Entry 11. An impenetrable black wall
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More unidentified artwork >.<

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A river of hazy white stars sprawled across the Northern night sky.

The vibrancy of the Milky Way dominated the stellar constellations, from Cassiopeia, Perseus, to Orion. The Hunter's Nebula, the supernova remnants of Betelgeuse1Betelgeuse: A red supergiant in the Orion Constellation that began dimming in 2019. Scientists suspect that it may go supernova eventually), had dimmed over three decades ago. The iconic constellation now lacked its left shoulder, a continual reminder of the fact that the universe was forever aging.

The year was 2497 CE, and Earth itself had gotten no younger.

From the changing coastlines... the evaporation of the Caspian Sea... desertification of Eastern Asia... the Planet groaned under the crises of every generation. Cities perished and acid rain poisoned crops, yet humanity persisted like a cockroach. The world lit on fire was no match for the technological ingenuity of mankind that merely replaced one fossil fuel for another.

It was a tragedy of the commons.

A voracious appetite for continuous GDP growth and annual investment dividends.

In some senses, gluttony was humanity's cardinal sin.

In the 25th Century, stars were not visible in Earth's night sky.

Global ambient light pollution had snuffed it all out.

+ + +

A girl with flaxen hair trod quietly underneath a virtual reality sky. She did not look up —  although in the beginning she had been thoroughly awed by the spectacle. She had been a city girl, in fact. In some parts of the Greater Eastern Megalopolis, occasionally it could even be difficult to see the moon through the cloudy haze of the urban night. Instead the sky was dotted with blinking airplanes and strobe lights that crisscrossed the web of darkness.

She was nothing more than a temporary alien visitor born in Urban Jungle from another universe.

In this sense, MagnoliaOnline — this server — was genuinely an incredible sanctuary.

To replicate a version of reality untouched by the acid rain and the pollution...

...The smell of yesterday's rain rich with the moisture of damp earth.

...Cicadas that sung in the bushes of the sweltering summer heat.

...The brilliant color palette of leaves in the autumn, drifting slowly as they descended en mass through the air.

...Unblemished white snow untainted by the muck and grime of city asphalt and chemical salts.

Flan had come here and instantly fallen in love.

Some things weren't quite the same in books and pictures and video clips.

You had to experience it in person to really know those things that you lacked.

And also recognize the things that were never going to come back.

+ + +

"「Q」? Is that you?"

Flan stopped her midnight stroll in her tracks as she recognized a familiar figure sitting on the ledge of a high rock, underneath the light of the full moon. It was a scruffy black-haired girl with a head full of tangled messy locks. Her eyes were focused with pure concentration on a small book that laid in her lap, while she chewed absentmindedly on the knuckles of her hand. Like usual, she was dressed in a baggy over-sized sweater that looked more like an old blanket. A faint reddish glow from a levitating reading light hovered in the air.

It couldn't have been anyone else.

It was unexpected, for sure, although not completely implausible.

「Q」 was known to visit odd places at odd hours. It was rare, as often the server administrator preferred to seclude herself in the 「Tower Library」, but occasionally she seemed to go for a change of scenery. Of course — nobody complained — 「Q」 was certainly entitled to be wherever she wanted, although many people tended to give the frosty administrator a wide berth. 

She wasn't exactly known for her friendliness, after all.

And she often got absorbed in her own world, ignoring everything else.

Like right now — evidently 「Q」 hadn't even heard Flan call out to her.

In the past, perhaps Flan would have taken offense. However, the flax-haired supervisor knew her boss well enough at this point to know that 「Q」 wasn't ignoring her intentionally. The high-school student was genuinely engrossed in whatever she was reading, which pretty much meant that she was oblivious to the entirety of her surroundings.

Flan took a detour off the stone path and climbed her way up the rocks to where the black-haired girl was sitting.

She took a seat right beside her.

"Hey."

Flan kept it short. She knew how the handle this.

"Hey."

「Q」's response was slightly delayed, but level-headed nonetheless. She did not look up from her book.

"Long time no see." Flan spoke.

It was uncharacteristic of her style to speak so telegraphically, and Flan sort of felt like she was speaking a foreign language. However, communicating on 「Q」's level was sort of a skill, and Flan believed that she had somewhat developed a grasp of it over time. It took a lot of patience, and it certainly was not the kind of conversation to rush.

Long gaps of silence was normal in 「Q」's language, and that was just something to get used to.

+ + +

"It's pretty late. Almost 4 o'clock. You're not going to bed?"

"This novel is really addicting. I like it a lot. It's about koala bears and forest fires."

"Hm. But you have school tomorrow?"

"I've been busy lately. I don't have any other time for myself."

"Sleep is important for you, you know."

"Mm. But I also need time for myself."

"...Hm."

+ + +

Flan really struggled at moments like these. It almost made her want to pull out her hair.

She had so many thoughts that raced around through her head, and it took all of her effort to suppress her urge to suddenly go on a ranting tirade. How the heck was this okay?? Who in the world decided that this was okay??

Flan strained to figure out the limits of her boundaries.

「Q」 was her boss, and also as mercurial as a thunderstorm. Although the high school girl rarely got "angry" in the conventional sense, she was extremely stubborn and sensitive to confrontation. The girl seemed to struggle with expressing herself (or perhaps she suppressed it?), yet she was also emotional in the way that ordinary teenagers were. Even the mildly-mannered Vesrian731 had gotten himself banned at the mere drop of pin, and after the disastrous October staff meeting the girl had refused to speak to anybody for weeks.

Flan wasn't exactly that old, but here Flan felt somehow like a powerless mom deprived of her ability to speak out.

There were many difficulties with having a teenage girl as her direct superior.

—Yes, 「Q」 was precocious and wildly talented in ways that Flan couldn't even begin to comprehend. However, that didn't change the fact that the girl was still just a kid, somehow already meandering herself through an adult world. The yellow flags were deeply worrisome. Indeed, Flan was often worried. It troubled her in ways Flan struggled to express.

The black-haired girl was like an impenetrable black wall. You could throw virtually anything at it, and it wouldn't open up.

In the end, she just felt helpless.

+ + +

"Synbius subpoenaed the private message logs from the October staff meeting and reviewed them. He banned anybody who was involved in that incident — although it's only a temporary ban since we don't have permissions to lock anyone out for longer than 30 days... just letting you know."

Flan finally spoke, not knowing what else to say, or what to do.

"Mm, okay."

"If you want to convert it to a permaban, that will be up to you."

"I probably won't." 「Q」 spoke simply.

"Huh."

Flan stared blankly for a moment, thrown off-kilter once again.

"It's not a big deal. They were just 「whispering」 to each other. You can't control the way people think." Kiu explained.

"I kind of disagree. It is a big deal. It's not fair to you, and it's not something that you should have to go through on your own server."

「Q」 shrugged at that moment and closed the front cover of her book.

She leaned back slightly and then yawned, rubbing her eyes.

"I'm not that delicate, Flan. I'm pretty strong. A bunch of words aren't going to faze me."

"If you say so."

"I'm logging off. Also — you're one to talk about sleep — isn't it like 6:00 AM where you are?"

"Gah. Go to bed! I'm not someone whose example you should follow!"

"Just saying~"

 

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