Kimo focused half of his eyes on Toba and the other half on the sky. The sky above the computing center is showing a relatively common rainy weather at this time. The rain has not yet begun, but dark green clouds are already gathering.
Clouds of any color are possible in the climate of the Endless City, so it has lost the meaning it may have had in other histories. However, in Kimo's memory, green clouds were not good news. They were either serious chemical pollution, or they represented giant storms brewing in the altostratus clouds.
Those were all things that happened in very backward places in the past, and they all made him deeply disgusted. But it's different now. Under the gaze of a dangerous enemy, he still couldn't help but look at the green clouds filling the sky. Not vigilant, but greedy. How precious is the sky! It is not faked by projection equipment, but a real, vast sky that allows ships to travel freely through it, from one end of the world to the other, or directly to the wider and deeper universe - of course that means The universe has not yet begun to shrink and age. Everything looked fine then. Life is routine, but steadily rising. A dull and carefree prosperity. How happy to be in such a gentle and glorious boring world!
"I didn't expect it was you." said the fungus standing opposite him. "Of all the people, that bitch actually chose you to be her goon. What? Did you kneel down and lick her toes?"
Kimo finally stopped thinking about those green clouds, the sky and the ships. He looked carefully at the strange old friend in front of him. Toba—it was so different from the Toba he knew in the past. The newcomer with purple-black hair tied her hair with a headband with a skull pattern, leaving a small braid on the back of her head. Jules always laughed at her son for being too naive and exaggerated. Only their eyes were similar. An ancient and stubborn lineage of the old aristocracy.
No one knew who Toba's biological father was, but Kimo had always believed that paternal lineage probably didn't play a role. The actual similarities between mother and son were much more than eye color. In the past, Toba had a strong body and tenacious will, as well as some innate fighting intuition, and was able to knock down Weiss time and time again in simulation training. He still had his mother's passion and rage, believing that nothing was better than his own judgment. Yes, this presents two extreme positions in the final result, but in Kimo's eyes, they are two sides of the same coin.
Now, Toba, the Toba who once gave everyone in the base a headache, was said to have been dismantled by his mother at the end of every reinforcing post in his bones, pulled out the auxiliary chip, and maybe even thrown into the laboratory for treatment. What, after experiencing all this, he was abandoned to the house of disaster. Kimo didn't allow himself to think too much about how Toba had survived to this day, or how this thing with Toba's memory was formed. But a bunch of mycelium groups emitting stench and rotten water were indeed right in front of him. The shock and panic he felt far outweighed the anger of being insulted. Oddly enough, in a way he thought he could understand the freak before him. A once outstanding young man. He was born into an endless falling base, enveloped in abyss and decadent spirit. Is it any wonder that chicks long to see the sky?
"Toba," he said softly, giving a brief greeting with gestures.
That didn't dilute the other person's anger. In the past, Toba didn't like him, thinking that he might be the most cowardly and timid man in the entire base, not to mention that he and Jules were now on the same side. However, this also seemed to make Toba increasingly suspicious, because just like his own son, Jul did not like weak people.
In the past, Kimo thought, before the world became what it is now, he would have been enraged. He will defend his dignity like the "model warrior" Toba and Jul admire, or he will follow the strict discipline like Wes. But he hadn't considered such a thing for a long time. Before Jul woke him up, he had been away from the core of power for a long time, and he had been wasting his life on synthetic drugs, artificial women, or other pleasures. He wasn't going to make any excuses or let anyone understand him. Everyone has their own crazy ways, just like Weiss trying in vain to maintain discipline and guarding the so-called slicer day after day; Bei locked herself in the laboratory and exploration station all day long, trying to figure out this... How long will the fall into the abyss last? But most people are the same as him, and even Bei's two artificial descendants are no different. Toba is indeed an anomaly, with a natural desire to create some kind of new order just like his mother.
An impulse suddenly occurred to him. It doesn't mean that he agrees or opposes anything, but at this moment, standing so close to the machine, his emotions that had long been eliminated by the drug began to sprout again. For the first time, he had a desire to understand and communicate with the young man in front of him, Jules' son, or a strange grass with his memory. So he spoke like this, his voice hoarse as if he hadn't spoken again in half his life.
"Jules is doing something necessary," he told Toba. "She chose me to help because I'm the only one who understands the importance of it. Others will think Wes is right, Try to wake Weiss up. Then we won't be able to proceed further."
Toba's dark, grotesque eyes looked at him horribly. Not one eye is the majestic pink color anymore.
"In my opinion, you are all a bunch of bugs." The freak said coldly, "You, that bitch, or Weiss. You each have your own excuses, but you all do the same thing."
"If you've been through what we've been through, maybe you will be too."
"You think I don't know?" Toba asked sarcastically, "You think I haven't read the files you encrypted? Come on, how did you escape in front of the chaos you caused, leaving all your compatriots behind? , I know everything clearly. There is no need to put on a bitter face, this is all your own choice. You wish it were like this, don’t you?"
"No," Kimo said. He wanted to explain further, but found that he had closed his mouth tightly. His heart beat as hard as a drum. At first he thought it was eagerness, then he tasted his own fear. A fishy bitterness that pervades the base of the tongue. His hands hidden in his pockets trembled, hoping to take some sedative medicine right away. The immortal cat leaned against the wall of the computing center and looked at him from a distance.
"Listen, listen," he said with difficulty, "listen to me, Toba. You are a child, that is true, and you grew up on the base. Jules has only shown you our past life, There were some written reports of when the slicer started. But that was just words. Very thin words. And I'm sure a lot of people didn't write the full story of what happened to them. Of all of us, I only believed Bei's. The reports may be completely true. But she hasn't been through much... Somehow the Slicer seems to be extra kind to her, and I don't say that to blame her, something is very wrong here... Slicer, it's not It randomly creates those hallucinations...it...it seems to be alive and full of malice towards us...that thing is very dangerous, and it will never make us feel better."
"You deserve it," Toba said.
"Maybe," Kimo said, his voice now ridiculously fragile, "but it's not the way it's supposed to be, Toba, things are getting out of hand. This machine has to be shut down, not left alone. Wei. Weiss can't completely solve this problem. Your mother and I reached a consensus a long time ago. Weiss thought that escaping would allow us to avoid it and let us never touch it again, but that was useless. This is why I followed Jules Reason for coming here.”
"Don't make people laugh anymore." Toba said loudly, and even the immortal cat in the distance shook its ears. But no one laughed. The fear in Kimo's eyes became more intense. His tall figure and resolute face looked so emaciated by long-term fear.
After a moment of silence, Toba said again: "You're lying, coward. That bitch just shut down the machine to facilitate control. She wanted to control the slicer herself, not shut it down completely."
It might have expected Kimo to quibble, but the latter said, "Yes. That's what she thinks... but she's going to fail."
"What?"
"She will fail," Kimo trembled. "The dead men foretold it. It was not our skill that enabled the Slicer, boy, do you understand? We were so far behind that there was no hope." . What really activates it is something more terrifying, the dead souls and evil ghosts, the monster that represents the universe... Everything it gives us is just to make our lives worse than death."
