From: Daniel Snyder Nighttime rain pelted Hokkaido. It was April, what once had been springtime, and the scent of rain in the newly-rebuilt city's downtown washed the air and the palate alike. People came out in spite of the rain, walking about the city center in search of entertainment and camaraderie. A young couple walked together, arm in arm. She was dressed in a white overcoat buttoned to her neck. One hand kept the bright red handbag at her hip from slipping to and fro, the other held her umbrella up over their heads. He was dressed in a sportcoat and khaki pants. He was jingling the change in his pockets absently. Although they were both visitors to the city, he glanced about himself, ill at ease, while she walked with a determined step. They stopped outside of a bar. She said to him, "This is the place Junko-san mentioned to me. Shall we give it a try?" "Yeah, why not," he replied. "'Mark's 7'--is that the name of the proprietor or something?" She nodded. "Junko-san said he was a foreigner." She listened to the noises from the inside for a moment, then added, "But it doesn't seem to be crowded." The man looked at his watch. "It's only just now 19:00. We're early, so...probably nowhere on this whole street is crowded." They fell silent, victims of their own indecision, before she asked him directly, "Shall we go in?" "Yeah, why not," he said, repeating his earlier verdict. She shook the rain off the umbrella, then took his arm again. They walked inside. The bar itself was almost painfully bright. The interior decoration consisted of white tables, white chairs, a white bar, mirrored walls and white incandescent lights. The couple's eyes were drawn to the only color in the bar. A row of bottles occupied a shelf behind where the barkeeper was serving drinks to a cluster of salarymen. They were talking easily in groups of three and four. "Shall we find a table?" she asked, trying to make out where the chairs were in the white-on-white scheme. When she got no reply, she prodded him. "Touji?" "I'll be damned," he said. "You know who I think that guy on the end is?" He was clearly the hanger-on, the one taken along as an afterthought. He was dressed identically to his fellow workers in a dark suit. His dark brown hair was more ruffled than his companions'. Hunched over his drink, it looked as though he was holding on to the glass to keep from melting away and running onto the floor. "Oh my goodness!" she gasped. "Shinji? Ikari Shinji? Is that really you?" He turned at the sound of his name, putting to rest the question. His eyes, as blue as the sky at dawn, hadn't changed in half a decade. He turned and waved at them, smiling; started to get up; sat back down, glancing at his co-workers; and then once again turned to them. "Hikari! Touji!" "Hi, Shinji!" They had come into the bar proper. Shinji finally stood and bowed to them, and almost beaned his head against Hikari's shoulder as she embraced him. Glancing to Touji for help, he found himself being embraced by his long-lost best friend as well. After a moment's indecision, Shinji slipped his arms around them in return. "Shinji, it's been so long now. Five years, hasn't it been?" "Uh...we all lost track of things after high school. So yes, that's five years now. Huh." They broke their embrace, and Shinji straightened his necktie. "It doesn't seem that long, you know." Touji and Hikari started leading him to a booth, and Shinji said over his shoulder, "Kacho, these are some old friends of mine, I'm sorry to leave you all." He sat down opposite them as Touji helped Hikari with her overcoat. "I don't get out much with the fellows from work...that reminds me, I heard on the Internet that your book's going to be translated and published abroad. Congratulations." "Thank you," said Hikari. She was dressed in a lavender kimono with a purple floral pattern stenciled on it. Shinji half-remembered having seen it before, and wondered if it was a family heirloom. Hikari continued, "Have you had a chance to read it yet?" "I'm afraid not, no." "Master!" shouted Touji to the bartender. "A bottle of sake, and make it the good stuff, if you would!" He smiled at Shinji. "Tonight is going to be a night to celebrate, Shinji. Five years, you know. So much has changed." "Yeah, I notice you've got some kind of facial deformity." "That's a moustache." "Are you sure?" said Shinji, smiling. "I think it's yeast from that homebrew beer you tried to make our senior year." "Well, no, it isn't." Touji blushed as Hikari tried not to giggle. "Anyway, I haven't tried doing that in years. Hey, here's the drinks!" The bartender set out a tray with a bottle of sake and three choko cups. Touji expertly filled each cup almost to the rim. They toasted their health and drank. The sake tasted dry in their mouths and left a warm burn in their bellies. Touji sighed. "Ah, you can taste the quality. That's good stuff. Hikari and me never spent money on good booze while we were at school." "So you did go to college?" Shinji inquired. "I remember you went through a period there where you were talking about becoming a master carpenter or contractor, or something." "Touji was studying French for a while," said Hikari, "and we're still trying to understand why. But he ended up with a degree in what they called 'biodynamics', which isn't biology but isn't physical education, either." Touji nodded. "After everything my sister went through...I guess I'd just like to make other people's suffering easier. Right up until the end, she was a brave and happy little girl. I'll never know how she did it, but she did. Now that we've got a little money, I can begin studying for my license as a physical therapist." "That's really good to hear. Good luck, Touji." Shinji turned his attention back to Hikari. "And you studied literature. I remember when your first book came out, I saved the review from the paper..." "That?" Hikari said dismissively. "That was just a novella and some short stories I threw together while I was studying. Honestly, Shinji, this book is going to be my first real book. I planned it, I wrote it, and to me it feels like a real book should be. In my heart, this one is number one." She stopped as Touji topped off her choko and they all drank. The mood was much more casual than it had been only a moment before, a result of the sake and the humor of its drinkers. Hikari stated, "You haven't told us about yourself, Shinji. So?" "Eh? 'So' what?" "So, did you and Asuka ever get together?" It all came back to him, the memories like boiling LCL. The pain of that night--almost five years ago that evening, he realized--rose up within him. He couldn't hide his scowl from Touji and Hikari, but he could tell them a half-truth. "Sorry. I'd forgotten that 'So?' and your asking me about Asuka went hand in hand." They laughed at that, like he had hoped they would, and he hurried on. "Asuka and I haven't talked since she got her degree our senior year. She moved back to Germany then. I didn't write to her, and she didn't write to me. That was the end of that." "Aw, how sad..." Hikari was cut off by Touji. "Thank goodness. You two never would've made it." "TOUJI!" "It's true! It's true! After the UN took over from SEELE and NERV, Asuka and Shinji didn't have anything in common anymore. They couldn't even agree on whether pork or beef was better in stir fry, how could they have any kind of a real relationship?" "Touji, as long as I've known you, you've never understood Sohryu Asuka Langley. Now, she really needed someone in her life, and Shinji has always been just the right person for her." "Yeah. A human-shaped punching bag. That's what The Demon was looking for in a date." "Touji, dear, please don't call her a demon. She is not a demon." "Those weren't clips she'd wear in her hair, those were horns!" "They were not horns." "They were! Shinji, tell her those were horns." Shinji smiled miserably. "Remember when the two of you called us the 'Married Couple'? You are married, aren't you?" "We're engaged," they said in unison. Shinji nodded, but changed the subject. "I sent off applications for those colleges the councilor suggested to me. I got accepted at a couple. I picked one school in Kyoto because it was the first letter of acceptance to arrive. I can't...I can't really say I had a good time or a bad time there. My roommates and I got along well, they were mostly quiet types. One fellow was a classical guitarist, and I played a few shows with him, doing duets that I'd helped him write. "I started taking psychology classes. Maybe I knew all along that I was a mess, and I wanted someone to help me, or maybe I just kind of fell into it. But there it was. Four years of my life, and I had a bachelor's degree in psychology. I liked it, I liked the work. I met interesting people and did some interesting things. I don't think I excelled at it or anything, but it was all right. No, no more for me, thank you, Touji. "My senior year in college, I realized that I'd need to get a job sooner or later. So I went to a job fair on the campus. There was a company there...here, let me give you a card." Shinji passed a business card across the table to Hikari and Touji. "Obana Limited, it's just an advertising firm. Someone read the resume that I gave them and thought that an Evangelion pilot would make a good spokesman, for the company or one of our accounts. Well, I'm not very photogenic or anything, so that didn't work out. They gave me a position as a salaryman and transferred me up here to Hokkaido." "What kind of work do you do now?" asked Hikari. "Up until a few months ago, I was responsible for staring out of the window all day long and signing off on anything that landed on my desk. Then the company got a contract with a hot springs resort aimed at the elderly. Nobody in Tokyo wanted to be bothered with it, so they sent it to Hokkaido, where they dumped it on me." "A hot springs," Touji burst in. "Shinji, not Hanagata Health Center?" "Uh-huh." "You mean to tell me," he said, "that YOU are the guy who came up with the opera-singing jellyfish?" "I am," Shinji declared. "I even wrote the melody of the jingle." "We are in the presence of genius!" Touji said. "Hikari, let's have a baby and name him Shinji. What do you say?" Hikari laughed. "What if she's a girl?" "We'll name her Jellyfish. Shinji, you're a genius. So what happened then?" "Money talks," said Shinji. "I've started getting real projects now. In fact, just today I finished my work on the Kobe monorail system they're planning. I guess I'm a success as an advertiser. That's my story." A moment of silence slipped by, then Hikari asked, "But you haven't kept in touch with anyone from before?" "No, I haven't," Shinji replied. "Asuka moved to Germany after she got her degree from Kantou Daigakku. My father is still in prison at Nuremberg. I heard from Kensuke just before he started that intensive English class he was taking so he could join Captain Ibuki in New Amsterdam--did you meet Captain Ibuki, Hikari? You know her? Good. And Rei...I never learned what happened to her after the UN invasion. She could be anywhere, for all that I know. That's everyone I really knew." Shinji finished off the last of his sake. Touji said, "Let's find them all." "Eh?" "Look at it this way, you two," he said. "Shinji, you just got done with your Kobe monorail thingamajig, and Hikari, honey, this was the last stop on the book tour. I haven't signed up for my physical therapy classes yet. Let's do it. Let's go find everyone." Hikari started to say, "You're crazy, Touji," but when she tried to explain to herself why he was she couldn't figure out the reason. In fact, crazy though he may have been, he was right--it was the best time to renew old friendships. Across the table from her, Shinji's mind was working like Hikari's. Saving him the trouble of coming to his own conclusion, she said, "Yes. Let's do it." "But...but..." "Touji's right, Shinji," Hikari said to him. "You're still an Evangelion pilot. Tell your boss you need a week to get together with all the other pilots for a reunion. There'll be no problem." "...I guess." "And don't forget, when my next book comes out there will have to be a big advertising campaign. Didn't you say a moment ago how money talks?" Shinji nodded, very slowly. He smiled. "I agree. Let's do it." From: Daniel Snyder The sky over the East Coast of the United States was covered in clouds. As dawn came, the cloud blanket changed from grey to purple to gold; by the time the sun had fought its way above the horizon and the morning had begun, the clouds were their familiar heavenly white. Into the morning flew a JAL passenger airplane, tearing through the whiteness with its turbine roar. Its destination was New Amsterdam, what to the old New York City Tokyo-3 was to Tokyo itself. 70 kilometers from its ancestor, it was perched where the new beach of the Atlantic Ocean met the Hudson River and the Taconic Mountains. A mere 200,000 people lived in the city; still, for historic reasons, the governments of the United States and of New York itself met there, as well as General Assembly of the United Nations. A special envoy from the UN met the three at the gate and showed them to a chartered limousine. Touji, Hikari and Shinji rode in style through the streets of New Amsterdam. The city was crowded, like its predecessor, but well-organized and astonishingly short. Unlike Tokyo-3, New Amsterdam had grown horizontally rather than vertically. Buildings of two and three stories, of red brick and concrete, grew like different species of mushrooms across the foothills. The dominant buildings were the government buildings. At tremendous expense, the original White House, Congressional Rotunda and Justice Building had been salvaged and restored. Reflecting the shift in power in the 21st Century, the three Capitol buildings were dwarfed by the UN General Assembly hall. This was an identical reproduction of the original buildings that had been destroyed in the Second Impact. That morning, with the overcast sky hiding the sun, the black face of the main building and the white clouds in the sky combined to make the skyline look like an eye, all-seeing, never blinking. Touji, Hikari and Shinji were shown into an office on the second floor of the building. After only a moment or two of waiting, they were joined by a lanky fellow in a brown NERV uniform. His drab brown hair was cut close to his head with exacting precision. On the bridge of his nose was a pair of wire glasses. From behind them, his eyes shown with an almost maniac energy. "KENSUKE!" "Hi, everyone! Werucom ta Nyuu Ansatudam!" Hugs were exchanged all around. "Hikari, boy, you look wonderful. I guess I'm almost a decade too late to be using a line like that, huh? And I heard about your book, congratulations on all your hard work. It's going to be published in English, too, so I'll be able to read it both ways. Touji, I thought you were going to be studying your physical therapy. I suppose that can wait though, can't it? I'm glad you wanted to come out for a visit. Shinji, I'm so happy to see you after all of this time. I had just about given up hope that I'd ever see you." "I'm happy to see you also, Kensuke," Shinji replied. "The NERV uniform suits you well. It suits you better than me." "Don't try and be ironic, Shinji, or I'll hit you." Kensuke waved them into his office. Like the waiting room, it was paneled in real wood. The desk, filing cabinets, computer, window ledge and all other flat spaces were covered in models of science-fiction robots, EVAs and Angels. The visitors sat down in folding chairs. The room was large enough to accomodate four with ease. Kensuke walked to a credenza by the door and poured green tea into a mug from a thermos. "Would anyone else like something to drink?" he inquired. "Hikari? Touji?" "I'm fine." "I'll take a cup," said Touji. He was looking at a picture on Kensuke's desk. It was the class photo from their senior year in high school. He remarked, "I wish I'd thought to smile for the photo. You look like you're the only happy person in the picture, Kensuke." "Yeah!" he said. "And that's why I keep it. I like seeing how people react to it when they realize who's the only smiling boy. Actually, though, you can see that Shinji's got a little bit of a smile." Kensuke grinned and added loudly, "Like he's got right now." The smile melted off of Shinji's face, to be replaced with a blush. He was looking at a photo of EVA-01. Some photographer had caught the EVA in profile just as it was projecting its AT Field to catch the falling Tenth Angel. The picture had been published widely abroad. Kensuke had gotten a large glossy reprint of the photo. "What, ah, what ever happened to the Evangelions, anyway?" he asked Kensuke. "Even though I'm still supposed to be part of NERV, they never told me." "You want to know? And do you want some tea?" "Yes, I'd like some very much." Kensuke gave Shinji a Styrofoam cup filled with tea and gestured to the photo. "01 is still somewhere under the Geofront, we presume. Same with the leftovers of 00'. 02 was encased in Bakelite and buried when they dynamited the remains of the Geofront. Now that the Technology of God doesn't work anymore, all of the EVA units are just big bunches of machine and pseudo-organic crap. Nobody wants them. The Japanese government can't pay to get rid of them, and there's nowhere to take them to. So there they'll be. "Let me tell you a little more about my work. People still want the Technology of God. NERV scientists have demonstrated mathematically that there's no science behind it anymore--that is, there's no reproducibility. What's working for you one run-through will not work for you the second time, and there's no way of telling what kind of modifications you need to make to your experiment to get it working again. We know this. But there are a lot of stupid people in the world. They think--shut up, Hikari. As I was saying, they think that because the Technology of God worked for about 20 years, that it can work again. We can't tell them why not because that's a bunch of big dirty secrets. It wouldn't work anyway, telling them, because people believe what they want to believe. "The other problem is that nothing is truly random in nature. We've demonstrated that the collapse of the Technology of God is 99.9999% complete. There's no way to be sure it's fully complete, because our statistics isn't that good. But just that one chance in 1,000,000 drives the same kinds of people who want to square the circle or find patterns in pi to pursue the technology. "So you have people with dreams of ruling the world investing huge amounts of money they've made since the Second Impact in the Technology of God. There's less than 200 organizations in the world at any time that are even able to reproduce the basic experiments from '97 in the South Pole. Of these, 10 or so will reach '99 or 2K. These people present a threat to themselves and to the world, because if it WORKS--if their experiments succeed as would be predicted by Akagi's Laws--then their health, and that of those around them, is in extreme danger. "That's where NERV comes in. We monitor them, we stop them, we incarcerate the money-men and give the scientists new jobs. The truth is that we're supposed to kill them all, but nobody obeys that. We're human beings, we don't like to take more lives than necessary. " Kensuke paused to take a sip of his tea. Touji asked the question that was on everyone's minds. "So...have you...you know...had to kill anyone?" Kensuke nodded gently. "It's my job. It's a necessary evil. I'd always wondered if I could do it. But don't let's talk about that. Planning operations and seeing them out isn't even what I spend most of my time doing. Most of my time is administrative. I help Maya make sure NERV has enough liberty to do our job, that we have funding, that the UN is informed, blah blah blah. I do a lot of reports, actually, piecing together the information our operatives have gathered together. Costa Rica, Saudi Arabia, Angola...I have to know about all these countries, who's in power where, and how much of a threat they present." "A moment ago, you mentioned Maya," said Shinji. "Isn't she still with NERV?" "Yes," Kensuke replied, "in fact I'm under her command. But she and Major Thorgarssen have a report to give by the end of the week on...uh..." He leafed through a small pile of printouts on his desk and glanced across the top of one. "...on 'The Status of the Technology of God as a Threat to World Security in Europe'. So she's getting ready for that. But we'll see her this evening for dinner." He casually tossed the paper aside. "Honestly, guys, Maya doesn't have the stomach for the killing aspect of our job; but she has experience, and she is a good scientist. She's better off not trying to be the senior officer around here and we all know it. Captain is as high as she's going to go, and that's that." "Speaking of which," Hikari broke in, "is Asuka with NERV? Or do you know where she is?" "Who, the Demon?" Kensuke said. He thought about it for a moment, and concluded, "No, I don't know. I do know who you'd need to talk to in Germany about it, though. His name's Lieberman, and he's in charge of SSO in the German branch. He's also the man you'll need to have sign off when you visit your dad, Shinji." "SSO? What's that, Kensuke?" "'Special Security Operations'. It deals with keeping the users of the Technology of God under lock and key, looking after the former pilots, things like that." "Oh, I see," said Shinji. "In that case, would he know where Rei is?" Kensuke laughed. "I was going to ask you a very similar question, Shinji. There's been no record of her since the day the UN had the bright idea of invading Tokyo-3." Shinji flinched. "It..it wasn't the UN's fault, I'm the one who was responsible..." "Whatever." Kensuke finished off his tea and stood. "Nobody here at the UN points fingers anymore, if it makes you feel better. Now let's get out of this office! I'm sick and tired of being inside, and I haven't heard your stories yet. Come on. Maya's meeting us for dinner, but we're free until then. Are you jet-lagged? Have you checked into your hotel yet?" They went to the hotel, a five-story white building, and left their luggage in their rooms. Their entertainment for the afternoon was a glass-bottomed boat tour of the Statue of Liberty. It was perfect viewing weather: the afternoon sun had come through the clouds, and the water was placid and clear. There was a neap tide, bringing the tip of the torch almost out of the water. Below deck, the tourists were within 10 meters of the Statue's crown. Shinji looked as best as he could at the timeless face, turned black by the water's shadows. It occurred to him that after the boat left, the Atlantic around her head would be completely still. The bronze woman in the ocean wouldn't "hear" anything or anyone. She would be all alone. "Are we all the Statue of Liberty?" he asked that evening at dinner. They were eating at a beautiful restaurant outside of the downtown area. The prices were reasonable, but Kensuke told them that it was hard to get reservations if you weren't someone in the UN or the government. Dress was casual. Bay windows looked out onto roads with light evening traffic. "Struggling forever and ever to get our hopes up above the waterline, but never succeeding?" Shinji directed the question to Maya, across the table from him. She had grown her hair out long since he had last seen her. She was wearing a blue dress and a white blouse, and there were large hoop earrings in her ears. Considering the question, she set down her steak knife and fork and chewed thoughtfully. When she could talk again, she said, "I don't think so. People aren't statues, people can change and do different things. Take NERV as an example. First we designed and built the EVAs. When the Angels came, we switched from so much science to a defense-oriented program. Then the Angels went away and the Technology of God didn't work anymore. Now we're a sort of an anti-terrorist organization. So there was one NERV, but three purposes. "People like your father, Shinji, and all the old people who want their own nations and their own tribes to be the top dogs, they are the statues. And what's happened to them? Your father is being held for crimes against humanity, and those partisan fools are laughed out of the UN. Maybe it's divine retribution. Everyone who can't move on is doomed." Maya turned her attention back to her steak, but Shinji was replying to what she had said. "Shigeru and Makoto died because of me," he muttered darkly, "is that supposed to be divine retribution?" The other four people at the booth went silent as Shinji's words sunk in. "Shinji..." began Hikari, but Maya interrupted, "No, it's all right. Shinji, that's a very good point. I should have had more respect for them and been quiet." She drained her glass of wine and winced as she forced herself to continue the thought. "Only I came out of the Control Room alive, Shinji. I don't know about your father...but for me, it was only luck that kept me alive. I was so scared of the gunfire that was going on, I was hiding under one of the desks. I didn't have the courage to be up there shooting with everyone else, I hid. And Lillith spared me in her wake because I hid out of her path. It doesn't go any deeper than that." "Can we change the subject?" said Kensuke. "If it's all right with everyone else." "I don't like to think," murmured Hikari, "that it's only coincidence that keeps people alive. What if there was no meaning in who lives and who dies? Wouldn't that mean that there is no God?" "I suppose not," Touji said. "What if there is a meaning, and we just don't understand it?" countered Shinji. "Wouldn't that be proof that there is a God?" Maya shook her head sadly. "It's no different from the Technology of God. The Technology of God works entirely randomly, so we say it's not science. God seems to work randomly, so we call belief in God 'faith'. Where there's a meaning we can understand, it's no longer faith, it's something else. You realize what this means...that any meaning we find in our lives will be an illusion, or faith, depending on what you call it." Kensuke tried again. "So!" he asked energetically. "What are your plans between now and the time you guys leave for Germany?" Touji sighed contemplatively. "We didn't have that much. Maybe we can stay around on our way back. Shinji here wants to see his father, and we're all planning to visit Asuka. Once all that's done, we can have fun." "Don't make visiting Asuka sound like punishment, Touji dear," rebuked Hikari. Seeing that Touji had no real way to reply, Kensuke said to Shinji, "Well, be sure and stop by when you come back." "Please do, Shinji," added Maya. "I'm sorry that we haven't had more time to spend together, I really am." "I could try to be better myself, from now on, I suppose," said Shinji. "I'll e-mail you, or phone, now. I've written everything down. "And hey, thanks for coming to see us. I'm having fun travelling around like this." It seemed an amazing thing for him to say, on reflection. From: Daniel Snyder Nuremberg largely had been spared both consequences of the Second Impact, the leviathan ecological changes and the presence of NERV. NERV had focused its activities on Munich and Frankfurt, larger cities with greater historical importance. But after the Instrumentality of Man unwound, it was Nuremberg whose historical importance took hold again. The two dozen members of SEELE, NERV and the UN who had been tied to the Instrumentality project--and lived through its abrupt end--were incarcerated in a prison the locals had taken to calling "Spandau", though its namesake was deep underwater. It looked like a ziggurat or a Mayan temple, cut off above the third story. In its walls were the prisoner's cells; in the middle was an exercise yard. Watch towers and barbed wire fence surrounded the prison, protecting the 50,000 inhabitants of Nuremberg. But it was all for show. The prisoners had nowhere to go to but the gates of Death. So they repaid their debt to humanity. It was to the exercise yard that Shinji was taken. Gunter Lieberman was a tall, imposing man of about 55. He was showing the effects of age: he was paunchy, and the cheap cigarettes he smoked had given him a persistent cough. With a meaty hand he gestured to a rickety chair set up on the concrete. "You can wait here if you like." "No, thank you," said Shinji. "I'd rather stand. He can have it." "Very well. I'll go and bring him out for you." Lieberman walked to the far end of the yard jingling a ring of keys. Shinji wondered at the anachronism--was having technology so primitive another way of punishing the guilty? He glanced around. The doors of the cells seemed to be of metal with tiny peepholes at the top. Were they uninsulated concrete on the inside? What did it feel like to be a prisoner here? Shinji saw his father from afar. Ikari Gendo was dressed in a grey jumpsuit. He wore chains on his ankles, and his right wrist was chained to a belt around his waist. He shuffled as he walked. In the eight years since Shinji had seen him, his hair had started to whiten. His hair and beard were now better groomed than they had been when he was commander of NERV. He looked thin. Lieberman seated the older Ikari in the chair and said flatly to Shinji, "Take all the time you want. We'll collect him when you're done." "I understand." The security man left them. Shinji and Gendo looked at one another, silent for a moment in their world of sterile concrete. "Father," Shinji said, bowing. "Shinji," Gendo said, nodding his head. "It's been a very long time." "Yes, eight years." Glancing to the door he had looked at a moment before, Shinji asked, "How are you being treated? Is your quality of life good?" "All things considered, yes," Gendo replied. "I have three bland meals a day. I have one hour of exercise three times a week, in this yard. Usually I jog. In my own room I practice calisthenics, and I meditate." He cleared his throat. "I've received your New Year's cards, but always late. You're working now, aren't you?" "Yes, in advertising." "I never would have imagined that." Behind the lenses of his father's glasses, Shinji thought he saw a flash of something. Amusement? "How is the advertising business going for you?" "Well. Actually, quite well. Maybe I can send you some of my work." Gendo shook his head. "I don't think you'll be able to. I've reason to think they destroy most of the mail I get." "Oh." Shinji fell silent in defeat, but then ventured, "Maybe I can bring some with me, if I get to visit you again." Gendo made no reply. Undeterred, Shinji went on. "Hokkaido's a really nice place to live, actually. There's a nice park where I live, and there's a local symphony. I met the conductor after one of their concerts, he's a nice sort of fellow. I could try playing with them, it would be nice, if work doesn't take up too much of my time. I don't know what the future will be like..." "It will be nice," muttered Gendo. Shinji went quiet in an instant. Ikari Gendo was staring off at some place far away that Shinji's body just happened to be blocking his view of. Gendo snarled, "Nothing like this was supposed to happen. There was a plan. Yes, there were a few flaws with it, there were difficulties. But each and every one fell, like trees under the ax. Right up until I stepped into Lillith's hangar, I had not come up against one--NOT ONE problem that was unaccounted for, that I couldn't handle. Then I walked into that room..." "Yes." "And do you know what I saw there?" "You saw me, and the EVA." "I saw you and the EVA helping Lillith down from the cross." Gendo gazed at Shinji with a look of fire. "The last thing I remember is two hands reaching out for me. Two hands...my God, they were so large, and so fast." Shinji said quietly, "That's the last thing I remember too, Father. Well, I remember that Lillith grabbed you. But after that, everything's a blank." "A blank, eh?" "Yes." "You don't know how we got out?" "No." "We had been missing for two days. Lieutenant Ibuki struggled out on her own, and those two UN soldiers weren't in the Geofront proper. We made it to the outside world, arm in arm, suffering from dehydration and malnourishment but without a single scrape or scratch on our bodies. Apart from my arm, that is. How did we do it, Shinji?" "I don't know." Gendo grunted. "Let me give you a question that I HOPE you can answer, Shinji. Why did you do it? Why did you let Lillith go free? And I want you to start from the beginning." Shinji was feeling weak. He sat down on the hard concrete and closed his eyes to concentrate. "I was angry. That's where it all started." "Mm-hm." "I was angry at the whole world. Kaworu, the Seventeenth Angel, he was my friend. He felt the pain I was going through. He cared about me unconditionally, he accepted me for who I was. I'd never felt so happy as when I was with him. I was scared by it, but I loved it." "Then you killed him." "Yes, I had to kill him. I deserved to be the dead one. He was so strong and beautiful, and I was...you know what I was like. I was mad at everything and everyone for the state of my life." "So what did you do then?" "I thought...I started thinking that if Kaworu was such a wonderful person, maybe the Angels weren't so bad. Yes, they attacked the city, they killed people, but maybe there was a reason for it all." Gendo nodded. "And when you were down in Lillith's hangar chasing after the Angel, you'd seen her there on the cross." "Yes." "So you thought of asking her about Angels." "Yes." "Why did you take Unit-01?" "Because I was impatient. Because the only way I knew to get down there was through a hole in the floor. Because I wanted to make everyone in the Geofront angry with me." "You didn't know about the UN invasion?" "No, I didn't." Shinji sighed. "I probably would have done everything the same anyway. It didn't matter to me." "So while we were all distracted with the United Nations assault force, you took EVA-01 on a joyride." "Yes." "You made it down safely, I presume. Tell me what happened then." "I remember it vividly, but...it's hard to explain. You could say, I talked to Lillith." "You talked with her?" "Yes, but not in words, or even images. In concepts. I had ideas in her presence like I've never had before. It was an entirely different way of perceiving reality." "That stands to reason," replied Gendo. "What did you 'talk' about, as it were?" "Everything. What the Angels are. Their relationship to humans. Adam. Lillith herself. The experiments that were conducted in the Antarctic...she told me that you knew you were vivisecting a sentient being when you began." "We did know, yes. But we had to know about the Angels." "I'm sure," said Shinji without listening. His eyes were watering with the memory. "So much pain she told me about. Finally, she reached a stopping place, and I said that I wanted no more. I told her that I would let her go if the Angels would leave us be." "That must have been when I came in." "About then, I suppose." "You took Lillith down from the cross." "Yes. She tore off your arm..." "...because that's where I had implanted Adam." "And then she left." "She took the force of God with her as she left." Father and son fell silent for several minutes. Shinji broke the spell when he asked, "What more do you want to talk about?" "What more is there to talk about?" said Gendo. Shinji swallowed hard. "It's funny...I'd wanted to talk to you for so long, but now that we're here together I don't want to actually say anything to you." "That's the way things are, I suppose." A moment later, Shinji stood and bowed to his father. "Thanks for talking to me, Father. We should do this more regularly." "Yes, I agree." Gendo got to his feet before bowing to his son. "Please come and visit me again. And tell Rei, if you see her, to visit also." "Actually, Father," said Shinji, "I don't know where Rei is. I haven't seen her." "No? How sad. She must have died in the Geofront." "Well, goodbye." "Goodbye." Shinji turned around and walked to the door he had come in from, looking for Commander Lieberman. From: Daniel Snyder Shinji found Touji and Hikari chatting over coffee in a cafe near where they had left the car. They were surprised to see him. "You couldn't have been with him more than a few minutes, Shinji," said Hikari. "I told you, I didn't think it would take that long." Touji rolled his eyes. Hikari went on, "Did Lieberman-san give you any information about Asuka?" "Uh-huh," Shinji replied. "Well, not much. He said she's living a few kilometers outside of town in someplace called Pegnitz. We need to go east out of town and then north along the river." "What was that name again, Shinji?" said Touji as he struggled to unfold a map. "Pegnitz." "Pegnitz...by a river...mm, that looks like more than a few kilometers. We'll finish our coffee and go, then." The drive took them a little over an hour. The road passed between a wide, slow river and forests of oak, growing back with neglect from centuries of harvesting. They drove through some small towns, but saw few people, and the buildings away from the road looked run-down. Hikari was reading the tour book she had brought. "The book says that this area used to be well populated. But after the Second Impact, the German government started encouraging people to move to the cities. At the same time, there was a depression in the local businesses, so almost all the young people have moved to the cities. Most of the local businesses are services, with a little lumber." "Doesn't it bug you that Asuka lives here of all places?" asked Touji. "I'm not criticizing her, really, because she can live where she wants to. But this is the sticks! Asuka got her first college degree while I was still in the 'girls are icky' part of my life, and then she got another one while we all were in high school. What's she doing living in a place that doesn't even look like it has a public library?" "I'd wondered that also, Touji, dear," Hikari replied. "Shinji, did Lieberman-san say what she was doing for work, or anything like that?" "Nope, all I got was this address." Shinji pulled out the paper. "Number 49 Einbahnstrasse. I guess we'll find out all when we get there." Touji glanced up at Shinji in the rear-view mirror, then took his eyes off the road for a few moments to turn around. "Shinji...really, how did things go with you and your dad?" "It was pretty much what I had expected," Shinji murmured. His voice was almost lost over the sound of the road. "Did he give you a lot to think about?" "No. That's...that's probably why I'm behaving like this. I'm sorry." "No apologies needed," Hikari said reassuringly. "We understand now." Shinji made no reply. They were soon inside of Pegnitz. It was decrepit, a town that had been abandoned to atrophy. Entire city blocks were boarded windows and peeling paint. In verdant contrast, the forest around the town seemed to be flourishing. Touji parked the car outside of the town's one tangible business, a greengrocer. While Shinji and Touji picked up supplies for a light lunch, Hikari got directions from the cashier, her half-remembered German supplemented with a phrase book and a warm smile. Einbahnstrasse was on the very edge of the town. Although they could have parked anywhere, it was a nice day, and Hikari insisted on walking. Touji and Shinji were each burdened with a bagful of picnic supplies. "Isn't this fun and exciting?" Hikari said to her two companions. "No," came Shinji's frank and cutting reply. He looked more miserable than he had in the car: his eyes were focused straight down on the ground; Hikari saw that the bag of groceries was shaking in his hands. "Shinji?" she asked. "What's the matter?" "It's nothing," he snapped, "forget about it." "Oi." Touji spoke loudly both to draw attention and to silence the other two. "What do you want to bet that that's Number 49?" He was pointing to the only building in decent repair on the cobblestone street. It was a two-story wooden house, identical in shape and construction to the others on the street. All along its front, and along the neighboring buildings', were abstract drawings in a child's hand. The artist was a child just old enough to be starting school. Although her back was to the small group, they could see that she was wearing a dress of immaculate white lace and sturdy black boots. Her dark brown hair, tied in a ponytail with a pink ribbon, had a slight wave to it. Shinji said something under his breath, but Hikari didn't quite make it out. She was hurrying up to the little girl. "Mein Fraulein!" she shouted, but the little girl didn't stop her drawing. As Hikari drew closer, she heard a snatch of what the little girl was singing. It was two lines from Beethoven's Ode to Joy, sung over and over as only a child can focus on a snatch of song; but the lyrics were different: "Kimi ni mo nimineru...harugana hoshi ga...kimi ni mo..." "Mein Fraulein!" Hikari said again, and went on, "Guten Tag, können Sie mir sagen..." She fell silent when the little girl turned to look at her from beneath epicanthic folds. She said in imperfect Japanese, "Oh, you're foreignersh! Mama will wanna meecha!" The girl ran across and up the street, disappearing into Number 49. Hikari didn't move. _That child's face,_ she thought. She turned back to where she had come from. "Shinji, do you..." "To hell with it all," he said brusquely as he brushed past her, "let's go on in." Hikari looked to Touji, who had been saddled with both bags of groceries. He shrugged perplexedly and fell into step behind Hikari. >From the doorway, the girl poked her head out excitedly. "Come on! Come on!" The trio found themselves in the unlit living room of the house. Dust lay everywhere; only a token effort had been made to sweep the floors and clean the windows. There was furniture present, all hidden under dust cloths like giant beasts slumbering. An odor of decay cut through the murky air. Directly opposite the foyer, a staircase led up to the second story of the house. Their psychopomp stood at the bend in the staircase, beckoning them. At a loss for words, Shinji, Hikari and Touji fell into line behind her. "Mama! Mama!" the little girl shouted as they came up to the top, "we got vizhitorsh!" The staircase had made a half-turn as they walked up it, so that the three Japanese people were now facing towards the street. The room that they were looking at once might have been a dining room, but had been converted into a study. There were a few more pieces of furniture beneath slipcovers. The light streaming in from outside showed piles of books, many open and showing recent signs of use. The tableau was dominated by the large windows of the second story and the writing desk that was next to it. It was covered in magazines and reams of paper. At the desk was a young woman in a black full-length dress. Her auburn hair was long and unkempt, but clean. The nails of her fingers were properly clipped. In her right hand she held a quill pen, a throwback to a forgotten age, and was scratching away on a sheet of paper. Her left hand was pointing at words in the dictionary. "Zeitung...Zeitschkraft...Zunge? No. Zehe...perhaps here...with Zähne...ja, das ist gut...nein, besser..." Sohryu Asuka Langley set down the pen and laid eyes on the three people standing at the head of the stairs. Her eyes lit up and she smiled, a broad, unhealthy smile. Her giggling began. "So! You finally came back to me! I just knew you would! You couldn't stay away from me could you? All that nonsense about how you weren't interested, it was just to...to challenge me, to see if I could do it, wasn't it? Well, I did it, Shinji! I made it! I'm successful! I did it all by myself, I didn't need you, or your stupid NERV, or anybody but myself. Kyoko and I are just fine without you, Shinji. We're happy. And now, you've come back to us, CRAWLING like the little bug that you are, all the way from Japan!" "Hey, hey!" bellowed Touji. "What's going on here? Asuka?" Asuka snorted. "Well, I wouldn't expect a complete idiot like you to understand, so let me explain. I am none other than your old acquaintance Sohryu Asuka Langley, former pilot, former physicist, and now the single greatest compiler of crossword puzzles EVER known in the entire history of the German language! And this is my lovely little daughter Kyoko, the product of my love and about 5 minutes of help from Shinji." At the mention of her name, the little girl ran over to stand proudly at her mother's side. "This is our own private neighborhood in the beautiful town of Pegnitz, in the heart of Bavaria. And we're happy. We're so, so happy without you, Shinji you big stupid...stupid thing! Go on, run away!" Shinji was staggering down the stairs as fast as he could, with Touji in hot pursuit. Hikari stared slack-jawed from one pair to the other. "ASUKA? You WHAT?" "Go get him, Hikari." "Come again?" "I said go get him, Hikari. I'm not done talking to him yet. I'll talk to you in just a minute, but I want to finish up with that stupid Shinji." "Asuka..." Hikari gulped down some air and made a snap decision. "Asuka, I'll be back in just about five minutes, I need to talk to Shinji, but I'll be right back, so don't go anywhere, all right?" "Go on, we'll be right here. That idiot..." Hikari careened outside of the house to find Touji supporting a sobbing Shinji in his arms. He was struggling to say something. After a tissue paper from Hikari's handbag, he managed to say "Namu...amida..butsu..." "Shinji," Hikari said gently, "what was Asuka talking about? Please tell us, we want to know." Touji helped Shinji down to the cobblestone pavement. Shinji accepted another tissue, and was silent for a moment before going on. "It's been so long...I don't know if you remember, Asuka was furious with me after she came out of her catatonia and piloted the EVA for the last time. She thought she had won the battle against the Production EVAs and then I'd stolen away her victory. Before we started going to school again she'd spout off about how all along I'd been plotting with Father to humiliate her in order to make the perfect EVA pilot. "I couldn't take seeing her every day anymore, and she had plans to go back to college, so we started living apart. I was handling it just fine, I guess. But Asuka didn't ever quite recover, I don't think. Maybe it was the stress of her new school and the fact that she was living all alone, with just her thoughts, that drove her over the edge. "There must have been some point I could have stopped her, or said no, or pulled her back. But I was 15 at the time. I didn't know anything about that kind of stuff. She'd come over at odd times and complain to me about how aggravating her life was, and how she was barely hanging on. And I'd pretend to listen. "That worked well for the first two years or so. Toward the end of junior year we were all worried about exams. That meant that if Asuka wanted to come over and talk at me, I'd let her in, but I had work to do. Sometimes, if I was stuck on a math problem or something, I'd ask for her help. She'd solve it all right, but spend more time telling me how dumb I was than teaching me about math. She started bringing over cheap booze and getting drunk watching television while I was cramming. "During our senior year she got so drunk she threw up all over the floor. I cleaned the mess up and told her to go, and she went. She didn't come back for a few months after that. One night...one night I caught her, trying to climb up to my third story balcony carrying a six-pack of beer. She told me herself when she got up there, it was about the dumbest thing she'd ever done. I told her goodbye, she told me goodbye, and I thought that was the end of that. I wasn't happy with it, how it had begun or ended...'cause...because I know Asuka is a better person than that. Or I thought so. "Five years ago the end of this month Asuka showed up at my apartment complex buzzing to be let in. I'd already been admitted to the University, it was the weekend, so I thought there wouldn't be any harm in her talking to me. I let her in. She was already piss-drunk. She sat me down at the kitchen table...and for two hours she trashed everyone she knew. You, and you, and Kensuke, and...everyone from our class, even people like Misato-san and Kaji. Everybody, she counted off their faults and how pathetic everybody was. "When she finally got to me, she... "She handcuffed me underneath the table and had me against my will." Touji and Hikari were thunderstruck. When he could speak again, Touji said, "What do you mean, she had you against your will?" "I MEAN I DIDN'T WANT TO FUCK WITH HER, THAT'S WHAT I MEAN!" Shinji shouted. "Shinji," said Hikari. Her eyes were watering. "That's all a bunch of lies, isn't it? You're kidding, right?" "You saw the proof. Maybe in some other universe it could have worked with us. Maybe if we'd started something right after we met. But by the time we were in high school, I knew what kind of a nut she was, and I didn't know how to handle her. I was tired of trying. She was a friend who wanted to stay part of my life, and that was it. A very beautiful, very lonesome friend. "I realized in college, after it had happened, that it wasn't the sex she wanted as much as the sex act. She couldn't have my heart, but she could take my body. And I don't know if it was a moment's inspiration or her genius, but she got what she wanted. Only Sohryu Asuka Langley could rape a man. "The worst of it is...there was never any question in my mind that I wouldn't tell you guys. I felt like I deserved it. I felt like I had pushed her away for long enough and not known what to do that I was asking for something like this to happen. Well, it did. I don't hate her for it anymore. It's just a big empty spot in my life." They were all three seated on the cobblestone road, staring at the lithic sea that made it. Above them scattered clouds, borne on a gentle wind, blocked out the sun now and again. In the empty street, none of the usual sounds of cities could be heard. "Shinji, you're a complete mess," stated Touji. "Yeah. I know." From: Daniel Snyder Asuka had returned to her crossword puzzles. By producing at least four crosswords per day, she was assured of enough income to survive on: food, utilities, clothes for Kyoko, and a new dictionary when she fancied one. Shinji's long-delayed arrival had cut into her schedule, but not derailed it. In fact, turning the idea over in her mind, there was some kind of inspiration in his arrival. Perhaps she could take some of those quaint images the Japanese associated with love and work them into a puzzle. That would be an interesting challenge! One worthy of the mind of Sohryu Asuka Langley, to be sure. The first word she would use would be "sakura", naturally. But, did "cherry blossom" have an appropriate translation in German? Her editor might not like her using the original Japanese, that meddlesome old fool...too much of Asuka's time was spent rewriting to get around those changes her editor said were "called for". Ridiculous! "Mama, Mama, they're comin' back inshide!" "I hear them, dear. Don't worry, they won't hurt you." It would be like that senile fellow to object to the original Japanese. Well, there were other words to be used. "Parasol" was certainly one. And then there were flower blossoms. Maybe...maybe she could do a crossword around flowers only indigenous to Japan! That would be hard, and truly worth her effort! "Um...Asuka-chan?" Wait. Not Shinji's, that voice. Asuka turned and looked back towards the stairs. Shinji and that friend of his Touji were there, for sure, but it was Hikari who had spoken. Hikari glanced nervously at Shinji. Then, in a bright and happy voice, said "Would you like a job with NERV?" "Eh?" "Would you like to go back to work for NERV? They'd really, really like to have you around. Right, boys?" Shinji and Touji nodded eagerly. "Right, NERV really wants to have you in particular back. In fact, as soon as possible! Today, even!" Asuka set down her pen and turned her chair around to face them. "Did you lot come out here today just to make me a job offer? Is that all?" "Who, us? Why no!" Hikari tried as best as she could to laugh at the idea. She had the sensation that her skin was actually crawling off of her bones. "No, we're here to see you, of course, but we heard about this job, and it seemed just perfect for you! We couldn't resist telling you!" Hikari signaled Shinji to come forward. He was glancing at a small piece of paper clutched in one hand. "There's a fellow in the Materials Sciences Division of NERV, called Dr. Joseph Morgan...and he needs someone to help him work on the EVA exoskeletons. He's looking for someone with an advanced degree in physics, someone who could work whatever hours she wanted...you and I are still technically with NERV, so you'd be a shoo-in for the job." His speech provoked no reaction from Asuka. Before his courage had a chance to wither, he pressed on. "You and Kyoko could come with us back to Nuremberg. The interview might be as early as tomorrow. There's plenty of housing at the NERV facilities for a short stay. Then, when you get the job, the two of you would get to go to Zurich, which is maybe someplace you've never been, but they still speak German, and so..." If she was listening anymore, Asuka showed no signs of it. She was slouched back in her chair, resting her elbow on the arm and staring off into space. Kyoko had disengaged herself from the newcomers and was leafing through a coffee table book on the floor, humming a tuneless melody to herself. A few moments passed. Asuka broke the uncertain silence. "You're not going to Switzerland with me, are you, Shinji?" "Uh.." Shinji stammered, blushing, "no. I've got a job in Hokkaido, you know." "Oh." Asuka swallowed. "What do you do there?" "I'm an advertiser. I've been doing it for almost a year now." He'd long put aside his middle-school memories of life with Asuka; then, in a strange room in a foreign country, he watched her searching her own heart, and those memories began to revivify, to burn. When her eyes stared at him with the ocean of her soul raging in their depths, the memories came. Good times, bad times...but most of all, times when he had been afraid of her presence. Her physical beauty, her physical force, the fear of unknown that came from being a 14-year-old boy around a 14-year-old girl. He was afraid of her again: he knew her heart, she knew his, what was she preparing to say? "You're too busy to come to Switzerland with me, aren't you?" He was scared, because there were only two answers he could give. One was a lie, a sweet lie that could lead him halfway across the world. It could take him to the bed of a beautiful, brilliant young woman. It could give him a beautiful daughter, just beginning her life and her learning. It could get him known in the uppermost circles of science, and possibly society. And the only alternative was the simple truth, a truth that--beyond a doubt--would break his own heart, and that of a girl he had grown up beside. The only thing he could think of was the smile of the Seventeenth Angel, Nagisa Kaworu. "I can't come with you," Ikari Shinji said. "But if you go, Kyoko can be with you. It wouldn't be too much trouble to get a bonus out of NERV to help you relocate. She can come with you. She'll learn French in school, too. Kyoko-chan?" She looked up from her book. "Yesh?" "Kyoko-chan," Shinji said to her, getting down on his knees to look her in the face, "how would you like to live with your mother in a whole new part of the world? You could make new friends and study fun things in school. Would you like that?" "Mama shays I don't have ta go ta school," Kyoko said defiantly. "...but there's still snow! And there's lots of new friends you could meet, you like to meet new people, don't you?" "Yeah!" "There you are!" Shinji patted the little girl's head. "Asuka, Kyoko-chan can be with you instead of me. And you can be a good mother and make sure she gets a good education." Hikari broke in. "I'm sure you'll do just fine, Asuka. Why don't you come with us to Nuremberg? We'll schedule an interview for you. Kyoko can come along." "Plenty of room in our car," added Touji. They fell silent as Asuka stood and started wandering around the room. Her steps were slow and measured. Her dry hands folded and bent round one another. She walked in front of her chair and back again; then past her desk, finally arriving at the window. She gazed down at the empty street below, almost longingly. "Shinji..." Flutter crept into and out of her voice. "Why can't things be simple? Why can't you just say you love me? I'm angry with you, God knows I am. You aren't nice to me. You don't...you don't treat me with the same respect everybody else gives me. Touji's afraid of me, you know that? And Hikari thinks I'm her best friend. I'm smarter than the teachers no matter where I go. NERV needs me as a pilot. That's all fine. But you have to love me. It's like the laws of Physics. Metals expand when they're heated. I need the boy who lives with me to be in love with me. "But you're NOT in love with me, are you? You think I'm just a big set of false impressions. Don't you understand, there's nothing wrong at all with trying to make people love you, or fear you. It's gotten me to where I am today. I am number one, I am Sohryu Asuka Langley!" She jabbed an accusing finger in his direction, her voice still thin. "You don't kiss with me unless I tell you to. You don't do nice things for me because you want to. You compliment other girls, like Wonder Girl, and Misato. You don't take me on dates. In fact, you're no kind of boyfriend at all! You...you can disappear from me for so many years, and then make some kind of grand entrance, trying to save me from some imaginary dead-end life I'm leading. You can do that. But you know what?" She took a menacing step towards him and declared, at the top of her voice, "Ikari Shinji, you can't ever, ever convince me you love me!" "Asuka..." Trembling with emotion, she dared to stare directly into his angel eyes. "...I wish I could." She stared at him, tried to analyze him, for almost a minute: his brown hair, his blue eyes, the cut of his suit, the way that his fists were clenched into tight balls and that Kyoko was moving to his side, staring at her mother with fear. Asuka made some kind of a squealing noise from the very back of her throat. She tried to run through the three adults, but Touji caught her as she passed by him. She whirled on her heel, trying to break his grip. "Asuka, where d'you think you're going?" he asked sharply. "Let me go, dummy! Let me go!" Hikari took hold of Asuka's shoulders. "Asuka, what are you doing? Don't you want to come with us?" "Of course I do! Of course I do! Of course." By the third time she had calmed down enough to look around for Kyoko. She took the child to her side protectively and draped her arms around Kyoko's shoulders. "Did you think I was going crazy or something? Of course we'll come with you. Yes. Let's go. Let's find your car. You said you had a car, didn't you? We can go to Nuremberg. Come along, Kyoko." Kyoko, Asuka and Hikari walked hand in hand to the car while Touji and Shinji made small talk with each other. During the drive to Nuremberg, Hikari fed Kyoko cheese, bread and some big black grapes straight out of the grocery bag. Asuka stared out the window, sometimes at the window itself. Touji was concentrating on the road ahead of him, and Shinji decided that he had nothing to say. His tongue felt hollow in his mouth. They reached Nuremberg in the middle of the afternoon, and were met by Lieberman on the prison grounds. He loaded Asuka and Kyoko into the back seat of a NERV truck. "Asuka," said Hikari through the window, "we'll come and visit you when you get the job." "If I get the job," she replied dully. "You'll get it, Asuka. I believe in you." Hikari blew Asuka a kiss through the window, and waved goodbye to Kyoko. The truck drove off with a moan a few moments later. Shinji felt his heart loosen as the truck became one with the daytime traffic. She wasn't an unknown anymore. Asuka had finally touched the Earth: hard, but not as hard has he had sometimes feared. "So what's going to happen now?" Touji asked. "Asuka's going to get a psychiatric evaluation and therapy, but she's also going to get a real job?" "The job's real enough," said Shinji. "That's what Kensuke told me. But Asuka won't have to go through therapy if she chooses not to. I really hope she does." Hikari smiled at Shinji. "Don't worry about Asuka," she said reassuringly. "She's tougher than she looks right now, Shinji. I believe in her." He replied very slowly. "I've...we've done all we can for her. I guess. It still doesn't seem like enough, but we're done." Touji nodded. "Yeah. Come on, Shinji. You said Kensuke had a lead on where Rei is?" Shinji brightened. "That's what he said. I'm looking forward to seeing her, a lot." From: Daniel Snyder Tokyo-3 had become a haunted city. Not merely abandoned, it was permeated by a very real force of fear. Only minimal security was needed to keep people at bay, and the soldiers that guarded its limits had tours of duty no longer than six months. No one wanted to be there. No living thing wanted to be there, either. No dogs prowled the city's empty streets, though there were easy meals to be had of food rotting on the stores' shelves. No birds flew in the skies overhead. The fishing off the coast was negligible. The only agent whose marks were visible in the city was time. Time ate away at the buildings, pulled down the traffic lights, and sent cracks through the concrete that made up the street. In time, everything in the city would collapse into the massive hole in the downtown over the Geofront. Lillith, the Angel on the cross, had left on a fierce and brutal column of fire that had taken her up through the hole. The blaze that accompanied her departure had leveled the city above the second story. It had also sucked up all the oxygen from the air as she went; the winds in her wake stripped the trees from the hillside and the litter from the streets. So Tokyo-3 became a town that nothing wanted to live in, and that nothing was able to live in. Eight years after the terrible events, the forest had expanded marginally to recover the land it had once occupied. But inside the city limits, there were no grasses or weeds. And yet, Aida Kensuke had told them--albeit somewhat cryptically--that this was where they could find Ayanami Rei. Shinji wondered how her quality of life was, if she was doing well. After he met her, he had an answer. Perhaps she had been waiting for them, there on the ground by her apartment building. She was still dressed in her middle-school uniform. She was smiling, a real smile, showing every one of her teeth. A distracted part of Shinji's mind told him that it was the first time he had seen her smiling like this, with her eyes wide open and her hands clasped in front of her. Ayanami Rei was a perfectly articulated set of bones, lying on the cement, staring up towards where her apartment had once been. "Nobody knows what happened," said Kensuke. "Maybe she lived through it, and somebody just told her to go home. Maybe she came back here because it was home for her. I, I hadn't thought about it before. Someone told me a couple of months ago that there were some human remains here in the city, but nobody had gotten around to recovering them." "WHY THE HELL NOT?" screamed Shinji to the empty city. "Isn't she still a HUMAN BEING?" Kensuke looked away. "It's not my responsibility, Shinji. I can't see every order through. Besides...the city should have been evacuated before the Seventeenth Angel appeared. People didn't know that it was Rei, you know. It wasn't anything personal. They thought that some kid had wandered in here and died." Shinji dumped the few items in his day pack out. He picked up Rei's skull and stuffed it down in to the bottom of his bag, followed by Rei's cervical vertebrae. "You know what, Kensuke? I quit. I am THROUGH with NERV." "I understand, Shinji." Touji and Hikari had followed Shinji's example and were gathering up Rei's limb bones. "It just doesn't make any sense...my father's getting fed and clothed, and at the same time, Asuka was abandoned and Rei wasn't given any proper respect as a human being. This is NERV's fault." Shinji was carefully slipping ribs into his pack. "So when you get back to New Amsterdam, you tell everyone that I've had enough, and I'm not even going to be an unofficial NERV employee, do you hear me?" "Yes, Shinji. You're right." They packed Rei's skeleton out of the city, through streets once familiar, now dead. On the hillside southwest of town, a few trees contemplated the city below them. It was a quiet, reflective spot. Shinji, joined by his friends, scraped out a grave where Rei's remains could be at rest. "I'll see that a headstone gets placed here," Kensuke volunteered, "or something. We never knew Rei, did we? Any idea what she'd want here, Shinji?" "None. Anything you do will be fine. Thank you, Kensuke." The next morning found Ikari Shinji in his apartment, staring idly out the window. He had been travelling continuously for six days. Although he had promised his employers he would return to work that next day, he found he didn't want to. The thought of going back to an office where he was unappreciated, only to make other people a lot of money, made him sick. Sickness made him think of hospitals. Hospitals made him think of hospital ceilings. The connection left him shivering with awe. He actually hated the state of his life. He hated his job, he hated living alone, and he hated himself for it being that way. Why couldn't he have kept his friends together after high school? Why couldn't he have gone out and gotten a real job? Was it too late for him? He looked around the room. His possessions were few in number: the computer, a few clothes, a couple of pieces of furniture--he hadn't needed more, he thought. In the bank was most of a year's salary. Really, the only thing he had was... Shinji padded across the apartment and opened a closet door. His cello lay at rest in like the trunk of a nude. The auburn wood was warm in the morning light. After a little tuning, his strings still sounded beautiful and melancholy beneath the bow. "Well," he said to himself, "I guess I can't write novels, or compile crosswords, or kill people. I can still play the cello. It's been a while since I tried composing, but...there isn't anything left for me." Two days later news arrived that the United Nations was constructing a monument to the memories of the people who had died in Tokyo-3. Shinji calculated that he had only really known a few dozen people during his days in the city. But there was a story he could tell about all their memories, and Shinji planned to be done with his exodium before Kensuke could finish his testimonial. The symphony began gently and slowly in the key of E major. The solo cello played a flat, uninspired melody; yet the soul with which Shinji played it brought life, and a sense of sorrow, to those wholly predictable notes. After a few minutes, Shinji's newly-acquired synthesizer added an orchestral backing in c# minor. The tempo changed from common time to cut time, appropriate for a march, and dissonant bass chords with suspended thirds seemed to hound the lead cello... -- Copyright 2000 Daniel Snyder. Permission to duplicate in any digital/binary/e-mail form; however, any physical printout is strictly prohibited. Shin Seiki/Neon Genesis Evangelion is the intellectual property of GAINAX. Any resemblance between persons living or deceased is purely coincidental. I realized, in the course of writing this story, that there were several similarities between my story and others'. The concept of Touji becoming a physical therapist stems from Alain Gravel's "The One I Love Is...", while having one of the Children studying psychology comes from "Farewell, (to the Final)" by Daruma and Ka-Wing Tam. Although I did not consciously choose to emulate these two stories, the fact is that I read both before writing this one. All similarities should be considered as flattering and not simply imitative.