Ch.8989. Human.

“Something that exists and doesn’t exist simultaneously. Something that can be observed yet cannot be observed.

That which can be seen but scatters hopelessly when touched had the appearance of both a child and an elder, a woman and a man at the same time.

“It’s quite strange. I know nothing about you, yet you often speak as if you know about me.”

This unknown entity with no information available to me calls my name. While it’s nice not having to go through tedious and awkward self-introductions, it’s also quite burdensome for someone as ordinary as me who isn’t a famous actor or singer.

“How can you say you don’t know what you know? My eyes and ears are connected to every Robot in this city, so I end up knowing things even when I don’t want to.”

When I spoke with a somewhat grumpy tone due to the distance created by our information gap, it responded with a remarkably human-like laugh, saying it couldn’t be helped. I suppose pretending not to know something isn’t easy either.

…Come to think of it, while talking to people through the Drone, I was so excited that I shared everything from my personal history to all sorts of random details. When you meet someone in person who has seen your videos. It might be a bit uncomfortable and embarrassing when a stranger approaches you mentioning things you’ve said or stories about you.

Well, I suppose I don’t need to worry since that won’t happen anyway.

“Moreover, Mori has been the one we’ve all been waiting for since long ago. This sense of déjà vu, as if we’ve met and talked like this in the distant past. Among us who can store and recall all information at any time, only Mori could give us this feeling across all of time.”

“Déjà vu… Perhaps it’s because my story traveled back in time and has been passed down until now.”

“Who knows? It could be that, or it might not be. There’s no way to know where this time we exist in began or how it has continued.”

Is it because it’s an AI from a clearly complex machine? Its words are incredibly difficult to understand.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t understand the Robot at all. Until now, when perceiving time, haven’t we naturally assumed that it flows from past to future according to material changes?

But through the Drone, I showed past humanity images of the future. And humans who saw my videos gave me gifts like “A Gift for the Last Wanderer,” including Alexander. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the future influenced the past to create the present.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The present that has returned through the past from the future. There couldn’t possibly be anyone who could clearly answer what came first.

“If there’s anything certain at this moment, it’s that all the Robots in The Ark, including myself—and many people have been waiting for Mori to arrive until now.”

“Waiting for me? What could an ordinary person like me, who got here through layers of coincidence and miracles, possibly do?”

I couldn’t help but feel skeptical about the claim that not just Robots but people too had been waiting for me. If they had seen what I’ve been like until now, they would have known I was just an ordinary person no different from those who lived in the past. What could I possibly do that made them wait for me?

Did they hope that by sending future information to the past through the Drone, accelerating technological development while enabling responses to imminent massive disasters, preventing human extinction—did they hope that by changing the past, this reality would change as well?

Come to think of it, I had already changed reality in many ways through the Drone, knowingly or unknowingly. Alexander and food facilities built somewhat distant from friends who were waiting for the last wanderer. While there’s no way to verify if these facilities were created entirely because of my broadcasts, it would be unnatural for humans with no information about the future to prepare such things.

Moreover, there was definite evidence that I had changed the past and reality to some extent: my memories and experiences. Although I spent most of my childhood in my room, I never saw any videos about Mori—about me—or writings about the end of humanity anywhere.

No matter how much time had passed, videos from the future and talk of the end of human civilization wouldn’t easily disappear from memory, yet the contradiction that I, who lived much later than the people I was talking with, didn’t know about myself was clear evidence that the past and reality had already changed.

In other words, people in the past by current standards vividly saw me changing the past and present through the Drone. I don’t know exactly what they saw, but they must have watched my videos right up until just before the long history of humanity was revealed.

Unlike me who knew nothing, people who learned that a being called “Mori” would appear in the distant future and change the past and reality, must have thought of me in their dying world and hoped that I would appear and change their current reality, just as I had in the past.

“As you know, the Drone has already fallen into deep sleep. The connection with the past is severed. And I’m still breathing in this world.”

But people didn’t know.

That while small changes might occur in places I wasn’t aware of, this cold climate and ruined world couldn’t be completely transformed during my lifetime.

When the past changes, the future changes.

Under this obvious principle, humanity in the past, realizing the terrible events of the future, began to forge a new timeline to avoid what was to come.

Having obtained a blueprint for events that hadn’t yet occurred, they began to build a future that no one had experienced or observed, avoiding that path.

However, while I belonged to their future, I also existed in an undeniable reality. Therefore, even as humanity in the past pioneered a new future, this reality—proven to exist through my interactions—didn’t disappear, resulting in the Drone’s shutdown. A disconnection from the past where the future had changed.

And considering the causality necessary for the world to exist, the people waiting for me here must represent one of the possibilities of humanity that failed to escape extinction despite seeing my videos and having the opportunity.

“My role is already over. All I can do now is fulfill the wishes of the Robots in this city and approach Paradise, the only remaining goal in this quiet world.”

I said self-deprecatingly. My mouth twisted involuntarily. Even though I had thought countless times that it would be enough if the future of countless humans could take a different path through my sacrifice. Yet whenever I try to calmly accept reality, my head fills with thoughts of why, why did it have to be me, and I can’t bring myself to smile. That’s probably because I’m just an ordinary human who wants to live.

“I wonder. Is that really true?”

Haha. The Robot spoke as it watched me laugh with a cracked voice. What else could I do here? I snapped back at the artificial intelligence’s meaningful words, which contrasted with my distorted expression.

“…What do you mean by that?”

“Ah. I didn’t say that because I know something, but because I too don’t know the answer. I’m not sure if I should say this to you, Mori, but humans are beings who always commit wrongs even while knowing they’re wrong—and endlessly repeat regrets.”

The Robot said.

“People who learned about the future through Mori will certainly try to walk a different path than the history we know, and try to create a different future. But in this world, the word ‘eternity’ exists only abstractly, not in reality.”

Even towers hundreds of stories tall made of solid metal will collapse and return to soil with time. Even the value and sublimity of art that seems eternal, the absoluteness of law, and the value of life—all have an end.

“Let alone abstract will that cannot be seen and cannot be shared by everyone simultaneously, like human goals or consciousness. Haven’t you yourself, Mori, agonized numerous times until now?”

The Robot continued speaking as if it knew me very well. No, perhaps it wasn’t me it knew well, but humans in general.

“That may be true… but it wasn’t just one or two people who learned about the future, and many people who will be born through them will know too. Are you saying that all those people aren’t fools, and despite knowing that future, they’ll experience the same future again?”

“Humans are born with the intelligence to glimpse the future, but they are still beings that exist in reality. Especially those living in satisfying realities. They probably think like this: ‘It’s something that will happen hundreds of years later anyway? The people living then will figure it out!'”

For humanity, who lives at most a little over a hundred years, hundreds of years is an extremely long time. Even if it seems like a big deal now, if they avoid some imminent disasters and wars, the rest becomes invisible, and it’s unclear whether finding solutions would be meaningful.

Humanity has been rational for a long time. More precisely, they’ve possessed rationality focused primarily on reality.

A world built on contracts and money. Would there really be many people willing to consistently provide large sums of money over long periods for something that can’t even be verified as solved or not by current standards?

The Robot shrugged, saying that if robots had been able to seriously worry about the future of all humanity rather than just their own future, this kind of world wouldn’t have come about in the first place.