(Terror)

Despite the setback represented by the loss of the simulation bodies, work on the Dummy System proceeded smoothly.

There was no telling when the next angel might attack, so the Commander and Dr. Akagi were eager to make use of the quietness on the fronts for so long as it would last.

This meant a lot more work for the good Doctor – and a lot of work for me as well.

I was on my way to the Dummy Plug plant to attend to one more round of such work, a process so regular and familiar that the many instances of my coming here has blurred together into one single prototypical imprint.

That made it all the more impossible to miss that something was different, something that had never been different before.

For the very first time, the black walls of Terminal Dogma reverated with a voice that was neither mine, nor the Commander's, nor Dr. Akagi's or Fuyutsuki's -

A high, strangled thing, yet soft and human, making the most wretched of noises.

So foreign seemed the idea that I approched the end of my path only with slow and cautious apprehension, watchfully taking in every forward expansion of my field of vision, until I came to the gates.

There, my eyes fell upon the sorry shape of Dr. Akagi's trusted young assistant – Lt. Ibuki, was it? – bent like a beast on all fours, stretching the fabric of her uniform.

For as long as I could remember some old cartons of lab supplies had been catching dust here, left here, presumably, when the facility was first stocked, back when this was just the Third Annex of the Artificial Evolution Laboratory.

I'd taken some of those boxes to pack my things into when I moved into my appartment.

Now, one of them had found itself removed from its long home in the corner by the gate, put to a new use.

What it was being used for was that Lt. Ibuki was retching straight into it.

Beside her, Dr. Akagi was crouching down in her usual white coat, doing her distressed underling the courtesy of placing a hand on her back.

"It's ok, Maya, it happens to the best of us. Many anatomy students faint or puke when they take apart their first cadaver."

Hearing her mentor's perfectly calm voice, Ibuki valiantly raised her dirtied, grimacing face out of the box and tried her hardest to force some semblance of a professional countenance:

"You know that I've always had nothing but the deepest respect for you, sempai, but this… I have ethical concerns about this."

This was strong language for the timid young operator, particularly when spoken to someone she ostensimply greatly admired – but even so, the object of her admirations remained wholly unperturbed, like nothing about it even surprised her.

Her confidence was no less fazed as it might have been if she were dealing with an elementary, routine Computer problem, the sorts she could have seen through at a glance:

"You'll have a hard time getting through life if you are going to keep being bogged down by suck cumbersome things as 'ethical concerns'.

Once you've dirtied your hands, it gets easier and easier."

Ibuki said nothing to this, merely averting her glance, and, in fleeing what she knew she would find in the eyes of her superior, her own wandered far enough afield to stumble across me, as I had been standing there behind them for quite a while now, waiting for their conversation to conclude, having ha no wish to intrude on such a moment of weakness.

Lt. Ibuki's eyes went wide the moment she saw me.

In an instant, she was back to being bent over the box, ellbows precariously supported on cardboard walls, dry heaving now that no more sickness would come.

Dr. Akagi then calmly informed me that today's session might have to be postponed.

...

I would soon after pierce together what had happened.

I really should have expected it from the way that the Dummy Plug related experiments had been icreasing.

For all that she might have been a brilliant multidisciplinary specialist, even Dr. Akagi had only 24 hours in a day and there was only so long that she could undertake so much of this project all by herself in addition to all her other, less clandestine duties as leader of the technical division and lead scientist of Project E.

NERV simply could not afford to spare her for tasks that were any percentage compomposed of busywork that even a lesser technician could take on, and I was aware that Lt. Ibuki had long been something like her right-hand assistant.

So it figures that the Dummy Plug project had just gained a new participant.

I heard the matter being discussed between Dr. Akagi and the Commander when I was at last called for the calibration- and backup session that had been called off on the day that I witnessed the two women in the corridor.

"Can we trust her?"

"Don't worry, I've got her well under control. She might have entertained idealistic notions, but all in all she's not a very tough person – she's the sort that tends to cling to strong leaders. She wouldn't even have the guts to betray us."

This assessment might well have been right, yet still I felt sorry for Lt. Ibuki, to hear her thus dismissed, if not disparaged by someone she so trusted.

I wondered then, if Commander Ikari might not well see Dr. Akagi in much the same terms as she did her young assistant.

If so, I felt sorry for her as well.

I wondered if, she, too, had once been such an idealistic ingenue, with vague but sincere dreams to improve the world through the marvels of technology, callous and hard-boiled as though she might be now.

I wonder if it was Commander Ikari who had led her to be the way she is now, much as she was now guiding her young protegé down the same path.

Still she had never seemed to match quite the same level as the Commander when it came to…

Well.

I was used to calling in pragmatism, or unyielding sense of purpose.

But those terms rang hollow now, like phrases simply cited to shut down uncomfortable chains of thought.

Unflappable as she may have seen on her own, next to the Commander's untouchable calm, she might have been taken for someone who could not stop fretting:

"There's one thing that concerns me, though. Major Katsuragi. I think she might be beginning to… suspect things."

"I see. Just let her be for now."

By the next time we came into contact, it seems that Lt. Ibuki had mentally prepared herself for the sight of me.

She only froze for a moment; The wavering of her voice could have passed for just an outgrowth of her regular timidity.

"Oh uh… hello Rei… good afternoon…"

She spoke more than she usually would have, perhaps in a kind of overcompensation.

Before she would just have casually accepted my presence, but after, her smile never quite returned to being wholly light and genuine.

Maybe it never would.

She knew part of the truth now, or just an infinitesimal fration of it, in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough, enough that it couldn't be erased, enough for her to start noticing, or perhaps simply for her to start to give herself permission to notice what she had previously been obliged not to see, or push aside, or to relativize away.

It was not just today that my hair took on its pale color, or my eyes their crimson hue.

What I was wasn not very well disguised.

The staff was just very well incentivized to look away.

And to her credit, Lt. Ibuki didn't let anything further slip, behaving professionally in any future encounters.

But of course she could not be at ease near me anymore. Maybe she had never been, and I had only now been given reason to look for it. I can't said I paid much heer to how she acted before, or anybody's responses, or very much else in my environment; my single-minded focus was strictly on the content of the exchanges, aimed as a straight and slender arrow on my function as a pilot, or else, concerned with my inner thoughts.

I wonder how much more her conduct might be changed if she had heard even more of the truth, if she knew everything Dr. Akagi knew, whose attitude behind closed doors all but spoke for itself.

I wonder how the views of everyone here would be chaged, how much wider the palpable gulf between us would come to feel, when it was revealed what I turned out to be, or rather, when they would no longer see me at all, without also seeing the long shadow of where I had come from.

Though in the end, it did not terribly matter what anyone thought, not even Lt. Ibuki.

That was not relevant to why I was here.

'Here', in this case was, as it happened, the control room adjacent to the very same experimentation chamber where I had first been injured all those weeks ago.

The layers of emergency Bakeline had been removed, the dents in the wall straightened out and in place of the shattered pane of glass left behind by Unit Zero's first, I was faced now with its clear, pristine replacement, looking more intact even than if it had never been broken, as this new pane and wall panneling were free from any trace of wear and tear or the coat of grime that tends to accumulate in used facilities.

Aside from that, no trace remained from the incident that set in motion this entire chain of events.

If I had managed to keep control of EVA 00 back then, Ikari-kun would never have been summoned, and the past few weeks would probably have contained far fewer surprises – it would never have occurred to me in my wildest dreams that there could have been a possible world where I might visit the aquarium facility or welcome a visitor into my domicile, and Ikari-kun would be wherever he'd lived before, far away from here, never even having heard the word 'Evangelion'.

Do not misunderstand – it is known to me that humans, especially young ones, tend to feel exaggerated responsibility for events they were involved in, even when they could not have known better, and when the result was not necessarily fix, although outcome bias might make it appear so.

I did not feel rsponsible for Ikari-kun's being here, for I did not order him here, did not know he existed, and it is not clear to be that there was any obvious method by which I could have prevented Unit Zero's rampage, much less sucessfully synchronized with her without the experience gained from the failed attempt.

We are all born knowing nothing and remain so in most areas, so people can only be judged by what they could reasonably have known.

Still, I could not help but be aware of that link of causality as I spotted Ikari-kun, already in his plugsuit, standing absent-mindedly by the window pane, a faraway look in his eyes.

He had arrived before me, presumably alongside the Major, who was awaiing us here as well and presently explaining something in response to the Second Child's demanding questions.

Ikari kun had tentatively pressed his hand against the glass, look at his fingers, or possibly straight past and between them at where Unit One was restrained in its harness, her purple armor standing tall where Unit Zero had once been held in place.

I wondered what he was thinking about that had him so abstracted from everything here.

At first, he had stuck close to the Second and Major Katsuragi, reflexively nodding to some points in their argument without really having anything to say, but at some point, something about the walls, the glass or the EVA seemed to have caught his attention, and by the time I had been done being awkwardly greeted by Lt. Ibuki, he had already wandered over to the edge of the control room, standing right by the windowpane overlooking the EVA.

If I were meeting him for the first time I might have thought that he was just interested in the proceedings, but I knew that he usually wasn't. He was not knowledgeable about nor interested in technical details.

I woundn't have thought anything of it if this had been the first and only hard-to-explain behavior as of yet.

The recent encounter near Commander Ikari's quarters still tugged at my memory, that thing he had said about some inexplicable sense of familiarity. Should I consider this erratic behavior?

I couldn't be sure, inexperienced as I was in the matters of humans.

The more I'd thought of it, the less of a real reason there was for me to leave so suddenly – it's not like his impression of deja vu meant anything harmful, even if it's bound to be based on a mistake, some mix-up perhaps, in which he was confusing me with somebody who just happened to look similar. If he was confused, then was simply confused.

I think it might have been rather the sudden strength and intensity of his response that left me to knowing what to do, especially since I could not claim to understand or share his feeling.

I had genuinely never seen him before the attack of Sachiel – unless one were to count that oe time that the first Ayanami Rei caught a glimpse of him at the graveyard, but that was such a brief encounter where we did not even speak to each other or learn each other's names.

That hardly constituted enough grounds for him to say that he 'knew' me, much less to associate me with safety.

Or was I overcomplicating this, might his impression simply be the result of his growing comfortable with me in the present, having spent as much time with me as I did with him?

If so, why didn't I share it? Should I?

If I were human, would I understand what he meant?

If so, then I clearly didn't now. It may have been something that I might not be able to reciprocate, one of the subtle human things.

It was pointless to ask Ikari-kun his requirements, for he couldn't articulate them, whatever that feeling was, it was something implicit, pre-verbal, pre-logical.

I didn't know what was being expected of me, and it even seemed as if it may have be impossible fo find out.

I was not used to that, not knowing what was expected.

NERV wanted a pilot. Commander Ikari wanted the key to Third Impact. School demanded simply another student – and if I gave them that, they would be satisfied and let me be.

But in that instant, I had not know what Ikari-kun was seeing, but I was certain that it could not be me, nothing of mine, nothing up to me or chosen by me, or I would have shared or remembered it.

So faced with this uncertain pricetag which may well be far higher than what I was able to cough up, I had really had no chance but to throw the towel, at least in that moment.

Whatever it was, I hoped that Ikari-kun would forget all about it, that he would end up concluding that whatever he saw must have been some coincidence or mistake, and simply let the thought go, and come back to it less and less until it evopared into confused blinks and lost trains of thought that could not be reconstructed anymore.

Through the glass, I too looked at EVA 01, her large frame looming above us.

Many times I had contemplated taking over as her pilot in case that Ikari-kun should refuse, but so far, it had never come to that.

I would be boarding her for the first time today, as part of a pilot cross-compatibility study.

This was useful information for NERV to have all on its own, but its primary purpose was the same as that of the last experiment: To provide data for the creation of the Dummy System.

This, in rough terms, had indeed been told to the NERV staff including Major Katrsuragi, but out of everybody present only Dr. Akagi and, I presume, now Lt. Ibuki, knew enough of the specifics to truly grasp why this data was required.

For what good would an artificial soul based on my backup data do if it could only move EVA 00?

That would bring no additional gain compared to just having a single 'Ayanami Rei' active at the time.

They had to confirm that I would be able to pilot Unit One, for if I couldn't do it, there was no way they could possibly expect it from an imperfect replica derived from my backup data.

Time to get to know what she is like, I suppose.

Mountains.

Heavy mountains.

Things that change with the passage of time.

The sky.

The blue sky.

Something that can only be seen

where nothing can be seen.

The sun.

Something there is only one of.

Water.

Something that feels agreeable.

Commander Ikari?

Flowers.

Many of the same thing.

Many things without a purpose.

The Sky.

The red, red sky.

The color red.

A color that I hate.

Flowing liquid. Blood.

The smell of blood.

A woman who does not bleed.

Human beings,

created from red clay.

Human beings,

created as man and woman.

The city.

Something created by man.

EVA.

Something created by man.

What is man?

Something created by the gods?

Something created by man?

All I have is my life, my heart.

I am a vessel for my heart.

The entry plug – the the throne of the soul.

Who is this?

This is me.

Who am I?

What am I?

What am I?

What am I?

I am myself.

This object is me.

The shape that forms my self.
The self that can be seen.

Yet I feel as if I'm not myself.

How very strange.

I feel as if my body is melting.

I no longer recognize myself.

My form is fading away.

I sense somebody who is not me.

Is there someone there, beyond here?

Ikari-kun?

One of these people that I know?

Major Katsuragi?

Dr. Akagi?

Everyone in my class.

The pilot of Unit Two.

Comander Ikari?

Who are you?

Who are you?

Who are you?

Unit One did not answer me.

Not directly, at least.

It was a very strange feeling indeed.

Different from Unit Zero.

Unlike the cold and foreign expance that I was used to.

This 'place' – not a physical space, but a mental state that nonetheless felt spatious – was, by contrast, almost akin to the oversaturated colors in an impressionistic painting.

Somewhere warm, vibrant, almost humans.

Most of the images and impressions I felt hanging around here, like not quite faded wafts of smoke, or pictures framed upon the walls, I would presume to be the imprints of memories thoughts and feelings left behind by Ikari-kun.

Perhaps those images that seemed to depict the nature on the outskirts of the city were what he had seen that time he ran away. Of course, the more I lingered here, the more that they were increasingly dilluted by my own thoughts and musings.

It was a little as if I had walked into someone else's dwelling while they were absent, like finding their discarded clothes thrown upon a chair, their things unpacked and spread out, their used dishes in the sink, and in the air, some hard to place, indefinite smell that seemed nonetheless characteristic of them.

Ikari-kun wasn't here, his 'room' left just as he had last abandoned it.

Yet the longer I attuned myself to the place-that-was-not-a-place within the heart of Unit One, the more I sensed something like another presence, as if there was another tennant in the building, someone or something else here, looking into me as I looked into her – and stopping, suddenly, with the sort of emotion that would have accompanied a sharp, startled realization.

Echoes clung to the metaphysical walls here, an afterimage perhaps of Ikari-kun staring in horror at the great green eyes of this beast on the day of his first deployment.

I felt the jolt of shock as if it were my own, but what she thought, what she realized, what it was that so concerned her, that, I could not tell.

The overlap between this intangible stranger and me was too vague and imperfect.

But yet, I couldn't shake this inescapable intuition that I wasn't alone, like I was being watched, as if there was someone just behind me.

Unit Zero was a sentient being as well, of course, but this was different.

It was really very much like a human presence.

One might have expected EVA 01 to feel more foreign, since she alone was no mere copy of Adam, but a full-fledged offspring, taken from a different source, something very close to the imperfect larva of a god.

Though, maybe I should have expected her to feel more alike to a human for the very reasons, for coming from a source that was far more akin to humans than Adam had been.

Or perhaps she only felt this way to me, since her body represented the kind of vessel that my soul was, in theory, supposed to go with – though, that speculation in particular failed to ring true.

Even as our mindscapes connected, it was a limited, dissonant affair, no different than it was with Unit Zero. What I sensed past the static was different, but there was no semblance of a wide open space that I could just spread myself out into, growing larger, filling the room like a compressed gas until something somewhere clicked into the place where it should have been.

It wasn't possible.

There was something, somebody, taking up the space already, very much like the smells of a living family would drown out the ones of the building materials.

Whose imprint is that?

What soul is this?

In the beginning, I tried to relate to her as I might have to Unit Zero, to extend my condolences that she had been ripped from whatever life she had before, from whatever she had been, to become part of this alien being.

I knew the EVAs 01 and 02 were imbued with salvaged human souls to better mediate between the instincs of the god-machines and the commands of a human pilot, but I was never really told the specifics.

Commander Ikari had never really gone into detail about it.

I'd presume this was some worker whose accidental death the Commander would have known to make use of, or perhaps a scientist from the development process who had not known that her backers at SEELE were sending her to her death.

Who knows how much of her would still be human, how much she'd remember of her human life.

I figured that I could understand her less than Unit Zero, a fellow created being – both the soul inside, and EVA 01 herself, as a being that was no mere copy, that there is only one of.

I didn't know what it was to be a human, what great pain it might be to lose that, to be trapped from all that humans valued in their lives, or whatever it was that an offspring of a god would value.

But when I listened for her sorrow, I could not find it – only a resolute serenity, resembling the sun, shining through the vacuum of space, the sun, of which there is only one.

A dim cadence on the outlines, a hard-to-grasp flavor of lighting that tinged the colors of the feelings and impression left behind by the EVA's usual pilot.

Dr. Akagi's voice shook me out of my deliberations.

"So, Rei, what's your impression of Unit One?"

How to summarize. Had I been asked a more specific question, I may have known where to start.

"...it smells like Ikari-kun."

This was the best that I could put it. The olfactory bulb is, of course, deeply entertwined with the limbic system, having the most direct connection.

I'd often read descriptions in books and articles of how some character was immediately transported back into the images, feelings and impressions of the past from the smell of their mother's cooking or the colonge of a man who had assaulted them.

I had no parents, so, I couldn't speak as to what this might be like. All smells of cooking would have been unfamiliar to me.
I'm not even sure that it was literally a smell, or just a signal that my midbrain interpreted as such, but smell was the closest thing.

I was not asked any further questions.

Dr. Akagi and the technicians, it seems, were confident enough in what their screens could tell them.

"...her synchronization rate is essentially the same as with Unit Zero."

"Well, the personal patterns of Units One and Zero are very similar."

Are they?

I wonder why that is.

"That's what makes the exchange possible."

"No issues detected in compatibility between Rei and Unit 01.

So it was, huh?

It seems then that no more hurdles remained in the way of the feasibility of the Dummy Plug System. From this point onward, it's completion was likely to be just a matter of time.

That's one more thing happening exactly as Commander Ikari had meant for it to happen, more or less, abstracting from the details.

One more instance in which I just sit here, playing my part – seeing my part being played by me.

It sat in place, keeping my perturbation shut tight inside of me, knowing that no one would care to hear it even if I could have articulated it.

"That concludes the test. Rei, you can come out now!"

"Yes, Ma'am."

I would be glad to finally get away from EVA 01, to be away from her radiance, her divinity, the brightness that revealed the flimsiness of illusion by shining right on through it;

And this was before I even knew whom exactly it was that I had been introduced to on this day.

While all of this was happening, the Second Child was undergoing a synchronization test in parallel – a perfectly ordinary snchronization test, to different from the series of countless other ones she'd been undergoing for many years now.

"Why don't I have to do any of that cross-compatibility stuff? Do you think I'm not good enough?"

Predictable. When has to do tests, she grumbles, yet when she doesn't have to, she grumbles as well. Then again, it was probably this attachment she was expressing now that had kept her going even when she hated it.

Major Katsuragi deflected the question in a light-hearted manner:

"Well, you're not planning to pilot any other EVAs, right?"

"I guess not..."

The Second seemed at least momentarily placated when the matter was framed as up to her choice. Though I suspect that the Major had to spin the answer simply because there is a good chance even she had not been given much of a satisfactory answer; I think the official narrative they were going to go with was that EVA 02 presened too many unknowns since she had been assembled at the Third Branch and as such was unfamiliar to the current staff, as was any estimate of her compatibility. Dr. Akagi aside, most would not have been informed how or why the Second Child was chosen. I presume that Dr. Akagi would know, well enough to think it unwise to disseminate this to the Major or the technicians.

Most of them still believed that the selection process was being done by an institute that did not in fact exist.

I too, am not familiar with the details of how the Second Child was chosen, but I don't have to be.

The truth is, EVA 02 is but another neutered copy of Adam, one out of many. If anything she was even more deffanged and declawed in the process of being optimized for use as a weapon, to a be a mere foot soldier, a pawn sacrife instead of everything that our creators had intended for Adam to be.

If I could link with Unit Zero, there was no reason to think that I could not do it with any other of Adam's copies.

Unlike EVA 01, they were interchangeable, replaceable, mere artificial imitations… just like myself.

It had not been necessary, but, neither I nor Dr. Akagi had much doubt that I could have taken over Unit Two at any of the times that the Second had threatened to refuse her orders.

...

This did not conclude the experiment, however.

I suppose the alledged similarity in the profiles of the EVAs 00 and 01 posed an obvious question, beyond the obvious one that caused this to be done.

Which was: If it was possible to swap me for Ikari-kun, how about the reverse?

Could he be put in charge of Unit Zero?

I could see the point of it from a purely scientific or even strategic perspective.

Ikari-kun was an unique specimen of sorts; An opportunity full of promise.

Nobody else had mastered synchronization with an EVA as quickly nor as naturally, with but a fraction of the training that the others had received.

He had also lost control of EVA 01 on the very day of his first deployment;

There was an opaque, volatile power there, a dubious blackbox. A forbidden fruit.

If it turned out that he could reliably pilot copies of Adam, what would the Commander and Dr. Akagi do? How would this affect their plans for the Dummy Plug?

It was not as if they could simply copy him as they did me, he was a pure-blooded human, a creature intended by the plan of the creators. Any genetic duplicates of him would be imbued with their own souls – they would, in effect, be something like his twin brothers.

So even if Dr. Akagi and the others were planning to duplicate his unprecedented prowess as a pilot, it could not possibly be accomplished by the same method.

It did not even occur to me to consider whether or not the Commander would be more scrupulous than usual where his own flesh and blood was involved; I would have lost my admiration of him once, had he proven this... biased.
The ultimate justification for everything he did was supposed to be that he applies the same unyielding pragmatism to himself as he did to everything else.

The calculation behind it all seemed clear as crystal.

But now I stood there, still in my plugsuit, my hair still sticking to my face, still soaked with LCL, with droplets of it clinging to various rubbery crevices of my suit.

Right before the glass, looking in, just about where he had been standing not long ago, not far from the Major and the Doctor, or the technicians all going about their business, clacking away on their keyboards in between the whirring machine.

EVA 01 was now replaced by the appearance of her predecessor, which was now pinned in place here, not too different from how she must have looked on the day of my accident, if it were not for the blue paintjob on the paintjob and the various little additions that had been added over the course of her upgrade to production model specs.

This was exactly the same setup that had let to that rampage when I was first sent to activate her.

This was yet another part of the plan – just a relatively small part, even – and yet, my heart was uneasy. Some bated, dreadful anticipation had the rest of me in its grip.

Was this not an uneccesary danger, just to test some long-shot possibility?

First I considered my objections in terms of risking Ikari-kun as an asset, as our most sucessful pilot who could wield our strongest EVA, but I realized that any strategic objections I could think of, Commander Ikari would also have thought of, & then considered a cost worth the benefit.

And once upon a time, my thought-process may have ended here, in figuring that this was a calculated risk, deemed acceptable as part of the Commander's plans.

But this time, this did not put me at ease.

I kept thinking back to Dr. Akagi's words, about how 'it god easier'.

At the beginning, maybe all of this had started with some sacrifice that was genuinely unavoidable, where hanging onto one's principles and one's pure, sanctified idea of oneself might have been the height of selfishness – a trolley that needed to be routed to the tracks with less people on it.

That the people involved would find some way to block out the pain, to make it tolerable to themselves, was also something very necessary. If one must bleed anew every time that a sacrifice is needed, NERV would run out of people willing to make the sacrifices.

But what of those bloodied, calloused hands, made that way by necessity, long used to seeing the loss of life as but a necessary evil or even just a fact of life?

Might there not come a day where we would accept as such a casual act of life, as something unavoidable a suffering that could in fact habe been prevented, or see as a necessity as risk that could in fact have been done without?

What if we were letting uneccesary suffering come to pass because we had long given up trying to find a better way, after far too many dissapointments, too many losses, to many trolleys diverted that we had to live with in retrospect?

And if this was our sin, then with all the things I had taken for inevitable, I would have been just as guilty of it as Dr. Akagi or Commander Ikari.

It occurred to me then that it might not be alltogether regrettable, to have optimists like Major Katsuragi, or soft-hearted individuals like Ikari-kun. I was grateful then, that there were people here who tried to preserve life, even if it was not always possible, or those who would lament losses even if they could not be averted.

My worry was not only regarding the distant, sas of yet abstract possibilities of what might come to happen if this venture was sucessful; There was also the matter of EVA 00 herself to consider.

When it comes to me, we had come to our truce, but that need not extend to Ikari-kun.

What would that be, for Unit Zero, if he was unexpectedly hooked up to her?

Did she have any concept of who he was?

In theory, Unit Zero should contain some imprint or afterimage of myself just as EVA 01 had contained some of his – and that was precisely the issue, as I then realized, sensing a sharp, yet distant prick of pain.

I wasn't the kind of existence that it might be same, comfortable or non-concerning for him to be exposed to, not at the innermost, not with the veneer-like semblance of humanity ripped away.

The kind of existence that I was – heh. I am not sure that I could really have defined it.

I knew what Commander Ikari and the others were intending to create, and not long ago, that may have been what I would have considered myself to be.

But what they intended to create must by no means necessarily be what was actually created.

The Commander is my creator, yet that does not mean he knows me, not any more than the staff of NERV knew Unit Zero, though they had created her.

And still she was being put to use:

Ikari-kun must be past the greater part of the entry sequence by now, judging by the anouncements of the technicians.

"What's the status of Unit Zero's personal data?"

"Rewriting already complete – we're currently double-checking it."

"How about the subject?"

"He seems a little nervous, but his nerve signal patterns are normal."

"Of course – it's his first time in a different EVA."

I hoped that he wasn't too distressed.

It seem that the Second Child had been listening in from the neighboring room:

"What an idiot! Why can't he just shut up and do his job without stressing about it?"

If that was so easy he would be doing it.

Has this really not occurred to her?

He wasn't prepared for this like we were.

Major Katsuragi seemed to think that the Second was being too harsh in her judgement:

"Shinji's not the kind of person who can do that."

"That's why he's an idiot." the Second Child shot back, voice dripping with venom.

She didn't seem inclined to look at things from his perspective.

She had plainly decided to dismiss him as inferior.

Though I suppose there was little to be done about that.

I am not sure what could have changed her mind.

I had no desire to spend long enough with her to find out.

Either way, her comments were incidental.

The experiment continued.

"Entry Sequence has started – Ionizing LCL. Commencing primary connections…"

Once the numbers on her screen reached some satisfying semblance of stability or consistency, Dr. Akagi saw it fit to adress him:

"So, Shinji-kun… what do you think of Unit Zero?"

When he answered, he sounded uneasy, his voice a little bit uncertain.

I wish I could have seen his face and body through the thick and heavy armor plates:

"It feels a little strange…"

"Like it's not working?"

"No-" he pased, ostensibly searching for words in which to wrap the unfamiliar impressions.

No doubt that it must be as foreign to him as that which I saw in his EVA was to me: "It's just… It smells like Ayanami…"

Interesting that he would use that same phrase. Maybe I was right about this connection between the olfactory bulb and the limbic system…

An connection that, it seems, had not occurred to the Second Child, who was still listening in – perhaps she was bored from being stuck doing the routine experiment all on her own.

"It smells like her?! What kind of perv talk is this?"

...now what does that have anything to do with this?

I found it strange that she would deride this choice of words. Was she not also an EVA pilot? Should she out of anyone not understand the most what this was about, aside from Ikari-kun and myself?

Did the inside of EVA 02 not smell like anything to her? Was she not used to sensing the EVA's presence?

Well. She had been EVA 02's pilot for a long time now, longer than I had existed, at least as this 'me'.

Perhaps she had grown so accustomed to the EVA's own presence that she no longer really perceived her as her own entity. For an instant, some automatic, irrational part of me wondered if EVA 02 must not be lonely.

I suppose I might find out if the Second Child should ever refuse a mission and leave me in charge of her EVA, though at this point, I had the impression that this would never come to pass.

But what of Ikari-kun and EVA 00?

All around us, the technicians were typing away at their stations.

Paragraphs of data were appearing on their screens.

"Data Received. Verifying. Pattern Green."

"Main power connection online."

"All restraining gear online."

That part, I suppose, was especially important.

A repeat of what happened back during my own activation experiment was not desired.

Finally, Dr. Akagi judged that what she saw to be ready to the operation to progress:

"Roger - We're proceeding to stage two of the interoperability test."

"Initiating Level Two Contact with Unit Zero."

More and more of the indicators corresponding to the various nerve connections lit up on the screen.

I couldn't see them directly from where I sttod, but I caught I smear of their characteristic colors mirrored on the glass pane before me.

"So?" inquired the Doctor, expecting to hear about the results she had sought:

"As expected, his synchronization rate isn't as high as it is with Unit One.

Still, these numbers are good. Which means that we can carry out our plan."

To this, Lt. Ibuki replied in a much quieter voice, refraining from calling out as she might if she were reporting something for Major Katsuragi to hear.

"-don't get me wrong, I will do my job, but I still think-"

It appears she still had her reservations.

But Dr. Akagi dismissed her before she was even finished speaking:

"If humanity is to survive, we can't afford not to have a fallback option."

Dr. Ibuki did bring it up again.

Nor did she speak until she came to report the next noteworthy thing on her screens:

"All harmonics nominal."

"Self-Psychograph stabilizing."

"Initiating A10 connection."

"Harmonix Level +20."

The Second Child must have been really, really bored.

"Soo, widdle Shinji? How is it? Like being back at Mommy's breast? Or is it more like her belly?"

So close to the experiment's hot phase, the Major was far less concilliatory about shutting her down:

"Asuka, you're causing cognitive noise. Don't bother him."

"Sure, sure! You all coddle him way too much."

I wondered how it was possible to arrive at such a gross misrepresentation of the events.

Should she not know better?

Although, come to think of it, perhaps it wouldn't be fair to expect this of her.

She almost resembled a child that is getting restless and feeling left out while her parents are preoccupied with her sensitive little sibling.

It must seem to her like all the action is going on over here while she is stuck at a routine task.

I have read that neglected children sometimes don't differentiate between positive and negative attention.

Of course, the experiment wasn't a game – it was a serious matter.

By then, it was already starting to go wrong.

I think it must have been going wrong a while by this point.

The salient threshold was probably the A10 connection, though it might also have been possible for the Second's words to have triggered some reaction. Or perhaps the cognitive noise picked up by the instruments was not her fault at all.

Be that as it may, the disturbance soon crossed the threshold past these intractable early symptoms and broke through in a form that could no longer be ignored.

We first heard a noise – something like a pained groan.

Sounds of motion – Ikari-kun pawing at his scalp, maybe.

Then he started mumbling to himself:

"What- what is this… Something's- coming – inside my head –"

The urgency shot through my spine like a blade.

All that I was constricted itself.

Behind me, I could hear Major Katsuragi and the technicians reacting in alarm as well.

"What's wrong?!"

"Abnormalities in the pilot's nerve pulses!"

"Shinji-kun!"

But by then, the Major's voice could no longer reach him.

We had lost contact with him – he was trapped inside a separate world of his own, talking about things that no one else could see of hear:

"What is it? Ayanami… Ayanami Rei?"

But… I am over here.

What is happening?

Dr. Akagi and the technicians were in an uproar:

"Mental contamination setting in-"

"Impossible! Not at this plug depht!"

"It's not coming from the plug – it's coming from the EVA itself!"

I could hear a lot of clacking. Several of them were typing something into their keyboards, but it didn't seem to avail anything.

Ikari-kun's increasingly panicked voice kept increasing in speed and pitch at no one in particular.

"That's Ayanami Rei, isn't it? It feels like her – Ayanami Rei… or… or something different?"

Then, it seems a kind of breaking point was reached –

There was a scream, and after that, nothing more.

From the intercom of the plug, that is, for simultaneous with the scream, just the instant that the sound cut out, my eyes were drawn towards a motion, as if it had been born of the self-same impulse as the vocalizations:

EVA Unit Zero was straining against her bonds, stretching the muscles of her back, neck and arms against the weakest part of the steel that caged her.

At once, I understood what must be happening,

what was going to happen.

I stood transfixed and frozen in place, watching the inevitable descend upon me.

Before long, the EVA had suceeded in detaching her fetters from the wall.

The words of Dr. Akagi merely confirmed what my eyes could no longer deny.

"We've lost control of Unit Zero."

Once free of her bonds, she ambled forward, but could not really maintain a semblance of purposeful motion.

She stumbled and staggered, her head one higher, once lower in the window.

She must have been disoriented – no, not just that.

When she began gripping her head, it became clear that what we were seeing must be spasms of agony.

Is this was this looked like when I was the pilot?

Is this what the Commander saw, when he was standing in my place?

There was nothing I could do but watch.

It was as if no part of me existed but my eyes and ears, nothing but the mirror of my mind on which the impressions of the world could be imprinted.

Everything else seemed to cease to be real, to recede into the background, still with the leaden strike of knowing that spread throughout my boy.

And still I recall nontheless the clear lucidity of my thoughts, the pristine understanding:

When this had happened to me, I'd been sent to the hospital for weeks.

I didn't die, so it was reasonable to assume that Ikari-kun might not die either, but it wasn't certain.

He might well die, his entire life could be ceased, with all his inner universe of feelings and connections and dreams, just due to an unforseen complication in a routine experiment.

He might well be injured – or worse.

The technicians had spoken of contamination.

He might return, but not as himself.

I had read that one of the initial test subjects in the construction of Unit Two had gone insane.

He might come out as I did, but in my case this had been my designated Unit who was used to me.

He could make it out allright, I was almost sure that they must have made modifications to the auto-eject system since the incident with me, but what if he, too, was sent to the hospital for so long? Would the duties of EVA 01's pilot fall to me then? What effect would it have on our martial capabilities?

What effect would it have on him?

All around there was shouting.

It came prattling into my consciousness like the rain on the other side of a glass pane.

All I could focus on was Unit Zero – watching her come closer.

Looking into her eye.

Watching the contraction of her mechanical iris as her glance fixated upon the contents of the control room.

"Break all circuits! Shut off its power!"

"The EVA has switched to auxillary power."

"Unit is still active."

"What about Shinji-kun?"

"Feed is down. We have no way to monitor him."

"Is Unit Zero rejecting Shinji-kun?"

But why would she do that?

"It doesn't seem that way - The auto-eject isn't working!"

"Or is this a repeat of that incident – Is it trying to absorb Shinji?"

...absorb him.

Unlike many in this room, I caught at once what Dr. Akagi was referring to.

If she was correct, Ikari-kun's soul was about to be devoured.

Just like the soul inside the other EVAs.

Just like that afterimage of a stranger that I encountered within Unit One.

No.

No – please no.

Don't take him away!

Anything but that -

I kept looking into Unit Zero's eye, even as her hulking frame came closer and closer.

Even as her fists detented the glass.

Even when the first shards from the pane were sent flying.

I had no idea if there truly was any way for my thoughts to reach her; Probably there wasn't; I just hoped that even I her rage, she might remember what she had known of my thoughts.

I see that you must be angry.

I see that you must be dying to release all your pent-up wrath and frustration upon the glass, plastic and metal of this facility.

I see that you must be frustrated at being jerked around at everybody's whims.

I see that you must be jealous that he got to walk in the sunlight while you were forced into this harness.

I see get that you must be lonely, trapped into that armor of steel all by yourself when even the other EVAs have been given other souls to complete them and fill the gaping emptiness in their hearts.

But please, please – Not Ikari-kun!

"Rei! Get back! Rei!"

Major Katsuragi must have been calling out to me for a while.

I barely even registered her.

I only really took note of her when she was already beside me -

in this moment of tension, her sudden touch was searing.

It is truly befudding how little inhibitions humans have to touch each other in moment of agitation, even then when the others should be the least willing or reading to receive them.

I imagine that it was intended as a gesture of placation or trust.

She put an arm around me, and before I knew it, she had pulled me towards the door.

I barely managed not to trip.

She stood on the threshold facing the window, deliberating whether to abandon the facility for the safety of her subordinates.

"Unit Zero System Shutdown in 10 seconds! Nine – eight – seven – "

Lt. Hyuuga was standing on his feet, ready to abandon his station at a moment's notice.

But he never had to.

Unit Zero turned away, away from the shattered window, as if she no longer could suffer to even look at it.

The last recourse at her disposal was to keep hammering her skull into the wall, perhaps hoping that she might destroy something before the countdown should run out.

Poor thing. Even if she suceeded, they would probably just have repaired her, leaving her even more of a shadow.

But Ikari-kun was still connected to it.

His neck – His skull –

"Unit Zero has ceased operations!"

Major Katsuragi immediately let go of me and leap back in through the threshold:

"Hurry up and rescue the pilot!"

...

Major Katsuragi was furious.

More so, I think, than what really seemed merited considering that this was nown in advance to have been an experiment with uncertain outcome.

She must have known this as well, for she kept her words within the established bounds of duty, even if the emotional weight of something else seemed to be ringing through them.

A shouting match errupted right in the wrecked control room, with the glass still on the floor, no sooner than the paramedics team had confirmed Ikari-kun to be alive.

None of us saw him or the medics as the plug had been removed by a robotic arm and dissapeared into a panel in the ceiling.

EVA 00's dorsal hatch was still open, exposing her spine. Her body was probably still warm from the energy that used to course through it moments ago, her once moving contorted form now standing frozen as a statue, now resembling a carven obect more than a living creature.

While the discussion went on, a signal termination plug was lowered from the ceiling and inserted into her back.

Though this probably wasn't the whole reason for her displeasure, Major Katsuragi emphatically pointed at the EVA with her arm just as she was stressing that if an angel attacked right now, we would be very helpless indeed, since Ikari-kun was now unconscious in the medical ward and I myself 'had nearly been killed'.

Was I?

Possibly.

It didn't seem important at the time.

She demanded answers about the reasons for the incident, but of course, it was far too soon to have any, perhaps, it might not ever be explained.

Even if it were, the explanation might pertain to something classified that the Major isn't privy too.

Dr. Akagi for the most part retained her composure, though I noted that the Major and her had shifted to adressing each other by last name and title.

"Could this incident have had the same reason as when Rei was the pilot?"

"It's impossible to tell."

"But surely you must at least have some idea of why it happened!"

"We thought the issue back then was just a mental instability in the pilot."

"In Rei?"

"She must have been more nervous than we thought."

Is that so hard to believe?

"To me, this looks like the EVA was trying to kill her."

Was she?

Major Katsuragi seemed fairly worked up about that.

"Nah, I don't think that was the case…"

Why not?

Whatever idea or theory she had, Dr. Akagi didn't seem inclined to answer:

"Evidently we have to reprogram Unit Zero for Rei and run a re-synchronization test immediately."

"As the leader of the operations division, I want this done right away."

It seems that her duties or, her own reasons for pursuing those duties still weighed heavier than any concern she might have of my person.

As was expected, of course.

She let the Doctor be and trudged over to me, sidestepping the glass as she went.

I was still standing near the door, where I had been left when she let go of me.

She touched my shoulders again.

I wished she had not done so.

For some reason, she leaned forward before speaking to me.

Perhaps to be closer to my eye-level.

"Listen, Rei… I'm really, really, sorry to have to ask this of you so soon, but we need you to do it again."

Curious.

What was she apologizing for?

The Commander had not apologized, not even when he asked me to pilot Unit One against the Third Angel in Ikari-kun's stead.

I think the Major was waiting for me to answer, hence, I gave the only answer that I possibly could:

"It's fine. I exist to follow my orders."

I think this disconcerted her a little.

Did it?

I'm not certain.

The response was just there for a moment, and in the end she let go of me and moved on.

Apparently the synch test for EVA 02 was to be aborted, and the re-synchronization between me and EVA 00 to be done in that other experimentation chamber.

I don't know why they did not just use this one, the instruments had not been truly damaged.

What would be the point of putting EVA 00 back into restraits that were already proven too frail to hold her?

Still, I suppose humans would get uncomfortable about all manner of things that were not really intuitive to me.

Before long, I was back in my accustomed seat.

Or another seat, I don't know if they reused the exact same plug.

There was no warmth clinging to the chair, in either case.

The entry sequence went like always.

There was nothing different but the faintest whiff of a different scent or coloration, and even that was quickly fading away, dilluting out as I poured more of my thoughts into the expanse of Unit Zero's mind.

I don't know why that seemed remarkable, was that not a good thing?

Perhaps some part of me had been hoping that in reconnecting, I would find in here some explanation, some tracks or traces pointing at what had just happened.

An explanation, a reason, a residue of feeling.

But of course there wasn't.

There was nobody here but me.

Reflected inside the EVA was but a mirror of my own heart.

I was alone.

There was nobody here but me.

Nobody human, at least.

Nobody at all, really, since one could hardly count myself.

In books people sometimes speak as if it is possible for a person to interact with oneself – there will be writings about how one should 'treat yourself' or 'talk to yourself', even 'love yourself', but that really is not possible.

'Yourself' is the one person you can never interact with, just as your left hand can never occupy the same space as your right.

There is no way that 'myself' could tell me anything that I did not already know.

But then in follows that what Ikari-kun would have encountered in here were but the sedimental echoes left over from my many, many visits to this place: Indeed, a mirror of my heart, and his own too, a little bit.

So why did this just happen?

Why would my heart do that?

Why would my heart do this to him, of all people?

I did not understand.

I did not understand 'myself'.

I had never wanted to think about this other 'me', the 'me' that was foreign to me.

There seemed to be no point to it, nothing I could do.

But now, the closest thing I had to a person I cared about had nearly been killed because of the 'me' that was unknown to me.

Still there was nothing I could do.

I tried, as best as I could, to focus on synchronizing.

Then, a sudden noise.

It only startled me slightly.

A beeping that fell out of the usual pattern from the noises coming from the Command center.

Then, another clacking.

Lt. Hyuuga must have picked up the receiver in a hurry.

"Shinji-kun has regained consciousness! No contamination aftereffects. They say he doesn't remember anything."

!

The next exhale overcame me like a great, precariously suspended weight finally settling down.

All this tension I didn't know was there suddenly settling into heaviness.

He was alright.

No damage.

He was himself.

I felt myself sink into my chair.

But scarcely lesser was the relief that he would not recall whatever it was he had seen in there.

That I would not be pressed to explain what I could not put into words.

Though there was no apparent damage, the team at the medicard ward chose to keep Ikari-kun for observation, just to make absolutely sure that he had not sustained any neurological damage.

They wanted to watch him for at least 24 hours, which meant that he was still there the next morning.

I had been planning on going to school, as there was no training or experimentation scheduled for the day, but before I left the other day, Major Katsuragi had suggested that I should get the day off after 'being put through such a harrowing experience'.

I don't know what she meant – I was hardly the one affected.

I had told Major Katsuragi that it wasn't needed and that I didn't have anywhere else to go anyway, but she would not be persuaded and insisted that I go wherever I want.

I was excused from school, so I ended up going somewhere else.

There was really only one place to go that I could think of.

I went down to the geofront using my habitual route and requested to visit Ikari-kun in his sickroom.

I had actually arrived outside of the usual visitation times and was about to turn back when I heard this, but the nurse I spoke to in the lobby insisted that I stay.

"That poor boy seemed rather rattled," she said by way of an explanation, "I think some company might do him good."

So, I went in.

I found him in his bed, sheets and blanket crumpled, a sweaty nightgown sticking to his chest.

Normally he would be awake by now, at very least for school.

Perhaps the experiment had affected him more than the clean bill of health suggested.

I wasn't certain that he was awake, so I approached with caution.

"Ikari-kun?"

He startled awake at once.

What more, he recoiled.

He had backed away from me for half the length of the bed before he knew what he was doing.

"Ayanami I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please forgive me! I just – I'm just a little out of sorts…"

That much was apparent.

I tentatively stepped closer to the bed, little by little, always making sure that he wasn't showing signs of discomfort.

But whatever that was, it mostly seemed to have passed.

His hair was tousled.

Some strands of it were sticking to his forehead.

He pulled his legs close to his torso, covering them with the blanket.

Part of it was hanging off the bed.

"Should I leave? Is now not a good time?"

"No, no, not at all. I'm actually really glad that you came to visit me! I'm glad that someone is here..."

I wondered if he was just saying this not to offend me.

But there was no way for me to tell, and it seemed presumptuous to assume that.

Whatever he said was what he had chosen to say.

So I approached and set myself down on a little stool next to the bed.

I didn't know what to say.

Last time I had visited him in his sickroom, I had clear intentions for what to tell him.

Some purpose for what to say.

I suppose the purpose of visiting someone in a hospital is to inquire after their recovery:

"How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?"

He paused to take a breath. "Nah. I just don't like this place. I know when I wake up here, it's never for any good reason. I think I'm probably goint to feel a lot better once I'm released from here…"

He trailed off, but didn't entirely close his mouth, as iof some unsaid word were still stuck to the tip of his tongue.

For a bit he seemed resolved to let it go, but then, the wish to be relieved of the burden won out:

"…say, Ayanami- I know this comes out of nowhere now, but, can you remember where you were when I first arrived in the city?"

"I was on standby, in the cage."

"Of course, of course, that's what I thought. I mean, I remember how you were all beat up and wrapped in bandages so, you couldn't have been in the street."

At first I wasn't sure if I had heard that correctly.

"In the street? Why would you ask that?"

"No reason – just making sure. It was a bit of a nonsense thought, so I kinda hoped you'd say that… It's not really anything important…"

"You know, if you are experiencing any unexplained states of anxiety or agitation, you should probably tell the physicians. It could be related to the experiment."

"No, no, it's nothing like that. It's just – I can't wash it off."

I narrowed my eyes in mild surprise.

"Wash it off?"

"The smell. The liquid from the entry plug – it reeks of blood."

"I am aware. I myself am not too fond of it either."

"Aha, is that so…?" he seemed surprised, but, for an instant, his facial features seemed to be lightening up a little, and he attempted something like a smile.

I was surprised that he'd be interested in that.

But like a brief gap between clouds, this fleeting respite didn't last, not once he recalled the thread of what he was originally going to say.

"The thing is – I'm not really sure when it started, but, I realized I can't wash it off anymore.

Since I woke up here, I've used the showers several times, but, it just won't go away….

And it's strange, too."

"The smell of blood?"

"Yes. No. Not quite -" He seemed to be struggling to find the words. "-it's 'cause there's a different smell as well."

"Different?"

"I'm seriously starting to wonder if I'm going insane.

Because, EVA 01… it's a scary fighting machine, right? A big monster that they've built to fight the angels. The inside stinks of blood.

But even so, when I'm inside, I sometimes feel strangely calm.

At first, I thought that I had simply gotten used to it, though I thought that I was never, ever going to. Now I can barely recall what my life was like before I came here, back when I wasn't a pilot.

There's just hardly anything to remember.

And inside Unit One… I think I only really noticed earlier, when I went inside Unit Zero.

I don't remember much of it, but I know it wasn't there."

"The smell of blood?"

That makes no sense. Unit Zero would have been using the very same LCL as-

"No. A different smell. There's a different smell.

Inside Unit One. I never really noticed it, until I noticed the difference.

It's not just the LCL, there is some other smell.

A human smell.

I reminds me a bit of you, and also a bit of Misato-san, but it's someone different.

Someone I know, I think, though I don't know how I know them-

But it's a familiar smell. Very familiar. It's like it puts me at ease, like it's connected to calmness and warmth…

….this must sound like total crazy talk to you, doesn't it?"

I didn't know what I should reply to this.

Not for the first time as of late, I didn't have the faintest idea of what he could possibly be talking about.

Perhaps he was going insane. Perhaps both of us were.

Perhaps the entire world had gone stark raving mad a very long, long time ago, and neither of us had ever known such a thing as sanity.

Then, suddenly, Ikari-kun gripped his blanket and pulled it up to his chest.

I honestly couldn't tell if he was holding back tears or laughter.

"What is going to happen to me, Ayanami?

The EVAs, experiments, angels… what is it going to do to me?"

I wasn't at liberty to answer this, so I just looked on.

So, he just kept talking, spilling forth what was running over inside of him.

"I feel like – Like the longer I stay here, the more time I spend here, the more that I get involved with the EVAs, the closer I am to learning something that I was never meant to know.

Something I don't want to know…

You've been a pilot a long time, haven't you, Ayanami?

Say, can you remember what you were like, before you were a pilot?"

I think I knew why he was asking this.

"Being a pilot didn't make me the way I am. I am simply trying to make the best of what I've been given."

"But how could you know? How could you really, really know? How can you tell that your life wouldn't have been different if you'd grown up somewhere out there without ever coming to NERV?"

"There is no point in thinking about things that are impossible to know."

I wasn't at liberty to reveal that I would never have existed at all if it weren't for NERV, but the point still stood that it would be a nonsensical thing to consider.

It struck me that he is probably trying to explain my being me by assigning me something explicable, some sort of event or condition, one or another variant of humanity, manifold as those might be.

Maybe he is thinking that something must have happened to make me this way, or that there must be some reason that can be categorized, that is just like others like me somewhere out there, or possibly, like him.

He probably wants to know that what he's going through is not unprecedented, that others have gone and survived it.

But I was probably the last person on earth he could be relating to.

I'm afraid I am a singular aberration, possibly different from him in so many little ways, ways that I know, and ways I haven't fathomed yet, because I've never had direct access to any consciousness other than my own and, I suppose, those of the EVAs I've piloted.

He might have had better luck asking the Second, but he probably wouldn't dare to. There was absolutely no change of getting anything like a honest answer, that she would say anything but what she feels she must say to be what she feels she must be, the fearless defender of earth.

Sadly, it looked like he may not be able to find a single person who could truly understand his plight. Even where others may have experienced the same things, they would have given them different meaning, felt different feelings about them, responded in different ways than in themselves gave birth to further feelings and experiences.

It might well be that numerous individual people might share his temperament or particular experiences, but his soul was made out of the interconnected whole of all those experiences, all their intricate interactions – There probably wasn't a single person who thought of the exact same things when hearing exactly the same word.

Such is the irrevocable reality in this as of yet uncomplemented world.

I was sitting less than a meter away from his bed, but between us, there might as well have been an insurmountable gulf, the cold hard thick wall of our individual selves, or whatever sad vestige of such a thing I could be said to possess.

I began to wonder why I came.

Probably because I wanted to see and feel proof of his continued presence after the misfortune that had been visited upon him, because I wanted to do something for him, but I didn't know what, I didn't know how.

There was probably nothing I could do.

The heat of the intention hung blind and limp in the air of some faraway place without anywhere for it to go.

The light of morning fell between us, captured and refracted by the towers above.

I had nothing more to say.

I was empty of words.

I considered leaving, but something held me back.

I knew he must be suffering, that he must be distressed, and I lamented that I had no means to make a dent in that suffering of his.

I couldn't even help myself.

I sat there, wondering what more to add.

I wondered what he must be thinking, so faraway from me, across from just one and a half floor tiles.

I felt like I even if I had grasped him and pressed him to me as tightly as the structural integrity of our bodies would allow, that would still not manage to have brought us any closer together.

I kept sitting on that stool, as the shadows between us shifted westward.


Shout out to the person who left a comment that was just "God, poor Rei!"

There are just a whole lot of… implications… to work with.