Chapter Text
That Monday I awoke to a picturesque spring morning. The cold of last week was well and truly gone, while the sweltering heat of the weekend had managed to calm itself down such that the temperature outside was perfectly mild. Wherever you went, you were met with a breeze gentle enough to feel like you were draped in fine silk sheets that soothed your every worry. It was so much the embodiment of spring that you could pluck a photo from the April page of your calendar and it would look no different than the view before me as I hiked uphill to North High.
“Do you recall the conversation we had about the nature of computer files?”
“Good morning, Koizumi.”
“The same to you.” He chuckled. “Now, you remember that exchange, yes?”
“Enough that you don’t have to repeat it for me.”
“Excellent. As I said at the time, the deletion of files is in truth a transformative process which reflects the properties of matter in our world.”
Here we go again. I braced myself for the rest of his inevitable monologue.
“However, at the time I neglected to mention one digital action with no physical counterpart.”
“And that is?”
He snapped his fingers.
“Copying.”
“Copying?”
“The act of creating an exact clone of a file. When a file is duplicated in such a way, the only difference between the original data and its copy will be its location on the disk, assuming no errors occur in the process of course. While it’s possible to replicate a physical object to such a degree that the two are nearly indistinguishable to the human eye, their atoms and structures at a molecular level will be wildly unlike each other. In our day and age, any technology capable of truly cloning matter is only found in science fiction.”
“I guess. But did you really expect everything a computer does to be the same as some law of physics?”
“Rules are rules, no matter the realm they govern,” Koizumi chirped as though reading it from a tacky poster. “Furthermore, while there is no property of matter that truly reflects the ability of a file to be cloned, that isn’t to say it is an alien concept.”
I told him to quit talking in circles and get the hell on with it.
“Right. Let’s return to our analogy of the unsavory photos.”
“I’d prefer it if we didn’t, but fine.”
“You know that those images can’t simply remain on a shared device; they may well be seen by a third party at any minute. However, let us say that you don’t want to erase the files completely, so deletion is also off the table. What do you do?”
I know what I did, but I wasn’t about to tell him. I kept my mouth shut.
“No answer? Ah, well. The idea I was leading towards was that of copying the files onto an external drive. Perhaps you would copy them to a memory stick, or to a personal device. Possibly even both, should you wish. Now, regardless of what happens to the original photos– whether you move them elsewhere or delete them entirely– you can rest easy with the knowledge of having a backup.”
If I ever get my own computer at home, I can see myself doing that with the MIKURU folder. That’s not important, though. I didn’t say that.
“The ability to retain a version of something, even when the original has long since disappeared.” Koizumi looked over at me. “What does that remind you of?”
“Uh…” I ignored the distracting thoughts he had dug up and searched my brain for an answer.
“Take as much time as you need. I’m more than capable of being patient.”
Great, now this really was a pop quiz. I gave up and just said the first thing that came to mind.
“I could take a rock from a hill, and then that hill gets dug out. So there’s no hill but I still have the rock.”
“A unique analogy, however incorrect. Please, do try again.”
Oh, come on.
We were almost at the top of the hill when Koizumi finally allowed me to stop guessing.
“I’m afraid we have little time left, so I’ll tell you; the answer is a memory.”
“A memory?”
“Indeed. When you witness a memorable event, your mind creates a record of it for safekeeping. What you saw, heard, felt, et cetera, is retained.”
“I guess. It’s not really a copy, though, is it?”
“Maybe. However, consider that from a certain perspective, there is very little proof that any event truly did happen. In fact, your entire understanding of what is and is not real is derived solely from your five senses.”
I was wondering when it would get too abstract for me to comprehend.
“What I mean is that if viewed from the perspective of your brain and nothing else, the memory of sensory information is in effect a copy of the original feelings that were experienced. Much like cloning a file as backup, your brain has cloned the information it received.”
It sort of made sense, and really didn’t.
“However, there’s a problem. Memories and the like fade with time. You may remember what Suzumiya said when you first met her, but it’s unlikely that your brain kept a record of whatever taste was in your mouth at the time. As you get older, the more distant memories lose more and more sensory information until they disappear. Because the original event has long passed, that means that as far as your mind is concerned none of it ever happened to begin with.”
“But it did happen.”
“Indeed, we understand it that way. Much like if the drive containing your copy of the now deleted photos is damaged in some way or degrades with time, the data will lose information until it becomes unrecoverable. Even though the file did certainly exist in the past, the computer has no recollection that it ever had.”
We were at the door now. He’d better finish this up quickly.
“Ergo, my conclusion is that much like the files we save to a computer, our memories are finite and irreplaceable. With time, both will fade away.”
Koizumi smiled enigmatically and flicked a strand of hair away from his eyes.
“All that we can do is hold onto our experiences, and the memories of them, until they are inevitably lost. Quite a bittersweet truth, isn’t it?”
I’d heard enough, and he seemed to believe his point had been made. I told Koizumi that I would see him in the clubroom after class. There was no point in saying something so obvious as the daily routine, but we humans say useless junk all the time, so who really cares?
I kicked my shoes off and reached into the locker, grasping for the familiar school slippers. I pulled them out and dropped them in front of me. They were already facing the same direction as my feet– a textbook example of high school efficiency at work. As I did this, though, I felt a piece of paper brush against my hand and fall to the floor.
My attention was instantly captured. Was it a letter, and if so what kind? A love letter from some unknown female colleague, wishing to profess her feelings to me? Instructions from Asahina the Elder, whom I hadn’t seen in so long? A prank from Taniguchi, just to get my hopes up? I reached down and snatched up the message before anything could happen to it. It was neatly folded and creased in almost a perfect square unlike any letter I had received before.
“Huh…?”
As I unfolded the paper I let out a confused remark at what was inside. In my hands was a colorful sheet of copy paper on which had been printed “The SOS Brigade Is Here!” in large bubble letters. It was one of the flyers I had made on Friday for that crazy publicity stunt that had me running all across the school grounds. Why was it here of all places? We didn’t have enough copies left over to do any kind of shoe locker campaign.
“Yo, Kyon, what’s that? A love letter?” Taniguchi’s stupid voice clattered against my ear as he snooped over my shoulder. “Eh? Isn’t that one of your posters or whatever?”
I glanced at his locker in the row opposite mine. “You didn’t get one, Taniguchi?”
“Nope. The old thing’s empty as ever. It’s hopeless, man.”
I gave him my condolences and went back to wondering what one of my flyers was doing on my slippers. I supposed it was possible that someone could have stuffed it in there to get rid of it. But if that was the case, why fold it so well? It almost looked like a machine had done it. The only person I knew who could potentially fold a paper like this was Nagato, but she had no reason to put my own handiwork in my shoe locker. It just wasn’t her way of communicating.
I pondered the mysterious piece of paper as I made my way to class 2-5. Was it a code? Did it mean something, anything at all, or was it just a thoughtful stranger returning one of my handouts to me?
To be honest, these questions probably would have lingered forever if I hadn’t bumped into some peppy-looking freshman on the stairs. Stirred by the force, the paper flapped around a little, and one of its creases bent over to reveal what should have been a blank white back. I didn’t have enough time to make them two-sided or anything, and I don’t think our clunky printer was even capable of that to begin with.
Once I was done looking back at whoever had bounced past me to spark that collision, I noticed in the corner of my vision that something was written on the back of my flyer. So that was it. Why hadn’t I thought to look at the back? I quickly turned it over to see.
It was mostly empty save for one corner, which was marked with a small note. The handwriting was very precise, with slow and methodical-looking strokes. It was too clean to be Koizumi’s, too imperfect to be Nagato’s, and too plain to be Asahina’s. Haruhi was out of the question as well– her style was fast and energetic, practically the opposite of these letters. In fact, it didn’t look like the work of anyone I knew.
But as I read the message that had been left for me, I had a feeling that I knew exactly who was responsible.
“Thank you.”
I folded the note and slid it into my pocket with a grin, then hurried to class. Haruhi would surely be waiting on her advisor today, and I had some great ideas I wanted to share.