[EXCLUSIVE] - Gaia Gear Ch.01 Pt.01

While I'm sure there's probably some other novel series that could benefit from a translation, I guess dealing with random cries for an animated version pushed me to start releasing this earlier than I anticipated. So, without further ado, here's the first part of the bi-weekly offering of Gaia Gear! Please let me know in the comments if there IS an interest in this novel series (otherwise, I can focus my efforts elsewhere)!

CHAPTER.1 ON THE BEACH

Does the wind carry the murmuring of a rising tide, or was it the rising tide that carried the sound of the wind?

He no longer asked himself those kinds of questions.

It seemed like only yesterday that he'd been in the habit of observing and analyzing phenomena of that nature. But, for now, all he did was feel the mixture of the sound of the surf and wind on his skin, accepting the pleasant feeling for what it was.

That isn't to say he turned off his analytical processing. He was consciously bypassing an intuitive, logical approach to the phenomena he saw, so he didn't dam the free flow of thought with causal questions.

As for where he had learned to do that...

"Leaving things that aren't so clear-cut vague isn't a bad thing, nor is it something to feel anxious about. So, I don't feel so restless anymore."

All he could see were stars.

It was one of those rare, windless nights where the stars stretched across the sky, unobscured by clouds and haze.

He lay on his side on the sandy shore.

The ocean came in contact with that shore a few meters beyond where his feet lay, yet the waves were silent.

Instead, the coral shells lining the shore's edge plinked and rattled as they clattered against one another in the faintly lapping tide, which could be heard over the water. The sounds of the tide came from the open sea, lapping at the coral reefs forming beyond the beach.

When had it been that Affranchi Char started to feel ambiguity?

Until now, he'd practically been programmed to collate all phenomena theoretically.

He was now, if memory serves, 19 years old.

The elder of the island and his adoptive parent, Gaba Suu, had told him so. Around this time, he'd become aware of ambiguity, though it was only recently that he'd truly begun to accept it.

As he counted each point of sharp, piercing starlight, he suddenly felt a ticking sensation somewhere inside his body.

"Ambiguity, huh?"

*tick, tick*

"That's a good thing."

*tick, tick*

*tick*

Something that didn't seem like a sound was ringing as if rejecting what he was saying.

He knew full well what it was.

And that was also why, annoying as it was, he couldn't bring himself to reject it.

It was the sound from the flood of cell chips in the deepest recesses of his memory web, waking up and resonating.

Down came the rays of starlight into Affranchi Char's periphery, and he almost felt like he could hear the sounds of the light itself.

Chaa...rrrr...

Even on an island like this, it was rare to have a night where a star of the eighth magnitude was visible to the naked eye. The Earth's atmosphere was as polluted as could be, and the weather was fickle.

But things were different now.

As Affranchi listened to the sound of the light that fell from the stars, he felt a strange sensation and abruptly stood up. For a moment, he thought he'd heard something that sounded like a person's voice from among the stars.

No, it sounded like it could have been the voice of some consciousness itself.

"!?"

The light from the stars suddenly grew brighter and more concentrated inside his body.

"Ahh!!"

*tick, tick, tick!*

Was it a hallucination?

His memory web was suddenly enveloped in a sharp, metallic sound as it tried to resolve the malfunctions of his hallucinatory and visual sensors.

For a moment, he felt as though he'd seen a vast array of visual phenomena.

He saw thousands upon thousands of people's faces. Their wills, the Earth and the nature that encompassed it, the extinction of the dinosaurs, the atomic structure of vitamins, the collision of metal particles, the creation of machinery, and more; a kaleidoscope of rushing images that numbered too many to put into words.

It was a visual phenomenon amplified by the accumulation of memories. In other words, a collection of memories from the past, piqued by the light of the stars, and he'd perceived them all as a persistence of vision for a brief moment.

Thus, his latent potential was understood.

"Outer space is full of people... it seems that's a fact..."

Affranchi Char recognized that.

×　×　×