1 This is How the World Dies
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Antarctica. 13th of September, 2000.
The frozen continent burned. Four gigantic eye-scouringly bright featherless wings rose high over the South Pole, accompanied by a explosive roar. Dark blast rings expanded over a glowing blood-red landscape. Motes of red light were thrown up by the blast, and scattered away into the furthest reaches of the planet.
The explosion rippled through the the continent, shattering the ice cap and breaking open the crust. The Earth itself began to change its tilt, as if like a wounded animal recoiling in pain. The quakes caused by the Event caused gargantuan tsunamis all through the Southern Hemisphere. Beaches retreated as the oceans rippled, and billions died almost instantly in hammering return of their waters.
Antarctica continued to bleed red.
In the days after, more millions would die in the ensuing world-wide coastal flooding. First skirmishes, then all-out wars, erupted due to food and resources shortages and the panicked movement of millions of refugees. A mere two days after the disaster, a nuclear exchange happened between Pakistan and India. On the 20th of September, 2000, for mysterious reasons a nuclear bomb was detonated in the heart of Tokyo, killing half a million people. Fighting would spread across the planet, only ending in the February 14th, 2001 and the Valentine Treaty that formally put a halt to the fighting so that the nations could try to recover.
From 13 September of 2000 to 14 February 2001 was merely 153 days. In that time, global human population was halved. Thousands of plants and animal populations were made extinct. Many many more millions would die in the years ahead.
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No one knew that Second Impact was not an nearly lightspeed asteroid strike as had been reported, but man's attempt to steal for themselves the hands of godhood.
Second Impact brought them all low, and purged humanity of its arrogance. No longer masters of the Earth, barely able to control themselves, nothing mattered now except survival. Impact reshaped the world and set billions of souls screaming into the night. Those that were left behind had to struggle the shivering remains of their proudest era.
The blood-red waters of Antarctica would keep its secrets a while longer.
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Japan, being an island nation, was among the worst affected. The seas had risen dramatically, drowning their interlocking coastal metropolises. Tokyo had to be rebuilt further inland. Worse, due to the change in axial tilt, Japan was no longer a nation that could know winter.
The children who were born following Impact could only know a world vastly reduced, vastly sapped of its vibrant exuberance. The age before them could only be dreamed about as the apex of humanity, an age of innocence abruptly taken from them. Things would never be the same again.
Everything before Second Impact was a time of reckless energy and optimism that they might ever achieve again, an age brimming with wealth, ideas, and fervor, and many of its ideals were drowned by the sea or set aside in the call for survival.
And in this shattered, traumatized world, there lived a boy named Shinji Ikari.
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Shinji Ikari grew up along the hills, which were now the new coastlines. He lived there with his uncle and aunt, who dutifully cared for him physically were emotionally distant.
They were related to him on his mother's side, Yui Ikari. But they didn't see him like that. The boy's father had thrown him away to the nearest relatives, apparently unwilling to care for him in the wake of his mother's death.
They had lost their own son in the Impact, and taking care of Rokubungki's child could not truly fill that emotional void. In a house without smiles, Shinji only learned to be silent and obedient, further deepening the dissimilarity between him and the child they once had, a boy full of laughter and easy tears. He was sullen and moody, much like his father, who left an instantly unpleasant and aloof impression on people.
Shinji did not expect much from his guardians. As he never asked for anything, they took it as a sign he was content. That it was how he liked things. He as a consequence grew without lavish attention, without toys, without the competitive bonds of playmates. He watched silently as the others played, bragged and then combined their amusements. His heart was cold, he did not dare reach out and beg to be included in their games.
Apathy was his bulwark against envy.
This was the years before he discovered the cello, the solitary music, and the gentle stirrings of the classicals. Before that, he had the sea.
He would walk back then at the edges of ancient bitten cliffs and the newly worn beaches, watching the unceasing motion of the tides beating powerfully against rock. Lying there, staring up at the sky, letting the sounds fill him and consume him - he felt like a part of something greater. It reminded him that man was small, that such needs and such painful emotions were as nothing at all.
Remember well, that the latter half of the twentieth century was an spectatcular oversaturation of entertainment. Anime, movies, TV shows, international stars! These glittering lights all but vanished as studios sank under the waves and all efforts were funneled into the practical. Frivolity was laid to rest beside the gravestones. That left a somber land and a somber people.
Shinji grew up without frivolous TV shows, without the spread of manga or the glorious wrath of Godzilla. The few books around the house and at school were simple texts, intended mainly to be instructional than entertaining.
One day, as he lay there, as if daring the sea to make that surge and swallow him up, it all changed.
For the sea did surge, and the waves did flow over him, and he gasped and flailed and something big and black rose along with the tides to clonk him upside down the head.
The ocean surged over him and dragged him off the beach.
He washed back up on shore, coughing and wheezing. Shinji rubbed at his head, and he thought it pitiful that for those brief moments he thought he was going to die it was nonetheless the most exciting thing to ever happen to him. His heart was still pounding, his skin cold and over-sensitive. For those few moments he was close to death he felt so thoroughly alive.
The waves seemed to push the black object further to him, trying to get him to accept it. Shinji decided to haul what turned out to be a big black suitcase away from the sea.
It was made of tough plastic, and sealed shut with protective hard plaster lining at the seams. The boy looked around. He was alone there. It wasn't that far from his house, but in the aftermath of Second Impact many properties still remained abandoned. Shinji gave in to curiosity and decided to open in.
In any other point in time he would have sheepishly brought it over to a person in any authority, too afraid to be accused of stealing anything. Too afraid of any form of negative attention. Right then however, he was still filled with his first shot of adrenalin and his head throbbed enough with pain to interfere with common sense. He brought it over to a slab of flat rock, and broke the seals with another sharp piece of rock. The suitcase lock had only three digits, and was easy enough to crack.
Inside, were books. Big, colorful books, and utterly unlike anything he had ever seen before. Packed to the side were little figurines in dynamic poses, painted in exquisite detail. Skulls, monstrous figures adorned the contents in many places, but for some reason it didn't scare him any, he who was nervous of little mice. He picked one book up and hesitantly ran a small palm over its glossy cover. Its title was adorned with a strange double-headed eagle. He didn't recognize any of the letters… but the sight was burned into his mind. He had to know what it said.
He opened the book, the pages crackling with newness. Illustrations, paragraphs, numbers, all there and incomprehensible. None of it made sense. The pictures matched the figurines though, and scenes of conflict and deaths on a massive scale were clear enough.
He did not understand, anything, but knew enough that he held in his hands something epic.
For the first time in his life Shinji learnt NEED. He needed it. He needed to know what it meant. He would never let it go, never give up this discovery. For a time, he considered just burying it as a treasure all his own, but then there was always the risk of someone else finding it and taking it from whatever secret stash he could make.
Slowly, furtively, he dragged the suitcase back to the house. He felt utter terrified. Every shadow could be someone who would steal it away. Every shadow was someone to seize him as a thief. Up, up, difficult as it was for a boy his size, he wrestled it over stairs and into his room.
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When his guardians came home, he hesitated and stumbled over his words trying to explain that they thought he had stolen it. Something like that obviously was valuable. Just as he expected, they wouldn't trust him any! So why should he trust any grownup in turn?
For the first time he felt anger. He found it by the beach, he insisted, and it was his by right! He shouted at them that it's not fair to take what's not theirs either! The seaweed and small cockle-shells clinging to the case convinced them. It looked like it had floated for years through the bloated Pacific.
When he asked what it was, they said it was perhaps too grown-up for him. "This… this means something." he said, suddenly too serious, his face such a focused mask that reminded them all too much of Gendo Rokubungi. Shinji pointed to the title. He took out one of the figurines, and matched it to the frowning helmet on the cover. "I don't know what, but it's this. What does it say? What is it?"
His uncle sighed. His wife disapproved of the blatantly violent and unchild-safe contents of the suitcase. "It says… Warhammer 40,000. Codex Space Marines."
What the hell was a Space Marine? It was a being clad in thick, knightly armor with oversized pauldrons emblazoned with a distinctive symbol of their brotherhood. It was a helmet cast into a terrifying scowl. It was a warrior firing off into the distance and battling aliens preying upon humanity with high-caliber hand cannons and chainsaw swords.
Inside, the grown man was bubbling. He saw the hope in Shinji's eyes and shared it. He recognized how most people would see the insides, the figurines, as nothing but toys. Yet it was in its own way a true treasure. It was something for the men in that house to share, his son would have enjoyed these things as much as Shinji would… in that respect he would allow it. It was all vintage.
The art, the figurines, the shamelessly exuberant slaughter. He nodded somberly to himself. He found the contents as damn cool as Shinji did. The boy could keep the things.
/'Mine too!'/ he was shouting inside. He did not dare glance aside at his wife. /'Man rights! Man rights! We are never too old for toys!'/
"What's that…?" Shinji asked. "That wasn't helpful at all!"
"It's in English, Shinji. A language different from Japanese. You need to know it to really see what this is all about."
The boy nodded. "Then I will learn this… Ing… lesh? I want to learn it, uncle! Please teach me!"
The magic word was WANT. His guardians suddenly saw the same burning self-determination so apparent in his father. Gendo Rokubungi had never needed anyone apart from himself, except his wife Yui, and he would never deign to ask anyone for help. Gendo's eyes, which held only contempt, and a demeanor that bubbled with barely contained violence. Even a Yakuza would be kinder, and could be mostly trusted not to betray his bosses.
Who was Gendo Rokubungi? That gaunt-faced man with a trimmed goatee and distinctive orange eyeglasses started as some no-name thug that married the incredibly talented geneticist Yui Ikari, then on marriage took her name (becoming Gendo Ikari), and shortly thereafter became a powerful paramilitary leader. His grief seemed genuine, but her death catapulted the depth of his powers and responsibilities. Shinji's aunt and uncle couldn't say no at all when the boy was dropped off at their doorstep.
Gendo was too busy to deal with something as petty as a child.
There was also an impression Gendo might murder the constant reminder of his greatest loss.
Now the boy, young as he was, was ready to give himself over to something separate from himself. He was ready to beg for it, but also to fight for it. If they took away the suitcase and its contents, literally anything might happen. Gendo was unpredictable in such a manner, and his son, so easily following in his steps… it was probably easier to just tolerate his odd dreams than to give him reason to become even more morose or unstable.
Besides, his uncle really wanted to play with that Dreadnought over there. He reached over to pat the boy's head, and stopped as he saw the child flinch. Although they had never raised a hand or voice to the boy in anger, for some reason Shinji cringed from them like they were always on the verge of abuse.
"I'll help you learn it, Shinji." He smiled gently. "It's okay," he said aside to his wife. "It's… educational…?"
Her nostrils dilated. She didn't fully believe that either.
The boy smiled happily and his eyes teared up with tears. He was so prepared to have everything taken from him, that this left him shocked and reeling with relief. They allowed him this little indulgence.
And this was how the world began to die.
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