Chapter 180 - The Being II

3

I had often discovered anomalies that already existed in the world, but rarely witnessed the moment one was “created.”

Honestly, I could count those occasions on one hand. The odds were probably lower than pulling an SSR in most gacha games.

In other words, the moment Patient A’s brain went from wild-caught to farm-raised was one of those precious few SSSR-tier specimens.

“It’s an anomaly called the [Ship of Theseus].”

“The Ship of Theseus? What’s that...?”

Noh Doha, whose knowledge was woefully lacking in certain fields, asked me to explain.

The reason was simple. South Korea’s civil service exams didn’t include philosophy. You could call it a backlash against the Joseon era, when philosophy was all they tested.

“There was a ship sailed by a hero named Theseus. It was a priceless object, like a turtle ship, so naturally they preserved it, right?”

“Hmm...”

“But as time passed, its planks rotted, so they repaired it by replacing them with new wood. If they kept replacing pieces like that, eventually every plank that made up the original ship would be gone, replaced with a new one—”

“Aha. Can you still call it the ‘Ship of Theseus’? In terms of materials, hasn’t everything in it changed? Something along those lines...?”

“Exactly.”

Until what point is it the “Ship of Theseus,” and at what point does it cease to be the “Ship of Theseus”?

What is the Ship of Theseus in the first place?

A so-called dilemma of identity.

Why did it have to be a ship Theseus sailed, you ask?

It didn’t really matter. He was simply Athens’s most famous hero.

It’s much the same principle as how, even though both belonged to a naval commander of the three provinces, you’d expect people to put more effort into repairing “Yi Sun-sin’s ship” than “Won Gyun’s ship.”

In fact, there were plenty of dilemmas with different names and much the same substance.

Then as now, hungry scholars needed the trick of slapping spectacular packaging on the same old product if they wanted to make a living.

The scientist’s brain went into a vat and Schrödinger’s cat went into a box as acts of self-sacrifice, all to keep their owners fed.

“Well, fine...”

Noh Doha glanced aside.

There lay Patient A—or the anomaly that had once been Patient A—securely strapped to the operating table.

Had Noh Doha been a mad scientist or an executive in an evil organization, the scene would have promised some serious trouble ahead.

“I more or less understand what sort of anomaly it is. It gets confused about its identity and starts shitting out that ‘Who am I? Where am I?’ bullshit, right...?”

“Hmm. Probably?”

“Why does our esteemed regressor end his sentence with a question mark? You’re making me nervous...?”

“Because this is my first time witnessing it, too. It keeps talking about identity—or, more precisely, sameness... But you wouldn’t understand even if I explained, Commander, so let’s move on.”

“Aha. So you want to fucking die...?”

“Anyway, judging by what we’ve seen, it’s definitely an anomaly whose identity keeps fluctuating.”

Even now, Patient A, isolated in the laboratory, was muttering incessantly.

“Even if a single tiny speck of dust falls onto a table, from the perspective of atoms, the object known as the table has changed. How much more so for humans? Am I A Reum? What is A Reum? What determines A Reum’s A-Reum-ness, A-Reum-like nature, A-Reum beauty?”

Noh Doha pressed a hand to her forehead at this A Reum gestalt breakdown.

“What a fucking headache...”

“Hmm. Perhaps the patient’s real name being ‘A Reum’ was something of a trigger point, too. Remove a single stroke, and it becomes ‘ireum’—‘name’—doesn’t it? A name is the term most intimately connected with identity.”

“But why would you remove that stroke...?”

“How should I know? It’s just the sort of crap anomalies often pull.”

Noh Doha let out a curse. Feel free to fill in the blank with the highest-level profanity you can imagine.

“Haa. Anyway, thank heavens it doesn’t seem to have any other abnormalities aside from spouting nonsense. Let’s just keep it isolated in prison forever...”

“Agreed.”

~And so the new anomaly was confined to Impel Down at National Road Management Corps headquarters, where it lived happily ever after~. END.

—If that had been the end, I wouldn’t have brought this episode up in the first place.

Anomalies begin to “grow” from the moment they are born, exerting an irreversible influence on the world.

The purpose of this episode is to give you a taste of those repercussions.

[“Mr. Undertaker.”]

Strange phenomena began that very day—in other words, the day Patient A’s anomaly was born and confined.

“Yes, Saintess. What is it?”

[“Some of the awakened currently exploring voids on the Korean Peninsula have begun showing signs of mental derangement.”]

“What?”

[“Those affected began voicing questions about what sort of beings they themselves were, then lost consciousness in less than five minutes. Their fellow guild members are moving them to the rear.”]

“...”

A chill crept over the back of my neck.

“Please give me the coordinates of the nearest affected person.”

[“Of course. Near Gimhae...”]

I immediately ran to the location she gave me.

The guild members there were already transporting the casualty to a hospital. I helped them and accompanied them there.

The building was closer in size to an apothecary or a clinic than a hospital, but all hospitals were like this these days. The separation of prescribing and dispensing hadn’t survived the apocalypse, either.

“Th-they suddenly passed out. We didn’t do anything wrong!”

An awakened from the affected person’s guild gave their account.

They seemed a little frightened by the sudden arrival of a big shot like me.

“We were exploring according to protocol, taking precautions against mental contamination. R-really. We prepared incredibly thoroughly. There were no warning signs at all, seriously. They got onto the boat first, and suddenly lost their mind and started...”

“Boat?”

I snapped to attention.

“Wait. They boarded a boat in the void?”

“Huh? Oh, yes... It’s much faster to use the waterways around the Joman River. Oh, listen! We really didn’t take a dangerous route! It was the route we always used, honestly!”

While the awakened desperately made excuses for fear of being held responsible, I lamented deep in my heart.

‘It’s barely been born, and it’s already devouring the concept of [boats]!’

There was no time for this.

I immediately left the hospital room and contacted our control tower in Yongsan.

“Saintess. You’re watching me right now, aren’t you?”

[“Yes.”]

“Please check what the awakened showing signs of mental derangement have in common. Had they just boarded or sighted a ‘boat’ in a void?”

[“... It’s difficult to check every case, but I think you’re right. For now, every group with an affected member was near water.”]

“Ha.”

A slender moment of hesitation.

The face of an awakened who had ventured into the void to defeat anomalies even after losing their entire body. A smile. Words of thanks.

A resolve that was always stronger than hesitation.

“Saintess.”

[“Yes.”]

“Contact Commander Noh Doha and tell her to kill Contained Entity-239-430-1-A. You can simply say A Reum. She’ll know who you mean.”

[“Understood.”]

Silence passed.

Two minutes.

[“It’s been dealt with.”]

I immediately asked,

“Physical annihilation?”

[“In progress. So far, no resistance to aura has been observed. We presume physical annihilation is possible.”]

“Thank you for your hard work.”

[“Not at all.”]

“Please tell Commander Noh Doha that it isn’t her fault. I agreed to it as well, and anomalies can arise at any time.”

[“... Yes. I’ll tell her.”]

My mind raced.

‘Is that the end of it? Or is it already too late to stop the contamination?’

There were several ways anomalies could increase their power.

I think I’ll take this opportunity to introduce the most common one.

An anomaly contaminates a particular “concept.”

For example, let’s see.

Suppose an anomaly contaminated “the lilies growing in my backyard.”

That wasn’t particularly dangerous. All I had to do was stop growing lilies.

What if “lilies” as a whole were contaminated?

That was a little dangerous. Still, there was no need to be neurotically vigilant.

Not growing lilies wouldn’t kill anyone (there is some room for debate), and if it really seemed dangerous, I could simply post on SG Net: “Everyone, please beware of lilies.”

But what if it went beyond “lilies” to “plants”?

No, what if it went beyond plants and contaminated “life” itself?

Exactly.

Quick-witted readers will already have understood: the farther anomalies climb from a “narrow concept” to a “broad concept,” the more dangerous they become in proportion.

To draw a simple diagram as an example:

――――――――――

[Existence]

│

[Living Things] [Nonliving Things]

│

[Cellular Organisms] [Noncellular Organisms] ...

――――――――――

Something like that.

In short, imagine that the world consists not of space, but of concepts.

Anomalies spread their cells by climbing precisely those ladders in the concept map.

Sometimes upward. Sometimes sideways. Sometimes downward. Steadily, or in leaps and bounds. Occasionally through logical reason. But mostly through illogical otherness.

The anomalies’ loathsome viral dialectic, intended to contaminate our world and the pyramid of existence.

Therefore.

If you want to become an excellent “anomaly-virus containment specialist,” above all you must quickly recognize where the anomaly before you began its contamination, which ladders it is climbing, and where that contamination is spreading.

Ultimately, what I did as a regressor was no different.

At that moment, my brain was busily turning over the following questions.

‘Boats have been contaminated. What comes next? Vehicles as a whole? Bicycles or trains? That branch would be a headache. Or, since it’s boats, will it expand into something related to water? Or has physical annihilation eradicated it entirely?’

It happened then.

“Uh, uhh? Huh? What’s wrong with you?!”

“Wait! Hey! Stop! I said stop!”

BANG!

A commotion arose at the hospital-room door, and it burst open.

I turned to see the mentally deranged patient who had been brought to the hospital a short while earlier, mouth hanging vacantly open.

A word escaped that mouth.

“Boat...”

“Hey, hey! Lee Geumseon! What are you doing?!”

The patient’s companions hurried after him into the corridor.

“He opened his eyes and started saying weird things! Ah, um. Mr. Undertaker. I’m sorry. Fortunately, he regained consciousness, but then he got straight out of bed!”

“Must repair the ship...”

Muttering, the deranged man trudged onward.

“The ship must be repaired. Existence shall crumble, and only those who repair the ship shall be saved, for it is the ark for us all...”

His companions shouted, “Hey! Hey!” and tried to hold him back, but it was no use.

As though drawing monstrous strength from somewhere, the deranged man strode along without difficulty. His companions cried, “Huh? Wh-what?” as he dragged them behind him.

That wasn’t all.

[“Mr. Undertaker!”]

The urgency in the Saintess’s voice instantly sent a tremor around the edges of my heart.

[“We have a serious problem. A considerable number of the awakened who were on SG Net are showing ‘Ship of Theseus’ symptoms right now!”]

“On SG Net? Why, all of a sudden?”

Even as I answered, my mind immediately produced the worst possible hypothesis.

Surely not.

“... Did someone upload a photograph of a boat or an image file related to ships?”

[“I don’t... know. I had the same hypothesis, so I’m deliberately avoiding using Clairvoyance on those infected.”]

“That was the right choice. We’ll be in serious trouble if you’re infected too. For now, have Seo Gyu temporarily suspend the board...”

[“I’m sorry.”]

My breath faltered.

[“Mr. Seo Gyu has been infected. Probably before anyone else.”]

“...”

For a moment, my breath orbited inside my mouth.

Just before it could escape as a helpless exhalation, my teeth and tongue cut the sound of that breath in half.

“Activate the emergency protocol, please.”

[“Yes. It’s activated. I’ve just sent every awakened a warning not to access SG Net, in the names of the constellations.”]

That was true.

The awakened being dragged along by their companion’s monstrous strength suddenly lifted their heads with a “Huh?”

“What? A constellation just...”

“You got a message too?”

“Yeah. But, [Beware of boats]? What the hell does that mean?”

“No, wait. The messages keep coming. [Beware of boats], [Do not approach bodies of water], [Do not observe anything resembling photographs or drawings of boats]...”

The awakened’s voices grew quieter.

“Fuck. What is this? Why’s this happening all of a sudden? This is scary.”

“Wait a second. Come to think of it, when we went there today, we also... Hey! Hey! Just stop! Why’s this bastard so strong?”

I sprang forward and first subdued the deranged man. Fortunately, people infected by this anomaly could be knocked unconscious.

“Ah, Mr. Undertaker! Th-thank you!”

“...”

My eyes found something literally “abnormal” on the deranged man’s body.

Two of his fingers had been cut off: the index and middle fingers. A pair of scissors was embedded at an angle in the severed stumps.

I looked at his companions.

“What is this?”

“W-we didn’t do it! Geumseon, he...”

“He cut off his own fingers, then jammed the scissors into them?”

“Y-yes! It’s true! Mr. Undertaker! I know it’s hard to believe, but we really didn’t do this!”

The awakened didn’t need to plead their innocence with such desperate eyes. I believed them.

And I thought.

Of the awakened who must have been on SG Net until moments ago.

Of what would have happened to the awakened across the Korean Peninsula—including its administrator, Seo Gyu—who had no other entertainment and spent all their time on an internet forum, after seeing an “image of a boat.”

Of the repercussions that could sweep through in just one day after an anomaly emerged.

Of the kind of world we lived in.

“Saintess. Put me through to Yu Jiwon.”

[“Yes. You’re connected.”]

“Please relay my words exactly. Request cooperation from Dang Seorin and Cheon Yohwa. Assemble every member of the National Road Management Corps under the Operations Control Office. Prepare containment procedures.”

Yes.

It bears repeating: we humans live in a world that hates us.