She felt that no one would say
Balot’s heart was ripped to pieces, scattered, and sunk beneath the waves.
At length, the thing that she had been protecting—hidden away in her shell—started to rise up slowly from the ruins of her heart.
The moment her heart—protected in its shell till the very end, not yet boiled to death—murmured these words in the faintest of whispers…
…that became Balot’s
05
Balot suddenly realized that the little ditty was spinning around in her head again.
Balot opened her eyes amid an eerie calm.
An ultraviolet lamp flickered in one corner of the ceiling. Reflective mirrors were fixed above her and arms extended from the bed. It was as if she were on an operating table.
She felt something moving on her back. The bed undulated slowly from left to right in order to prevent bedsores. When Balot moved her body to get up, the bed automatically rose with her, gently supporting her upper body.
At the same time the lower half of the bed started to fall, so she could now bend her legs.
The bed had become an easy chair. Almost like a cradle.
Her focus now moved from the ceiling to the room itself—she was in a huge hall filled with a number of machines. One of the contraptions was beating a pulse along with Balot’s heartbeat, and all the cords sprouting from the devices and tubes ran along to the bed, some of which were also attached to her head or arms. Balot looked around the room, listening to the soothing rhythm of the machines pulsing in harmony, working just for her benefit.
The room was windowless, and disinfectant tiles covered the surfaces of the walls.
The dry air was suffused with a feeling of quiet madness.
And then, all of a sudden, the realization—
She ran her hands across her body. A movement to confirm her own existence.
She wasn’t naked but wore a thin hospital gown made of insulating material. Protruding from the gown were her arms and legs, spotlessly clean. Her skin was almost uncomfortably smooth.
Her hair was full of life, as if it had only just sprung up. Cut cleanly, just above shoulder-length, it was now much shorter than it had been before.
She stretched her left arm out and slowly caressed the limb from her elbow to her wrist with her right hand.
It felt like the white of a boiled egg, and—very faintly—there was a sort of spark.
There was no other way of describing it. Millions of little currents of electricity flowed down the surface of her skin.
Not only that, they were in the shape of a complicated circuit. As if woven into an exquisite fiber.
She felt the threads of the fiber stretching out toward the air, one by one, like a spider’s web, and that instant Balot understood why she felt so calm.
She felt no insecurity about the room she was in whatsoever. In other words she recognized every little corner of the room, intimately.
Normally, because there were blind spots where she couldn’t see, she would have a sense of apprehension. But now, because Balot
This was because of the millions of threads, invisible to the eye, extending from her body. And all those threads were connected to the machines in the room. Or rather
Balot lifted her still-extended left hand above her head and toward the lights.
She felt the threads again, thin, unbreakable.
Quite spontaneously she pinched the threads between her fingers. An image of
The world was plunged into darkness in an instant. All the lights had gone out. The electricity hadn’t been cut. Rather, the switches had all gone off simultaneously.
Balot opened her eyes wide in the darkness, remaining absolutely still.
In the darkness she could sense the threads that extended from her body even more vividly than before.
She plucked at the strings again. A blinding light flooded her eyes. All the lights were back on.
She let go of the threads, and this time took the mass of extending strings and stroked them gently.
It was like a kaleidoscope. A flick of her wrist and anything in sight could be changed in a million ways.
She changed the temperature on the air conditioning. The dial moved, and the tubes fixed to her hands and feet came loose on their own. After a while she didn’t need to check the threads anymore. Without even having to move her hands, using willpower alone, she realized that
The fact that she existed was proof that she had gone mad. When she opened her eyes she had become a different creature. Or, strictly speaking, her outer layer of skin had become a different creature. And that creature was powerful. With an as-yet-unknown, but very
And, then…
Balot discovered an old portable radio in the corner of the room. As if it were the only thing in the room that was not under the control of Balot’s consciousness.
As she lifted her hand toward the radio she noticed a slight resistance from it. Balot gave a little scowl, and just then the radio started giving off a noise.
An ear-splitting sound rent the room. A grating sound, as if a large crowd of people had all decided to claw at chalkboards.
Balot searched for music in the air. She realized that her senses could extend beyond the confines of the room.
Outside a multitude of radio waves were overflowing in a complex tangle of dissonance.
She plucked one of the radio waves, ran it through her body—her
The light on the radio started flickering, surprised, and in an instant began broadcasting
She rested her head back in the easy chair, concentrated on the jolly music, and all of a sudden she felt like
