Story Reader / Interlude / Blue Bird / Story
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you—along with others, she longs for the arrival of immortality.
She is awakened by hazy voices in her M.I.N.D.
My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
Among thousands of voices, an affable female one has grasped her.
It had started its journey long before Earth had even formed.
The next moment, it changes to a male voice, chanting some strange but familiar lines among the data torrent.
I can see the invisible microwave glow of the background radiation leftover from the Big Bang. I see stars drifting aimlessly at hundreds of kilometers per second, and the space-time curving around them.
I can even see millions of years into the future. That blue twinkle will blow up one day, sterilizing any nearby solar systems in an apocalypse that makes the wrath of human gods seem pitiful by comparison.
The voice is calling a name, but she cannot recall where it comes from.
This is the path of the shepherd. One day, your loved ones will bid you farewell. They will be entangled and wounded by thorns around them. Their blood shall pour upon the spikes. They will tell you the path is right before their death.
The surreal but loving voice has grasped her heart—she feels something important is leaving. What is it...?
It will lead you to far away places, but you cannot stop. Till one day we meet again, then you shall be crowned by our Lord. On the land shed by your blood flowers will grow, outlasting the thorns by far more.
...Who is that?
Before she can seize the fading thought, another voice has replaced the words and pulled her into the abyss of the Punishing Red Tide. Like a living hell, the terrible suffering of all living creatures on the earth is displayed in her M.I.N.D.
—If the red slayer thinks he slays,
—Or if the slain think he is slain,
—They know not well the subtle ways
—I keep, and pass, and turn again.
The distant and the forgotten follow Liv like a shadow.
Black tears roll down Liv's cheeks, falling into the Red Tide underneath.
She walks among the stars and listens to everyone's dreams. The infinite pain and hesitation are condensed in her body, among which are some familiar voices... But there are too many of them. Shouting, screaming, crying, deafening.
But they cannot stop her. She continues wandering on the desolated land, wielding her scepter.
The egret is still pecking the thorns under her feet, but it can no longer catch her attention.
—Shadow and sunlight are the same;
—The vanished gods to me appear;
—And one to me is shame and fame.
She is ending the suffering of countless people with every step she takes: Scavengers who spent their lives in vagrancy and devoured by the Red Tide, medics who left their homes for the battlefield, soldiers who lost their ways...
Father gave her the flower seeds, but Mother was her Hestia. She taught her how to sow the seeds, and irrigate with her blood. Hestia turned into soil in the end, telling her to keep going on her path.
The despair that Liv sees in the eyes of all the people she has ever met has accumulated into decades of years of illusion. She reaches out to every one of them. This time, she holds their hands.
In the void space, someone seems to be calling for that familiar name.
But who is that...?
The next instant, data explodes into unlimited visions in her M.I.N.D., but she still cannot grasp that familiar feeling.
—They reckon ill who leave me out;
—When me they fly, I am the wings;
—I am the doubter and the doubt.
Her consciousness is divided into thousands of pieces. They absorb all the Punishing Virus in the M.I.N.D. that she can connect to, which then forms a sea of data.
An even clearer voice is pushing her.
Among a great menagerie of subatomic particles, she sees windless seas, vast deserts, planets crashing into each other, their cosmic dust devouring all. Deaths turn into eternal cosmic rays. In the endless cycle of destruction and reincarnation, a voice enters her M.I.N.D., enfolding and telling her—
—You are the chosen one.
She weeps for the sorrow of everything, but smiles because she has the power to cure it all.
In the vast amount of data, something that originally was a part of her seems to have disappeared into the crimson sea.
She walks into the desperate life of everyone and takes away the Punishing Virus along with their sorrow and resentment. Each second feels like a million years.
She watches buildings rise and fall, the sun rise and set. The lives of thousands of Constructs fly past her M.I.N.D. in an instant.
She witnesses their red nightmare fade away, replaced by a blue sky and white clouds. Their future has no Punishing Virus, nor does she need to be there.
—"Then, from all the gaping tombs, there rises gradually an efflorescence at first frail and timid, like steam; then white and virginal and more and more tufty, more and more tall and plentiful and marvelous."
—"Little by little, irresistibly, invading all things, it transforms the graveyard into a sort of fairy-like and nuptial garden, over which rise the first rays of the dawn."
—"The dew glitters, the flowers open their blooms, the wind murmurs in the leaves, the bees hum, the birds wake and flood the air with the first raptures of their hymns to the sun and to life."
In that world, there are no deceased lives, regretful futures, or bitter hatred.
—I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.
—The strong gods pine for my abode,
—And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
—But thou, meek lover of the good!
—Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
