Kikotsu no Haibi
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4672992/kikotsu_no_haibi_the_deployment_of_souls/
Metacafe description:
No English? Complete description and transcript in text form at
http://haibaniki.rubychan.de/wiki/Kikotsu_no_Haibi
Video: Kikotsu no Haibi: The Deployment of Souls, Terry Wilson 2010; inset stills from original Antikythera Mechanism video by Scott Pagano, Binary Acoustics 2006
Audio: Antikythera Mechanism by Brian Transeau (BT), Track 6 of This Binary Universe, Binary Acoustics 2006. This video is not intended to share the song or challenge the Binary Acoustics copyright. Please purchase the album This Binary Universe if you enjoy the song.
The audio has been degraded also for artistic reasons, since with reduced quality, the "building" part of the song from 4:46 has a more frantic personality that fits better with the story.
While this video was made for the song and after the beautiful original by Scott Pagano, the story concept predates my encounter with the Pagano video by several months. The lady apparently depicted in the Scott Pagano video is Yaiba, not Tatakai. Yaiba was introduced into the FHD Remix world on 30 June 2009, just over five months before I bumped into Antikythera Mechanism on 7 December 2009. The line, "Three hundred and forty one times ... Never once you failed to say thank you" was written into Chapter 17 on 10 September 2009, three months before I encountered Antikythera Mechanism. The epilogue, Haibane Tatakai's discovery of the origin of Glie from Haibane Renmei as the city created by the Soul Cube from Doom 3, was written into the story on 27 November 2009, nine days before I first heard the song and ten before I saw the video that made me cry for over an hour because it depicted, entirely by coincidence, what I had just written. Scott Pagano writes of the cube in his video being a "catalyst to unfold new worlds", yet instead, it folds together the world of FHD Remix: Three Worlds In One.
Transcript of Video
2156 AD November 1
2156 year Anno Domini, 11 month, 1 day
"Featherwing Tatakai," It says formally, with the voice of all of its citizens.
"What's up fellas?" Tatakai responds to the Soul Cube, friends for eleven years since she rescued it from the intermediate dimension, better known as hell. Only one soul is closer to her than the ones in this cube.
"Before we drop the big news, we'd like to say that we really appreciate your efforts to preserve humanity, and even though stopping the war could have prevented our decision," the Praeleanthor dips their face down slightly, "we don't mean anything against you or Jack personally."
Jack Campbell, her husband, takes notice.
"We're leaving," the Soul Cube says sadly, "For strategic reasons, we can't say why. We can't compromise even the slightest clue to our plan."
"At risk of our capture by the enemy," Tatakai understands, a warm smile accompanies her tears, "Got time for a hug?" The powerful being deploys her grey wings. Spread, they span twenty feet, but right now, she is on her knees with them folded, the Soul Cube tucked under one of them. The crying pseudo-angel presses her cheek against the side of the Soul Cube, which is always body warm.
Jack, with his even larger mottled red wings, takes a turn. After parting by a few metres, the Soul Cube whispers, "Three hundred and forty-one times you called upon us in battle," tears made using arcane technology flow from its four closed eyes, "never once you failed to say 'thank you.'"
Never once have you failed to say to us, 'Oh, we thank you' No, never once, we thank you. Never once have you failed to say to us, 'Oh, we thank you' No, never once, we thank you. Never once have you failed to say to us, 'Oh, we thank you' No, never once, we thank you. Never once have you failed to say to us, 'Oh, we thank you' No, never once, we thank you.
Jack and Tatakai are so grateful at that moment that they can't even utter those words. With its healing power, the Soul Cube has saved them dozens of times as the Final War dragged towards its inevitable conclusion. Outnumbered millions to one, Operation Tatakai could only do so much.
The little Soul Cube, whose eighteen centimetre edges belie its true form, departs.
Angels with BFGs have nothing on this unassuming ornament.
It roams about the shattered Earth, looking for a place sufficiently uninhabited by the creatures of evil that have taken over the vast majority of the planet. The people in it cuss amongst themselves, regretting having procrastinated for so long on this vital decision:
We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure. We hope that you make it. Try to find us later. We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure. We hope that you make it. Try to find us later
To adopt for themselves a form appropriate for a hundred and forty-four thousand people.
A city.
A design the Kikotsu no Rittae has been working on for over four thousand years.
Kikotsu no Haibi. 気骨の配備 (Japanese) Deployment of Souls.
It ultimately settles on a rather nondescript article of taiga forest in Siberia, east of the deepest lake in the world and north of the burnt out ruin of a normal city once called Chita.
The object once called U1 deploys its fighting blades for the last time above the site they have chosen as the centre of this exotic new city.
Text in picture: Ashfeather Federation (Japanese) FHD Remix: Three Worlds In One
The events described happened eleven years to the day after the end of the game Doom 3, twelve hundred six years, and approximately four months prior to beginning of Haibane Renmei.
Doom 3 was created by Id Software (story by Matthew Costello) in 2004.
Haibane Renmei was created by Yoshitoshi ABe, Radix Animation, Areole Secret Factory, and Fuji Television in 2003, and was once distributed in North America by Geneon.
The song Antikythera Mechanism was written by Brian Transeau without lyrics. The original video for it was created by Scott Pagano and published as Track 6 of This Binary Universe by Binary Acoustics in 2006.
Featherwing Love and FHD Remix are by Terry Wilson. I found the Pagano video eight days after committing these events to the story.
To ice the cake, the character in the Pagano video is the spitting image of Yaiba, a character introduced into FHD Remix five months before I encountered the video, and the real life Antikythera Mechanism's history resembles that of the Soul Cube.
The eight thousand tonne object falls out of the sky from almost fifty thousand feet. In just under thirty-one seconds, it is supersonic over the wintry landscape.
When it hits the ground, it starts a new clock and calendar, and ceases to exist.
A brilliant yellow energy wave spreads quickly, taking about one minute to reach its full diameter of twelve kilometres, at which point it stops, but does not weaken. It has excavated millions of tonnes of soil and bedrock and deposited it within its outer edge.
The suspended souls are shocked to discover near their chosen zone's western edge, an aquifer that has never been affected by the quantum mechanical virus they created at the instruction of their Saviour.
The saddest thing the Soul Cube ever did, was to create a device for changing water, the single most essential molecule for life, into blood, the symbol of life lost.
As the wall builds up, molecule by molecule from the stone below the site, the Saviour himself stretches his hand and imbues it with his light.
The hellspawn that have conquered Earth gather to attack, but are unable even to watch. Blinded by this light, they babble frantically into their talking boxes what little they know about the sudden city
The natural soil piled outside the new wall and the trees held in quantum suspension like the people themselves, are beamed inside the completed foundation
The wall filters a river to enter from the south, and directs it around the edge of the wall through a stoneforge aqueduct which allows it to pass around the city and exit to the north.
The aquifer in the west is given its own watershed divided from the rest by a ridge, that simulations show will be very breezy, giving it a name that will outlast that of Haibi:
The Hill of Winds.
The basics are ready, and so the Kikotsu turn to building the actual city on the second day. Six cylindrical Defense Towers equally spaced around the wall, plus a spire-like Central Tower in the middle of town, at the lowest point in the terrain of Haibi.
The city boots up its arcane computer network, at its core the clock on the Central Tower's sixth floor, with backups in each of the Defense Towers, plus dozens more tucked away into the structure of the wall and foundation.
Haibi will never forget the time, even after its citizens forget the city's very name.
Shops and homes clustered around the Central Tower form, and Praeleanthor cuts the space for the moat inside the wall, and the gates that will pass over it to, hopefully, support farms outside the wall.
The Earth is already polluted with the deadly enemy poison, delta radiation. The enemy's basic metabolism produces its organic-binding vector.
It will soon be impossible for anyone to safely leave, and if this keeps up for more than a few centuries,
it may become deadly to so much as touch the wall's inner surface.
Finally, the people. The Kikotsu. The Souls. The 139488 wingless humans and 4512 featherwing creatures.
Each person has his own body again for the first time in forty-five hundred years.
The featherwing creatures knew already that they would come out with their wings deployed, and never able to make them magically disappear again.
To protect the remaining health of the crippled wings, the Saviour had prescribed a forged metal halo that would cling to their heads with an invisible force, as though to complete the angel caricature.
The featherwings can feel their wings, but they can't find them, looking about. The skin on their sides where they are supposed to be is closed over. They first see each other's. Twenty inches instead of twenty feet, and all in shades of grey, all color lost, emerging from between the shoulder blades.
Weak, hardly functional, and far too small to fly.
SCD+0yr November 17
Soul Cube Deployment, 0 year, 11 month, 17 day
The sudden city Kikotsu no Haibi, rather than celebrate its founding, mourns the fate of her angels. In their grief, they christen themselves ashfeathers.
Instead of the Council of Featherwings planned, it is the Ashfeather Federation.
The Haoto no Renmei becomes the Haibane Renmei.
SCD+1262yr February 3
Soul Cube Deployment, 1262 year, 2 month, 3 day
"What's a Soul Cube?" she asks in a quivering voice.
The screen obediently displays a picture. Tatakai's eyes go wide. "Oh my," she cries, falls to her knees. "God, is this for real?" she bawls.
"Tatakai, what's wrong?" Shimoni asks, "What's the matter?"
"Get down here!" she screams.
Once all three haibane are in the room, Tatakai asks the system, "Do you know who I am?"
Author's note: The SCD+1262yr Feburary 3 sec
Antikythera Mechanism Lyrics
The complete lyrics by Terry Wilson to Antikythera Mechanism by Brian Transeau. These words account for all the notes from a single instrument, a metallophone heard from 1:27 to 6:19 of the original version:
Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you" No, never once, we thank you Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you" No, never once, we thank you Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you" No, never once, we thank you Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you" No, never once, we thank you
We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure We hope that you make it; try to find us later We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure We hope that you make it; try to find us later
We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure We hope that you make it; try to find us later We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure We hope that you make it home
Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you" Never once, have you failed to give us rest
We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure We hope that you make it; try to find us later We're sorry to leave you, it has been a pleasure We hope that you make it; try to find us later
Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you" Never once, have you failed to say to us, "Oh we thank you"
