"Life is a script of joys and sorrows in a stage play. Ordinary people are but the audience standing on tiptoe beneath the stage, looking up at the dancing protagonist."
"Many people project themselves onto the protagonist, but is it really good to dance on that stage?"
"Not necessarily."
Chiaki popped a piece of gum into her mouth, puffed out her cheeks, and quietly savored the minty flavor.
"Ritalin is a relatively mild central nervous system stimulant. It can excite various mental activities, promoting quick thinking, relieving fatigue, and boosting spirits. It is used to eliminate drowsiness and respiratory depression caused by hypnotics. Clinically, it's used for minor brain dysfunction and narcolepsy."
Lin breathed steadily, layers of cold mist passing through his lungs and exhaling as warm breath.
"But when Ritalin is used in excessive doses, it causes symptoms of toxicity: anxiety, tension, confusion, delirium, and... hallucinations."
"..."
"At first, I simply thought you were indeed using medicine to help me. But later, when I mentioned Ritalin and Mobius attitude to Vil-V, Vil-V said that Mobius once expressed a hatred for Ritalin."
Recalling the abrupt change in Mobius attitude toward him that night, he already had the answer.
"She is an expert in pharmacology, yet she never uses medicine herself. This shows she doesn't intend to develop better medicine, but rather to research how to make humans not need medicine."
"This might stem from a past of Mobius that I don't know about. One piece of information I gathered from it is that Ritalin is the exact type of psychiatric drug she loathes most—those that cause drug tolerance and addiction."
"So, I looked up the side effects of Ritalin that you never mentioned. Finally, looking back at the seven days spent with you, you never used Ritalin yourself. This indicates that you don't actually use such drugs to focus your mind."
"Thus, there were only two possibilities for you bringing out Ritalin then. One: you knew in advance that my mental state would be poor when I came to find you, so you went to get the medicine. Two... you wanted to convey something to me through the Ritalin."
As it turned out, both possibilities were correct.
Chiaki chewed her gum in silence, offering no rebuttal. She gazed out at the distant collapse extending toward them, the beautiful sunset in her eyes being swallowed bit by bit by darkness.
Lin didn't mind her silence and continued his deduction: "You once mentioned 'conspicuous normalcy' as a way to hide oneself. As the only 'person' still existing in a headquarters where all AI machinery had vanished, Prometheus actions wouldn't seem special at all. Because she was right by my side, no one would suspect an AI that only follows orders."
"Finally, you also mentioned the concept of the 'Y2K bug'."
'After hearing about the Y2K event, I kept wondering: if humans experienced an event beyond their own cognition—like the transition from 1999 to 2000—would a "bug" similar to the Y2K bug appear?'
'Humans couldn't go crazy just by seeing the number 1999 change to 2000. But when they constantly repeat the year 1999, treating one year as a cycle and experiencing a dozen or even hundreds of cycles... would a human "Y2K bug" be born?'
"You were warning me. If I treated this recursion as a cycle and failed to question the rationality of the recursion itself—if I lost myself in the repeated 'slaughter events' and eventually developed a false perception—my consciousness would become a 'bug'."
"..."
"..."
Chiaki let out a sigh. She gave him a deadpan look and tilted her head: "Are you telling some sci-fi story? I don't understand a single word."
"...You understand."
"I don't. After all, you have no evidence, do you?"
"I do."
"..."
"At the end of the first recursion, during that massacre, only you were still alive. But the place where I was unconscious was your room. Whether I was the killer or the person who attacked me was the killer, it's impossible they would have spared you when you were right there."
His striking iridescent pupils shone even more brilliantly under the sunset. Chiaki gazed into these extraordinary eyes.
"But you didn't die, and you even appeared at the scene of the massacre. Finally, when I reached the Research Department, you picked up a knife. Initially, I thought you wanted to kill me, but then I entered the second recursion, meaning someone killed me then—but it wasn't you."
"You saw the real killer behind me and wanted to take up a weapon to save me."
"But the fact that you could observe the massacre and see the true killer without dying is an anomaly in itself. This shows that the Eighth Herrscher intended not to kill you unless absolutely necessary."
"The first time she intended to kill you was when you collaborated with me to investigate the monitoring hub. Her attack—why did it target you instead of me? Likely because you had already spoken a portion of the truth. 'Errors that only the AI controlling the system can cause' was actually referring to the only AI left, Prometheus. It was a warning to you."
"At the end of the second recursion, she killed you before you could speak. Meaning, what you were about to say was a threat to her. Then she stepped out to feed me a false truth."
The words were finished.
Chiaki pondered, her gaze sweeping from Lin pupils to the distant horizon. Finally, she shook her head and smiled helplessly.
"So you actually saw through it long ago? Then my acting must have been quite the solo performance."
"...Actually, I only realized it this time."
"Since that's the case, think about it again. Why are you a special person in your own consciousness? Why did I warn you? And why did I help you without telling you the truth directly?"
She looked at Lin with a smile: "Think about it... who exactly am I?"
Lin stared at Chiaki. He recalled the things she had said, the layers of lies being peeled away, only for another lie and an incomplete truth to lie beneath.
An outlaw hacker.
A student longing to be special.
A girl playing the villain.
Each was her own self-description; each was her mask.
"...The birth of the Eighth Herrscher didn't happen at the Fire Moth headquarters. she might have existed long before the birth of the Seventh Herrscher. Yet, when the Seventh Eruption broke out, the Eighth Herrscher did not help the Seventh."
"She is the Herrscher of Sentience. Her own combat capability is not strong, but she should be able to control even her own consciousness. So, she used a method to enter the Fire Moth headquarters, using her authority to sabotage the human hub, borrowing Fire Moth's resources and intelligence to wipe out humanity in one go."
"And that method was to create another consciousness to replace herself. The Herrscher consciousness goes to sleep, allowing the new consciousness to pass Fire Moth's inspection and arrive at headquarters. Then, through preset conditions—such as 'awaken after entering headquarters' or 'awaken after contacting a specific person'—she successfully woke up at the base to launch the conscious invasion against me."
"This consciousness is the Herrscher's original human consciousness—recreated from her memories to be no different from the original..."
"You."
Chiaki blew a bubble. She remained calm, silent, and didn't say a word...