Doesn’t this story about space he’s telling now sound almost exactly like the situation I’m in?
Did Kanu notice that I’m going through something like this?
Had I ever told Kanu about the dreams I had?
Did someone tell Kanu about the dreams I’d had?
Or is he simply telling a story he came to know, without any particular intention?
Is it one of the countless fantasies that conspiracy theorists like?
Could the dreams I had really have been things that actually happened, and now I’m going through that situation again?
Space? We’re at the bottom of the sea.
······Is he telling this story to mess with me?
This story Kanu is telling might have nothing to do with me at all. I might have just had one bad dream, that’s all.
All kinds of thoughts smacked me across the back of the head and passed by. Kanu yawned once, looked around with lazy eyes, and said,
“As you know, the explosion of the Mars base Ares was the largest mass-casualty event since the London incident and the New York incident. Amid people of every race, gender, and age thrown together at random, why was it that only one poor Haitian woman from the Third World, a woman who had almost nothing, was able to survive?”
Right, why did only that person survive? Was there some reason? ······In this case, is that me? No way it’s me, right?
“What conditions had to be in place for something like that to happen? Could we artificially recreate a similar situation?”
As I listened, feeling as though I were being sucked into Kanu’s story, Logan asked irritably from the side,
“What part of that story has hope or fun or whatever the hell you said? Did you fool me again?”
It seemed the story of everyone at the Mars base dying and only one person surviving was neither fun nor hopeful to Logan. A few people gave small laughs or jeered at his reaction.
“Research into time, which had been wandering without direction, became the starting point for approaches not only through biology, medicine, physics, and astronomy, but through other methods as well. Similar things had happened for a very long time in train derailments and passenger plane crashes too, after all.”
Kanu scratched his chin and said,
“I’m talking about people who, by sheer coincidence, avoided such accidents by a hair’s breadth; people who received dreamlike revelations; people who suddenly overslept; whose dog ate their train ticket and passport; or who, strangely enough, woke up that morning and got the date or time of the accident mixed up. People who avoided those large-scale tragedies because of such trivial things, or who managed to remain unharmed even while experiencing the scene of the incident firsthand.”
Kanu looked at Logan, who seemed dissatisfied, and acted like a professor generously setting aside time for a stupid student.
“By the middle of the twenty-first century, the resource considered most important became time. Not diamonds, oil, or food. Depending on how you can control time, things close to omnipotence become possible. It’s the only answer for surpassing the limits of an organism.”
“What does that have to do with me being trapped in an elevator right now?”
Kanu clicked his tongue at Logan and said,
“If what happened to that Haitian woman at the Mars base were to happen to someone specific here as well, we could make all the stupid things we’ve done never have happened, or make them better. For example, there’d be no need for us to be trapped in an elevator in the deep sea like this, venting our complaints and stress at one another. If we could turn back time, all of us could be lying on the warm Pacific sand in Hawaii, basking in the sunlight and swimming in clean seawater. Or, in my case, I could be lying in bed in San Francisco, drinking coffee and smoking at the same time, watching the news that the undersea base got wrecked as if it had nothing to do with me.”
Logan seemed to ponder Kanu’s story with a puzzled expression. Thinking of how I had believed I’d woken up in the bed in my room, and recalling the things I had dismissed as dreams, I asked Kanu,
“Then injuries that can’t be undone would disappear too. You could even bring dead people back to life?”
Kanu looked at me and grinned.
“That’s right. Isn’t that hopeful? Our situation, trapped in an elevator hundreds or thousands of meters under the sea because of a power outage, could be resolved in an instant.”
If you were unlucky, you could turn back time and make things worse. Like now. Even though I went through a similar situation in a dream, I still ended up like this. I barely swallowed those words. Then I recalled everything Kanu had said and sank into thought. Kim Ga-young, who had been quietly listening beside me, smiled crookedly and said to Kanu,
“You could watch everyone die like that woman did, then use those experiences to leisurely escape this place all by yourself. ······Or maybe not.”
Kim Ga-young turned her head and body to the side and looked at me, then naturally turned her head and body back toward Yugeum, acting as if she were loosening the muscles in her waist and neck. ······What was that just now? After looking at me, Kim Ga-young shook her head ever so slightly.
The moment I saw that gesture, I realized there were three people in this elevator who knew what I had experienced. If the things I had avoided by thinking of them as strange dreams were actually people dying, then what did that mean? Like what happened in space, had I really turned back the past and come here? If that was true, what would happen if I revealed my situation to the people in here?
······With just that small gesture, Kim Ga-young had signaled to me to keep my mouth shut. What did it mean? Kanu nodded at Kim Ga-young’s words and said,
“Well. I only know of one case properly. But doesn’t it seem possible? If someone used the privilege of going back to the past for their own personal gain, I mean. ······The truth is, there’s no way to know who would be chosen or whether something like that would really happen in an actual disaster. It’s practically superstition.”
Kim Ga-young rolled her shoulders broadly, then stretched her arms straight up. Then she lightly tapped Yugeum, who had been biting her lip hard and frowning beside her, and said,
“If going back to the past is possible, I wish someone would stop me on the day I tried to submit my résumé to an undersea base. I don’t want to live here anymore.”
“Ah. ······When I enter university, I’ll choose a different major. Or maybe I won’t go to university at all.”
I wasn’t sure about Kim Ga-young, but Yugeum’s words felt like an obvious lie. To naturally move Kanu’s story into the past, I asked Yugeum,
“What would you do for a living?”
“I want to bake bread and live off that. If there’s anything left over that doesn’t sell, I’ll just eat it all myself. I already live eating bread for all three meals anyway. It’d be much better if I made it myself and consumed it myself.”
Or not? Was she serious about having a grand dream of becoming a baker? ······I couldn’t tell. Kim Ga-young smiled softly at Yugeum and said,
“Really? Then bake bread with me. Sometimes regret hits me too, making me wonder why I ever chose my major.”
“Sounds good. First of all, I’ll bake red bean buns, chocolate buns, and cakes.”
“Sure. Then I’ll bake cookies and whatever bread is left.”
“I’ll occasionally stop by that bakery and become an excellent consumer.”
I tried my best not to look at Lee Ji-hyun. I wanted to ask her right away with my eyes: You know my situation too, but can you stay silent right now?
No. Why can’t I be found out? I struggled to calm my body, which was itching to turn unnaturally and look at Lee Ji-hyun’s face. Then I tried to fix my gaze naturally on Yugeum and Kim Ga-young beside me. Fortunately, there was no reaction from Lee Ji-hyun’s side.
I have absolutely nothing to do with this story. I have absolutely nothing to do with Kanu’s story. So let’s act naturally. Act naturally. ······I’m so anxious I could go insane.
It felt as if someone would suddenly grab me and shout, You’re the one who’s going through the same thing as that Haitian woman Kanu talked about! Even though no one was saying anything to me, I was busy letting my guilty conscience eat me alive.
In the middle of that, Emma suddenly reached her hand toward me, startling me so badly my heart felt like it would burst. It seemed the flashlight shining toward the ceiling had been rattling. It wasn’t because I was holding one arm up and shining the flashlight at the ceiling, but because I had grown nervous without realizing it. What would happen if I were found out? An anxiety with an unknowable source brushed down my back.
When I handed Emma the flashlight I was holding with a stiff face, Emma took it from me and withdrew back to the corner where she had been. Emma held the flashlight toward the ceiling and raised her arm slightly. When she rested her forearm on her knee, the light shone on the ceiling without shaking.
Once the source of light disappeared from me, my mind began to calm down a little. Maybe because I had been holding the flashlight, people’s gazes had sometimes lingered on me, but now my facial expression and actions would be buried in the darkness of the elevator.
Logan suddenly spoke with his arms crossed.
“No, if you think about it that way, shouldn’t there always be at least one person alive in every disaster or mass-casualty event? But there are plenty of incidents where everyone dies and there are no survivors.”
Kanu yawned and leaned against the elevator wall as he answered Logan.
“That’s true. There are tons of incidents with no survivors.”
“If the elevator falls, everyone here will die. Then that’s just the end.”
Logan also yawned and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Kanu said to him,
“If we look not at the twelve of us, but at the entire undersea base, there might be a possibility. The church gathered up every incident that had occurred since humanity came into existence and searched for stories and accounts from survivors. They collected a tremendous amount of data. Surprisingly, there were far more fatal incidents with no survivors. In particular, among mass-death cases, those caused by civil wars or massacres by dictators almost never produced overlapping continuity of time like the Mars base did. They said these peculiar phenomena only occurred in accidents where a large number of people died within an extremely short period of time.”
The church? It felt like cold water had been poured over my head. I stared at Kanu and asked blankly,
“May I ask what religion you belong to, Mr. Kanu?”
Kanu answered immediately, as if it was nothing difficult.
“What was the name again? Uh. The Infinity Church. I’m registered there.”
······But you’re not wearing one of those weird caps, and you’re not carrying a gun!