10. Interlude: A Thousand Line’s Woven World

Does a meaning exist? Can an answer be found? Such questions are annoying, bothersome, and more than anything... They are meaningless.

Kinda ironic, that the quest for meaning itself is sometimes meaningless, but... Does that change anything? No, wait, does it even matter? After all, whether it’s eternal obsession or endless apathy filling those eyes... It doesn’t change anything.

Whether it’s the bittersweet love or the sour but addictive hatred paving that path, whether it's curiosity or nostalgia liting those lines... Not to mention whether it’s desire or jealousy pushing this story forward. In the end, it doesn’t even matter, as long as you can take another step, as long as you can start all over again, and so...

Amidst that endless sea of confusion was a single path, a single line trying to prove its existence, and that line... It split into two, then five, after that, they become seven and like that... Irregularly and awkwardly, those lines kept splitting and diverging, other times they kept connecting and converging... Sometimes they were lonely, others they were proud. Sometimes they were lost, others they were excited, and like that... With no beginning presented and no ending accepted, those lines, lost in an empty white world, they kept moving on, weaving their own story...

Still, is moving on that easy? Is keeping up that simple? The answer is... No, it’s truly not. And so, even as those lines wove their own ending, a new start was drawn... Even as the irrational become rational, a new madness was presented... And even as the impossible was rewritten as possible, the world itself still shook in rejection presenting a whole new reality, but... Again, it doesn’t matter. No, it won’t and shouldn’t matter.

So, cover your ears and ignore the sound of chains, cover your eyes and ignore the flow of waves, and if you can’t?... Well, then just open them again and look forward. There, beyond the lines limiting a world... There, transcending the beginning and ending, you will see it.

Perfection. More precisely, it’s an imperfect Perfection, a God created by Men. And sitting in front of it was Imperfection. A perfect Imperfection, and a monster born of irrationality.

And so again, in an empty world of thousands of lines woven together sat two. First was Ex-Machina, wearing a red and black evening dress. She, the many but one, sat there waiting and waiting more. Even as wind brushed her scarlet long hair, she simply sat there waiting while tapping her fingers on the table, until...

“Oh, You are here” She spoke with a smile, as her fingers stopped and her scarlet eyes moved on staring at the other in front of her slowly opening his eyes, but...

…?!

What’s wrong? She thought. Is the connection unstable or is the synchronization not high enough? She questioned, and then with silence forcefully restored again, she simply waited while curiously staring at ‘him’.

Imperfection, or better called the Administrator, the one but many. That was the one sitting in front of her. No, that was the one who should be there, but...

“Truly... Just what is this?” Muttering such words and blinking her eyes in confusion, Ex-Machina titled her to the right while staring at ‘it’, then failing in finding an answer, she titled her head to the left, but even then... She didn’t understand, just what was it, that sitting in front of her?

Not a man or a woman, not a child or an adult, but barely clinging to the form of a human. Something like that was all that sat in front of her as it tightly held its squirming face and bite its trembling blue lips, all as those mad eyes of its kept jumping around staring at the surrounding with the light in them repeatedly changing.

No, it wasn’t only the light in its eyes that kept changing, but even its hair and clothes, its body and form, they all kept changing as the thing twisted and shifted around, as if its whole being was glitching, maybe even malfunctioning and breaking apart.

“......!”

And staring at such a scene with her scarlet eyes wide open, she, the imperfect Perfection... She felt surprise, confusion, and more than anything else... She felt awe and curiosity. After all, it’s not everyday you see such a scene. No, did she ever see it before?

A broken mind of an alien structure, a twisted ego with an absent soul. Such a scene, even in the Central Index’s endless library... Such a perfect scene does not exist, such contradictory data are not found, and if not for this sample today, she...

“Ah... Right, today.” Reaching that point in her thinking, and suddenly remembering all the irregularities taking place at once, Ex-Machina suddenly woke up from her reverie and then with a tired sigh, she suddenly leaned back at her seat and with blank eyes, she slowly looked up at the thousands of flickering lines making this artificial landscape’s ceiling.

“So... Any clarification?” Suddenly raising her head again and asking that, Ex-Machina stood from her seat, and then with the light of curiosity in her eyes relit and the feeling of hesitation shaken, she suddenly reached her hand forward.

“More specifically, just what is this?” Saying that and feeling some resistance blocking her progress, Ex-Machina shamelessly leaned forward on the table, and then with more force in her ‘hand’, she broke through trying to reach ‘it’ in front of her, but...

“... I don’t know.”

But before she could do so, her wrist was caught.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Restlessly flailing her arm and asking that, Ex-Machina suddenly frowned and then glared at the side, and there...

“Just as I said, ‘I’ don’t know.”

What she saw there was a familiar pair of black as abyss eyes and also... Tsk, that condescending smile again.