http://renai.ru

Ибо сколько же можно пыхтеть над каким-то сайтом, пора бы и честь знать. :)

Если вы знаете что такое визуальная новелла — вам туда. Если еще не знаете — то тоже.

— S-s-sh. It’s okay. Everything will be allright now. — Michiko whispered.

Soundtrack

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!

Soundtrack

But Rika did not. Her skin was far whiter than it usually is, not the color of porcelain, but more like a pure white paper, shiny in the light the of flames consuming the shelves around them. Her bright red hair lost all of it’s glow and turned to black, almost infrared, and even though there were no wounds left on her anywhere at all, her clothes were charred and the synthetic fiber in them melted, ran and solidified again, spreading thin spidery threads all over. A piece of bone from her finger lay next to the book she was reading, that miraclously survived the flames, laying open on the part where the pages were torn out.

From far below, the murder of crows was approaching. A multitude of hats, big and small, of every fashion and style known to man, but all of them black, swirling in a whirlpool of felt, cloth, armor panels, flapping at the flames and trying to put them out. White smoke of fire extinguishers filled the spiral, and the Hitchhiker started coughing, but he still pressed down, going through slow, routine motions, almost an unmoving dark statue in the sea of black and white, as the swarm of hats passed the platform and moved on upwards, accompanied by the hissing of extinguishers and whooshes of swooping felt, racing after the fire that was slowly creeping up and up.

A lonely, half-burned single page, blown freely by the winds and smoke, landed in the middle of the book on the platform and with a thin white flash grew into place, as if it was always there.

Deep down below, Dorothy was melancholically pulling up the cracked floor tiles with her bare hands and sliding new ones into place. They locked in with a sucking sound, as if the grey nothing underneath was trying to suck the very air out of the place, but Dorothy, not needing the air anywhere near as much, was not worried about that.

Nearby, Daisaku was banging his head on the back of the black couch, almost crying.

— Will you stop that? — Dorothy said blankly, turning around to stare at the boy. — It’s not like it’s the end of the world.

— But it is. — Daisaku slumped back into the couch. — It’s the end of hundreds of worlds. Thousands.

— Manuscripts don’t burn. — Dorothy said resolutely, sitting up on the floor and looking at Daisaku with her hard to decipher camera eyes.

— That’s what Rika would say. — Daisaku noted.

— That’s what she said, once. — Dorothy nodded. — And that is the truth. Eventually, everything will come back. The Library is as old as humanity, it stood through worse. Not even Rika can burn all of it down. The only thing she can really ever burn into nothing is herself. In the end, the Library can only grow. Forever. It’s the crossroads where people come when they have nowhere to go, and from where they eventually leave once their train comes.

Daisaku stared back at Dorothy, almost looking like he’s about to find someone to whack the android girl over the head with, but thought better of it, and stretched out on the couch, pulling the blanket Rika left around over his head.

Dorothy stood up to lean over the boy, whispering into somewhere where his ear would be beneath the blanket, — And one day we all will not be here, one way or another, but you will.

“When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can’t run for ever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment accepts it. … Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call… everybody lives.”

River Song

Soundtrack

Rika flew up, always up, as far as the eyes could see, and then more of the same. She only stopped when she was many kilometers above the floor — if the Library really is as tall as it takes to go from Earth to the Moon, she was somewhere at the first Lagrange point, howering there on the stream of jet flame pouring out of the muzzle of her crystal machine gun.

— It should be somewhere here, — she muttered under her breath, and flew over to the bookshelves, scanning them clockwise, reading title after title on the bookends, so different and yet so the same. She didn’t even notice the Hitchhiker standing by the railing and looking curiously at her, even though she had to practically brush her shoes across his face to continue and wash his figure in the hot flames of the jet stream, singing his trenchcoat.

— That one. — he pointed at a shelf well above what he could reach and to the right. Rika didn’t respond, but just flew towards the place pointed out and pulled the book out of the shelf — a heavy, thick hardback with a glossy black cover.

She darted back to the concrete railroad platform howering in the middle of the spiral cylinder, and settled on the bench, tossing aside her machine gun, which promptly folded back into a shiny metal suitcase at her feet.

And as she was leafing through the pages, a thin, sharp frown spread across her face, all the way until she reached a place where a large quantity of pages was torn out, leaving only the tattered ends inside. The Hitchhiker was just leaning on the railing and watching her from a distance with a blank expression so typical of him.

— You’ve got two shadows. — he suddenly pointed out, yelling across the empty space, his expression turning to one of concern.

Rika looked up from the book. She really did have two shadows — one from the streetlight she was sitting next to, and another one, a darker and altogether more sinister one, next to it, as if there was another streetlight on the other side of the bench. But if that were the truth, both shadows would be washed out and grey, with a darker area where the two crossed… There wasn’t one.

She abruptly stood up, sending the torn book flying and jumping across the platform, settling open on the part where the pages were torn out. The shadows followed her closely.

— Just run, huh. — Rika mumbled.

After a long pause, watching the shadows, she added, — Nowhere to run now. — and unbuttoned her sleeves. — It was a trap, wasn’t it. And I stepped right in. — she muttered under her breath, — Well, there is one way I can deal even with Vashta Nerada. — she said, breathing in deeply, puffing her chest up and stretching a hand out.

— Stop! — yelled the Hitchhiker, but it was too late. The shadows swarmed around Rika, small clouds of darkness biting at the white flesh, chipping out big pieces of it, and she didn’t even have a chance to scream, as streams of oily, thick blood splashed out, covering her white skirt in crimson, chunks of her instantly reforming at the bite marks, and disappearing again, the literal lake of blood growing thicker and wider, as Rika snapped her fingers, clicking together what started as fingers and finished as white, bare bones. They slammmed into each other with a hollow, bright drum strike in the silence, sending a white, shiny phalanx bone flying and reforming again.

And there was light. A bright spark of lightning, small, but strong as ever.

The lake of kerosene caught fire instantly, spreading all over in less than a second, white flames dripping down the platform and leaking towards the bookshelves in a thin path of liquid, a burning, narrow, bright road of fire… and the books caught it next.

But the shadows did not give up. They kept chewing at the constantly regenerating girl as she stood there, shaking, turning into a skeleton and back into a complete figure again every few seconds, as the piranhas of the air tried to consume something too big even for their insatiable appetite. Shadows filled the air, as the Hitchhiker pulled out his screwdriver and tried to ward off the encroaching darkness with blue glow, while Rika breathed out weakly, — …there’s more where that came from. There’s still more, you bloody little critters!

An insane grin spread across what was left of her face, the eyes opening wide with the expression of sociopathic madness, disappearing and reforming again in a creepy pulse. And as the lake of fire spread, slowly turning into a sea, as more and more books caught fire, the shadows slowly pulled back, falling into a thin layer of soot on the white concrete. The Hitchhiker, narrowly avoiding the flames, ran towards the girl, who fell back onto the bench among the ocean of fire, that wrapped the entire circumference of the spiral and crept upwards, slowly, shelf by shelf, a perfect enemy to the forest of dead trees, spread by the perpetual, slow upward draft, common to every pipe as tall as the universe.

Far below that, at the bottom of the spiral, Michiko was sitting on the couch next to Dorothy, sipping coffee out of a fine china cup. The hats cleaned up most of the mess, and were now busy removing the cracks in the floor, pulling up the stone tiles and replacing them, prying them up with their brims to reveal the grey nothing beneath and immediately covering it again with fresh stone tiles.

A burning drop, still flaming despite all the time it spent falling, dropped into Michiko’s cup, going out with a splash, and the policewoman looked up, as all the hats suddenly stopped everything they were doing and rushed towards the faint glow above like a murder of black crows.

— She didn’t listen, did she. — Michiko muttered under her breath.

— I think she did. — Dorothy said, looking intently at the cup, and the oily splotch of dark kerosene, that was quickly spreading over the surface. — She just didn’t get what she woke up for.

Michiko sighed, standing up and kneeling beside the couch to pull a sheathed police saber from underneath. — All of you and your childish antics. — she muttered under her breath, drawing the sword and looking at the glittering blade in her hand. A true, shiny sword.

— What are you planning to do? — Dorothy asked curiously.

— Something only I can do. — Michiko smiled to the little android. — Go and call names, and have them heard. Be a mother for everyone. You prayed to someone. Let’s just say it was me who listened. — She looked upwards into the faint glow. — I know every name there is. I was the one who gave them out… and I can take them back. — she added with a sneer.

And all over the library, every single book, every one of them all, from hardbacks to paperbacks to thin comicbooks, every single one… jerked.

Soundtrack

It is impossible to mistake the howling of a non-aerodynamic object falling from a great height for anything else. You can only hide behind something — a trench is best — and cover your head with your hands. They say it doesn’t help much, but such is the normal reaction to this sound.

Rika slept peacefully, covering under her blanket, and did not notice how the shoe fell directly into the middle of the low table beside the couch. In an instant, everything changed and silence was broken by thunder.

The table didn’t just crack, it sent shards into all directions, it’s legs going right through the floor as if knocked in by a steam hammer. A shockwave went across the floor, as if it were a lake, or maybe, a swamp, anything but the solid stone floor it really was, and following it, from the remains of the table, were cracks, thin and twisty like cobwebs, which reached the edges of the library cylinder in a fraction of a second.

The couch Rika slept on was thrown violently a couple of meters away and fell on it’s back. When Rika finally crawled out from under her blanket and, hanging off the side, rubbed her eyes drowsily, what she saw were the two shoes, standing lonely in the middle of the catastrophe.

And while she was looking, a wave of paper flooded her.

The bookshelves on all the floors of the Library all the way up to twentieth — if you can talk about floors when it’s really an Archimedes screw — fell on each other like a long line of dominoes, and books, as the theory of gravity directs, fell out, crawling between the railing supports. Actually, most of them have not even reached the center of the cylinder, but enough floors were affected to make it look like the shoe cracked a hole open in the floor that the books were attempting to get sucked into in a paper whirlpool.

Thankfully, a sea of books is still not a liquid, and when the books finally stopped, Michiko, surfacing in the book sea somewhere close to it’s edges, swiftly ran to the kerosene lamp, lying on the side but still somehow not broken, and still burning, and picked it up before the fire could escape.

— So, sleeping beauty, — she asked, handing the lamp over to Rika, who still looked around dumbfounded and tried to figure out whether she woke up already or not, — what were you dreaming about?

— Revolution, little girls, snow and floating point. — Rika replied tersely, climbing out onto the surface of the paper sea and carefully taking the lamp with both hands.

Dorothy finally crawled out from under the bookshelf that fell on her, for which she had to crack that unfortunate piece of furniture apart and toss the halves aside, which, with her almost victorian dress, looked rather rather stupid. — How’re the shoes?

Rika looked at the shoes and smiled. — They’ll do. — before carefully settling the lamp by the shoes to start undressing. Standing around in only her panties and tossing the charred suit aside, she dug around in the books, covered mostly by her long hair, glowing with that pecuillar bright red of a light emitting diode. — I have things to do. — she mumbled.

— I can imagine. — Michiko said, looking around. — Try not to screw everything up too much? — she said imploringly. — There’s people in there, everywhere. They still have their stories.

— Don’t worry. — smiled Rika, pulling a white skirt out of some book and putting it on. — I know what I want, I know where to find it… What I don’t know is how to make it happen. — she stood up to look at Michiko while buttoning up her heavy wool jacket. — But it will happen, by hook or by crook, by direct editing or by goodwill of these people. Those who stand in my way, they will be sorry… or else. — she added, a scary grin spreading out on her beautiful face. And then bent down to fasten her new shoes.

Michiko folded her arms on her chest and looked at Rika with a frown. — I know. I’m just asking you to try.

— I will. — Rika nodded, and added, — For warmth. For happiness. For flames. — before stretching out her arm and yelling, — Hautecleur! Init zero!

Her suitcase jumped out from under the paper sea, glistening in the twilight, booming in an unearthly voice all over the Library, which normally does not offer an echo of this kind, and shouldn’t have done this now, with the books dampening the sound, — OUI, MADAME.

The suitcase locked into Rika’s outstretched hand, unfolding into a shiny crystal structure, very much resemblant of a Gatling gun. Michiko backed away, as if knowing what Rika was going to do now. Come to think of it, Michiko was the only one present who possibly could know. But whether she knew or not, Rika just jumped straight up into the air, and instantly, an explosion right under her feet propelled her upwards with tremendous force, tossing Michiko aside like a ragdoll.

Dorothy crawled towards Michiko, helping her up by the light of the kerosene lamp Rika left standing on what remained on the table. The lamp was shining brightly like a little star. — I see what you meant. — Dorothy said uncertainly. — I think I do, at least.

— Oh, you don’t know the half of it. — Michiko mumbled, standing up and dusting her police uniform off. She looked up to see the tiny flame of jet exhaust slowly disappearing somewhere in the gloom of the near-infinity above. — Just pray she doesn’t wreck the place now.

Dorothy settled on her knees, looking up. It took Michiko a whole ten seconds to take that in. — I didn’t mean it literally. — she said.

— I’m not doing it literally either. I’m praying that she gets what she wants. — Dorothy replied. Looking questioningly at Michiko, she added, — Is that wrong?

— Not really… — Michiko smiled at the android. — I just don’t know who you’re praying to.

— I don’t think it’s important. — Dorothy replied, still on her knees. — In here, a prayer by itself will have to do.

She wanted to add something else, but was interrupted when a hand took the hat off her head. Lilith — dirty, battered, freshly dug out of the paper sea, but strangely, smiling, — put the hat on her own head and grinned.

— I’ll see what I can do. — said Lilith seriously, looking up, before stepping on a bookend and disappearing in a bright flash of white.

Даже самому понравилось. Если у меня вдруг случатся еще идеи, я сделаю из этого дела серию. :)

Soundtrack

Листик немедленно завяз в воздухе, как если бы за краем полки начинался огромный блок оргстекла, в который листик залили предварительно, и когда Дороти попыталась вытащить его обратно, в ее руках остался только оторванный уголок страницы.

— Убиться ботинком. — прошептала Дороти, глядя на видимую в отдалении в щель между шкафами волнистую шевелюру Лилит, которая за это время успела проявиться где-то на треть, и все еще висела как привидение в облаке искорок над оставленным на полу философским словарем. Означенная шевелюра, вместо положенного блондиночного цвета, отливала ярко выраженным красным и постепенно чернела.

— Дальше будет еще интереснее. — заявила в ответ Мичико, — скоро там скорость света упадет до упора, и мы вообще перестанем что-либо видеть.

— Но с чего бы вдруг? — вопросительно посмотрела на нее Дороти и поправила на голове шляпу.

— Понимаешь, — ответила Мичико, устраиваясь поудобнее, — на свете нету ничего, что могло бы идти против изначального Дао, не имея за это положенных последствий. Однако, есть на свете существа, которые способны как следует наломать дров самому изначальному Дао, прежде чем поток их остановит. Это те, которые сами часть и проявление изначального Дао. Именно потому, что они такие есть, изначальное Дао и движется всегда в одну сторону, и никуда не сворачивает.

— Все равно не понимаю. — недоуменно спросила Дороти. — Все как будто специально идет так, чтобы она не проснулась.

— Все ты понимаешь, — улыбнулась Мичико, — Именно так оно и есть. Как ты думаешь, что произойдет, когда она проснется?

Дороти на некоторое время, если само слово можно применять в такой ситуации, задумалась. — Она возьмет со стола свой пулемет и отправится путешествовать. Это же Рика.

— Только сначала развернет на треугольники все, до чего доберется, и сложит обратно нормалями вовнутрь. А потом скажет, что так и было, если вообще заметит что сотворила. Это же Рика. — ухмыльнулась в ответ Мичико. — Она не просто спит, она вызревает как куколка. Заснула на диване Рика, метафора, рыжая девочка с чемоданом-пулеметом и керосиновой лампой, а проснется аватар витальной силы… которая сама суть проявление изначального Дао, и которая будет отнюдь не в самом радужном настроении, а в руках у нее будут все пароли и прямой доступ к памяти. По другому и быть не могло, у Библиотеки тоже есть система самосохранения. Помнишь, что осталось в ящике Пандоры, когда Пандора захлопнула крышку?

Дороти просто помотала головой — подробностей истории про ящик Пандоры она вообще не знала.

— В захлопнутом ящике, ну или точнее, заткнутом кувшине, предназначенном удержать в себе все зло мира, все болезни, все ужасы, осталась лишь Надежда. “Элпис”. Которая просто была снизу, завязла под горлышком кувшина, и не успела выскочить. — мрачно сказала Мичико.

— Какого черта она там делала? — удивилась Дороти.

— Она из них всех самая страшная. — бесхитростно ответила Мичико. — В кувшине еще много чего интересного было, чувство меры и рациональное мышление, например. Это был не просто подарок. Это было вручение новорожденным людям всего, и сразу, чтобы они могли выбрать, чего из этого надо выпускать, а чего пусть еще в кувшине посидит. Ключи от множества дверей, подарок на выпускной. А Пандора, дура, взяла и просыпала все без разбору… Сама по себе Надежда ничего не может, и совсем не злонамеренна, в отличие от многих других вещей что шли с нею в комплекте. Но она может раскачать до бесконечности что угодно, превратить все сущее в ресурс, и когда работает, ничего вокруг себя не видит, а последствия игнорирует. Ничто с такой скоростью не сжирает людей, как надежда на счастье.

— Но не всегда же сжирает. — подумала вслух Дороти. — Ведь счастье бывает.

— Конечно. — улыбнулась Мичико. — Огонь бывает разный. Огонь на жертвеннике, горящий газ на плите, пламя свечи, огонек сигареты… Лесной пожар.

Дороти внезапно очень внимательно посмотрела на Мичико, и камеры в ее глазах зажужжали, подстраивая фокусировку так и эдак. — Ты и есть Пандора. — уверенно заявила она.

В ответ Мичико лишь печально улыбнулась. — Пандора — это миф.

Дороти еще немного подумала, но потом улыбнулась в ответ и понимающе кивнула. Подумав еще, она спросила, — А оно когда-нибудь отлипнет?

— Должно. Однажды. — ответила Мичико.