Pale Cocoon - "What was she looking at?"

Not Quite / Not Otherwise

A swift descent through gray clouds, then blackness.  No, not quite blackness.  Points of light pass the camera, their motion in unison but parallax.  Unlike pure blackness, which may be mistaken for blankness, this is a space; we are traveling through the cosmic expanse, extending into the unknowable distance even as it envelops the viewer.  

No, not quite again.

A shaft of light emerges from the darkness, soon followed by the staircase which wraps around it.  The light given off by the core is the same hue as the falling particles, which no longer appear as stars but luminescent snow falling from the heights to which the stairs lead.  That place, however, is far out of view, and there is a despair in seeing something physical appear so interminable.  Nobody could ever reach the top in ten thousand lifetimes.

The silent oppression is interrupted by a step, followed shortly by a defiant face.  Somebody is trying anyway.  Shortly, though, he turns and lies on the landing; nay, collapses on it, resting in his ascent for now.  This moment of reprieve costs him, however: his view drifts from the metal grating to the place where the stairwell leads.  He still can't see it despite how far he has come.  He reflects:

The archives that we call ‘history’ ceased to exist at some point.  Before we knew it, humans were living in this world.

It is not just a space without end, it is time.  This time.  History has been interrupted.  People are still living but there is no more story; no more past and no more future which connect to this place at which we have arrived.  All that is left is the eternal monochrome present.  Like the stairwell, it is horrible in its unchanging extent.  And the view retreats upward... upward... upward...

Restoration in Progress

We pass through the screen into a record.

In a room with arcane diagrams and lines scribbled on electronic panels the same man is sitting.  In front of him a program is running on his console, a double-ended loading bar fluctuating with uncertainty.  A process is being completed, but its precise extent and timing are unknown.  It is getting close, though, and all one can do is anticipate with hope.  

Restoration complete

An image of a green plain appears with blue sky above.  The camera zooms in, effectively controlled by the man's commands at the computer, to scrutinize an unremarkable portion of the scene.  The focus moves from place to place like an eye saccade, as if looking for something, or perhaps just checking the quality, before returning to the full view once again.  He stares impassively at his work, and we might think him bored, until:

"Good!"

It escapes him so quietly it only reaches his own ears but the enthusiasm is there.  This little piece of retrieval mattered.  He sits contemplating it in satisfaction for a moment before turning to a book, which on being touched reveals itself to be yet another digital terminal.  He connects to his coworker through audio alone:

Coworker: "Oh?  Are you done?"
Man: "Yeah.  It's a visual record, after all."
Coworker: "Understood.  I'll get the next one ready."
(The coworker seems to consider no more words necessary but the man continues)
Man: "The atmosphere is clear, with lots of greenery.  It's a record of the surface layer from around AD 2000.  The location..."
Coworker (interrupting): "Who cares about the location?  Ura, I'm always telling you..." (preemptory into cajoling)
Ura (interrupting back): "'Don't bother with the Analysis Department's work.'  Understood.  Send the next one." 

We never see the face of this voice, but after the contrast between Ura's expression and his feelings we probably wouldn't learn much from this other person's mask either.  The interruptions tell us what we need anyway: one is the product of impatient apathy, the other impatient sincerity.  From the indulgent tone, the speaker isn't hostile; he's just somewhat amused, and a bit exasperated, at Ura's inability to merely accept what is in front of him without asking questions.  He's great at his job, but couldn't he do it with a little less intensity for the sake of the rest of us?  

Ura hears this... and keeps going anyway.  After a considered pause he duplicates the file, giving himself one version before sending the other off to the 055 Analysis Division.  It is a small rebellion, soon revealed to be one of many, as the small image is shepherded to its new home on the screens behind him.

Here is where the real Ura lies, his secret project.  The wall display in front of him was sterile, a set of neat diagrams and lifeless wireframes that are no doubt as functional as the rest of his surroundings; it's probably the same wireframe globe that every employee here is given.  Behind him, however, is another matter.  Here are the images he has secretly collected for himself, annotated and woven together in a bewildering effort.  

A pause will reveal some method to this.  On the left he seems to have stored the fragments in an orderly array, keeping them in columns and rows for reference, while on the right they cluster over and around each other in a jumble as he tries to make sense of the lot.  And in the center of that story is the wireframe world again but now brought to life by the images.  The coworker interrupts Ura's pondering:

Coworker: "I'm sending two together.  They have lots of encryption."
Ura: "I'll try opening them."
(Ura brings them onto his console.  Staring expectantly at a black frame for a moment he is startled by a burst of static and the eerie image of a woman's face.)
Ura: "What?!?"
Coworker: "What happened?" (mildly interested)
Ura: "This is unusual.  It's a visual record with sound.  This is worth restoring."

Ura doesn't become elated, but any pretense of calm vanishes before this new discovery.  Despite, or because of, the nearly-painful shock, Ura knows he has encountered something special.  It promises to reveal so much more than these singular images he has been forced to make do with.  Faced with a record of such inestimable value Ura is ready to get started right awa...

(An alarm sounds; the work day is over)

With relief that he doesn't have to worry about this hassle for now, the voice chimes in:

Coworker: "Welp, until tomorrow.  I'm disconnecting the book." 
(Ura stares at the mysterious vision until it vanishes)
Ura: "Until tomorrow..." 

Not On the Same Wavelength

Archival debris, lying dormant throughout the world, rare fragments from the former world, binary data that can be restored... that's why I was excavating the archives: because these are the only clues to understanding the past.

So Ura narrates as he leaves cubicle 080, the power flickering off behind him, to join the rest of the personless shadows commuting to and from... wherever they do... outside of the 092 Archive Excavation Department.  055, 080, 092.  These zeroes in front, they have a dulling effect.  There are always more cubicles and divisions and departments, and nobody knows where it ends.  High or low, close or far, these numbers somehow tell us nothing.  Just that we're somewhere in the middle, ordinal and yet misplaced in a world that has no shape.

Retrieving his timecard (from endless rows of slots), Ura pauses in front of the clock that runs everything.  For a moment he looks as despondent as his surroundings, but a shift shows he is merely slightly perplexed as he gazes at the timecard for an attractive young woman on the bottom row.  Scratching his head with his own, as if to say, "What am I to do with you?", he takes hers and clocks her out along with himself.

Jumping scenes, the woman is lying on a grate staring impassively upward.  It is the stairwell again.  The music of before, starting with the announcement of the day's end, was a techno-happy march, a shallow step-to-the-beat industriousness that belies people's only real joy in work is to leave it.  Here, though, the tune is muffled; it remains faintly in the background, but the resonance of this place drowns it out.  There is something about here that makes the rest of that all just seem like noise.  Hearing Ura's footsteps come to get her, the woman's eye shifts but her expression does not lose its solemnness.

Leaving the stairwell, the music resumes and the woman's aspect lifts:

Ura: "Come back when it's time to clock out."
Woman: "I'll go back if there's work to do at the Analysis Division." (dismissive)
Ura: "Hey, Riko.  Why do you always go up there?"
Riko (peering through the screen): "Looks like everyone's gone."

As Ura asks his question his face turns away in an attitude of forced nonchalance, but the query matters.  Why is she attracted to that special place?  What is it she is thinking during her vigils?  However, it would be indelicate to demand such personal information so he tries to pass it off as casual interest, and, with the excuse of slipping back into line when nobody is looking, she casually ignores it right back.

Here we have our introduction to Riko: an Analysis Division specialist who reflexively seeks out solitude.  She'll do her work if necessary, but otherwise she'd rather not think about it.  It's almost amusing that it's Ura who must scold her to be mindful of the clock.  But nonetheless he takes her cue and follows to get back onto the conveyor belt that forces everybody to go one way.  She did hear his question, though:

Riko: "Why are you obsessed with the Excavation Department-?"
Ura (instant response, practically cutting her off): "Because of the archives.  Otherwise, I'd never come up to this level." 
(Riko's eyes and head turn slightly away and her lips tighten as he answers)
Riko: "The Excavation Department is the only thing left up here."
Ura: "It'll move to a lower level eventually." (confident)
(Passing a sign that shows they are on Floor 0285, the other departments below 092 all closed)
Riko: "They say the 080s-level Excavation Departments will be closed off."

This is the faith, and fixation, that wearied his faceless coworker.  Ura knows the archives are important; they're what raise him from the lower levels to the upper ones, and he considers their value self-evident.  It's the trait that makes him genuine... and a bit exhausting, as when he speaks he assumes his listener feels the same.  No matter how many times other people give him indications that they do not, he keeps trying anyway, always just a little surprised at the negative result. 

For indeed, there is already sense that he and Riko are not quite seeing eye to eye despite their shared connection to the stairwell.  Though the reason is not obvious, she wishes to dissuade him from his present course; impress on him that for all his confidence the world may make his search difficult.  She's trying to warn him so that this, too, doesn't take him by surprise.  Boarding an elevator that can only go down from where they are, they continue their conversation:

Ura: "There's work for you tomorrow."
Riko: "You found something again?" (impassive... but not disinterested)
Ura: "I sent you one today.  It's a surface-layer record, before the sunlight was blocked.  Green..."

This last word is spoken with happy contentment and a sense that it is worthy of capitalization when it comes from Ura's mouth.  Not just green but Green, a frequency that yet means so much more.  And he is eager to share it.  To just post such pictures in his isolated cubicle of a self isn't enough, he wants others to partake of it as well.  Earlier the voice disappointed him with its indifference, but he's closer to Riko and can count on her to appreciate Green.

Riko stares at him with what might almost be construed as awe.  He really can't be dampened.

She averts her gaze in unhappy silence.

Eco-Spiritual Collapse 

Humans learned about this reality, along with the past world, through excavated archives.  The world in the beginning was covered by the artificial world and human beings lived in the gaps.  [Then there is] the environmental maintenance equipment, and the lower levels, where the equipment has the most impact.  

As Ura narrates, a sunlight-blocking mesh creeps over the wireframe globe, eventually covering it entirely.  It confirms what we already suspected: the whole world has been changed irrevocably from its old state and there is nowhere left from which the original can be recovered.  Like a terminal cancer, the artificial world has consumed it.  Worse, it has been so complete that not only has the Green world been lost, it has been forgotten; there is no living memory left to unite what the pieces of the past meant.  We don't even know how we got here.

A parallel is taking shape: humans, somehow, are in a world that is not the way it should be.  In the narrative it is a physical dislocation: we no longer live on the beautiful surface.  Instead we eke out a subterranean existence in which there is light but not sunlight, oxygen but not atmosphere; a vast, planetary iron lung that imprisons its inhabitants in a life that is not truly living.

More deeply, there is a homesick alienation at work.  A place is out there, a place that Ura somehow longs to return to: the Green world.  It isn't the world he lives in, it is... elsewhere.  Up.  So far away as to have become mythical, and although he has no everyday knowledge of it he is inexplicably drawn to the fragments nonetheless.  He's sure that the archives of the past, pieces of this place or records of memory left of it by similar seekers, will yield the illumination he craves.

This doesn't seem to be what everybody else is thinking, though, as they docilely await the opening of the elevator door.  Not only is the surface lost to the past there is now an ominous sense that something is changing in this human world as well.  Riko was trying to warn him of something, something that may soon be upon him:

Below the lowest level, there's an area called the sea. According to the excavated archives, humans came from the sea.  Meaning what... Lots of humans eke out livings in the bottom layer.

Ura is straining upward but the evidence is that humans are from below.  Meaning what... that it is only natural for most humans to remain there and live out their lives.  Visions of the surface may beguile some but it is down here where life is most comfortable.  The elevator door opens.  Floor 0028 the sign reads; we may not know where the top is, but we do know that this is not far from the bottom.  The work day is over and this is the destination.  Welcome home.

Heading Up...

We leave the record.

Ura is once again high on the stairwell, resting with his head down in exhaustion and thoroughly alone.  Why would anybody join him in heading in such an unnatural direction?  After a moment his gaze rises and shifts to the electronic book next to him, the faint image of a woman in white discernable within.  Fortified by the sight, he picks the book up and stows it in his bag, continuing his ascent. 

This is the second time we've joined Ura on the stairs.  Given that his book contains a picture of the record he is working on "now," this must be the future.  Or, this is the present and we are being told of the events that led up to it.  Either way, it makes sense.  We are heading toward some event which sends him on this climb and we need only wait to find out what it is.

Listening Through the Static

We drift over the lattice of the world and enter a record.

Ura is once again at his console, pondering with arms crossed this newest video-audio file.  It is clear he is at an impasse.  He drags it to Analysis Division 055 on his screen and walks promptly over to Riko in her workspace.  Leaning in, he shouts to her:

Ura: "Hey!  Take a look at the record I just sent you."
Riko: "What is it this time?  The green world again?" 
(She is genuinely piqued, she had been staring pleasantly at the last picture he sent; but then she pauses, and finishes with quiet trepidation)
Riko: "...or human history?" 
(Ura walks over to where she is sitting)
Ura (oblivious): "That's what I want to know.  What's this a record of?"

Ura plays the video.  It is... like a Japanese horror film.  Black and white, sketchy, a ghostly woman with a pale, ghoulish grin staring out as the orientation of the frame flips back and forth, up and down all while a screeching wail plays in the background.  What a hideous mess.  Riko pauses the clip and both stare at the screen until she breaks the silence:

Riko: "What was that?" 
Ura: "Well..." (embarrassed hearing her tone)
Riko: "You should have brought me the fully restored version." (indignant)

Riko's question is calm, but has all the airs of asking why in the world Ura just brought that to her.  He's like a cat that just dropped a dead mouse on her lap and thought she would appreciate it, the cat again surprised that she isn't elated by his macabre gift.  He thought maybe she'd be excited as he is with this new conundrum.  Obviously she is not.  Still, she plays the rest of the uncanny video until it hits static:

Ura: "I got this far with simple restoration.  The thing I'm curious about... (rewinds to a particular frame)... is this.  It seems like a book but... it isn't, right?"
Riko: "It's probably a book." (serious)
Ura: "But doesn't it look strange?"
Riko: "Originally books were a recording format to transfer text and figures using a physical method."
(Riko pulls up a picture of a paper book from the records)
"Riko: "Like this.  Of course, you could only do the recording once, and you couldn't communicate with other books.  But it was a medium for passing on archives, just like now."

Despite being digital, the consoles that Ura and Riko have been working on are undeniably... fuzzy.  It's difficult to read any anything off of them, the black lines glared out by the sterile light.  In some cases the contents can even been seen to flicker and jitter in their place, as though ready to drift away.  There is something fundamentally impermanent about them, and though they have many features the old archives did not this new, modern experience of memory is despairingly transitory.  It just doesn't feel as real.

Continuing with the video, Ura tracks to an image of shelves full of books:

Ura: "So this... is an archive storage facility?  Viewing records and putting them in a database.  And then..."
(Before Ura can get much further into his excited pondering Riko cuts in)
Riko: "Why are you obsessed with the Excavation Department?" 
Ura: "You're not interested in knowing?" (teasing; of course she's interested in knowing)
(Riko gives him a solemn stare again, but this time rather than just gazing away she stands up and leaves; Ura turns to her in genuine alarm)
Ura: "Where are you going?"
Riko: "Haven't you had enough?" 

With his hand resting comfortably on the chair behind Riko, for a moment it had almost seemed like they were united in their goal.  Though not necessarily a romantic past, there is a sense that they were close once and that he still turns to her in the expectation of being truly understood; it is the most precious type of intimacy for eccentrics.  Sadly, he doesn't realize just how far they've drifted apart until Riko forces the issue:

Riko: "A lot more people used to work here.  I heard it was crowded, and everyone rejoiced when a new record was found."

Once the search was the search of everybody who cared; the halls were filled with people whose hope was to get closer to the Green world.  Now, like the closed-off floors, the department is abandoned and desolate.  It's been too long.  Hundreds of years, thousands of years, it's all the same; despite the efforts of our best and brightest, the project still remains frustratingly incomplete.  No matter how tantalizing the results may seem, people have stopped caring about the surface.

As has Riko.

Riko cared once, cared passionately.  She was the analyst, the interpreter, the one who had the knowledge and acted as a crucial complement to Ura's decryption.  He brought her the world and she figured it out; you can't appreciate someone like Ura without feeling it too.  But as the halls emptied and she found herself forsaken, she discovered that their apathy had become hers.  She is tired of chasing fantasy.  It was only for Ura's sake that she continued this long, and in doing so has been a true friend... but he can't see it that way.  Standing now on opposite sides of the department entrance, Ura faces resolutely away from Riko: 

Ura: "I'm still excited about it."

"But you apparently aren't," is the implied conclusion.  If she isn't here for the sake of the archives, for truth and beauty and the Green world, then she isn't here for any reason that matters.  It means that she can't truly understand him, just like the rest who have abandoned the search.  She has betrayed his trust and, though she continues to stare at his back, expressionless, he walks away without a second look.

Warning: Prolonged Exposure May Result in Damage to Vision

What follows next are days (weeks? months?) of unremitting study for Ura, having downloaded his work onto his personal book so it is no longer interrupted.  At first it's the normal rounds: the day ends, he leaves, he comes to get her... but they don't say a word.  He reads on the conveyor while she stares at him, waiting, but nothing comes of it.  As far as he's concerned there is no more need.

Steadily they become desynchronized.  Ura stays to work in his cubicle at night, leaving Riko to lie alone until she leaves of her own volition.  The same images play, the same spaces, but only one of them is present rather than both.  There's a hole in the scene where the other person should be.  Soon there is Riko, curled on the grate toward where he once stood.  People's masks are so useless for telling us how much they really care.

Ura, meanwhile, has become completely immersed.  This is the most important thing he can do, the most important thing any human can do, and now free of distractions and the limitations of having to wait on others to do their job he can pursue it with unmitigated intensity.  This is what he always wanted.  

Now night and day he sifts through the cryptic file, extracting images and words he latches onto.  "Sky," "ocean," and "pale cocoon" pass under his inspection but these words have no meaning.  He mouths along with the ghost, as if to feel for himself what she is saying, but it leaves him none the wiser.  He can tell he is missing something but if he can just pierce this riddle he will have his answ... 

Ura's jaw drops.

There, in the middle of his precious archive from the Green world, is a mundane image of a man with his arm around a woman next to him.  Companionship.  Care.  Affection.  On his console are the attempted translations:

You            forget
882: You --- forget
883: You --- do not forget
884: I --- forget you
884: I --- do not forget you

He forgot.  He forgot something important, and in the process has forgotten part of himself.  He wanted to share this, didn't he?  He wanted other people to know it mattered.  Now he is avoiding them just because they are trying to tell him what he doesn't want to hear.  After all her support, when Riko tried to talk to him earnestly he abandoned her to protect himself.  Had he ever really listened to what she had to say?

Suddenly finding himself alone and incomplete in his cubicle, Ura is left to ask what's the point.

Every Man For Himself

An indeterminate amount of time later, Ura is still in a daze.  He faces away from his console for once, now staring dully at his back screen.  The voice interrupts with its usual casualness:

Coworker: "How's the restoration going?"
Ura (unenthusiastic): "It's odd.  The image fragments have no logical connection.  Same for the things the girl is saying.  The restoration is almost done, but analysis might be tough... but that's not my job."

Ura does not even turn to look at his console as he answers; he has all that memorized by now and he still doesn't know what to do with it.  It has somehow failed him.  Or perhaps he has failed it.  Failed her...

Coworker: "No one showed up for work in the Analysis Division again today."
Ura: "Riko's a no-show again, huh?" (still deadpan)
Coworker: "It would appear she wants to quit the Excavation Department." (...embarrassed?)
Ura: "I wouldn't know.  I haven't seen her recently."

The view shifts and we see what Ura has been staring at: the image of a younger, happier Riko impishly pushing her head against a too-serious little Ura.  Just as commonplace as the one in the record, it has nonetheless taken its place alongside his invaluable memories of the Green world.  "Haven't seen her recently," is an extraordinarily inaccurate truth.

Ura: "A long time ago, she said people leave records because there are things they want to keep from changing."

That's the problem.  The monochrome present, the intangible digital archives, the lethargy for work and hollow enthusiasm for quitting time, they are all connected.  There is nothing in this place that people deeply want to preserve; the shuffling existence of shadows isn't worth the hard drive space of recording it.  It doesn't any longer have meaning.  The coworker for once appears to have been pricked by what Ura has said and responds swiftly:  

Coworker: "Of all the records we've excavated, is there anything that still exists today?"
(Pause)
Coworker: "I'm... quitting... this job.  Ura... have you ever thought the records might all be lies?"
Ura: "All of the records have been verified." (swift as he always is... but without the usual energy)
Coworker: "Ura... I often wish they were lies."

Ura's coworker had been looking for an excuse to get away for a long time, and now the topic of Riko quitting has given him the opportunity to do the same.  Yet it is with a sort of embarrassment that is surprising after his previous nonchalance.  He feels the need to justify himself, and despite his assault he is somehow begging Ura to join him.  Like with Riko, Ura's genuineness was anchoring him here too, almost against his will; as the audio connection slinks off the page and vanishes, one has the sense that if this were in person he would not have been able to meet Ura in the eye.

Now entirely alone, Ura stares upward at his wall to see images of oil rigs and refineries, the words "environment" and "degradation" partially hidden in the newsprint nearby.  They had always been there, but we were distracted from them by his better, brighter images.  There is something in all this he has yet to fully grasp.

...and Wearing Down

We leave the record.

Ura is truly struggling now.  His back is hunched, his breathing labored.  He has been climbing for a long time and the effort is beginning to tell.  Yet, strange... despite the the flakes falling him around him and the clothing he is wearing, no steam is visible from Ura's mouth.  It isn't actually cold.  Although, of course, this can't possibly be snow either.

As he continues to stagger forward, Ura's vision blurs.  It isn't the same as the simple exhaustion from before; he is profoundly disoriented this time and, unable to maintain his balance, falls on the outer railing and loses his book into the darkness below.  He stares after it in shock; it was his only possession and now he cannot even turn to that for support and inspiration.  He has nothing left.

Well, not nothing.  He does have something and he knows where to find her.

To Be Set Free From the Truth

We enter the stairwell record.

Riko awaits us, and as the view solidifies Ura is revealed to be standing a distance off as well.  He finally came.  Walking forward to sit next to her he first glances up and down the stairwell before settling into a position that does not face her directly.  He always did have a bad habit of looking anywhere but at her at crucial moments.  This time, she does not turn to look at him either.  Say, Riko, why do you always come up here?  Ura opens his mouth to speak but she begins before he can complete the first word.  This is her scene:

Riko: "My grandma said that when she was a child people lived in the levels up there."
(Ura looks up)
Ura: "The environment maintenance equipment used to reach the higher levels.  I heard eventually they couldn't live up there so they came down here." 

Things used to be different.  People still lived in this artificial world but many of them were higher.  Closer to the surface.  Somehow, the atmosphere of society supported that.  It is not yet out of memory.  Of course, Ura knew this fact the way he knows many others, but it had never been particularly relevant to him.  He shares it with Riko by way of explanation, another opportunity to talk about the archives.  He has missed the point.  Riko continues:

Riko: "Did you know some people kept on living up there?  My grandma was one of them.  The world in the archives didn't need environment maintenance equipment and they didn't want to accept a reality so different from that world."

As Riko speaks, Ura's eye turns toward her; he is finally starting to listen as it dawns on him that she is answering him... and that it regards him and his precious archives.  Ura isn't unique.  He's not the first person to feel this way about the Green world, nor is he the first person to believe that devotion to the truth is enough.  Carrying on as though his current surroundings are an accident of sorts is exactly what Riko's grandmother did.  Of course, Ura still can't help but ask:

Ura: "What's up there?"
(Riko ignores him)
Riko: "Then... she fell down from above.  This is where her body landed.  They said her insides were in bad shape.  You can't live beyond the reach of the environment maintenance equipment."

The camera lands on Riko as the memory of her grandmother falls on her, and for a moment is her: Riko's lips do not move as her voice continues, and Ura, staring at her at last, realizes he is looking at a corpse.  Riko has been lying here, still broken generations later, with the knowledge that trying to live in defiant idealism will only lead to suffering and failure.  It doesn't matter what's up there because nobody can reach it.  Ura doggedly looks away from her again, trying to use his old faith to evade:

Ura: "Maybe if we researched the archives more...?"
(Riko has had enough and forces him down so he has nowhere else to look; he will hear her this time)
Riko: "Will digging up archives change this world?"
Ura: "We can understand."
Riko: "I wish I didn't understand!  The green world... and that humans destroyed that world.  I don't want to lose any more hope in reality."
(Riko places her head on his chest, practically sobbing as she begs him to understand)
Riko: "We shouldn't have dug up the archives in the first place.  No one wants to see more of humanity's foolishness.  Don't you get it?"

We get it now.  This was what Riko was trying to tell us: it wasn't apathy undermining her dedication, it was despair.  If she were merely insensitive to it all it would be easier to live, to just get by day after day in a haze of dull gray-rust escapism.  But she isn't.  She wants to believe.  The pictures of the Green world touch something her; they are beautiful and she wants nothing more than for them to be right.

But how can they be right?  The archives do not just bring memory of the good but the indiscriminately awful.  Humans have done unspeakable things, things that cannot ever be fixed.  Just look around: it's all gone.  There is not a shred of any of it left, just memories.  Memories that are useless, that people wish were just lies because we can never go back.  Why do the archives have to remind us?  Why does Ura have to remind us... that we could have been more?  Can't we all just die quietly with our faithlessness without having to feel guilt for it as well?

This is Riko's confession, and why she is here.  Given longing but not hope, she can only stare, day after day, letting the lights fall past her while not daring the ascent.  It is a shame unmitigated by impossibility, no matter how many times the reasons are repeated.  Why does life have to be like this?  Denied both the sea and the sky, all that is left is to feel the harsh metal under her while praying for release from the dream that there was anything more.

He Gets It Now

I got it.  I really got it.  Right... it's something everyone understands.  

Ura wasn't unaware of the past; he knew what the archives contained better than anyone, and what they contained were images of the Green world.  It was a goal, an inspiration, a thing to ponder and a thing to yearn for.  He had thought that perhaps the problem was people didn't know about what beauty the surface once contained, and that when reminded they would celebrate too.  In his sincerity he could see no other explanation.  But that's not it, and the foreboding text behind the smokestack is finally revealed:

Population growth is steadily degrading the environment.  If nothing is done, major change in the Earth's environment is unavoidable.

Everybody was aware the surface was once up there.  In fact, they couldn't forget even if they wanted to.  The flicker is there, the dim awareness at all times that somehow the life they are living is a rusted facsimile of something better.  Yet having never had what they lost, and seeing no way of reclaiming it anyway, they merely seek to live deeper to escape from that memory.  On screen the environmental maintenance equipment shudders as Ura contemplates this civilization-wide retreat toward the atavistic sea:

So what about me?  Did I just want to surround myself with the archives to avoid seeing this reality, the ruin of a vast internment camp?

Now even Ura begins to doubt his faith in the green world.  As long as he thought everybody was merely suffering from ignorance his perseverance was a virtue.  But perhaps it's just folly; everybody else knew and everybody else tried to escape.  Maybe they had the right idea.  Maybe he was just trying to escape too, a rat who put on airs as the ship sank.  Besides:

But, back then... I longed to find something from the world of the archives in this reality.  That's what I was thinking.

This whole time he knew it was impossible to go back up there; even if he could somehow climb those stairs and survive beyond the environment maintenance equipment all that would await him was desolation and death.  What sort of fool knows that and keeps dreaming of the surface anyway?  His hope, his only insane hope, was to somehow have the world of the archives manifest themselves here and in so doing grace his existence with a little Green too.  Of course, he had it all wrong back then.

He knows better now.

Even as on screen Ura continues to stare with exhaustion at his console, a fixity that is really despair for containing no spark of brightness within it, the background music begins to change and gain energy in anticipation.  Where is the narrator?  When is the narrator?  We're in a record after all, so what is it that Ura knows now?

The image of the staircase rights itself to point toward the sky.

Ura didn't even have to do anything; it did it all by itself.  His eyes widen as the memory screens behind him leap to life, filling with their images as everything he has seen crowds his mind.  This image... no that image... no... he needs to somehow see them all at once... he had drawn all these lines but somehow he had missed something.  He was treating the images as separate, just as the record he had been puzzling through was indecipherable in its parts.  He thought what he needed was more information.  But that's not it.  His eyes go skyward.

What he had been missing the right question.

What was she looking at?

What he had been missing was... the music.  

A Kindly Angel's Thesis / Fly Me to the Moon

"Hito no Hibiki" - "The Song-Sound of a Human/of Humanity"

Morning when the woods have fallen asleep
Smoke leaves a trail in the sky
Intersecting with the horizon
Creating a silver cross

A silent dawn has come and the worst has come to pass.

Morning when the ocean has fallen asleep
The moon has stopped waiting
The full moon wanes, offering a cradle
In place of a prayer

A silent dawn has come and we begin our ascent.

The last angel...
The lingering horn...

Even the unhatching Pale Cocoon
Has lost its smile

There is so much that has been lost.

Morning when the stars have fallen asleep
At least there is morning with a cloudy sky
During the era in which God was present
Wet strawberries glistened in the garden
A day of meeting is promised
You will not be forgotten

A silent dawn has come but let us find gratitude

for the light shining from beyond the horizon,

and remember before we fall asleep ourselves
that all separation is temporary
if only we don't forget.

The Sound of One World Clapping

A day of meeting is promised
You will not be forgotten.

The song ends and Riko, given this gift from above like a clap of thunder, is... there is nothing to say.  This is what a whole human sounds like, this... this is what we are when we live for the surface and do not strive to forget it.

For that is what is most horrible about this place: the forgetfulness.  In trying to forget the surface people have forgotten themselves, and Ura, the last piece she held onto in this universe, seemed to have forgotten her too.  She needed to somehow be preserved in something outside herself, otherwise... what was the point?  It will all be swept away in time.  But she could find no place to deposit herself; there are no more records, no more memory, no more history left, and though she didn't want to remember those things she didn't want to inevitably die and be forgotten either.

Then, a dead woman offers her life.

Or, perhaps she is dead.  It is... unclear.  First she was a specter, now she is a celestial, and it seemed self-evident that being from the archives she was long deceased.  Indeed, she even wears a robe of the otherworld to signify she has passed on... yet continues to sing as one living.  Who was it she was addressing in those last lines?  It would seem she addresses the planet, yet the words are offered out of the screen to the present.  In the original Japanese the subjects are ambiguous; humanity will not forget what it has lost, she and the Pale Cocoon will not forget Riko (and us), and something/everything will meet and be met by something/everything else.  It is a promise unbounded by time: nothing can be forgotten.

But how is that possible?  We know how this world works; passing through a screen means moving into the past.  We have a confirmed narrative: a disaster occurred centuries ago on the surface, Ura found a record from that time, the subsequent events were a flashback as he climbed the stairs, and now with the impact of the book he dropped we know the two timelines have converged.  The singer is dead, Riko and Ura (and we) are living, and the passage of time guarantees it.

No, not quite.

We never saw Ura take his first step onto the stairs.  That was because it had already happened before the beginning of the story.  Every time there was a transition from his ascent it was back into a memory record, but the events of those memories always paralleled the climb.  Ura as he started out, looking for meaning but prone to resting when he felt like it; Ura as he felt his isolation, reliant on inspiration from the archives; Ura as he became exhausted and desperate, losing even his faith in the archives as they drop over the edge.

Yet this doesn't seem to work either.  How did an imaginary book reach real Riko?  In retrospect, our understanding of the situation is inferred; all we know is that a book was dropped at one point, a similar book landed at another, and that is why the two are connected and the same.  Did somebody else drop the book?  The woman too was in a stairwell with a book.  She too ascended with face up, striving toward a blinding light that shone on both her and Ura.  His stairs terminate in a jet-propelled elevator, hers in a rocket trail that reaches upward, bringing both of them higher than they could ever reach on their own.  There it is, even, in the background; the same one!

Wait, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Perhaps this is all just metaphorical; that is a safe license for discrepancies, especially when they're minor.  All of these are just ways of portraying Ura's state, and this parallel with the woman of the records is but a helpful illustration only.  Other people have done similar things, sure, but those are other people.  This is really a story about Ura's ascent, real or fictive, struggling against the collapse of meaning in modern society, and about how finally, after all his searching, he has reached the surface and the truth: "This is... 'Sky.'"

No, not quite again.

We can see it isn't sky; we know what sky is and what it looks like, and what Ura is viewing is something else.  This is all still human-produced, and though he has reached the top of reality there remains a critical confusion.  His vision begins to blur again as it did on the stairs, a shuddering disorientation accompanied by a screeching dissonance in the ears.  Before it stripped away his beliefs but now he has nothing left to drop... except himself.

The tether on the elevator breaks, removing even this last attachment, and he reaches upward in panic and despair.  Something, anything to grasp and save "Ura"... but there is nothing.  It would seem Riko was right; falling is inevitable.  Yet a gentle tinkling music-box melody drifts in, a faint memory out of the past, to remind us that Riko is beautiful and intelligent but perhaps also adept at repeating certain mistakes:

Riko: "When I'm here, I often wonder why people used to leave records behind."
Ura: "So what are you doing right now?"
Riko (giggling): "Some things you want always to keep from changing, right?  I'm recording!"

We enter Ura's eye, back to his cubicle where Riko is trying to understand.  There was one more restoration still waiting.

History is now and England

We exit (?) a record to find Riko staring, quelled and solemn.  Her old image is in the background, overlaid by her head in front.  She is a memory... that's taking place in the present?  Strange.  She seems quite alive now, full of intensity as she waits in Ura's old chair for the second video to complete.  It opens to answer everything:

"Hello to everyone on Earth watching this show.  I'm Yoko.  I arrived here a week ago.  I'm at the residential area in the Sea of Tranquility.  It seems this colony did everything first and it's close to the harbor.  And gravity is just like Earth in places with environment maintenance equipment.  It's a lot more comfortable than I expected."

Riko's eyes are wide.  She had misunderstood everything.  They... aren't on the Earth.  They are on the moon.  What an absurd mistake to make!  Below them is the Sea... of Tranquility.  The images rush by of everything that has transpired, acquiring on recollection new categorization.  A sea that was not the sea, a sky that was not the sky, an earth that was not the Earth.  It just seemed so much like them that...

Where is this happening again?

Look closer.  

With the foreground faded, the background comes to light.  Green.  Green everywhere.  They were surrounded by Green, saturated by it.  They were on the Green world the whole time... and that is somehow the moon.  We thought we had an answer, but that's not it either.  This obvious twist is but a single whorl in a larger gyration, a shock to dislodge the rust that obscures everything:

Yoko: "But... when I look up at the sky, there's the rust-colored Earth..."

Yoko breaks off in mourning.  She feels it too.  She knows what has happened and what humans have cost themselves.  We have been so utterly foolish.  Dimmed perception colors everything we have created with our recording, past and present.  So perhaps it is better said that we are only remembering the present in this mode: the rust color remained inside and out of the records because it was only a transition from one sector of human-constructed memory to another.  It was us that interpreted it as time.

The camera begins to drift away from Yoko; she wasn't supposed to remind everybody of their collective grief.  It hurts too much to contemplate and there is no solution anyway.  Better to leave that hidden behind a peppy, reassuring broadcast that promises comfort.  But she calls it back:

Yoko: "Wait!  I know it's tough for everyone waiting for a place on the immigration ship.  Let us pray together: one day, our mother star-planet will awaken from her long slumber, and meet the dawn again and that there will be people there."
(Yoko raises her eyes to something beyond the camera)
Yoko: "Yoko and the Pale Cocoon."

It is tough for those who are waiting to get off the wheel.  The Green is there but Riko is so alone as she listens; how is she ever supposed to find hope and comfort in this place?  This world of endless ordered confusion and environmental collapse, where all that seems of value is fading and our taproot can no longer reach the water.  What good is a promise of the future?  She is stuck, scared, and sees no way out now.

But this, of course, was always Riko's (lit. "reason/logic child") problem.  She was the analyst, the memory recorder, the one who took what Ura (lit. "private face" or "inner self") found and made it comprehensible; indeed, when he brought her something she could do nothing with she was rather put out.  The beauty he acquainted her with was all well and good but she was still the one who had to consider the plausibility of the ascent, the despair of the present, and the failure of the past.  She had to be called back to her work because no rational faculty wants to contemplate a reality like that; flight was her only option.  It is only now, after hearing Yoko's (lit. "sunshine child" or "child of light") song that she has come to see what lies in Ura's cubicle for herself.  She has to: the tether is broken and there is nothing left to do but try to figure it all out.

How many people are there in this story again?  

The visions of the rusted-Green world during Yoko's speech brought with them another revelation Riko-cum-Ura: which hallway is this?  Is it the hallway Ura was exploring alone in his mind?  Was it the one he and Riko travelled together?  Is it where all of humanity is right now?  One, two, or many, it's like they're all happening at once.

Once the questions start they don't stop.  Where and when did Yoko make her climb?  Did she ascend before Ura or did she ascent with him?  Was she Ura ascending?  That can't be; these characters have such individuality.  They have names.  They were definitely real.  As real as the archive-lined stairwell.  As real as the... wireframe world?  Yoko was supposed to have been on the real Earth; why are all her archives inscribed with the symbol of the false moon?  How is it that her book contained a picture of Riko and Ura?  And how is it possible for Yoko to react with concern when Ura's elevator lost its first-stage booster?  

The more it is pondered, the more our understanding of the world frays.  

Ura's ascent is happening within, mirrored in the events without.  Ura's ascent is happening without, his memory of the events revisited within.  All this happened in the past on Earth.  All this is happening in the present on the moon.  All this is in Ura's mind.  This is a story about two people finding the record of a third.  This is a story about two parts of the psyche being enlightened by a third.  Yoko is a dead memory of the past.  Yoko is a living memory of the present.  It is Yoko who remembers Riko and Ura.  Ura wants to leave the false moon to go to the real Earth.  Yoko left the dying Earth for haven on the life-giving moon.  Why does it seem like they left and went to the same place?  Where.  When.  Which.  Is?  Is identity in question?

Ah, finally, a better inquiry.

This whole time we've been tricked.  What we thought was same is different and what we thought was different is same.  At once.  Of course, we tricked ourselves.  When things appeared next to each other on screen we knew they were separate but in the same time.  When they appeared sequentially they could be the same thing but separated in time.  When they didn't follow these rules, we built a more complicated narrative to enforce it; either there were multiple timelines or it was metaphorical.  When those didn't work out we waited for Yoko to tell us.  And she did: Pale Cocoon.  This was file 001, her music video was 002; after she spoke those words of benediction it was only song.  No more explanation was possible.  

Riko: The rusted Earth...

A chorus begins and the camera turns upward past the wireframe image of the world.  Overwhelmed but tranquil, Riko stares heavenward too.  She longs to find out: is the Earth recovered?  Can we leave this place and go to another and be free?

Let us not make the mistake once more.  She is on the moon, she is on the Earth, she is on the rusted world, she is on the Green world, she is on none of these because it is all nothingness, so asking where to go to find the Pale Cocoon is the wrong question.  We can only follow Yoko's gaze if we want to escape.  Abandoning the hope of restoration, Ura is up there...

No Black and White in the Blue

Ura isn't falling.  Although he is not not-falling either, his former vehicle fallen away but not destroyed, and now without any ground to stand on he only has one direction to gaze.  It is blinding, but soon...  

He sees it for himself.

...after everything he had still never gotten it.  All that was still thinking, still worrying about when and where this was, about how many and whether we could get there.  Busy giving the sky a name.  But this has no name.  It's simply...

...Blue...

Beyond the sky, beyond even the glass firmament above the sky.  It's our center, our origin, our destination, our haven.  Our home.  Without it nothing had context and in it all the paradoxes dissolve.  All is well.

Song, a reverential whisper, then silence.

This is what she saw.

And it awaits.

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