by Ryu Mitsuse
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTERWORD
Commentary by Mamoru Oshii
Ten Billion Days and
One Hundred Billion Nights
© 1967 Ryu Mitsuse
Originally published in Japan by
Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.
English translation © 2011 VIZ Media, LLC
Cover and interior design by Fawn Lau
No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.
HAIKASORU
Published by
VIZ Media, LLC
295 Bay Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
www.haikasoru.com
ISBN: 978-1-4215-4287-4
Haikasoru eBook edition
For ten billion days and one hundred billion nights—
Only dreams.
-R.M.
Surging and receding . . .
Surging and receding . . .
The sound of the waves rolling in and rolling back out has echoed across this world for hundreds of millions of years, a long reach toward eternity.
Not once in that span has it ceased rocking and crossing this blue world, sometimes gently, sometimes powerfully; stormy as the morning, calm as the deep of night.
Surging and receding . . .
Surging and receding . . .
The sea rolls in and rolls back out. One hundred billion shimmering stars rise between the wave crests, only to sink back into the vastness of the waves with the first dim light of dawn.
On a night of exceptional darkness, a faint shooting star cuts across the void, trailing a long tail of light, then falls behind the nacreous line of the horizon, its glow becoming an unfading scar—a memory in the space between the stars.
Gradually, the constellations change their shapes; white stars take the place of blue stars, red stars take the place of orange, each making way for the next as they slide past each other to weave new shapes in the sky.
Surging and receding . . .
Surging and receding . . .
Time that knows no haste flows over the waves as they roll in and roll back out, through night and into day and into night again.
The vast flow of time leaves traces of its passage across everything without exception. It moves within everything that is, mischievously touching, changing—sometimes destroying. Not even the sea is spared, for over one hundred billion days and nights, the starlight that falls upon its surface, the wind and rain that blow across it, the brilliance of the burning sun that warms it, and the snow that whirls in eddies around its frozen waves, all are absorbed and reduced into individual molecules, tiny motes that show no hint of their vast history. In the bottomless sediments only a vague memory remains.
The sea: it contains within itself the long, long story of time, a perpetual record of shapes that will never be seen again.
Of wind and cloud and wave, of bright days and dark nights.
The sea has always been time’s closest confidant.
Surging and receding . . .
Surging and receding . . .
Hundreds of billions of days and nights roll in and roll back out again. All the while the waves sound ceaselessly, rolling and roiling in unending motion.
And yet, there was a time before the waves. In those far and distant days, when the planet still boiled with accretion heat and the furious energy spewed forth by the molten rock and metal beneath its surface, hydrogen and oxygen swirled in wild clouds of incandescent gas, having yet to combine into the new substance they would one day become. The great sphere’s surface was crisscrossed with fissures; explosive gas and molten lava gushed high into the sky like crashing waves, there to twist and scatter. Primal mountains and hills reared up, only to sink once again into the lava. Sheets of flame like waterfalls bloomed across half of the planet.
The orange sun that dominated this solar system with its strong magnetic field ceaselessly blasted the landscape with precise quanta of radiation and heat, triggering minute physical and chemical changes in the planet’s depths and across its surface.
The result of two billion years of long, long toil was about to make itself apparent.
Thick, thick clouds filled the sky, barring the sun from reaching a surface still ravaged by wild flames. Through the ashen shadows, glowing lava flows rushed like rapids, colliding with other similar streams to send forth hundreds of thousands of sparks that rose and fell like a burning ocean. The undersides of the clouds were lit eerily by the light of those explosions, and the fiery slag of the surface seemed capable of destroying the very planet that birthed it.
Bursts of lightning flashed inside the thick cloud layer, sending occasional pillars of electricity shooting up toward the tops of the clouds. Meteor showers rained down again and again, puncturing the savagely swirling atmosphere. Many of the descending fragments scored direct hits on the fiery mud below. The giant conflagrations that lit the thick, dark clouds and the firestorms that followed made this world a thing of terrible beauty, though there were none to see it.
The grand gala of creation was approaching its conclusion. The stage for the next event was already prepared beneath the sea of flame that covered the planet’s surface.
Yet it would be another long, long time before the true lead players arrived.
It all began eons earlier still, as tiny particles of interstellar matter were pushed by the faint waves of light radiating from distant stars, gathering one by one in this region that had been mere empty space. Objects as small as one hundred millionth of a millimeter cannot move far in an hour propelled only by weightless light; yet they had come, slowly but steadily, from the far corners of the almost-void. After an impossibly long time, this collection of interstellar matter had gradually formed into a dense cloud of floating gas.
This frigid cloud—close to minus 160 degrees Celsius—hung like a veil between the stars, receiving their energy, becoming a cloud of light—an emission nebula, streaming a vast luminescence of its own. And still the various particles in this veil of brightness continued to pull at each other, the greater absorbing the lesser, forming innumerable tiny masses. Smaller masses spun into larger masses, and larger masses grew larger yet. Eventually, the largest accretion came to control the gravitational field of the entire system. This great monarch of matter had already begun to breathe—its hydrogen fusion reaction the very essence of power. The other, lesser bodies were swept into place by that shining nuclear power to form a solar system.
The orange star at its center consumed an entire 564 million tons of hydrogen every second, creating 560 million tons of helium. The remaining four million tons of matter were converted into a stupendous amount of energy that spread throughout the surrounding space.
This particular sun held ten planets within its grasp. The closest kept a distance of fifty-seven million kilometers from the star; the planet in the farthest orbit kept an average distance of roughly sixty billion kilometers.
The third planet from the system’s center had a diameter of twelve thousand kilometers and completed a full circuit of the sun in about 365 days. The long, long flow of time brought tremendous change to the substance of this planet. Its own gravitational field caused it to contract, creating tens of thousands of degrees of accretion heat in its core. This sum of fire was compounded by heat released from radioactive particles over their long decay. Together these two energy sources
melted and scorched the crust that had begun to form over the planet’s surface.
The process of transformation was accelerated when the planet began to release the incredible heat that had built up within its core. The lava that spewed forth changed the chemical composition of the surface, creating countless new compounds and releasing even more complex chemicals into the air to become part of the atmosphere.
At long last, water steam shot from the heated mantle, roiling beneath the thick clouds, glowing like fragments of a crimson mirror.
After countless years, this water steam became a fog that dropped back down toward the surface. Still, pillars of flame reached into the sky, and scalding hot winds scoured the surface. Incandescent lava moved in great rivers of fire, scorching the barren terrain. Heated clouds burst, sending the fog scattering back into the air. But gradually, the water steam grew thicker, forming droplets, until the fog became rain, falling from great thunderheads. It would be tens of millions of years more until that rain began to reach the surface.
After a long, long time had passed, the first droplets of water made it to the ground, only to evaporate the instant they touched the steaming crust. And yet that fleeting contact, though it lasted less than a hundredth of a second, marked the most important moment in the history of this planet. Over time, the process that it began would eventually lead to the first standing water and the wholly novel development that was to follow.
Time passed slowly on . . . one hundred years, then one thousand, then one hundred thousand, then one hundred million . . . and the rain grew stronger, more intense, becoming a sizzling torrent. Steam heated to incredible temperatures blasted up from the ground, rending the atmosphere over and over again, until enough time passed and enough water fell to begin to cool the flaming sea of lava, a single degree at a time.
For tens of thousands of years, then hundreds of thousands more, the rain fell without pause, and eventually the sea of flame became a plain of hot mud where water and fire fought ceaselessly. Black ridges of igneous rock rose slowly between the superheated clouds of swirling steam.
Grudgingly the flames undertook their long retreat.
Water began to collect in the lowest reaches, where the land lay sunken after the last gouts of lava had cooled.
Once the porous skin of the cooled cinder-stone had absorbed all the water it could, small fragments in the pores stopped the water, forming a seepage barrier.
Pools emerged where the water collected. The rain continued to beat mercilessly upon the land. Countless tiny seas gradually joined together to form a mighty ocean, while the numerous volcanoes raged on, their violence unfaltering. Brimstone still fell like rain, dark clouds of ash covered the sky, and cascades of lava rushed down the newly formed valleys of the world. Incessant earthquakes and landslides changed the face of the surface daily, all while the rain came down in such a torrent it seemed like it might wash everything back to the void from which it had come.
Then, when the great circulation of energy in the atmosphere had slowed just enough, narrow rents like arrow trails opened in the thinning clouds, and the first ray of the sun fell upon the broken land. This single beam of light, piercing the thick layer of gas that was not quite cloud and not quite smoke, lit the cracked edge of a scorched eruption crater and revealed with a glimmer the surface of the great, steaming ocean within. On every side, volcanoes spewed forth their dark effluvium while the lava streamed down their steep sides.
It was in moments like these that the first rainbows rose above the shattered plains, brightening against the veil of rain that swept between the land and the ashen clouds above.
In the nights that followed, stars appeared through new rents in the clouds, their light faint and wavering in the violent currents that flowed through the atmosphere. For the first time, the planet looked up at the great universe that had birthed it. Perhaps it then heard a voice, calling to it from a distant place. The stars cast their glorious light down upon the broken surface of the world, telling of the calm that was to come. History had just begun for this new, ageless place; there would be many long years of change ahead.
The warm pools of rainwater filled with a muck of minerals, developing into a thick primordial soup. Water, a potent solvent, dissolved much of what it fell on and flowed around; as more and more was added to the mix, new things appeared that had never before existed. Organic chemicals compounded together, creating the first proteins.
Still time marched on, silent and steady.
The water falling from the sky and the water pushed up from inside the ground came together in the crevices on the surface, until it covered a full third of the planet’s surface. For the first time, it was possible to distinguish land from water. The water that collected in the depressions stayed there, until its sheer weight pushed against the planet’s mantle, causing the ground beneath it to sink even further. Around the expanding watery regions, the volcanoes continued their furious activity, spewing forth ever more acidic and alkaline substances to dissolve in the water.
The sun reached through the clouds now, streaming a vast amount of energy into the spreading waters. It rained, hard, several times a day, filling the seas and washing the land, water mixing with inorganic material to enrich certain regions within the expanse of the ocean.
The charcoal clouds grew thinner and thinner, scattering over years, until a vivid blue sky domed the land. The towering stacks of vapor dimmed the outlines of the mountains, which rose to lofty peaks along the shores of the sea. These mountains, which formed the high spine of the land, were growing at the rate of several centimeters a day. The constant earthquakes and landslides were an ever-present indicator of growth and change.
Continents emerged, advancing and retreating through the seas that surrounded all. Simple coastlines quickly became more complex, carven with bays and inlets; shallows marked where the eroding slopes filled in the ocean near the shore.
Here, somewhere under the surface of the gentling waves, were formed the basic building blocks of life—sulfur, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium, as well as nitrogen and carbon dioxide and ammonia, in endless combinations. The conditions under which these substances mix to form the basic building blocks of organic material are rare in the extreme. How many times they must all have come together only to fall apart. Somehow, as this endless process of trial and error continued, the simplest form of life—a substance that could propagate itself and metabolize energy—came into being. It is difficult to say whether this was truly life as we know it. Such primeval entities were so simple that it would be hard to define what about them was life and what about them was not. Gradually, however, a hierarchy emerged among them. Some became absorbers while others were absorbed—the opening act in a harsh struggle for survival. From the chaos that ensued, only the most successful entities would emerge. It was almost inevitable that this simple, primal material that sprang up from the rich soup of the ancient shallows would, one day, develop a higher intellect, as if to challenge the very natural world that gave it life.
Meanwhile, a change both gradual and violent was taking place in the sea as well. The narrow sea that had split the land mass in two gradually disappeared, until a single great peak dominated the surface of the planet. Its heights were sheathed in thick ice, hard as steel, from which glaciers flowed, bearing down time and time again upon the land far below.
Four great oceans ruled the climate of the planet and split the land into four great continents that rose above the waters, creating their own unique interior environments.
By now two billion years had already passed on the young planet; the next two billion were fast approaching.
Uncountable new organisms formed in the seas, drifting, swimming, crawling; some dividing and multiplying, some laying eggs.
Trilobites appeared and spread, dominating the shallows across the planet. With their thick carapaces and sensory organs far more advanced than those of their contemporaries, they dominated the early ecosystems; for a lo
ng time they held their watery domain against all intruders. Though the mollusks and the echinoderms had developed equivalent internal complexity, their defensive body structures made them particularly unsuited for vying with the trilobites for supremacy. Their rule unchallenged, the trilobites diversified into species ranging in size from two centimeters to a full two and a half meters, and their kind flourished.
And yet, though harried by the trilobite swarms, in the depths of the sea another variety of life was gathering the strength it would require to carry the next age.
Though these creatures too first began with the thick shells that were the fashion of the day, they gradually abandoned their unwieldy carapaces, their armor diminishing to small scales of chitinous plate. External gills folded inside, and flat bodies morphed into more aerodynamic conical shapes. Small, round eyes developed convex lenses, and a multitude of jointed swimming appendages became a smaller number of highly efficient fins.
This kind of change does not come about in a hundred years or a thousand. It was only by fierce tenacity that these new creatures persevered over tens of millions of years until the processes of mutation and selection had remade them into something wholly new. In the face of the incessant onslaught of the trilobites, they paid countless sacrifices, pushed nearly to the brink of extinction on several occasions. Yet every time the fish came back stronger, better suited to their environment. Against such highly efficient, highly energetic life-forms, the offensive weaponry and defensive structures of the past age would ultimately give way. At last the entire vastness of the ocean was a stage for life. The lords of the coastal shallows, the trilobites, could no longer stave off the invasion. There was a limit to how deep the trilobites could survive, and once the fish pushed them and their heavy carapaces down to the seafloor, there was no returning to the shallows.
