION SHELTERS IMMEDIATELY. WE REPEAT—"
Rei Ayanami was across the street. Her blue hair wavered in the wind, and her body glowed with an unidentifiable pearlescent light. He glimpsed her for a fraction of a second before she disappeared, and after that he was left to wonder if she had even been there in the first place. He didn't know how he came to the conclusion that her name was Rei Ayanami—he didn't really know why he even recognized her. There was a disgustingly overwhelming wave of déjà vu that had hit him right after he woke up, and it hadn't gone away.
A missile roared low through the street and broke his stream of consciousness. The sound left his head throbbing and his ears full of whine. There was supposed to be a monster besieging the city against a brilliantly blue sky. A blue alpine was supposed to arrive in T-minus—
"Sorry I'm late."
Shinji looked up to see the passenger door already open.
"An AT-Field," Fuyutsuki yawned, gazing dispassionately at the carnage presented on the holoprojection screen.
"Mmm, yes. Conventional arms will prove useless," Gendo affirmed with about as much interest. "Just like last time."
"And the time before that," Fuyutsuki responded. He casually glanced at the nearest clock and waited for the day to end.
The monster blew something up and the screen flashed. Fuyutsuki closed his eyes and started to doze.
And then everything went black.
Shinji Ikari turned off his television set with the remote control. The screen flickered into darkness and all the people trapped inside the box went into comas. They would wake up again when someone resumed watching the show.
"Yeah, I know." The phone that Shinji had cradled between his shoulder and face showed signs of heavy use. Its faded beige coloring suggested that it had been manufactured as a tacky resurrection of 1970s. "I'll be there in a minute; I just need to get my shoes on."
The voice on the other end said something undecipherable that the microphone on the camera couldn't pick up. If needed, they could overdub that part in later.
"No, I didn't—what? I told you already. Yeah." He used his left hand to slide the phone over to the other ear. "I don't know—we can talk more when I get there. Alright. See you soon." He untangled the cord from around his arm and sat the phone back on the cradle next to the couch. He sighed as he stepped past the camera man, doing his best to avoid tapping the directional mic that protruded from underneath the lens.
"Batteries," he whispered as he gathered his shoes. "I need to get batteries while I'm out. My S-DAT's dead and I need more batteries." The camera zoomed up on his fingers as they tied the shoelaces. "And I need to figure out what to get Asuka for her birthday, but I can do that after the tutoring session." He got up and the camera zoomed out, watching him pick up his books from the nearby table and walk out the door. The deadbolt latched behind him.
Suddenly, he arrived at the library, where he met Maya Ibuki's semi-casual khaki and button down lime-green blouse-donned form. On the table in front of her was a textbook on some sort of advanced mathematics, and next to it was a sweating bottle of water. She scribbled numbers and symbols on a yellow pad of paper. The cameraman set his device on a tripod at the end of the table, taking a moment to line the shot up correctly. Maya looked up just in time.
"Hey there, Ikari. You're right on time." Her voice was warm and her mood chipper. "Everything going okay?"
Shinji nodded and politely smiled before taking his seat across from her. "Yeah," he started. "—Well, I mean, I'm still having trouble with these weird quadratic problems Akagi assigned for homework. I got numbers one and three, but two, four, five, and—um—six I can't seem to figure out."
"Quadratics are a pain in the ass, huh?" Rhetorical question. "Just wait 'till you get into college; Naoko teaches at the University I'm getting my masters at—we spend weeks on a handful of problems. It gets ridiculous."
Smash cut to:
"Psychograph readings normal," Lieutenant Ibuki recited from her station. "Pilot's readings are green."
"Angel's AT field has been neutralized. Target is silent." Even as Shigeru said this, he couldn't help but think about the redundancy of the statement—the target had vaporized itself; of course it was silent.
"Good work, Shinji. Go ahead and return to the lift." Misato's face held a familiar smile, even if Shinji's pale face reflected an unidentifiable fear that lurked just below the surface of perception.
Gendo's brow creased sharply. "But you have already defined reality as being comprised of information."
"You're right," the man acknowledged. "But have you ever considered the possibility of a life form beyond our wildest comprehension? A life form existing solely as information? That's what this is. That's all we are—its thoughts given form and what we perceive to be substance."
"Similar to an immense artificial intelligence—a computer program."
The man nodded. "Sort of, yeah," he started. "But less a program and more a kind of fiction—a kind of hyper-fiction, I'd call it." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I'd call it the next evolution of rational storytelling; if meta-fiction is what it evolved from, then hyper-fiction would have to start with some sort of information singularity—the point at which the story itself reaches self-awareness. Meta-fiction involves a self-referential awareness on the part of the writer or storyteller, so it's essentially still a fiction, however complex—Lord of the Rings I'd almost consider in this vein, in which its word becomes its world; it's fleshed out enough to be more than believable, but it lacks the history for it to really become a true mythology. Naked Lunch and the rest of Burroughs' work as well, especially since most of the story has to be figured out by the audience anyhow."
He paused as he sighed and thought a little more. "As for hyper-fiction," he continued, realizing he wasn't getting a response. "Your mythologies would verge on this status. People make them real because they believe in their existence. Their dreams and ideas could, in theory, bridge that informational event-horizon that separates the mind's reality from the interactive reality."
"The AT-Field," Gendo said. "In order to bridge that gap, the information would have to be separated from the individual's residual ego—break down, in essence, the ego barrier itself."
The man shrugged. "Sure, I guess. That's the trick though, isn't it?"
Kaji squinted his eyes in thought. "But perception governs the individual's interpretation of information. How could anything the individual thinks be separated from the individual's inherent bias? Taking that information out of context would, by its very nature, alter the nature of the information."
"If the singularities we carry around in our minds had access to a sort of… informational underverse per se, then the collective unconsciousness could be the perfect depository for this kind of hyper-fictional reality to gestate."
Ritsuko's gaze was directed at the ashtray on her desk.
"Maya, didn't you quit smoking?"
The lieutenant jumped a little, breaking out of some unknown reverie. "Um, I never smoked at all, Ma'am."
The Doctor frowned. The fan on the computer's hard drive kicked in.
"You didn't?" She swiveled her chair to face her assistant. "I could have sworn you did."
Maya shook her head slowly.
Ritsuko turned back to the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
"Then who's been…" Her eyes narrowed. "I bet the cleaning crew's been at it again." She picked up the cat-shaped ceramic and tilted it into the wastebasket. "I'm getting really tired finding all these cigarettes in my ashtray," she said as she set the thing down. She reached into her the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, only to find that it was empty.
"Shit," she mumbled under her breath as she crushed it, before tossing it into the garbage. "Maya, when you get a chance, would you mind grabbing another pack of cigarettes for me? You know the kind."
Maya sighed and shrugged, but Ritsuko didn't see this.
Gendo flopped the report onto his desk, coolly gazing at the rest of the committee.
"This is a brief report on the recent reality schism NERV and surrounding areas experienced at approximately fourteen-hundred this afternoon," he said. The report he had set on his desk was well over a hundred pages. "While we are still unable to determine the source of the intrusion, it was apparent that our existences were briefly superseded by some sort of hyperdimensional alternate reality that acted in place of our own."
SEELE 05 had a comment. "One moment, Commander."
Gendo's eyes darted to the steel-faced monolith of the interrupter.
"I'm leafing through this report," SEELE 05 continued, "and I seem to have identified a mistake." The monolith paused.
"Continue," Gendo said, carefully eyeing the featureless black pillar.
"On page… sixty-three, about the middle of the fourth paragraph, you've written 'thus spake the welkin at the behest of three cosmological solenoid personas, and lo, they forbade me to answer all save the ringing of this burning pyre'. I believe that you have misplaced your commas—if I recall my language skills correctly, there should not be a comma between 'personas' and 'and'."
Gendo's brow creased as he mulled over the absurdity of the statement. Quickly, he flipped to the sixty-third page of the report and found the excerpt in question.
"With all due respect, I find your assertion to be mistaken," Gendo said. "It is a compound sentence, in which case both the comma and the coordinate conjunction are necessary to facilitate a proper division between the clauses at hand."
SEELE 10 spoke up. "I'm not inclined to agree with that opinion, Ikari."
"Yes, it seems a trifle arbitrary," SEELE 08's vaguely British voice nasally consented. "By what criteria would you judge a clause against, I wonder?"
Gendo removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"A clause," he started, coughed a chuckle, tried to subdue the cries of hilarity that rumbled in the back of his brain, "A clause is a complete statement with a subject and a verb," he said. "In order to convey two clauses within one sentence, they must either be divided by a semicolon or by a comma proceeded by a conjunction. Depending on the nature of the relationship these ideas share, this conjunction can be either a coordinate conjunction—in this case, 'and'—or a subordinate conjunction such as 'but'."
SEELE 05 made a humming sound. "I see," he said after a little while. "It seems your reasoning is correct. I am, indeed, mistaken."
SEELE 01 spoke: "This conversation was meaningless, you realize. Japanese is structured—"
"Whoa, Japanese?!" SEELE 02 promptly made a sharp whistle. "Hold the bus! This isn't Japanese at all!"
SEELE 04 responded, "Number Two is right. We cannot speak in English and make believe it is Japanese. That would be absurd."
"My imagination isn't capable of that. If it were, my avatar would be something more interesting that a featureless rectangle." SEELE 08 agreed.
"Wait, if this isn't Japanese, then how can it be English?" SEELE 11 spoke for the first time. "I clearly remember speaking in these omniscient baritones since... well…"
"Since we were first introduced to each other," SEELE 12 finished for him.
This prompted a short period of confused mumblings from various council members.
"Baritones?"
"Who's Barry?"
"I don't play saxophone."
"I've got a vocoder on mine; that's why it sounds so kickass."
"Mine kind of sounds like I'm speaking into a conch shell."
"Enough!" SEELE 01's partially synthesized voice resounded through the presumably holographic chamber. Silence prevailed, and Gendo Ikari's frown couldn't get any deeper.
"I believe the answer to Number Eleven's question can be found in the report," Gendo finally said. "If you'll flip to section fifty-seven point one, you'll find a brief synopsis of our hypotheses concerning the reality schism's effect on our streams of consciousness. One surmounting correlation, we believe, is an alteration to our linguistic pattern recognition subroutines in our brains, and the subsequent corrosion of our dialectic speech inhibitors to the central processing units of our attention spans."
"It seems Descartes was accurate in his prediction that we would all be machines before the future waned," one of the council members stupidly remarked.
Gendo, unable to endure the ludicrous session any longer, reached into his desk and pulled out the dated phone. "Fuyutsuki," he mumbled into the receiver, "immediate extraction required. Subroutine Six, just like we practiced."
"A-Asuka…"
"Go away." Her words were barely audible. "All you ever do is hurt me."
"But I don't want to," he said. "All I ever cause anybody is pain, but—but that's never what I ever wanted. Sometimes I just wish that I—that I'd never been born at—"
"Don't say it." She buried her head deeper into her arms. "Don't you dare say it, you coward."
"Asuka…"
She pulled her face off the table. It was red and flushed and stained with tears. Her eyes were bloodshot and angry and despairing.
"Look at you," she said.
"I'm trying to help you."
"But you're only trying to help me because you can't stand yourself!" she yelled. "How can you expect to help me when you can't even stand up for yourself? Or understand yourself? How can you expect to help me when you can't even like yourself?"
"But you expect me to help you!"
"I do not!"
"Then why—then what's with—"
"Just stay away from me. All you ever do is hurt me."
"We don't have to keep hurting each other, Asuka." Shinji offered his hand in retribution and consolation, offering the warmest smile he could. Her stare was blank, but tinged with some underlying enmity that Shinji couldn't quite relate to.
And she dove into his arms! "Oh Shinji, how I've been yearning to hear you say that!" she cheerfully declared!
"I've always loved you, Asuka." He said tenderly and full of confidence! "From that very first perfect moment on the aircraft carrier, I knew we were meant for one another."
"We were destined forever," she softly crooned, snuggling into his embrace.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang! I wonder who THAT could be…
Shinji broke from the embrace and kissed Asuka on the cheek. "I'll be right back, so don't you go anywhere."
She winked at him and waved as he left the kitchen (what the fuck?), turning into the blushing little schoolgirl she was.
Shinji slid open the door, only to be just ONE of COUNTLESS victims in an unprecedented REALITY SCHISM!
"Well I—I didn't, want, um…" Shinji looked around, uncertainly. Maya stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes with her sleeves in an attempt to hide the bloodshot whites. "I didn't want you to leave so upset," he finally said. "I don't like it when people are upset, and I—and I just couldn't bear it if it was because of me…"
"Shinji…" Maya couldn't help but grin through the tears that had started to form. "It wasn't you," she whispered. "It was me… I just… I can't accept it." She turned away. "God, I'm sorry Shinji. I just hadn't been able to—I still can't—your age just—I can't get over the fact that you're just fourteen!" she wailed. "If only you were older… nobody's shown me what you have, like that, before… but… oh god…" She sobbed on, she felt uncomfortable, vulnerable, revealed before him, frightened.
She felt something touch her shoulder—his hand. "Maya…"
She had backed up; her back pressed against the wall of her own apartment foyer, the door hissed closed, his flowers fell to the floor, and just as he was closing the distance between them with his lips, she screamed. It was a scream like no other he had heard before. Her eyes focused on something nearly imperceptible that was just beyond his peripheral vision—and her scream was a heart-shattering exclamation of utter repulsion, like the icy tendrils of some unnamable fear poured into her throat and yanked and twisted and crushed her soul.
"Shinji," she cried. "Shinji!" She closed her eyes forcefully and held onto him. Her head got dizzy and her knees weak.
He called her name and twisted to see what she had seen—and he did. It was blazon and bold and irrefutable. It was hideous in its sincerity. The truth was as ugly as the lies had been.
"Make it stop! Make it leave! Get out! It—no! No!" Her sobs and shrieks stilled his heart.
His pupils dilated.
He remembered Kaji's words. He remembered the television. He remembered everything.
And there was a lens staring him in the face. Deep as the void, domed as the sky, it was held aloft in a short man's grip as he steadied it on his shoulder. The man seemed indifferent to their cries; with one eye squeezed shut, he had the other focused in on a viewfinder on the side. His hat read "KAME" in huge letters. His jeans were blue.
"This can't be happening," Maya whimpered.
"This can't be real," Shinji shivered. "This—this is—this has to be—"
"Don't say it!" Maya begged. "Don't please, this is all I have left!" Her screams were horrible and filled with a primal terror.
"Kaji was right all along!" He screamed, and his voice cracked on the first syllable of 'along', camera zooming in on his distress. "He was right all along! All along! He was right all alo—"
"Look, it's really quite simple," the man said. "It's like this: reality exists…"