HACKED 99

Contrary to his extremely timid impression, he did not avoid my eyes. It wasn’t that social skills or proactiveness had suddenly sprouted in him. It was a peculiar stubbornness unique to someone who had truly decided to let everything go.

“I’ve accepted it now. That no matter what we do, we can’t win.”

<DriedAnchovyLowerEnds>, the self-proclaimed ‘Malchi,’ gave a bitter smile.

“Everything went wrong from the moment the Narrative Compilation Union’s trans-dimensional barrier was breached, from the moment they let the virus called ‘Dimensional Merger’ infect the Pantheons.”

“……”

“What’s left even if we Compilers fight among ourselves? Even if I grow stronger by using the Pantheons I’ve swallowed as nourishment, I’ll just end up facing another Compiler who grew stronger the same way in the next merger. Constantly dying, killing, vanishing… What lies at the end of this meaningless fratricide? There’s nothing but total annihilation.”

“From what I heard… a Compiler who loses all their Incarnations and is defeated receives a new Pantheon and starts over from the beginning.”

I meant that if he was going to restart anyway, his words about ‘wanting to give up on everything’ didn’t quite click into place.

“Ah, yes. That’s why I’m going to die here.”

A bombshell statement dropped as if it were nothing. I lost my words and froze on the spot.

“I want to go home so badly. I miss my family. I want to go, but since being a Compiler is a life-term position, and you can’t go anywhere until you die… I’m just going to die.”

Malchi began to tear up. I felt even more at a loss for what to say.

Comfort him? That was an option with far too high a difficulty level for me. Yet, just leave a blubbering person alone? That wasn’t easy either.

“I—I was only born in the year 2358… Sob, all my friends are still going to school, so why did I come here and suffer like this…”

“Wait a minute. Born in 2358? What year is it supposed to be now?”

“It’s 2380, of course… But Mr. <UserMyeong808>, why are you answering like a time traveler who fell into a strange era because their time-trip device broke? What is the current year as you know it?”

“The year 20XX.”

“What?”

Malchi looked at me with a bizarre gaze, as if she were looking at a UFO that had suddenly plopped down in front of her house. After stammering for a moment, she barely managed to ask back.

“The year 20XX? On—on the Earth Calendar?”

This time, it was my turn to be bewildered.

“What on earth is the Earth Calendar? Is there a Galactic Calendar too, then?”

“Oh my god. Wow. Then you came from the past, Mr. <UserMyeong808>? If it’s the early-to-mid 21st century, isn’t that a time when things like time machines didn’t exist yet? How on earth did you come to this era?”

The conversation was flowing in a direction similar to the plot of a science fiction movie. Malchi eventually stopped crying and her eyes began to shine with curiosity through her disheveled curly hair. I opened my mouth reflexively.

“Well, I played a game. Just a phone game where you decorate a Pantheon and raise Incarnations. Then one day, I suddenly ended up falling into this place.”

Since falling into this world, this was the first time I had conveyed the situation I was in to another person in such objective and concise sentences. It felt strange.

It was a hollow story that sounded unrealistic even to my own ears—one where I couldn’t complain even if it were dismissed as the nonsense of a crazy person. However, Malchi did not seem flustered or troubled. She crossed her arms seriously and muttered.

“Ah… so that rumor was true.”

“What rumor?”

Malchi explained while observing me slightly.

“You know about our union, I mean, the Narrative Compilation Union, right?”

“I know it. Though what I learned from the game settings is everything.”

“The union is suffering from a manpower shortage. There are countless narratives we must protect, and there are countless Record-Expunging Forces targeting those narratives… while the number of Pantheons and Compilers is absurdly small in comparison.”

“……”

“So the union decided to request help from ‘other world-lines.’ ‘Other world-lines’ are divided into ‘other time-lines’ and ‘other space-lines.’ Usually, it’s space-lines, but… Mr. <UserMyeong808>, have you ever seen a Compiler who looks like they came from a completely different world?”

The Compilers I had actually seen, including this person in front of me, were only two people. But someone immediately came to mind at those words. The Compiler named <IsItPresbyopiaCrap> who was my first merger opponent.

“I’m not sure, but I think I’ve seen one. They used strange characters I couldn’t even guess the culture of, and their clothing was weird.”

“That Compiler was probably someone from another ‘space-line.’ They have no interest in or knowledge of the culture or narratives of this Earth we live on… they just contracted for the pay or the fame.”

“But we were able to communicate without any trouble.”

“It’s a real-time translation function. It’s a privilege of the Compiler stationed in their own Pantheon. Oh, but if it’s the 21st century… didn’t you have things like AI real-time translators back then too?”

“We do. But they don’t work this smoothly. There are lots of errors.”

“Was it still in the early stages of development? Ah, I guess it was like that back then. I dozed off a bit during Modern and Contemporary History class… I’m sorry.”

A conversation with a self-proclaimed Earthling born in 2358. It was more surreal than anything else I had experienced in this world.

“Anyway, the union worked hard to scout aliens from other ‘space-lines.’ They probably said that if you become a Compiler, you can lead a bunch of cool Incarnations, engage in incredibly thrilling battles, contribute to the peace of other worlds, blah blah blah. But even then, the combat power was too insufficient.”

As I listened to the situation, I was washed over by a strange sense of déjà vu. The Narrative Compilation Union, which was depicted as a group of justice struggling to protect humanity’s narratives in the game <No Lifer>, sounded like…

‘A small, crappy company that constantly posts job openings because they’re short-staffed.’

In that moment of feeling hollowed out, Malchi lowered her voice a bit.

“Lately, a rumor has been circulating among Compilers. Wondering if the union, not satisfied with sending out an SOS to other ‘space-lines,’ has started touching other ‘time-lines’ as well.”

“If you say other ‘time-lines’… do you mean people who do exist on Earth, but come from the past or the future instead of the present? Like me, who came from 20XX.”

“Exactly. Precise. But unlike crossing a space-line, touching a time-line is a bit complicated. There are time paradox issues, and if you’re not careful, the past, present, and future all get tangled up. An international law regarding this was even enacted in the early 24th century… Ah, this must still be too distant a story for you, Mr. <UserMyeong808>.”

The 24th century. It was a term that didn’t feel real at all. It would almost sound more realistic to hear a story about a successor of a 10,000-year-old family riding sandworms on a desert planet, or someone looking for a mysterious powder that cures all diseases, grants superpowers, and makes one smart.

“The biggest problem is this. To scout a person from a different time period as a Compiler, you have to explain things. What the Narrative Compilation Union is, what Pantheons and Incarnations are, what the White Paper Legion and the Record-Expunging Forces are, and so on.”

“……”

“People from the future are fine. They’ll have basic knowledge. But if you tell these stories to someone living in the past, especially a past from several hundred years ago…”

“They wouldn’t understand it at all. Or they’d treat it like crazy talk.”

I would have been the same. I only accepted all of this because <No Lifer> was a game, and because these were settings within that game.

If a stranger suddenly contacted me one day and… made a suspicious job offer like, ‘We need to fight against a mysterious legion of monsters to protect humanity’s narratives, so won’t you contract with us and become a magical girl… no, a Compiler?’

‘I would have blocked them immediately and reported it to the voice-phishing report center.’

Malchi fell into thought, muttering something to herself, and eventually nodded.

“Because of those reasons, the rumor that there are Compilers from other time-lines only circulated as a groundless rumor. But hearing your story, Mr. <UserMyeong808>, I see now. You were brought here—which, from your perspective, is the future—through the indirect means of a ‘game.’”

With those words, one of the questions I had harbored until now was resolved.

How I, who enjoyed the game <No Lifer>, ended up coming to the world of <No Lifer>—it was simply the Narrative Compilation Union’s employment fraud or a kidnapping by a deep-sea fishing vessel…

The biggest question was resolved. But another question rose up following it.

“In the era I lived in, there were hundreds of thousands of people playing <No Lifer>, the game that dealt with this world-view. Why me out of all of them?”

‘Why me, of all people.’

This was also one of the important questions. Why did it have to be me among the so many players of <No Lifer>?

At that, Malchi spoke lightly as if it were nothing.

“There’s no guarantee that you’re the only one who was dragged away this way. There could be another case exactly like yours. And Mr. <UserMyeong808>, you were good at the game, weren’t you?”

“Pardon?”

An out-of-the-blue question flew at me. Why are we suddenly talking about being good at the game here?