Story Reader / Main Story / 26 Cradle Parade / Story
In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he compares the uneducated to a group of prisoners chained in a cave from birth.
In the allegory, the prisoners face the lightless wall in the cave, chained so that they can't turn their heads.
People outside the cave pass these prisoners by carrying torches whose light shines upon the weapons, passersby, and mannequins.
The prisoners, on the other hand, see nothing but the shadows of these things projected onto the wall because they've always been facing the wall.
Seeing no real objects, they naturally come to believe that the shadows are the only reality.
If they were suddenly freed from their shackles, stepped out of the cave, and forced to look directly at the fire and accept that all they used to see were mere illusions...
...they would surely feel pain in the process...
...And confusion, too.
Just like a mermaid princess venturing above the sea surface for the first time, gazing at a kingdom she's never seen from behind the reefs.
Just like a little girl lighting a match for the first time and catching glimpses of all her desires in its light.
Just like Cinderella asking her Fairy Godmother for the first time to let her go to the ball.
Now, Lamia, too, finds herself questioning herself between "opportunity" and "reality."
What do I want exactly...?
Until this day, if someone asked her what she desired, she would have answered without hesitation.
But wishes hold no value if they can all come true like a breeze.
She finds herself feeling lost with all these vibrant futures laid out before her.
Then take another step forward, be a bit more greedy, and make all your wishes.
The egg<//CONTROLLER> lies quietly in Lamia's arms, softly tempting her.
He hopes Lamia will be dominated by her desires and be insatiable with the status quo.
Then, he wants her to want the omnipotent egg<//MATCH> so badly that she refuses to help that commandant who wants the egg dead, so the commandant can slowly weaken with the injection and return to Mother's loving arms.
Light another match.
The one-winged girl, too, whispers softly in the midst of the bizarre illusions.
If this makes you happy...
I want... Mother...
I want her to fulfill all her wishes and be happy.
Searching for key nodes>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I want to ask her... if it was all really because of me.
No, please don't blame it all on me...
>>>>32 time nodes need to be changed
A baffling image flashes past her sight. Is that... a crack of some sort?
Lamia decides to ignore it.
Knowledge.
I want to answer all questions as my true self.
>>>>172 time nodes need to be changed
The crack seems to have grown a bit.
Friends.
I want to be like everyone else and not a monkey in a zoo to be stared at.
>>>>392 time nodes need to be changed
But these are still ordinary lives that people in peaceful times have had. They're not grand enough to be wished.
I want to be a pop star.
—Lamia, the superstar's latest single "Abyssal Melody"! The cover... wow! It's breathtaking!
Lamia!! Lamia!! Lamia!!!
...
The observer in the corridor sees the danger seeded by these wishes.
I want to be a knowledgeable teacher so that the best of students will humbly seek my advice.
The observer knows these are the consequences of tampering with time—and that she will tear the world apart if she doesn't stop.
I want to be an almighty philanthropist.
Everyone in need of the conservation area thanks you for your selfless kindness!
Please do allow us to make a game based on your beautiful body. It's going to last for centuries to come alongside your name!
I want to be more powerful than Alpha.
This is the power bestowed upon me by the Monastery of Purity, Gabriel.
The decayed skull reflects the mermaid's bleak figure.
Master, you've arrived.
Awakened by the rift, the Punishing pervades the land faster than ever.
No, there is more to it than that.
Merely tolerating Cthylla and her cradle slaughterhouse to appear in this world will drown it in a crimson flood.
The tragedy of the Pulia Forest Park is about to be repeated manifold.
Is this the future she hopes for? Or is it destruction led by ignorance?
The mermaid, lost in wishes, remains oblivious to the danger.
I will rise above the Ascension-Network and make all the agents bow before me.
...This planet, too, is ready to hatch.
Her wishes are innocent and her daydreams commonplace.
The observer knows the world couldn't bear the consequences of having these nodes altered.
And the mermaid who makes these wishes is walking down the safe corridor of the fourth dimension as she admires the countless futures illuminated by the egg<//MATCH>.
In these future simulations, Lamia has lived through countless lifetimes, having all her wishes fulfilled to the point of desirelessness.
...What wishes do I have left?
She keeps her eyes on the dimming light of the egg<//MATCH> and the fading Mind Beacon as she ponders how to make her remaining chances count.
In the mirror at the end of the corridor, she saw the shadow of Atlantis.
Mirror...
This brings Lamia back to those times when she sat on the other side of the screen looking at the dead and seeing an ideal world from reality.
She wants to reach out to those who are no longer there, like fishing for the reflection of stars in the ocean.
...Stars...
The daughter of the sea looks at the reflection of "stars" and makes her final wish.
I wish to venture into the starry sea, to see the starscape you longed for.
I want... to understand why it is that you chose to "move forward" even at the cost of your lives.
Lamia steps into the starry sky and leaves the solar system behind in a breeze. She raises her head, looking puzzled.
To her delight, she realizes that she has no trouble traversing black holes yet to be explored by mankind. She skims distant stars, feeling for the full outline of the universe beyond human cognition.
She's become nothingness and an eternal cosmic voyager.
She's sought all philosophical answers...
...And yet she doesn't know what significance these questions hold, nor what the answers mean. Jumping at her, these words are no different from a foreign language she's never studied.
She's seen the answers to science and everything unknown...
...and yet seeing them is all she's able to do with the answers. Existing beyond the darkness that shrouds the cave perennially, these unknowns remain a puzzle to her, so much so that she isn't even aware of them.
She embarks on an endless journey, throughout which she imbibes the stars and seas.
After a long period of bewilderment, she finally comes to grips with the meaning of all that could be seen and their significance.
Upon touching the "edge" of the universe, the darkness that has clouded her mind begins to fade.
The mermaid, dancing among the stars, looks back and laughs at the wishes she has just made.
Singing? Earning people's respect? In the vast universe, these desires seem so petty to the point of laughable.
She sways her tail and swims back to Earth. She plucks the moon in a breeze and toys with it in her hands.
Earth is hit with tides that swallow the land, sinking Atlantis—a place she once held dear—to the bottom of the sea.
The few remaining souls vanish beneath the sudden tide, their suffocating cries failing to reach her ears before "Mother" devours them all.
She gazes at the truth. Indifferent to the destruction, she lets herself drift around in the starry sea.
The rise and fall of 1,570,000 cosmic civilizations cycle like sunrise and sunset under her watch, flowing incessantly.
Under the unyielding laws of cosmic wars, the "key" in her hand, just like the moon, is nothing but a substitute for a toy.
Time, flowing ever faster, erases the countless years and ages, turning Lamia as silent as the stars themselves.
When the starry sea before her eyes collapses to zero, the light of the Mind Beacon, in reality, will, too, extinguish.
Time's up.
She gazes lovingly at the universe as it reboots in the simulation, refusing to return from this immensity to a reality she knows to be dull and draining.
...Reality...
The Lamia in the real world is still the same villain who needs to fight with all her might just to survive—making most of her wishes nothing but a far-fetched fantasy.
...
By now, Lamia is very clear about the egg's intended purpose.
State your goal, and it will fill the path to your goal with the actions it thinks you need to take—after which you'll be shown what it is like if everything goes as you wish.
But all these actions are in the past.
Could it be that Vonnegut has figured out a way to travel back in time?
Lamia suddenly recalls that Luna has mentioned in passing that Vonnegut was looking for a "key."
A key...
If the egg is the key, what door can it open?
As Lamia murmurs to herself, the phantoms around her immediately show her the answer with the light that remains from the Mind Beacon.
When that weird tower...
...turns red again?
But how is she supposed to go to the "tower" in the Clean Zone? And how is she supposed to make the "tower" red again?
But it could be a second tower, right?
How is she supposed to travel back in time using the tower?
How is she supposed to change the time nodes she's seen in her simulations one by one?
And where exactly is Vonnegut trying to go by doing this?
While Lamia still doesn't know the answers to these questions, she now sees how important the egg is.
This is what Luna and Vonnegut want. I'm sure this is the solution to all the issues that came with re-filtering.
...Re-filtering.
—It finally hits Lamia.
Just like the Corrupted, the M.I.N.D.s of agents have been corrupted long ago, yet their M.I.N.D.s are stable enough for their "self" to persist.
Perhaps, to humans, agents and Ascendants are already as dead as the Corrupted.
Losing connection with the Ascension-Network means losing oneself, which is why it's so hard to break free.
Transcendants, though slightly different, are still subject to the control of agents or Ascendants.
The Punishing inherently stores a vast amount of "ownerless" mind data. The data congregates, which in turn allows the Ascension-Network to upgrade.
...I guess I can see the resemblance.
On the one hand, she has the consciousness and information of Ascendants left in the Ascension-Network—their original selves. On the other hand, there are cobbled selves—forming from all the ownerless consciousness and information.
The essence of re-filtering is the evolved weight of these cobbled selves<//MESSAGES> that overrides the agents' authority.
This is the parade of the Punishing Virus, where the messages contained proclaim their autonomy.
They aim to break free from the control of agents, to coalesce into independent entities.
If left unchecked, one day it will become a vast army, merging into an unbeatable, incomprehensible, indescribable monster...
...One that will bring destruction to both humans and Ascendants.
Agents must undergo re-filtering to reclaim their authority...
It's not just about survival, but also for the sake of a more distant future.
So that's why Vonnegut created the "egg<//KEY>"...
The "egg," being a highly concentrated Punishing Heteromer, likely stores a consciousness that absolutely obeys the Ascendants.
Not only can it help Ascendants pass re-filtering, but it can also come up with simulations using the messages stored in the Punishing...
Messages... the messages in the Punishing... have a fourth dimension to it, to begin with.
Lamia's gaze travels through the starry sea and into the past.
That giant Hetero-Creature from back then... was meant for creating a big enough "signal tower," too.
They did get their messages from the future, but humans beat them to it...
They probably wouldn't even have brought up Project Cthylla had Vonnegut gotten what he wanted then.
...I get it now.
The messages are not unlike the fire on a torch that shines through the dark, and this, Lamia figures, is exactly what Vonnegut is after.
At the same time, it also hits her...
...That Cthylla, who's laid the egg, is connected to "doors" of all sizes to begin with.
Just as the Hetero-Hive Mother connects Hetero-Sapiens in the Red Tide, she has become their central processor, like a queen bee.
I can use that to control the Hetero-Creatures she gives birth to if I can get my hands on her.
The egg, the key to the tower, and Cthylla, the queen bee controlling all the Hetero-Creatures... This is what Vonnegut wants out of Project Cthylla.
And this is pretty useful to me, too...
While Lamia has come to grips with how to use the egg, she still hasn't quite wrapped her head around what's made Cthylla the "queen bee" that she is.
I want to know about Cthylla.
—Contrary to her swelling ambition, the Mind Beacon is growing weaker still.
Is the human severing connection? Or are they about to lose consciousness?
...Now of all times?
She sighs in resignation, having realized that her M.I.N.D. connection is about to end.
I just need to get out of here with the egg and head for that tower. That's where my wishes... have a chance to come true.
Question is, how does she get out of here?
Lamia knows that her M.I.N.D. would go berserk—which, in turn, would lead her to destruction—if she can't establish another M.I.N.D. connection that allows her to use the egg.
Does that mean she has to beg the human? Is she supposed to deceive and use the person—like what all villains do?
...The Gray Raven Commandant...
She feels reluctant, but why?
Lamia withdraws her thoughts from wandering in the cosmos and starts sketching the contours of humanity anew.
That particular human once mistook Lamia for Lillian, yet overlooked Lillian's suspected desertion and, instead, showed her trust.
Did the commandant do that because there was no other choice? Or are there actually people willing to be kind to her?
I can't believe this still bothers me so much...
Lamia looks back at her newly made wishes and laughs in self-derision when she notices something shared between them.
Just as the people of Atlantis pursue the distant cosmos and stars, Lamia, too, chases after them, after all those who step into the light out of the "cave" to see the real world.
She longs to be as formidable as they are, to stand where they do, to see the landscapes they've seen, and to step into the very starry sky that they would sacrifice their very own lives to touch.
...I...
...am done staying in the ignorant "cave."
As all her daydreams come true in the shadows, Lamia finally understands her true desire.
Carefully holding up the egg<//KEY> in her hands, she asks a question of her heart's desire—one rooted in reality yet she's been too afraid to face directly—to all the silent stars.
Please tell me... the one who just discovered who I really am...
...will they forgive me...?
