A vast room, where classical music played softly from a turntable record that had become an ancient relic.
To the music, I blankly gazed out at the space beyond the window, where Saturn’s immense rings gleamed beautifully.
I was currently staying on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.
A venerable corporate state of colossal scale, founded in the fourth millennium and run by the Yurick Family and me,
this moon was ruled by Gateway Corporation, which held an unrivaled monopoly over trade, logistics, and distribution throughout the Solar System.
As I watched the majestic vista of space and noisily sucked cola from a glass bottle through a straw,
the automatic door behind me opened with a mechanical hiss.
Click. Click. Click.
Tilting my head back to look, I saw a beautiful woman with dazzling blond hair and blue eyes striding toward me in a sleek, futuristic suit.
"Oh, Milly, you’re here?"
"Noah, all preparations are complete."
At her words, I set the completely empty cola bottle on the table and grinned.
"Yeah? Then shall we go work up a sweat for the first time in a while?"
My personal secretary, Milena, smiled sweetly, a blush coloring both her cheeks.
"Every year, this is the one day I wait for."
"Ah! Really?"
"Yes. Truly."
"Then I’ll have to put some real effort into it today."
I followed her out of the room.
"This is as far as you need to take me. I’ll go alone from here. Cheer for me, sweetheart."
"Yes, Noah! You can do it!"
The farther I walked alone through the dark corridor, the more the deafening cheers and shouts of countless people rolled in from afar like waves and battered my ears.
My heart began pounding in time with those vibrations.
At last, when I reached the end of the dark corridor, an arena so vast it defied imagination opened before me.
The moment I looked upon the stands filling the arena, a gasp escaped me.
A brilliant golden wave was surging there.
I confidently strode to the center of the stage and roughly tore off the outer garment I was wearing.
My perfectly trained upper body filled the great central screen,
and as I whipped the atmosphere into a frenzy with passionate performance and dance moves,
thunderous cheers roared through the arena as though they would blow its roof away.
Matching the fevered atmosphere, I sat before the drum kit that had been set up beforehand and gripped the heavy drumsticks in both hands.
At the same time, dazzling lights shining down on the stage blazed to life all at once, and the band members waiting in the darkness emerged at my signal, each taking hold of their instruments.
The tens of thousands gathered before me, and the band members standing onstage with me.
Every single one of the countless people assembled here was a descendant of Alexei, my eternal family—
in other words, one of the Yurick Family’s children.
There were probably a little over ten million children of the family throughout the Solar System, weren’t there?
Even that terrifying number had been artificially controlled through rigorous birth-control planning, for the efficient management of Titan and the corporation.
Today was an immensely meaningful and important day: the anniversary of the Yurick Family’s birth.
Before everyone, I looked at the children who had sweated and practiced music alongside me for so many years, then struck the drumsticks sharply together.
"Let’s do this!"
"Yes, Noah!!!!"
Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!
We launched into a ferocious performance, burning with passion from head to toe.
With the explosive beat of the drums shaking the arena, the fervent cheers of the Yurick Family’s children surged wildly toward Titan’s sky.
In a heat fierce enough to utterly sweep away the boredom of endless immortality, we brought the commemorative festival to a perfect, splendid close.
When the performance ended successfully,
I toured every district on Titan, meeting the children of the Yurick Family
and sharing in the joy of the festival across all of Titan.
"Noah, this is my newborn child."
"Oh, look at this little one... He’s the spitting image of Alexei. Hahaha..."
"How could you say such a thing...? I’m touched."
The newborn in my arms butted its head against my chest and bit the hem of my clothes.
As a result, the cloth was soaked through with the child’s drool.
"Oh, I’m sorry... Noah..."
"Ahahaha! No, it’s good. He looks healthy. He’ll grow up strong."
What the hell was up with this bloodline? Even after so many generations, every last one of them looked almost identical.
When I had their genetics enhanced, the tests had shown nothing genetically unusual.
Occasionally, a mutation produced children with black hair and black eyes,
but in such cases, they almost invariably possessed the Pariah gene, so they were given special care separately.
I strolled leisurely among the children, savoring the lingering afterglow of the festival.
It had taken an immeasurable amount of bloodshed over countless years to reach this moment.
And in the future, an inevitable fate awaited us—one that would demand even more blood.
That was why I let myself feel this sort of joy, so different from battle, with my entire body.
After all, there would be more than enough war and combat to enjoy until I sickened of them.
I was storing this peace and leisure in my mind and heart in advance, because someday they would become painfully precious.
Things become precious the rarer they are.
For all my talk, the children and I had endured no small amount of sacrifice and struggle to get here.
The Fourth and Fifth World Wars, the period of chaos following the collapse of the world government, corporate wars on a planetary scale, and the defense against Titan’s invasion.
That was only the brief version. In truth, we had to weather threats and wars too numerous to count.
Of course, war and battle were always thrilling enough to make my skin tingle,
but the grief of partings that came rushing in at their end still hurt.
The precious children who had departed before me... and even those whose suffering I had to end with my own hands.
If I had needed to bear all that sorrow alone, I might have lost my humanity too, just like the other Perpetuals I had met.
I had met countless Perpetuals over the course of my life.
From scheming bastards like Damon Prytanis, lurking and plotting behind the scenes,
to loners who spent their entire lives in solitude.
Most of the Perpetuals I encountered like that were twisted somehow.
In particular, because of a certain encounter in the past, I no longer wanted to set foot on the planet Earth.
Because he was on Earth now.
Yes. Nessos... the man who would one day be called the Emperor of Mankind
had personally come to find me in the eighth millennium.
It was just after I had won a brutal corporate war on Earth, filled with fierce conspiracies and bloody struggles,
and claimed every right to Titan, Saturn’s moon, as my rightful spoil of war.
At the time, for the children of the Yurick Family who had fought beside me and died in that war,
I was fasting for a month and mourning them alone in deep grief.
While the quiet sound of Buddhist sutras and wooden moktak drums honoring the dead drifted from afar,
an alien set of footsteps naturally intruded upon it.
Thud... thud... thud...
I had given strict orders that no one was to enter this place, yet heavy footsteps broke the silence and approached me.
The instant I sensed they did not belong to one of my children, I immediately opened a [Gate] in the empty air and coldly warned the intruder.
"Who dares walk about here?"
"..."
"Hah. No answer? Are you telling me to turn around and see for myself?"
"That is correct."
It was only a short reply, but a voice that weighed heavily not merely upon my mind, but upon the very weight of my soul.
Vast psychic energy naturally bled from it, an aura potent enough that an ordinary mortal would fall to their knees and be enthralled merely by hearing his voice.
The moment I heard it, I immediately knew who he was.
"Ngh... Nessos..."
"I was called that name once."
Slowly, I turned around and looked upon the being approaching me.
...It was a truly bizarre sight.
The man before me possessed the Emperor’s essence as I knew it from my past-life knowledge,
but he was not simply a single human being dressed differently.
Countless afterimages overlapped across his body.
The image of an innocent, primitive child,
the image of an old man who had faced the ravages of time head-on,
even the image of him selling rough mackerel kebabs on a street in ancient Earth.
All of humanity’s history shimmered strangely and overlapped within the shape of one man.
I took a breath and opened my mouth.
"You look like you’d make a damn good kebab."
"You recognized me well."
He readily acknowledged my mockery.
That was right. The man who would one day become humanity’s master really could make an unbelievably good kebab.
"Ha. What brings you here? Here to advertise kebabs or something? Too bad, I’m fasting right now."
"Noah, I came to speak with you."
"...You picked the exact moment when I most wanted to be left alone. Impressive."
"Yes."
"Fucking stalker..."
That bastard had been subtly trying to prod at my mind with psychic power from the very beginning.
It was such an imperceptibly subtle psychic ability that ordinarily, I would never have noticed it.
But the protection of Enuncia inscribed on my back blocked the Emperor’s psychic power and alerted me to the anomaly.
The Emperor’s eyes widened slightly as he looked at me.
"...It does not work. And to think you have that inscribed on your back."
"What, you want it?"
"..."
"Try taking it, then. But you’ll pay a harsh price. I’m fucking irritated right now because you interrupted my mourning for my precious children."
Seeing the killing intent in my eyes, the Emperor quietly averted his gaze.
He looked toward the altar where incense was burning.
"I have been most discourteous."
"Fuck, so you have at least a shred of common sense... Then stop scratching at my brain, too, will you?"
"Very well."
The Emperor completely withdrew the psychic pressure that had been bearing down on me.
Then he approached the altar, picked up a stick of incense, and walked to where I had been mourning. He lit it and respectfully placed it there.
Wow. My children would be living well in the afterlife now, getting to breathe incense personally offered by the man who would become humanity’s master in the distant future.
As the heavy silence between us continued to drag on, I could not bear the awkwardness any longer and spoke first.
"So what the hell did you come looking for me for?"
At my question, the Emperor stared at me silently for a moment.
They were merely a pair of eyes, yet mental pressure swept over me as though I were meeting the gazes of hundreds of millions at once.
A cold bead of sweat trickled down my spine as I was overwhelmed despite myself.
Prepared to enter a full-scale battle for my life at a moment’s notice,
I set every weapon stored in my personal space and every spatial spell to the brink of activation.
"I came because I was curious. And if possible... to persuade you to join me."
"There can’t be another man in the world who persuades people like that."
At my words, the Emperor gave a quiet laugh.
"Heh. The more I see of you, the more I want you."
"You already know, don’t you? That you and I are fucking incompatible."
"Yes. I knew that from the beginning."
The wordless standoff between the Emperor and me continued for a long time.
Simply standing face-to-face with him made it feel as though my sanity were being steadily ground away.
This time, the Emperor was the first to open his heavy mouth.
"I should leave now."
"Yeah, please fuck off already, you trespasser."
"But one day, I will certainly come again."
"Fuck, that won’t happen, so don’t ever come back."
"We shall see."
After that unpleasant encounter with him,
I hurriedly brought the mourning period for the children to an end.
Then I immediately gathered every child of the Yurick Family, along with all of Gateway Corporation’s assets and technology.
I erased every trace of myself from Earth and prepared the spaceships needed to settle completely here on Titan, Saturn’s moon.
Even now, the private audience I had with the Emperor that day sometimes becomes a nightmare.
In the dream, I am eating a delicious mackerel kebab, but not only the waiter serving it—
the chef, the cashier, even the janitor cleaning the restaurant all have the Emperor’s face. It is a horrific nightmare.
‘Noah, make the tip thirty-five percent.’
"Aaargh, get away from me!!!!"
Even now, merely imagining that nightmare makes the backs of my knees tingle.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register