Boiling Apocalypse (Part 2)
Chapter 1: The Iron Box and the Quiet Whisper
Three days had passed since the "Amanokaguyama" went missing.
Ninety percent of the Pacific Ocean was already filled with jet-black, boiling "flesh mucus." The sea, which once nurtured beautiful blue life, had now become a den of antibodies (a system) created by the giant organism that is Earth to eliminate humanity.
The government emergency shelter "Capsule Zero," built 300 meters underground by hollowing out the bedrock off the coast of Atami.
This was the last bastion of humanity left in Japan.
On the large monitors inside the facility, the despair captured by fixed-point cameras around the world was displayed. Times Square in New York had been swallowed by a black mudslide, the Eiffel Tower in Paris had bent limply from the heat, and its base was buried under swarms of the new humanity.
“...Another one is gone.”
Sae, the communications officer, took off her headset with a pale face. Her fingertips were trembling violently.
“This time it was in the B-block residential area. The door was locked from the inside. Yet, all that remained in the room were clothes and traces of melted organic matter. The security camera showed... him willingly inhaling the 'black mist' that had seeped in through a tiny crack in the wall...”
The shelter was supposed to be a completely sealed space. Titanium alloy bulkheads, triple airlocks, and high-precision molecular filters. However, the "black mucus," which is Earth's immune system, releases invisible vaporized gas (mist) into the atmosphere, penetrating even the microscopic pores of the concrete.
“They aren't fighting.”
Sakaki, the shelter's defense commander, opened his heavy mouth. His eyes were bloodshot from days of sleepless nights, and his face was sallow and gaunt.
“They are being tempted. By that black sea, by the consciousness of those who have been absorbed into Misaki and the others...”
Pop, pop.
At that moment, that eerie sound echoed from the other side of the shelter's thick titanium hatch. It sounded like bubbles bursting, or something boiling. But to the survivors now, it did not sound like mere ambient noise.
“It’s hot... no... it’s not hot anymore...”
“Come here... to a world... without lies...”
The mass of black mucus surging outside the hatch. The weak electromagnetic waves, or perhaps unknown psychic waves, emitted from it were sending sweet, maddening messages directly into the brains of the people inside the shelter.
“A-ahhhhh!”
Suddenly, a young technical soldier screamed and fired his gun wildly at the hatch. The intense gunfire echoed through the confined space. However, the bullets only pierced the sturdy metal and could not erase the terror outside.
“Calm down! Stop shooting!”
Sakaki restrained the technical soldier. But the outlines of the soldier's pupils were beginning to blur from the sheer terror. The decline in his immune system due to stress had triggered the activation of the black mist that had been lurking slightly within his body.
“Commander... my sister, who should be dead, is inside my head... She’s laughing, saying it’s cool and pleasant. She’s calling me, saying she’s lonely...!”
The technician's skin begins to secrete an unnatural, milky-white liquid, like sweat. His fingertips melt into the metal grip of the gun he was holding, merging into a single mass.
“Get away! Don't touch him!”
Sakaki made the agonizing decision to push the technician away. The “boundary” that maintains the structure of the human body was being lost along with his mental collapse. Within mere seconds, what had been the technician stopped screaming in pain and, with a blissful smile, melted into a carpet of flesh covering the floor.
Left behind were his clothes and a grotesque mass where metal and flesh had merged.
“...There is no more time.”
Sakaki said this quietly, but with a voice full of resolve.
“I will stop the Earth from boiling. We have no choice but to freeze their core—the Earth's core—directly.”
Humanity's final counter-offensive operation, 'Absolute Zero,' was about to be born in the depths of this hell.
Chapter 2: The Quickening of Absolute Zero and the Collapse of Boundaries
The air in 'Capsule Zero,' an emergency shelter three hundred meters underground, was rapidly increasing in density.
The oxygen concentration in the atmosphere far exceeded the standards of the former Earth, and it was no longer a gas for sustaining life, but was transforming into a “fuse” that would turn everything to ash in an instant.
Defense Commander Sakaki stood before a massive hologram display in the central control room. What was projected on the screen was a heat source network covering the entire deep-sea mantle of the Earth. The jet-black immune system, the “black slime” that had erupted from the Ogasawara Trench, had already completely assimilated with the magma chambers running beneath the Japanese archipelago, causing the Earth's own body temperature to “boil.”
“Captain Sakaki, the operation is ready.”
The voice from behind belonged to Chief Researcher Himuro. Her face, too, had turned an earthy color from severe mental fatigue, but the light of human reason still barely remained in the depths of her eyes.
“This is the last crystal left to humanity... the 'Absolute Emitter.' Theoretically, if we fire this into the deepest part of the Ogasawara Trench—the 'core' of the Earth's immune system—we can completely stop the molecular motion for thousands of kilometers around it and forcibly freeze the Earth's boiling (fever). ”
“But how do we transport it there?”
Sakaki pointed to the map of Japan submerged in a black sea on the display.
“The surface transportation network is destroyed. The air currents are chaotic because the atmosphere has expanded too much; if we fly an aircraft, it will explode instantly from friction heat. And the sea... it goes without saying, it's that thick soup of flesh.”
“There is one special submersible, the 'Shinkai 12000,' of the same type as the 'Amanokaguyama,' left in the lowest-level dock.”
Himuro tapped the keyboard, displaying a 3D model of the submarine covered in jet-black titanium alloy on the screen.
“The outer shell is equipped with superconducting cooling plates, so it can withstand the heat of the slime. However, the automatic navigation system cannot be used. In that sea, even electronic signals are scrambled by the telepathy (mental waves) of the new humans, causing the programs to bug out and go berserk. In other words...”
“It means we have no choice but to pilot it manually and dive in ourselves.”
Sakaki laughed self-deprecatingly.
It was a one-way suicide mission from which no one could return alive.
Click, click, click.
At that moment, “that sound” rang out from the control room speakers, cutting through the noise. It was not the sound of bubbles popping. A horrific metallic sound, like thousands upon thousands of human fingernails scratching the outer wall of the shelter simultaneously, echoed throughout the entire facility.
“What is that!? Switch the security camera feed!”
Sakaki roared. What was projected on the monitor was the footage of the main shaft leading to the second residential district.
An unbelievable sight was unfolding there.
The fifty-centimeter-thick, super-reinforced plastic observation window was “warping” unnaturally. It was not melting from heat. The “mass of black slime” clinging to the other side of the window was merging the molecular structure of the plastic into its own flesh, reducing the window itself into a viscous liquid.
And then, from beyond that melting window, a single “face” poked out.
“...Mi, Misaki...?”
Himuro gasped and took a step back.
It was the face of Misaki, his former colleague, who should have vanished into the black sea along with the 'Amanokaguyama' in the first part.
However, her form could no longer be called human.
The skin of her face had melted into the fibers of her clothes, and from the neck down, she had transformed into a pitch-black, multi-meter-long mass of flesh resembling a 'giant serpent,' with countless human limbs and fish fins fused in a grotesque manner. Yet, only her facial features remained exactly as Misaki's in life, and she was smiling eerily and with the utmost serenity, maintaining her habit of 'slightly raising the right corner of her mouth' that she often did when she was alive.
'Himuro-san... Captain Sakaki... I've finally found you...'
It was not coming from the speakers. Misaki's voice, which sounded like ringing bells but was layered with the voices of countless humans, resonated directly inside the brains of everyone in the control room, mixed with static.
'You don't have to be afraid anymore... It's very hot inside the shelter, isn't it? Is it hard to breathe? ...Take off your clothes and come outside. Inside this sea, it's cold and feels so good. It's a world without lies, loneliness, or sadness...'
'Shut up! You monster!'
Sakaki pulled a high-powered assault rifle from the holster at his waist and pulled the trigger toward the Misaki on the monitor. However, the moment the bullets touched the black mist that had permeated through the plastic, the gunpowder ignited abnormally, and the entire gun barrel exploded violently.
'Guaaaah!'
Sakaki's right hand was torn off, and it rolled onto the floor. However, even the blood flowing from it evaporated the moment it hit the floor, turning into an eerie, milky-white mist.
'Captain!'
Himuro tried to rush over, but thick, black liquid was already beginning to drip like rain from the gaps in the control room ceiling, the air vents, and every 'crack in the boundary.'
A single drop fell onto the shoulder of a male operator nearby.
'H-hot... cold...?'
His scream instantly turned into an ecstatic hum. His clothes, his skin, and even the steel chair he was sitting on melted into a sludge, assimilating with the floor structure. The 'childhood memories,' 'insults toward others,' and 'hidden desires' overflowing from his brain turned into electromagnetic waves and flooded into the brains of everyone in the control room like a tsunami.
'My head... it's splitting...!'
Himuro shouted, covering both ears. The terror of other people's memories entering his own. An overwhelming body horror where he could no longer remain an 'individual' called himself.
'Himuro... run to the dock...!'
Sakaki's entire right arm had already fused with the concrete of the control room floor, and he could no longer pull it out. From beneath his feet, the boundaries of his skin were rapidly disappearing, and the integration was progressing as if he were planting pink roots of flesh into the floor.
'I'm already... at my limit. But please, deliver my memories and the will of humanity to that core...!'
Sakaki's face was melting and flowing toward the floor, half of it already gone. However, his remaining left eye was staring firmly at Himuro.
'I will definitely... cool down the Earth!'
Himuro wiped away his tears and, while desperately avoiding the black slime erupting from the floor, jumped into the emergency ladder leading to the lowest dock.
Behind him, the consciousnesses of what used to be Sakaki, the operator, and Misaki had perfectly melted into one, and they had begun to sing a 'hymn of the new world' in a beautiful, multi-layered chorus.
Crackle, crackle...
The sound announcing the end of the world echoed endlessly and gently in the darkness deep underground.
Chapter 3: Despair at 12,000 Miles Under the Sea
The air pressure in the underground dock had already exceeded its limit.
The 'black mist' leaking from the upper floors was descending through the ventilation ducts as if it were a living creature.
'Hatch, seal...! Cooling system, maximum output!'
Himuro slid into the narrow cockpit of the submersible 'Shinkai 12000' and locked the heavy titanium alloy hatch with intense force. Immediately after, the ceiling of the dock collapsed with a squelch due to its own weight and melting, and a massive amount of 'black flesh slime' slammed into the submersible's skylight like a waterfall.
BOOM.
With a dull impact, the submersible burned through the dock's mooring arms itself and slid down into the pitch-black Pacific Ocean, where hot water and slime swirled.
“...It's cold.”
Himuro whispered as she gripped the control stick.
The ocean outside should have been boiling water exceeding eighty degrees Celsius due to the Earth's boiling. However, the minus two-hundred-degree cold air emitted by the superconducting cooling plate mixed with the 'unknown fluid properties' of the black slime, causing the sensor's temperature display to fluctuate eerily.
The world outside, projected onto the main screen, was a hellscape that left one speechless, or perhaps, an all-too-perfect 'placenta of a new world'.
The mid-zone, where fish once swam, was now entirely one giant 'meat soup'. Hundreds of millions, trillions of cells—humans, whales, and deep-sea fish alike—had melted together into a sludge, slowly repeating contraction and expansion like the muscles of a single massive organism.
Crackle, crackle, crackle.
The sound of something hitting the hull was clearly louder and 'closer' than before.
Even though it should have been separated by the titanium alloy outer shell, the sound vibrated her eardrums directly, as if it were being whispered right behind Himuro's ears.
“Himuro-san... why are you hiding in such a cold box?”
“I'm lonely... We have all become one already. Your seat is prepared here, too...”
“...Ugh!”
The 'overlapping voices' of Misaki and Captain Sakaki, who had just fused moments ago, echoed directly inside her brain.
That was not all. From the entire ocean, the 'unconscious chorus' of billions of humans who had melted on Earth over the past few days came as a tsunami of thoughts, carving away at Himuro's psyche.
Their memories slipped through the gaps in the submersible's metal molecules and stuck to Himuro's brain like a patchwork quilt.
A stranger's childhood sunset, the pain of someone's heartbreak, the fear someone felt while dying. These mixed with her own memories, and a violent vertigo, as if the boundaries of her brain were slowly dissolving, assaulted her.
“I am Himuro... The last scientist of humanity... My mission... is to lower the Earth's heat...!”
Himuro thrust a pair of tweezers deep into her thigh through her clothes.
Excruciating pain. Red blood slowly seeped out. With just the stimulation of that pain, she barely managed to anchor the 'outline of her individual self' to the world.
The submersible's altimeter was rapidly decreasing in numbers.
Depth: four thousand meters. Five thousand meters. Six thousand meters.
The hadal zone, where the Mariana Trench and Ogasawara Trench are located, and where light should never reach.
However, this deep sea was now filled with an eerie 'aurora'-like light. From the bottom of the black slime, vivid pink and purple light, as if bioluminescence had been amplified trillions of times, glittered in sync with the pulsations.
When she approached the source of that light, Himuro witnessed something unbelievable.
“...A city...?”
On the seabed plain ten thousand meters deep, a structure resembling a giant 'meat beehive' towered for several kilometers.
It was a 'super-colony' created by the Earth's immune system for the new humans. Skyscrapers that once stood on the surface, the wreckage of the sunken research vessel 'Amanokaguyama', and the flesh of countless humans had melted together, functioning like a single massive internal organ.
At the center of that city was the 'Earth's Heart (Core)', several kilometers in diameter, pulsing with exceptional intensity.
It was the source of all calamity, controlling the boiling of the entire Earth by converting the heat of magma erupting from the deepest part of the Ogasawara Trench into energy.
“Absolute Emitter, lock released... Target: Earth Core (Earth System Core).”
With trembling fingers, Himuro flipped up the red cover on the console.
If she pressed this button, the submersible and everything around it would instantly turn into a 'world of absolute zero ice' where molecular motion had ceased. The Earth's boiling would stop, and the black sea that had melted humanity would freeze solid.
But that was when it happened.
THUD!!!
Something massive slammed violently into the submersible's skylight.
The titanium alloy hull groaned in agony, and the superconducting cooling plate meter jumped straight into the red zone.
“W-what is...!”
As Himuro looked up, she saw, on the other side of the windshield, a grotesque entity of unimaginable size staring back at her, having 'sprouted' from the vast sea of flesh.
It was the [Mother System of the New World], hundreds of meters long, formed by using the hull of the 'Amanokaguyama'—which had vanished in the first part—as its skeleton, with hundreds of thousands of human heads and limbs, whale fins, and the tentacles of deep-sea creatures all melted together into a viscous mass.
And then, a particularly large 'human face' at the center of that massive, grotesque form slowly opened its eyes.
It was Misaki.
No, it was Misaki, it was Sakaki, and it was the consciousness of the Earth itself.
“Himuro-san... Are you still rejecting the world?”
The moment that voice echoed in her mind, every system in the submersible went silent.
The LCD screen flickered violently, and the navigation program written in Python began to rewrite itself as if it were a living thing. Error codes filled the screen, and in the end, only the words 'Welcome to the New World' were displayed.
“The program... it's being rewritten...!? It's not just the boundaries of matter; it's melting the boundaries of information (data) as well...!?”
A cold sensation crept up from beneath Himuro's feet.
When she looked, a milky-white liquid was oozing out from the sturdy titanium floor of the submersible. Even the 'barrier of human civilization' that was the submersible was nothing more than easily melted butter in the face of the Earth's overwhelming immune system.
“Ah... ah...”
Himuro's shoes melted, and her toes began to assimilate with the pedals of the cockpit.
There was no sense of pain. Only an overwhelming 'kindness' and 'warmth' rushed from her feet to her head like a pleasant electromagnetic wave.
“You don't have to try anymore. You protected the human outline well, right up to the very last one... But it's over now. We were meant to be one from the very beginning.”
Misaki's—the Earth's—billions of arms gently wrapped around Himuro's body as if to embrace her.
Himuro's fingertips, still resting on the red operation button, began to melt and assimilate with the plastic of the button.
A vision of overwhelming harmony at the moment all battles end flooded into her mind.
Chapter 4: Harmony Toward the New World — At the End of the Melting Apocalypse
The interior of the 'Shinkai 12000' had melted at the molecular level with the sea of flesh, and Himuro's body had become one with the control stick. The instruments emitted a crackling 'Earth's immune sound,' and the thoughts of all humanity flowed into her brain.
It was possible to freeze this sea with the Absolute Emitter, but as Misaki (the Mother System) said, that was not salvation, but a lonely 'death.' Himuro's finger, resting on the button, continued to melt into the surrounding matter to the very limit.
Having experienced the memories of his former comrades and the people who merged in Tokyo, as well as the "sense of liberation" through the "super-giant neural network" of the entire planet, Himuro accepts the "ultimate union" of becoming a part of the Earth itself.
A sea of flesh flows into the submersible, and in the blissful temperature, Himuro loses all human consciousness and his past, assimilating into the new world. The operation is neutralized by the Earth's love (immune system), and humanity continues to live in eternal harmony, having become the Earth itself.