Ch.9595. Still Alive.

95.

For humans who are already overwhelmed just living in the present, there’s a truth so obvious that we often forget it.

That is, our existence and all the landscapes and life in this world are not guaranteed.

Earth where humans were born, the solar system Earth belongs to, the galaxy and universe our solar system is part of. No one can explain how all of this came to be and how it has continued until now.

It’s too intricate to be mere coincidence, yet too vast in scale to believe someone planned it all.

It’s not without reason they say scholars who try to uncover the truth of this universe either feel emptiness in life and choose death, or come to believe in the existence of God.

I personally don’t know whether God truly exists in this world, or if we were simply thrown into existence at some point, like the universe that came into being through a series of positive probabilities.

However, regardless of God’s existence, I can say this with certainty:

The fact that I’m alive right now. Beyond that, the existence of human life is an undeniable miracle.

In a universe filled with invisible matter, among the 2 trillion galaxies and even more stars, a star with conditions capable of harboring life was formed. But even such stars weren’t initially hospitable to life.

A long monsoon lasting 2 million years. The mass extinction that wiped out over 80% of species existing at that time. Multiple ice ages that came and went.

Major events that could have erased all traces of life.

Yet life, once it began to exist, didn’t easily disappear despite these trials and changes.

No matter what situation arose, life continued by putting survival instinct first and doing whatever necessary to survive.

After countless efforts of many lifeforms, I came to exist.

“If this isn’t a miracle, then what is?”

We have always fought against seemingly impossible odds to secure our existence.

These people are the same. They left their freezing homeland and departed for the distant universe to somehow preserve their existence and continue the history of the human species.

I don’t know if they truly discovered a planet that could replace Earth and left, or if they just departed blindly hoping for another miracle, just as we came to exist through a series of miraculous probabilities.

Those who stand still because they can’t see a clear answer never achieve anything.

People who didn’t give up, who left their beloved homeland to achieve a miracle.

I began exploring the building to find a way to communicate with them.

“…This looks like a scene from an old movie.”

Fortunately, I didn’t need to go far before finding a room where communication seemed possible in the same building.

Inside a large door. A huge screen filling one side of the room and many desks in front of it. Computers on top of them.

Whether in comics or movies, if it involved space, this familiar yet new room always appeared, and for some reason it made me smile.

“It feels like I’m on a movie set. Though when wasn’t it like that?”

It’s so familiar that it creates a sense of disconnect. Did they really prepare the migration project here? Did they maintain this old structure because it was most useful despite the passage of time? Or was it nostalgia for a past when they could explore space leisurely amid abundance?

I can’t know what people from the past were thinking—but I was happy to be in a place I’d admired since childhood. Space stations and spaceships are places every young boy dreams of at least once, no matter how times change.

“Wow. They still use monitors that look like this.”

Monitor, keyboard, mouse. Quite vintage items even by the standards of my time, let alone this era, were placed on the desk.

“I wonder if they used old equipment to match the aesthetics, or maybe considering potential malfunctions or interference?”

Genuinely excited for the first time in a long while, I ran around the room for quite some time before sitting in a chair and pressing a button on the desk to turn on the computer.

The rectangular monitor lit up brightly, and soon various icons appeared on the screen.

All unfamiliar icons, and having not touched a mouse or keyboard for a long time made it somewhat strange, but as I clicked on them one by one to adapt…

“Is this it…?”

I found a program that could communicate with those on the spaceship. A window appeared asking for a password, but fortunately, there was a post-it note with the password stuck to the desk. Did someone leave it knowing I would come here?

Anyway, muttering about my good luck, I ran the program, and a considerable amount of communication records appeared on the screen.

[931112418-11-07-1]

Hello Stella. It’s been a while. We’re now entering the Hills Cloud. We’ve finally set foot in the unknown territory that our ancestors only observed and longed for. How is it there? Still livable? Is Paradise finished being built yet? Being in a place where neither day nor night comes makes my sense of time strange. Let me tell you more about us since you’re probably curious—everything is fine. The spaceship’s condition—the autopilot program—supplies—mental state. It seems like there won’t be any problems, at least until we enter deep sleep……………

Casual stories as if sent to a close friend or colleague. In the photos attached to the lengthy text, people appeared to be happily living on the spaceship, just as the message sender said.

White tables and chairs. Large potted plants. If not for the countless stars visible outside the windows, the spacious and comfortable-looking place could have been mistaken for a café on Earth from the old days. They seemed to be living much better than I was, at least.

Seeing this, I leaned back against the chair, let out an inexplicable sigh, and moved the mouse.

There were people asking about acquaintances left here. People talking about what they discovered while drifting through space. People who recorded their daily happenings like a diary, similar to the first person I saw.

Unfortunately, the messages weren’t just from one spaceship. As I browsed through them, there were also people who sensed their spaceship’s end and calmly left their last words.

But the messages here were fundamentally full of hope. Even those whose oxygen supply systems had malfunctioned and were engulfing their spaceships didn’t directly mention their anxiety or despair.

People speaking only of hope to the point of seeming manic might appear strange, but when you think about it, these people had already prepared for their deaths when they ventured into space.

People who left their birthplace and homeland in search of a miraculous planet where humanity could live in this vast universe probably didn’t want to voice their despair even when it came.

That feeling. I know it well.

“Hmm, it’s obvious but… everyone seems close.”

A few photos and messages. These were the only clues I had about them, but it doesn’t take much information to understand people’s relationships.

The atmosphere felt in the photos and the familiar tone of address. The relationships between people that had been lost to me still remained for them.

If I had woken up just a few years earlier, could I have been with these people?

It was a meaningless assumption. I couldn’t wake up just because I wanted to, and when people were alive, it would have been even more difficult to sustain life than it is now, and how would I have gotten past the functioning security robots to come up here?

But seeing the heartwarming sight of people living together with other people—the first I’d seen in this world—such thoughts kept coming to mind. There’s nothing as unproductive and self-consuming as attaching “what ifs” to things that have already passed.

Loneliness, emptiness, and a bit of helplessness. I felt good just knowing that people other than myself might still exist in this universe. Nevertheless, various emotions swirled within me.

“Ah.”

Tapping on the photos displayed on the monitor as if venting my frustration, the photos followed my finger and moved around. Even outside the monitor.

So it’s not completely ordinary after all. Having learned that I could move the windows, I pulled out numerous photos and displayed them on the giant screen decorating the wall.

Facing a screen filled with different people and landscapes, I just sat in the chair and stared blankly.

—Even if I let those people know I’m alive now, I probably won’t meet them.

As the distance increased, it seemed to take longer to send messages to each other. The frequency of messages, which were exchanged often at first, gradually decreased.

Moreover, perhaps because there were no replies from this side even after sending messages, the last message received had a gap of nearly half a year from the previous one.

In this situation, even if I said I’m here so please come get me… the possibility of that happening is infinitely close to zero.

It’s uncertain whether the spaceship can return to Earth in the first place. Even if it could, calculating the time it would take for my message to reach them, plus the time for a spaceship that flew away over several years to return, it would take at least 5 years.

What guarantee is there that I would still be alive during that time?

Besides, from their perspective, there’s no reason to turn around a cruising spaceship for a stranger like me who suddenly appeared.

I’d be lucky if I didn’t get a reply saying I was crazy after waiting and waiting.

“Having come this far. Being just a few years late and only able to watch… it’s still disappointing.”

Ironically, the more I learn about my situation and the world, the broader my view becomes, the smaller the possibilities become.

A few geniuses see the wide world and consider how far they can extend their abilities.

But ordinary people like me realize our limitations in this vast world.

“Still, thinking that these people got along well even in such a world—and are still alive going to discover miracles. It’s somewhat comforting.”

[It’s time to sleep now.] The end of the message, containing an impossible wish for Earth, their homeland, to be well until they return, was about sleep.

Considering that they’re vaguely drifting through space, it’s right to assume they’ve entered a deep sleep from which they’ll only wake when it’s time, just as I did.

After contemplating for a long time in front of the last message, I slowly began to press the keyboard.

There’s not much to say to people whose faces and voices I don’t know.

But to that face that seemed somewhat tired of unanswered replies at the end.

Just as they gave me hope and joy for a moment.

I decided to leave a message that I, a human, was still alive in our precious homeland even after they fell asleep.

“Done.”

After much deliberation, what I wrote was just two words.

Still Alive.

I am still alive here.