Editing City Series:Volume8a Chapter4 (section)

===Aoe’s Sight Mode: In DT Central Redford District===

'''<Aoe’s Over Reload>

Aoe returned to Sight.

His lowered vision saw the dark street. He felt the bumpy dirt ground below his feet.

But he could not feel the thickness of the weeds growing on the ground. Nor could he feel the softness of the soil.

It was all fake.

He had already known that, so he thought it was weird to only notice it now. He also told himself he had more important things to focus on at the moment.

He only had to look up to see the proper target of his attention: Yuo.

She was looking at him with her eyebrows drooping a bit.

She had not Downloaded or Grandloaded, so that was only a piece of data known as a PC Body that was given her shape. Her Lives data stored in DT’s intermediary layer resonated with it and subprograms moved it around.

But Yuo was looking at him, so he looked back at her.

He thought he saw some sadness cast over her face illuminated by the windows.

He realized the windows around her were beginning to close. They had been set to automatically close if left idle for a period of time, so they started flashing and then closed in the order they had been opened in.

<nowiki><I</nowiki> misinterpreted the growing darkness as sadness.>

Yuo glanced at his window and responded.

“No. I am…worried. You interpreted correctly. As weird as it is to say it myself,” she said with no change of expression.

She moved her hands to bring two windows up next to her: the list of names possibly related to Kobayashi and the Word Mail sent by her adoptive mother.

In their light, she seemed to be working up the nerve to say something.

“Um, Senpai?”

“Mh,” he grunted with a nod and she nodded back.

“I said I think Suedomsa might be my father, right? Set that aside for the moment. We are searching for Alternative’s father. The father of the tiny Alternative we met during the day.”

“Mh.”

“Do you think her father is…an ordinary DT citizen?”

He didn’t know what she meant at first, so he replied with confusion.

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

[[Image:DT01_193.jpg|thumb]]

“This city is made of falsehoods. For example, the night sky you see above us has no moon.”

Now that she mentioned it, he realized it did lack a moon.

“The position of the stars is set to match the sky in the outside world, but doing the same with the moon had it out for around 1000 hours and I’ve heard there were complaints from Glossolalians.”

“So you hid the moon?”

“The Glossolalians are influenced by the real moon in the outside world, so it would actually be more accurate to show it that way here, but they say it feels wrong to see it up there for so long.”

“Mh,” grunted Aoe. “Get to the point.”

“This is part of my point. Again, the night sky only has stars.”

When he looked up and strained his eyes, he could indeed see a very bright starry sky.

“The moon received complaints, but no one has ever complained about how the stars are displayed. Do you get what that means? This sky is fake, but it’s close enough to the real one that no one cares.”

Aoe said nothing as he kept his eyes on the sky above and waited for her to continue.

After a bit, she spread her arms and gestured toward the city around them.

“Similarly, DT has been remade several times, but its boundaries and the layout of the streets remain almost identical to before the Word Bomb destroyed it. It’s all nearly the same as the industrial city of Detroit that built cars and aerial ships.” She took a breath. “So don’t you think people would use the same basic image of their wild name when creating their handle?”

Aoe looked down.

'''<Aoe’s Over Zoom>

Yuo was within arm’s reach in front of him.

She wasn’t standing up straight, but she had a hand on her chest and looked straight at him.

The shade of sadness remained on her face.

She opened her mouth with only two windows illuminating her face now.

“I will now explain my theory to you. I have a question too, so please answer if you can.”

“Mh.”

“First, think about the handle Archon Suedomsa. An archon is a type of governor. Suedomsa is the demon Asmodeus spelled backwards. Asmodeus is a demon of pleasure and fertility, so it is a good name for the person in charge of the amusement park and medical facilities and the person who led the creation of NPC Bodies long ago.”

“Mh.”

“Then there is Alternative. Her father would be her uncle’s brother, right? Even an idiot can figure that much out, right? Right?”

“Mh? Mhh? Um, you mean…?”

“Moving on. Alternative’s uncle was your and Algo’s master and his name was Kobayashi Ungyou. In Japanese, the ‘un’ is the second half of ‘aum’ and the ‘gyou’ means dawn.”

“Mh. So the um is the ending and the dawn is the beginning.”

“Now what are the opposites of both?”

“In aum, the opposite of um is ‘a’. And the opposite of dawn would be dusk or ‘kon’.”

“And what do you get when you combine those two?”

He started to give the answer but stopped.

He tried the name out in his mouth for a bit and subtly adjusted the pronunciation to end up with something that sounded very familiar.

“Kobayashi…Archon.”

'''<Aoe’s Sight Mode has updated>