(Excitement)
Was NERV HQ always this… ehm…
(I struggled, for a moment here, to match the sensation to a word.)
Was it always this desolate?
Nothing about it had changed, aside from the fact that the frequency of my visits had been somewhat decreased in the last couple of weeks ever since the Dummy Plug was complete – no doubt a merely temporary phenomenon owing to the recent lack of angel attacks.
Around me were the same long, dim hallways, the same ambient mechanical noise that was still more familiar to me more than anything.
It was the way it always was;
The little ritual of these sessions was the same as ever:
Enter NERV HQ through the usual terminals, ride the main shaft elevator all the way down to Terminal Dogma, leave my clothes in the little makeshift dressing room on top of the structure, climb on top of the pedestal in the center of the dummy plug plant, try not to think about what's behind the walls, and then wait for the tube to descend, seal itself and fill with LCL.
The machine was designed to allow all manner of maintenance, backup and data collection functions to be carried out simultaneously.
The LCL was cooler and stickier than the spring water at the bath house.
Dr. Akagi was fiddling with the remote without sparing me so much as a glance, perhaps checking on something.
She had never made a habit of greeting me unless the other pilots or further NERV staff was present, people such as the bridge technicians of Major Katsuragi for whom appearances were supposed to be maintained.
The place was entirely comprised of right angles and clear-cut lines, even down to the abstract symbols and sigils etched into the floor.
All you could hear were the machines, and of course the sun would never touch anywhere this far underground.
I suppose the question as to whether this place was desolate or not had never really occurred to me. I may have dismissed the idea as making no sense, as places did not really have any kind of inherent emotional cadence, only what one has learned to associate with it.
For others, this place may be strange, but for me, it was the most familiar place in the world.
Furthermore, I didn't have that many other options to compare it with, and the ones I did have struck me as none too different.
There did not use to be a strong enough difference in my experience for the perception of a contrasting impression to arise.
I couldn't really have told you what a desolate-feeling place is.
I couldn't have told you what it is to be in a place that doesn't feel desolate.
Besides the ambient hum of the machinery, the room was so quiet that I could hear every little shift in Dr. Akagi's posture from the subtle rustling of her clothes.
I think she may have been impatient.
I realized why then the hiss of the automatic door could be heard.
It was Commander Ikari.
He, at least, acknowledged me briefly, with the slightest, most cursory greeting and some seconds spend waiting for me to slightly nod.
I was accustomed to thinking of this as something that made moments like these slightly better, and it did… but not by that much.
It wasn't long before his glance moved on and he stood next to the Doctor, ready to proceed with business.
Sometimes he'd come to simply relieve Dr. Akagi from the duty of supervising the procedure. Today, however, it seems that they had much to discuss.
They spoke as if among themselves, ostensibly feeling no more observed by me than by the many pairs of eyes that I knew to be floating somewhere in the darkness beyond the glass panes that circled the room.
The outcome that had never truly been in doubt was now ascertained and confirmed:
The thousands of people that had been working at the Second Branch of NERV were dead.
Dead-dead, vanished as if they never had existed.
Nothing was left but a circular crater 89 kilometers in diameter.
It was highly fortunate that the base had been situated in a remote desert, not in a city like headquaters and the first branch.
I never knew anybody from the first American branch, yet I must imagine it as a place filled with people, walking about in the same uniforms as our technicians here, wiped out of existence in what seems to have been a singular instant.
Most likely, they never even realized that anything was happening to them at all – in mid-thought, they had abruptly stopped being biology and become physics.
Remote satellite measurements were able to confirm the breakdown of an AT field, but that was all anybody knew – if they were proceeding according to schedule, they should have been in the process of booting up the EVA's experimental S2-engine.
Even Dr. Akagi could only speculate as to the cause of the mishap – Design flaws? Material deficiencies? A lack of understanding concerning the inner workings of s2 engines?
It was easy to think of hundreds upon hundreds of plausible scenarios.
Even so, the Commander seemed not too concerned with it, not was he all too interested in the political fallout that ensued, even if it resulted in the United States looking to be rid of their one remaining EVA Unit as soon as possible, as if it were a hot potato – just as Unit Three had been completed.
Commander Ikari had probably expected it to come into his hands one way or another, even without knowing the 'how', or rather he was ready to exploit just about any convenient 'how' that may have come his way.
At this point, the acquisition of Unit Three was merely a matter of logistics for him.
He was much more interested in the progression of the Dummy Plug – apparently, Dr. Akagi had been working on hooking them up to the simulators so that they might be tested, though she was, at present, no entirely satisfied with the performance.
But not even that seemed to faze the Commander all that much:
"The only thing that matters is that it gets the EVA to activate."
No wonder.
His faith was not so much in Dr. Akagi's creation as it was in the EVA itself, particularly, I imagine, unit one and the soul that dwells within.
He ordered the Dummy System to be installed in EVAs 01 and 02 as soon as it were feasible.
There was no mention of Unit Zero.
I liked to hope that this was because he trusted me, but it was fully possible that he simply regarded that one as already being run by one of his machines.
If a day was soon to come when Ikari-kun and the Second would no longer be needed, that would certainly be a nice thought… no need for anybody but me to suffer as a pilot.
I felt a little bad thinking of this given how much Hikar liked her, but I wouldn't miss the Second's bullying.
But what of Ikari-kun?
It would be in his best interest to leave, really, so, that is what I wanted for him.
Yet I felt a painful twinge inside my chest at the thought of having to endure all the tests and training sessions without him.
I did think we had expanded the bond between us into something that goes beyond just a relationship as fellow pilots, but there is no guarantee that we might not grow apart with time…
I suppose there is never such a guarantee for any relationship.
But if he and the Second are not needed here, there would be no reason why they wouldn't be evacuated along with everybody else once the city was destroyed.
I would be the only one left behind here, left with nothing to do but to wait for orders, just as I was in the start…
Though for now it seems as if a future that would have no need for living pilots was still a long way away.
This became apparent when the subject of the conversation turned back to EVA 03 and its transport:
"The UN has been entrusted with the transport of the EVA. It should arrive here this weekend. I'll be leaving the rest to you once it does."
"Very well. Our adjustments and the activation experiment will be conducted at Matsushiro."
"And the pilot?"
"I think the Dummy system is still too unstable at present. We'll have to review the list of candidates-"
"And select a fourth?"
"As you wish. There's one child for which a core could be prepared right away."
From the moment that the Commander had said the word 'Fourth', the only thought inside my head was a silent, hopeless prayer to any deity that might listen: Please don't let it be Hikari. Not Hikari. Anyone but Hikari.
As much as I might miss her once she left the city, I did not ever wish to behold the tearful, heartbroken faces of her father and sisters as her crushed body was wheeled out before us on a stretcher, her wax-like face frozen into a rigid mask of regret, caked with the salty remnants of tears she cried in terror, or in lament for the love she never got to confess and the children she would never have now that their possibility of being was snuffed out along with her life.
That future she hoped for wasn't ever going to happen anyways, but since she didn't know it, she would never need to grieve it. I would have been gentle in taking her with me on the final day – I could not promise the same of whichever angel might go on to take her soul instead if she died fighting xem before the final day.
The awful thought of this befalling, and the awful feeling that came into my chest along with it did in fact constitute enough of a distraction that it took me a moment to register that Commander Ikari had in fact spoken to me.
"Rei? Are you listening? Rei?"
"-Yes. Of course."
I wondered for a moment if he would be displeased – would it be with the harshness of a master speaking to a servant, or the way a parent or a teacher may be displeased if a child doesn't listen.
There was no displeasure at all.
What could such a little thing displease him when even a tantrum thrown by the president of the United States was nothing to him?
He beheld the world as a closed system following clear, inexorable rules, and by glimpsing their underlying rules, he could wait for the inevitable to come to him with open hands, with all the care in the world.
This was probably why I had admired him.
And it was true that, to this day, he had managed to bend the flow of the scenario to his will right under SEELE's nose, because the understanding of his intellect was sharper and more penetrating than theirs, his will more bold and unshackled by attachment or convention.
That is probably why I used to think that he knew all things, that there was nothing he couldn't do.
What had not changed was that this filled me with fondness still.
As ever, he smiled right back at me, with that same reliable dim echo of affection:
"You can come out now. Let's go have lunch."
As ever, I played my part, following the guiderails of old habits:
"Yes, sir."
Yet I could see now that he plainly doesn't know all things.
She was standing behind him, so, he probably did not see the hateful poisonous glare that Dr. Akagi shot at me from her spot.
There was a time when I might not have noticed, or marveled at its meaning… that was probably what she was counting upon, seeing as she didn't expect me to complain to him. But I could distinguish it by now, in fact it lined up perfectly with all her history of behavior.
She is not merely indifferent to me, nor does she innocently lack awareness of my interiority -
In fact, that's probably only how she rationalizes it to herself.
If that weren't so, she would not bother to feign concern beyond the bare minimum needed to keep up appearances.
She hates me, as plainly as the Second Child does – she is simply older and more sophisticated, more subtle in her ways.
She might not acknowledge it to herself, but her every action makes it clear that she wants to let me feel her hatred, as much as she can get away with it under the scrutiny of other people, or that of her own conscience - or at least, her desired self-image.
I wonder why she hated me so.
What had I done?
Maybe I shouldn't expect her to need a reason any more than a typical middle school bully such as the Second Child.
People do not really seem to change that much as they get older, they seem to increase only in their masks and self-importance.
Yet I had noticed how her expression had darkened when the Commander suggested lunch – how often her casual little acts of cruelty were prompted by mentions of him.
Does she wish that she were coming along with us?
Is it that?
Is she also one of those people who dislike doing things alone?
If so, then the Commander didn't seem to have noticed at all.
Otherwise he would not make the error to say things right in front of her that would only spark her ire… not while he still had need of her skills.
It began to dawn on me that when it came to things concerning people, he isn't really any more perceptive than I am.
…
For the highest-ranking staff and the purpose of entertaining important visitors such as politicians and industrial bosses, NERV was equipped with a high end dining establishment.
As its de-facto leader, Commander Ikari was wont to dine here as a matter of course.
Though he was not one to care for luxuries, it would have drawn far more attention and cost more time to frequent a different establishment.
The cafeteria had much more people, whose presence he would prefer to avoid.
Outside of the afore-mentioned business dinners, I was probably the only one who ever kept him company here.
He had mentioned at times how he looked forward to a time when instrumentality would have freed us all from the troublesome distraction of having to attend to the needs of the flesh, but for now, his body required sustenance, so he was perfectly willing to take the steak, garlic bread and red wine that had been put before him – in fact, hearing him speak thus was probably part of why I'd never attached much importance to such things as meals.
He always took whatever the menu of the day happened to be, and often asked me if I wanted some as well, but today the main course happened to be steak, so I declined, since I didn't like it.
On such occasions I merely asked for some water so that I might better swallow my pills, laying out my medicine box before me to copy the placement of his plate, perhaps to have a sense that I was somehow participating.
He never objected to this, but neither did he ever ask me why, and lacking that answer, he did of course not think of getting me something different, either.
I used to look at this in gratitude that he would respect my choice, but now I had experienced people willing to ask and show interest, or even cater to me.
I used to think for the longest time that these dinners were the closest thing I would ever get to human companionship, so of course I was grateful.
They were already more than I knew to expect or thought I had a right to.
Just like I never thought of whether or not NERV HQ was desolate before I knew many different places, or how I had never considered Dr. Akagi to be cruel to me before I had experienced the ways of many other people, I figured that this must be typical for human companionship –
And if the Commander didn't speak much during it, then I saw that as a mercy too, something to be grateful of as he did not ask too much of me.
The only way to be with others is not to be with them at all – this is what he taught me, as the closest thing I had to a guardian.
I used to miss him when he left, I used to wait for every chance to see him, I used to treasure every short blip I could pass off to myself as a memory, and I used to cherish every word that he spoke to me, every crumb he threw me.
Now, I realized that I had not even realized that I actually hadn't seen him for a good while, simply as a consequence of these past few slow weeks at NERV.
I barely noticed, because I had been doing so many other things rather than just waiting for my next orders.
Those not-quite, barely-there meetings of ours gave me so little that their absence was barely felt as a decrease to the total sum of my experiences.
It was only the stark emptiness of the days I had known that had made his half-hearted, left-handed affectation of affection stand out as a beacon.
It was only once I'd ventured out into the world onto my own more that I came into contact with other ways of being.
That is of course typical of puberty and adolescence even in animals – there is an increase in novelty-seeking and risk-taking, and interactions focus less on parents and more on peers.
That is how a juvenile animal comes to become independent from their parents to claim its own mate and territory, maybe joining a new herd, forming one of its own or establishing their place within the existing one.
I had experienced the Horaki family, spent time with the people from the Community garden, been invited to the Katsuragi household, had lunch with Ikari-kun, Aida and Suzuhara at school… if I were capable of growing up like all the other Lillith-based lifeforms on this planet, then perhaps they could have been my 'herd' (or forest, or bacterial biofilm community… but probably herd, since they were animals. A herd of humans could contain other beings, such as cats, dogs and the occasional hot-springs penguin) ...or I may have joined Hikari's.
Once I heard Ikari-kun express the wish that his father could have been there for one of those outings that he'd had with Major Katsuragi and his other friends.
He seemed to picture that the Commander was also having all this noise and warmth and togetherness somewhere out there that he was merely forcibly excluded from, perhaps on the account of antipathy or unworthiness – and Dr. Akagi, come to think of it, might have thought the same, perhaps suspecting that that thing was taking place her in this room without me.
But as the person who has been the closest to his heart since the departure of his wife (for such, I recognized myself to be in this moment – not because he cherished me so greatly, but because he kept everyone else at even greater distance), and as someone who had spent their childhood (or what passed for such) being shaped and guide by his influence, I could say with confidence that such a thing did not seem to exist anywhere inside him.
It just wasn't part of him, and growing up with him, I had gone without knowing it existed as it was something he could not tell me of, since he never understood it himself.
He may have associate with Dr. Akagi, the Sub-Commander, Mr. Kaji, perhaps that Makinami person if she was still around somewhere, but I never saw them lost in friendly, casual talk as for example the very same Dr. Akagi with her friends from College.
These were just alliances of convenience for him, and even my presence here was owed to such an alliance that just happened to be contaminated by some stray, waylost sentimentality.
If there had ever been an exception to that, it was probably his wife, but once he had been burnt by the pain of her loss, he had no room left for anyone anymore.
Everyone else had been too late.
There was nothing to be jealous of, not for Ikar-kun, not for Dr. Akagi, not myself.
I had long wondered why Commander Ikari did not behave with his son as human parents were typically said to act with their children.
I realized now that the answer had been staring me in the face all along. I had not seen it for the same reason that fish do not see the water.
This, because in looking upon him as a young child does, I had not been looking at him as a potential equal, as I might now with the eyes of a juvenile or young adult.
Once, I had looked at him as a wondersome monolith, as a creation looks upon its god;
I was loyal to him, because he had given me the world.
Then, when it occurred to me that he did not have all the answers, or that the answers he had were no greater than anyone else's, I felt despair and alienation, especially since I felt like I had built my entire world upon answers I could no longer trust without question.
I was disappointed then, but it occurred to me now that I could only have been so disappointed because I had been expecting him to be higher than an ordinary man.
But he wasn't.
He was just a man.
He was no different than me; There was never any reason to expect otherwise.
And as such, it was not so difficult to find it within myself to have compassion for him.
I think I understood now, why he kept his distance from Ikari-kun and ultimately, everybody else as well.
It was for the same reason that I used to minimize contact with others.
He was going along what seemed to him an inevitable path from which there could be no divergence, no flinching away.
He was pursuing a future at the end of an unalterable path lied out before him that he must walk no matter what.
Just like me, he knew that nothing in this world would last, that it was coming to an end, and that harsh choices need to be made to keep it from falling into even greater ruin.
His frame of reference was distinct from that of anyone around him;
Every contact he could have with the others in the world would be in the knowledge that he must act based on things that were too difficult to explain, and worse still, in the awareness that everything would soon be over.
Explanation may be attempted, but it may easily end in misunderstanding, and if he waited long enough, the great union of instrumentality promised to explain all things as a panacea.
To nurture attachment to things or people in a world that is doomed would not sway his determination, but it would hurt.
Of course I cannot truly presume to know what exactly the Commander might be thinking of feeling, but I suspect now that he didn't even realize how much his son would appreciate even just a little time spent together – he might think it would be fruitless, that it could only make things worse, that he could not possibly understand others well enough to presume to do them good, that it could only be a pointless, awful hassle.
But had thought much the same once, and still our paths had crossed.
So how could that be?
In the beginning, it was probably simply because Ikari-kun and I were both EVA pilots. Because circumstances had put us together and thus left room for me to realize that things could be different.
So maybe, if someone could create some circumstance that would bring the two of them together… some excuse to pretext to have them in close quarters…
What was it that Ikari-kun had said? 'I wish he was at the party too...'
Until very recently, this is where that thought would have ended, just hoping that someone would do it, maybe trying to get someone to do it with tears and pleas.
But this time, I thought further:
I was someone.
I could be someone, even the 'someone' to create that circumstance.
It occurred to me that this was absolutely within my power.
If I could do this little thing for them before the final day comes, before they become something else and cease to be able to experience this as humans with their human bodies, then even my small and feeble existence would have made a difference – and in taking proactive action to enact my will upon the world, I might experience at least a little something of what it's like to be an adult, even if I am fated to die young…
It would just be a little thing, something small in the grand scheme of things, but looking back on the sum of my limited experience, if I had the time to learn anything, it would probably be that the value of little things should not be understated.
But of course, it is said that plans seldom survive contact with the enemy – that would be one of the first things the Commander ever taught me, and one I had yet to find reason to doubt. Another is the value of knowledge – so then, it was time to test my hypothesis:
"Commander Ikari?"
"What is it?"
He sounded neither eager nor resentful to answer, touched by some faint memory of tenderness maybe, but overall half-absent as ever.
I decided to start with something basic:
"Do you enjoy meals?"
"Yeah."
More than anything, his answer was lacking in energy, not wholly unwilling to pay an interest, but he just couldn't muster it.
But as long as that was something other than rejection, I still probed further:
"And do you enjoy eating with others?"
"Yeah."
I had hoped that I could at least bank on that seeing how often he'd summoned me, but from his point onward, I would be going on thin ice:
"And does it make you happy to have food cooked for you?"
"Yeah."
He didn't seem impatient, at least, so I it was time to shoot my shot:
"Then, next time, would you like to have a meal with Ikari-kun and the others?"
I think I felt a sinking feeling taking possession of me at once – I was sitting across him, and I had been looking straight at him, so I recognized the swiftness with which he picked up his cutlery as if to put some barrier between us, as if not even this long, long table and the tinted glass of his spectacles could ever have been enough.
I knew well the slight, hurried quality to his voice: "No, I don't have the time…-"
I don't know if it was something I did.
I was merely looking at him imploringly, knowing that I was going to accept his pronouncement if he ever got that sentence to end.
But he didn't. He stopped in his tracks suddenly, as if struck by something painful, his eyes widening slightly as if he'd seen a ghost –
Suddenly, he looked very, very old, and very, very tired.
I was struck suddenly by the very many lines under his eyes which were usually distracted from my the rim of his glasses.
I think it was that exhaustion which answered me:
"...alright. Go ahead."
I think I felt my entire body melt in relaxation in that moment, my shoulders coming loose, the corners of my mouth slightly perking up of their own accord.
I thought, 'It was going to happen'.
That I could do this.
Yes, for them, but looking back now I think it was also tied up with the head-in-the-clouds wish to make an impact on this world… the self-serving wish to have those that I cared about all get along, regardless of whether or not that was congruent with their natures, so that I wouldn't have to separate them.
Back then I still hoped that I wouldn't have to choose.
That all these apparent contradictions in my sights might be resolved as sides of the same coin, coexisting within the same unity or synthesis.
…
It had been long since I had turned on the light above the kitchenette in my apartment.
Right after returning from NERV, I had thrown my bag onto my bed and gone right to work, first of all washing the new knives and other equipment which I had bought on my way home.
I would have to figure out how to use this.
It was then that I probably felt one last shiver of a ghostly presence, heavy and cold as it hung over me.
Being clumsy at tasks like these was one of the things that made me different from Yui Ikari, one of the bricks in the wall that kept the difference between us from melting away…
To hell with this damnable question!
Cooking is a basic skill, right? A distinguishing characteristic of homo sapiens, the creature that uses fire. It was not anybody's sole providence.
Besides, I was meaning to ask advice from both Hikari and the older ladies from the community garden. Whatever meal I might produce at the end of this would be made by me, a product of me, and my particular life.
When Ikari-kun and his father were reunited with their wife and mother in the next world, they might tell her this about me: 'That was Rei, she made that happen, she is the reason we got to bring this memory into the sum of human experience that is pooled here'. And no one else.
I didn't want to waste any more time thinking about some stranger I had never met, neither of resembling her nor of differing from her.
One thing in my favor was that there was a great amount of vegetables to practice with, particularly squash and zucchini, which were apparently rather prolific vegetables of which it was rather easy to plant way more than you might be able to eat…
Witnessing the trouble our little group of amateur gardeners had to get rid of all these various gourds really lead me to appreciate why in days of old the fruits of the fields were often shared by the whole village or at least a large family rather than everybody having their own garden.
The older ladies regaled Hikari, little Hare and myself with all kinds of horror stories about having to find ways to use up bountiful harvests, tales of canning, pickling and freezing the results or finding ways to gift them to unsuspecting neighbors and relatives.
We got some stern warnings about the perseverance of mint plants and more suggestions of what to do with Zuchini, squashes or pumpkins than we might ever need in our lives.
I had been thinking of giving some to Ikari-kun, but then I learned that the Katsuragi household's supply had already been filled up by Hikari via the Second Child.
Aida and Suzuhara weren't too enthused about vegetables and didn't even have anybody at home to cook for them besides.
So I figured I might use up some of them myself to practice some cooking.
Making these into soup sounds like it would be the easiest – the first step should probably be to cut them into bits…
…
There was nothing scheduled for me at NERV the next day, so I could go to school again –
and this I did with a renewed (at least for this moment) determination to deliberately take part in the world that surrounded me for so long as I was here, however briefly that may be.
As I was pushing the classroom door aside, I absently figured that I might as well say hello, vaguely aiming my greeting vaguely in the direction of where Aida and Suzuhara were sitting.
I made sure to speak up, since Hikari had often told me that she had been unable to hear me if I responded too quietly.
I had not expected that several of my classmates to stop and stare.
Suzuhara and Aida in particular both blinked at me in disbelief.
The latter caught his bearings quicker, but didn't quite trust his ears:
"Did she just say 'Good Morning'?"
Suzuhara helpfully confirmed that they had, in fact, both heard the same things.
"Yep – she actually greeted us! Ayanami of all people..."
Well. This may take some getting used to for both of us.
That doesn't mean it's impossible.
Just thinking that it wasn't utterly futile somehow changed many things.
I didn't see Ikari-kun at first, but wherever he may have been when I came in, he swiftly left it behind to come half-sprinting to where I had just sat down, barely concealing a touching hint of urgency: "Ayanami! You're back!"
He stood by my desk in no time at all.
"Are you feeling better now?"
The simple, honest concern in his words never failed to light me up from the inside somehow – the genuine hint of strain there, as if there was distress in every moment that he didn't have the answer.
"Yes. I am fine today."
Though I still felt a bit embarrassed, I also had much reason to smile.
Especially when I knew that someone was looking:
"What happened to your hand?"
I'm glad he paid so close attention to me, but I'm not sure I was ready to tell him yet, so I answered somewhat obliquely on purpose:
"Dr. Akagi put some band-aids on it."
"But why?"
I had to slightly avert my gaze there, cause it all got a bit much… it's like there was a sprinkler of sensations, impressions and feelings going on, peaking and ebbing without any gaps in between that would have given me any chance to sort through them.
Yet I was willing and able to volunteer the following, albeit in a quiet and tender voice:
"I've been practicing something. It's a secret. I'll tell you once I'm a bit less clumsy at it."
His face relaxed into clear relief and fondness, plain and transparent.
The morning sun shone all around us, framing everything in its picturesque long golden rays, like a naturally occurring poem, a moment seeming to be baiting us to take it and frame it and keep it inside us, as if it were supposed some archetypal representation of the happiness we might come to miss in a hypothetical future.
As of right now at least, things were good.
I do think even then I may heard some displeased huff off in the distance that may or may not have been the Second, or maybe more expressions of disbelief, but I couldn't bring myself to have a care in the world in that moment, certainly not for that sort of thing.
Let them all say or think whatever they pleased.