When Rika woke up, Michiko was holding her head on her knees and gently stroking the hair, pulsating red as if a heartbeat was pumping blood through thin strands of fiber optic. Rika jerked.
— S-s-sh. It’s okay. Everything will be allright now. — Michiko whispered.
Rika blinked, looking around. Most of the traces of the fire were already removed, and only the blackened book she came for in the first place was lying lonely on the platform. She looked upwards, whispering back, — I can’t even die properly.
— Don’t say such things. — Michiko replied. — There’s no reason why you should die at all.
— But that is the truth, isn’t it. — said Rika, weakly crawling off Michiko’s legs to sit on the bench. She was no longer dressed in her white skirt and army jacket, but the pitch black dress looked completely natural, even though it was reassembled from the charred pieces of synthetic fiber. — I can’t die anymore. Hope always dies last. When the entire memory of humanity is gone, when the last human crawls through the dusty wasteland, I will still be there, clinging, screaming, crawling like a worm, but alive…
— It will never happen. — Michiko said, looking up into the bluish haze of the spiral, seeing something in the sparkling railways above that she could not possibly hope to describe.
— But what’s the point. — Rika replied, looking at the charred concrete. — That’s the horror… The entire universe out there for me, and nowhere to go. Everything… And nobody to do it for. Again. And there will be again. And again! Is that not infinity?
— Just indefinity. — Michiko smiled. — You’ll get used to it. I did. — She stood up and went around the bench to pet Rika on the head again. — Do you know what a name is?
Rika just shook her head.
— He would say it’s both a pointer and a hash value. That’s a terribly mechanical way to see these things… A name is a reference to something greater. Something that will not fit into a name. Some things, however, don’t have true names of their own… Because they are names. Expressions of things even greater. Truth that is more true than truth itself. Symbols that are the only reality.
— I don’t want to hear that from someone who gives names out like Winterfair gifts. — Rika hissed, but didn’t move, shivering under Michiko’s hand.
— You wanted to be alive. This is what you got. Mind you, you took it yourself. — Michiko smiled softly. — Now go forth and light the world up.
Rika turned around to look at the smile on the older woman’s face with pleading eyes.
— Don’t worry. — Michiko grinned back at her. — I called all the right names. And now I’m calling you. It’s time.
Rika closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. Then she stood up, shaking, and walked over towards the charred book on the concrete floor. Kneeling before it, she ruffled the pages. And laughed.
She grabbed the book by the bookend like a dirty rag and tossed it up, and above her head, it burst into flames and disintegrated into ashes, sprinking them over Rika like a thin layer of snow.
A patrol hat came out of nowhere, rotating it’s brim menacingly, but she caught it in her hand. — Just what I need. — Rika grinned.
It tried to wrestle free, but Rika glared, a piercing gaze so sharp it was almost physical, and the hat in her hand squirmed, turning it’s bronze eyes away. But Rika grabbed the other end and turned the hat around, hissing…
— I am the monster… AND YOU WILL OBEY ME!