I gave up; couldn’t get to the past without Suzu-chan! Besides, she has a cute smile. : )
Sky Clad Kansokusha was my soundtrack for Kurisu’s determination, just as it was for Okabe’s determination in Episode 23. : D
Chapter 5: Ventral Pallidum Insomnia, Chapter 7: Dreamworld Poiesis
Chapter 6: Divergence Hariolation
It was the evening of August 15th, and the time-leap machine was almost finished, practice lending me speed in its construction. But right now, I stared from the text on my phone asking me to come to the roof of the hotel, to the time machine that stood there. “I don’t understand.”
“You said that you’d say that,” the brown-haired girl said patiently. “You decided to break out of the loop you had trapped yourself in, and spent your life developing a proper time machine, although my appearance on this date in this particular worldline certainly helped, apparently. You asked me to come back to now to help you out, to get more answers that you can’t reach right now.”
“How should I believe you?” I demanded. “How do I know I really sent you? How come I haven’t seen you before?”
The girl smiled. “My name is Amane Suzuha.” She produced a yellow ball cap and settled it on her head over her braids. “And I don’t know. I think the worldline has branched a lot from your actions. Maybe other Suzuhas waited longer to talk to you, after you had already time-leaped back. Maybe in those you never built a time machine.”
That hat-! Daru’s hat! Hashida Iteru’s hat! “You’re… his daughter?”
“Yup! And it’s nice to meet you in the past, Ba-chan!”
I squeaked in indignation. “Don’t call me Ba-chan, Amane-san, I’m only nineteen!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Suzuha said, laughing. She had such a happy smile. I liked her already. It was hard to believe she was Daru’s daughter. “But please, call me Suzu-chan like you alway- like you will when I’m born properly. You believe me now?”
“Y-yes. So… where- when are we going?”
Her face grew serious. “We’re going into the past, to observe Okabe Rintarou in his childhood.”
“What good will that do?” I demanded. “How do you know who he is?”
“Why, you told me, Ba-chan!” she said. “And I believed you.” She smiled again. “He seems like a really interesting person. I hope you succeed so I can meet him.”
“Why the past?” I objected. “How can the answer be in the past, when he isn’t even thinking about time travel, then?”
“I don’t know, but searching the worldline after he disappeared isn’t going to do anything.”
“Why would I give him up and then spend my life on this?” I muttered to myself. “That pervert isn’t worth this trouble.”
Suzuha’s eyes bored into mine. “Because you love him.”
I blushed crimson and flailed. “W-w-well, but even so- Anyway, I don’t know anything about his past! I only have fragments of things he might have told me-”
“You never gave him up,” she said, inexorably. “You never gave up hope. He did no less for you, you told me. He changed inevitability for your sake.” Her face softened. “I believe, too, that you can find a way. That you can find your way back to Steins;Gate.”
“W-well, I…”
“Come on, Ba-chan. You can’t know until you try.”
“A-all right,” I said, and climbed into the space-capsule-like compartment after her.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible. Me, build a time machine? Sure, I wrote that paper, but that was only on its theoretical practicality. I wouldn’t have dreamed of bothering to build one myself, so obsessed was I with neurology and pleasing my father. And the words she had said, ‘the loop you had trapped yourself in’, were bothering me as well. Yes, something had to change to progress, because I certainly wasn’t making it anywhere just trying to theorize. My stubbornness and intellect alone couldn’t reach Okabe.
But now… I could believe it. Now I had something – someone – I wanted to protect so badly I would believe in even that.
Rain, soaking me. A boy, across the street, umbrella in hand, amber eyes downcast and melancholy. “O-Okabe…”
I began to move in tandem with him, keeping pace as he trudged along. But my heart would not be calm, and my feet began to run, faster and faster. “Okabe- Okabe!”
He looked up, startled, uncomprehending. Of course, he wouldn’t know me yet. I reached the crosswalk and began to bolt across, but my boots slipped on the wet white lines. “Whoop-”
A truck horn, a panicked cry, an umbrella flying-
Thud.
I recovered behind a nearby building with Suzuha, watching the ambulance arrive. Okabe had pushed me out of the way of the truck and gotten hit himself. He was still alive, though, thank goodness.
“He’ll be all right,” Suzuha said. “He won’t die. He doesn’t die in this worldline.”
“Then it’s fixed,” I said, still getting my breath back, still recovering from the shock of having my future sort-of-boyfriend almost die for me again. “Unchanging. And that means I can’t save him in this worldline.”
“Maybe, but that’s not why we’re here. So let’s go back a bit and observe again.”
Despite my best efforts, if we showed up at the same time, Okabe would always get hurt because of me. After several loops of watching him get hit by cars or falling down stairs, I asked Suzuha to go back more in time.
I walked through the quiet rainy town, more calmly now, putting the upsetting memories of blood and broken bones out of my mind. The rain was rather soothing, even though I was getting damp. I pulled my jacket properly around me for once, otherwise my thin white shirt would get soaked through. My footsteps wandered aimlessly without purpose or goal. I trusted I would know what I found when I got there.
There was a small train platform ahead, and I skipped into cover beneath its sheltering roof.
A few minutes later, a black-haired, amber-eyed boy joined me, just sitting quietly. I had to be careful not to get him hit by the train or anything.
He looked so ordinary without his hair brushed back.
“Are you lost?” he asked quietly, unprompted, his voice higher-pitched and young.
I said nothing.
“Me too.” Pause. Here we were, two lost children, looking for meaning in a life bound by convergence… “A girl I’ve known since I was little is really depressed. I don’t know what to say to her… I wonder if I’m just useless…”
I listened carefully, and something shifted in my memory. Mayuri’s voice, telling me how Hououin Kyouma had saved her after her grandmother died by making her his hostage. “Do you know the story of Hououin Kyouma?”
Amber eyes turned to me, curious.
“He was a scientist,” I began. “But not just any scientist. He was a mad scientist, and an exceptional one. He always talked and acted crazy, and people made fun of him. Nobody believed in what he said, his research, or his discoveries. But you see, what he uncovered was something that only he could see. He realized that it could hurt and cause pain and even destroy the world at times. So he tried with all his might to protect everyone. He worked so hard to save the world, and managed to protect all of the people dear to him. But he never let anyone know. He just kept playing a fool and letting everyone laugh at him.”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, what he had to go through. And I couldn’t reproach him for hiding his pain away, for not trusting us… If I hadn’t been through similar things to him until now, how could I have believed him before? Even now that I knew, my burden would never be equal to his burden… I could share in it, but never fully understand it or take it away… He would always be protecting me that way.
Perhaps I could let him do that for me, at least.
“That’s a sad story,” young Okabe said.
“Maybe it is,” I said, and turned to smile at him. “But he was so brave, so strong, I think it’s a wonderful story.” I leaned closer and kissed him on the cheek. “You would be a great Hououin Kyouma, the way you want to protect your friend.”
He thought silently for a minute, then stood, hefting his school backpack.
“There’s someone waiting for you,” I said, not quite making a question of it. But I knew the answer already.
He set off with a determined step, faster and faster. I followed him at a distance, watching as he dashed to a cemetery. There was Mayuri, a little shorter, standing in a familiar pose, reaching out with one arm to the sky, where a tiny ray of light had broken through the clouds and shone down on her.
Okabe charged up to her, throwing his arms around her. I didn’t hear what they said, though I felt a pang at my heart that he cared so much for Mayuri. It was all right, I told myself. He loved Mayuri very much, he always would. But he would come to love me too, once he met me.
The light grew stronger, shining around them, the boy and the girl standing in the rain, almost looking like ghosts through the bright raindrops… Almost as if… outside of time…
“Did you learn anything?” Suzuha asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I have new ideas.”
“I discovered something,” I announced to adult Okabe on the next loop. I wondered vaguely if my visit in that one worldline, or any worldline, had carried over, if he remembered me. But now was not the time to find out.
He looked up from whatever he was typing. “What is it?”
“I know where you’re going. I just don’t know how to get there.”
His eyes opened very wide and serious. “Where am I going, then?”
“You’re not anchored in this worldline, right? So you’re all going to… a… the… space between worldlines, if that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “I call them worldlines, but it’s not like they’re actually threads in time-space and there’s gaps between them. It’s more like-” He stopped to think, and I pounced on the opportunity.
“Well, it’s also a fact that you’re between worldlines. You’re not anchored to any worldline.” I pointed at him dramatically. “That’s how I know we’re not on Steins;Gate anymore!”
His eyes narrowed. “Steins;Gate doesn’t rely on me.”
“Yes, it does!” I told him. “Steins;Gate is the worldline without the sadness brought by time travel, the worldline with the unknown future. I know you’re not going to be here tomorrow, so I know the future. We’re not on Steins;Gate. It branched when you disappeared.”
“You yourself said that we don’t know if the future of Steins;Gate is fixed or not, because we’re not going to invent time travel on it.”
“W-well- If you disappear, I’m going to invent time travel, so logically, whether or not Steins;Gate is fixed, we won’t be on Steins;Gate!”
“So don’t invent time travel and let me go!”
“I know you want to give up, but I’m not going to! I’ve run out of non-time travel options, and especially when my future self sends Suzu-chan back in time to help me out-”
“Wait, the Part-time Warrior was here?”
“The who-” More of his silly nicknames? How come Suzuha got a catchy nickname and I had to put up with The Zombie? How did he know her, when she didn’t know him? “Yes, she was. She only came after you left, though, so you won’t be able to meet her.”
“That’s too bad…” He smiled sadly. “I would have liked to see her again.”
“How do you know her, if she doesn’t know you?”
He looked startled, then nodded. “Another worldline. Did she tell you who she is?”
I glanced around to make sure Daru really wasn’t there, and then nodded back. “She’s Hashida’s daughter. Is she the one who’s going to show up seven- sorry, six years from now?”
“That’s right. I wonder why she’s always the one picked to drive the bus?”
“Probably because she loves her Aunt Kurisu who made the time machine,” I teased.
“Hey, for one of my worldlines it was because she loved her Uncle Okabe and his time machine.” He grinned at me and I rolled my eyes. “I guess she just really likes what we do. Well, back to work then.” He rolled up his sleeves and sighed. “No rest for the terminally ill.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” I scolded him, grabbing a marker. “Now let’s see if we can figure out how to get outside of time, assuming we have access to Suzu-chan’s time machine.”
I stepped back from the whiteboard after another two days of plotting diagrams and calculations. Our efforts had encompassed numerous sheets of paper taped to the wall around the whiteboard and little coloured sticky notes everywhere, including one stuck to his shoulder by accident.
But I was so close, and still so far… I just knew what was happening, Suzuha had helped immensely… and yet…
“You seem tired,” he told me. “You want to take a break?”
I bowed my head, feeling suddenly exhausted, mentally and emotionally. “Even with all this… I… still can’t save you yet.”
He gave me a long, serious look, and I suddenly remembered he had once told me in a broken whisper that he couldn’t save me. “How many loops have you made?”
“I’m not sure. Only twenty or twenty-five. And maybe five with Suzu-chan.” I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders. “I’m not giving up yet, only… You’re trapped behind the unyielding walls of time, and I’m beating on them with all my might, and I understand a little how you felt, back then… I just want to punch through, break them down, and drag you back physically, as if holding on to you will keep you from vanishing.” He was thrown out of the world, completely and utterly alone, a horrible metaphor for how he felt. If I could only make my feelings truly reach him…
I was getting upset and tried not to sniffle. “The only really good thing is that I have ‘lots’ of time to figure it out.” The time loops didn’t seem to be really hurting anyone, since I wasn’t meddling much. Except for the ones where I got him hit by a car, but those loops were over. No more of that.
“Christina…”
“No ‘tina’,” I said automatically.
He ignored that and continued. “This can’t be good for you, having more and more memories of this week than actually happened. You’re the neurologist, isn’t there a limit? You’re not going to drive yourself crazy or anything, right?”
I glared at him. “You’re not allowed to talk. But I don’t know. Since we can’t trust humanity not to misuse time travel, the scientific community is never going to get the chance to find out. But I refuse to let my present consciousness to go too far from your consciousness.”
He put his head on one side. “I think you’re addicted to me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” I fumed. “Just because I’m not willing to give you up doesn’t mean that I’m addicted!”
A smirk was spreading across his face. “You can quit at any time?”
“Maybe I will!” I snapped. But I didn’t really mean that.
He moved closer to me and wrapped his long arms around me, heedless of Daru computing in the corner. “It’s okay. I’m all right with it. If you decide enough is enough, that’s okay.”
Oh, that jerk. Twisting my angry knee-jerk reactions against me. How could he still be so patient after living through this so many times!? Knowing what lay ahead for him!? I had been about to relax into his embrace, but at that, I took a half-step back, my palms against his chest. “You’re impossible!”
“And you’re terrifying,” he said, but he was still smiling. “That burning look in your eyes – you really aren’t going to give up, are you?”
“No!” I cried, my determination gathering yet again, fisting my hands in his lapels. “I’m not letting you go!”
“I guess I can’t leave my assistant to her own devices, can I?”
“I’m not your assistant! But no, you can’t! I won’t allow it!” He was leaning in, I was reaching up, relaxing again into his arms-
And I almost fell on my face as he vanished. The one stray sticky note fluttered to the ground. Noon on the 13th again, dangit! I’d run out of time again!
“One more time!” I cried to Daru, still lurking in the corner. “I’m going back one more time!”
“Starting the hack now, mistress,” Daru teased. “Yeah, you can’t have your lovey-dovey time interrupted by silly things like accidental worldline-jumping- Ow!” I had thrown a marker at him; it bounced off his hat.
“You pervert! Get to work!” I told him, and ran to buy parts, red hair flying, my determination building with every step.
I ended up not going back in time this time, although I still built the time-leap device. I got a text from Suzuha again on the 15th, and went to the roof of the lab to discover that she had arrived there, this time.
She stared at me when she saw me, until I started to be uncomfortable. “What’s the matter? Is there something on my face?”
“Er, well, no, it’s just…” She looked awkward. “You look different, Ba-chan.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You didn’t stare like that last time. Did I tell you not to tell me what’s different?”
“Um, yes…?”
Drat. Foiled by myself. I hoped it wasn’t anything embarrassing. “Okay, can this time machine reach between worldlines?”
Her placement on the roof of the lab was convenient, as it turned out I had alterations to make to it. At the moment, it would only go back and forth in time along this worldline, and from seeing Okabe get hit by a car and surviving last time, I guessed it wouldn’t be able to make the worldline diverge. We needed to get it to move not back and forth, but laterally, to a ‘time’ that shouldn’t exist. Suzuha told me that I hadn’t tried to build it with that capability in the future since it was too far away from Okabe’s last known point in this worldline to be certain of results. She had some notes to help me, though.
She seemed more serious this time around, at least for the first couple days, and I wasn’t sure why. But she got along great with Mayuri and Ruka and Daru, and even Moeka downstairs in the shop, until I wondered if my impression was just my imagination. She still had the same bright smile, the same wit, the same bounciness. I invited her to stay in my hotel room, since she shouldn’t have to sleep in the time machine. As we worked on altering the time machine together, I got to know her a bit better, and wished that Okabe could meet her too, since he knew her as well. With the lab members truly assembled, we would have had so much fun!
But the only reason she was here was because he wasn’t here. Once he was brought back, once we’d made it back to Steins;Gate, she would disappear out of our worldline with her time machine and we’d have to wait six years to meet her again.
The 24th of August was our first test day. Daru wasn’t present, out on a ‘date’ with Yuki. They were playing Rai-net, and I’d bullied him into going to see her in person. I hoped that didn’t mess up the worldline, but honestly, he was being such a chicken. He’d gone out with her on the 24th the last time I got this far in time, but only on the internet without face-cam.
Suzuha, Mayuri and I were all in the lab and now we climbed to the roof to the time machine. “What are we testing?” Mayuri asked, clapping her hands while hugging a stuffed Uupa and bouncing.
“We’re going to send a text message outside the worldline,” Suzuha said. “You all still have Okabe-san’s number, even though it’s unlisted right now, right? With the changes Kurisu-chan and Tousan and I have made, it should have enough power to send at least a signal out. We don’t know if Okabe-san will be able to answer or not, but I’m thinking not, since Ba-chan never said anything about it. But, if all goes well, we can move on to testing bigger things, and then see if we can go there ourselves.” And then bring him back and move the worldline.
“All those changes have made my brain hurt,” I complained. “After the text-message test, I want to sit around and eat pudding and do nothing for a bit.”
“If Kurisu-chan’s brain hurts, it must really be complicated!” Mayuri said cheerfully, waving her stuffed Uupa’s arms at the time machine.
“All right,” Suzuha said, tapping on her remote control. “I’m starting it up. Mayuri-chan, you have the text?”
“Mayushii is all ready to go!” Mayuri turned her phone around to show the short message: ‘Tuturu, Okarin, testing! Answer? : D’ “What are we going to call the test?”
Suzuha and I looked at each other. “Call it?” Suzuha echoed.
“Like, Okabe’s silly Operation titles?” I asked. “It’s just a test…” Mayuri’s eyebrows rose and I backpedalled. “Um, let’s see… maybe… Operation Yggdrasil?” My knowledge of Norse mythology was lacking compared to Okabe’s, but from what I vaguely remembered, Yggdrasil connected all the worlds of Norse legend, so it was appropriate, right? I hoped he hadn’t used that one yet. With my luck, he probably had.
“Okay! We’re beginning Operation Yggdrasil!” Mayuri cried.
Suzuha smiled. “Well, the machine is on, systems show normal, if a little high from all the extra power we’re pulling. Go ahead and send whenever you’re ready!”
Mayuri’s face became adorably determined, and she mashed her finger on the ‘send’ button.
The hum of the time machine changed.
“Should it do that?” Mayuri asked, leaning over to look inside.
“Mayuri-chan, get back!” Suzuha screamed, dropping her remote.
The time machine shone with a piercing light, brighter than the sun. Even as I turned away to futilely shield my eyes, I felt Suzuha grab my hand, dragging me towards the roof stairs. I heard her scream Mayuri’s name again, but I couldn’t see, black spots in front of my eyes. She shoved me fiercely, and I skittered down the stairs, clinging to the handrail.
We burst into the lab, my eyes still blinking back to normalcy. There was an ominous rumbling whine from above us, and the feeling of a vibration thrumming through the whole building. “What’s happening!?”
“I lost her – Mayuri-chan, I lost her! She- she just evaporated-”
“Suzu-chan!”
She shoved the time-leap headset on my head. “Now I know why you were that way… We’re in the Chiyoda Bombing! I didn’t- Quick, go back, go back-”
Enter key. Brilliant light. Ear-bursting sound. The ceiling bursting in, a beam of rebar impaling Suzuha next to me…
Chapter 5: Ventral Pallidum Insomnia, Chapter 7: Dreamworld Poiesis
In the original version of this chapter, Kurisu set off a black hole while trying to build her own time machine and destroyed the whole world (Suzuha wasn’t present). That was a bit over the top. (Also this is what I mean by having higher stakes than the movie. In the movie Kurisu can just faff about without anything bad happening.) (Also also I think Kurisu just got her mad scientist’s license, having destroyed a city at least one time, mwahahaha.)