User blog:Seieireppa/God Eater: The Butterfly Effect, chapter 9: Strategy

All at once, it all came back to him.

Will’s head was flooded with memories of his father, of the dark-skinned, silver-haired, red-eyed man who raised him all on his own until his death when Will was twelve years old. There was no mistaking it—this child before him shared the exact features of the man who held the utmost position in Will’s mind as the reason he had become a God Eater in the first place, in that desolate, ruined future.

As Will stood there, dumbstruck and in complete shock, Silas approached him from behind.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” the scientist spoke, “but we need to be going before that kid notices us and we cause too significant a change in the divergence factor!”

Will, however, stood there, not saying a word.

“Dammit, Will!” Silas exclaimed angrily. “Pull yourself together!”

Still, however, Will remained motionless, his face wearing an expression of absolute shock.

Silas, on the other hand, had had enough. Clenching his hand as tightly as he could, he drew back his arm and let loose with as strong a punch as he could, his fist impacting Will’s face and knocking the God Eater out of his trance.

“Goddammit, Will! Get yourself together! If we don’t leave now, who knows what’ll happen if Feldman notices us?! You need to send us back to 2705, and you need to do it yesterday!”

Stunned momentarily, Will blinked once, then twice, then nodded, his expression finally back to normal. With nary a word, he grabbed Silas’ hand and initiated the transportation process. In a moment, they were gone, and the familiar scenery of Silas’ lab now surrounded them.

“What… the hell…?!”  Will gasped his exasperation as he slumped against a nearby chair. “I mean… how the…???”

Silas appeared plainly bewildered, stopping to take stock of the situation. “So,” he began, “your father… is Isaac Feldman?”

“No. No way.”  Will’s reply was curt and cold, tinged with annoyance. “No way in HELL is that bastard my father! I know my father! I remember my father! And my father sure as HELL isn’t Isaac FUCKING Feldman!”

Will stood, seething with indignation as he stared Silas down. The latter, meanwhile, merely stroked his chin as he ran over the ramifications of this discovery in his head.

“Will…” he began. “You’ve been a God Eater for, what… eleven years? Tell me—is such a thing possible? Can a human being… transform from consuming an Aragami? Can they adapt the Oracle cells to their own body like that?”

“…No,” came Will’s reply. “Normally, if a human tried to eat an Aragami, that Aragami’s Oracle cells would cause a rejection response, and the human’s body would be consumed. But…”

“But… that’s clearly not what happened with your father… with Isaac Feldman, is it?”  Silas voiced his thoughts aloud. “Something… off happened here. Something that shouldn’t have happened. Will… under what circumstances can Oracle cells fuse with another organism?”

Will thought for a moment, before happening upon something. “The only way Oracle cells can be incorporated into another organism,” he began, “is if that organism is fundamentally identical on a cellular level to the being whose Oracle cells it is consuming. Normally, of course, this only happens because the only things that consume Aragami are other Aragami and God Arcs, which are Aragami themselves. But in this case…”

“Right,” continued Silas. “It should be impossible, unless… unless those Oracle cells came from Feldman himself. The only way he should be able to consume Oracle cells would be if he himself gave himself those Oracle cells in the first place.”

“But that would mean…!!”  Will spoke up, before cutting himself off as he realized the answer to his own question.

“That’s right,” answered Silas. “A time loop.”

Will was taken aback by Silas’ choice of words. “A… time loop?”

“That is correct,” came Silas’ response. “Normally, because of how branching timelines work, time loops should be impossible, because intervention in the past of a timeline should just create a branch in the timeline. But in this case…”  Silas paused. “In this case, that intervention, the branching point, came about as a result of the branching point itself. The Isaac Feldman in this timeline gave himself his own Oracle cells, which would enable him to later go back in time and give himself his own Oracle cells. Does that make sense?”

Will nodded. “I’ve some experience with messing around with timelines, but nothing to this extent. What exactly does this mean for World Line Prime?”

“It means,” replied Silas, “that even though there’s a time loop, it should have a start and end point. The start point, as far back as we can go, would be the point that the first Oracle cells arrived on this planet. As far as Fenrir’s records indicate, the first contact our planet had with Oracle Cells was in 2038, when a strange meteor crashed into the South American continent. It was from this meteor that a team of Fenrir scientists would later obtain the Oracle cell samples they used for their research. Looks like this might be our best bet!”

“Then what are we waiting for?!” exclaimed Will. “What’s the precise location?”

“In the old country of Brazil,” began Silas, checking his watch-projected holographic display, “at a point located 521 kilometers west-southwest along the Amazon River. But with the revelation of, well… of the divergence point, we’ve no time to waste.”

Silas flipped off his display and stared at Will with an expression of ultimate determination.

“All of my years of research,” Silas began, “all of the years I’ve spent looking into the past to find the truth… it’s all about to come to a head. We’re about to step off the precipice of the known and fall into the unknown. This is the origin point from which all begins. Are you ready?”

Will merely nodded. No words could do his own resolve justice. He was ready, readier than he ever was.

Together with Silas, he stared forwards, towards a wall. However, their eyes were not aimed at the wall itself, but rather at a point far beyond. Their eyes looked towards the future, towards the past, and towards the truth.

A truth that stared them in the face as they vanished from the world altogether, on their way.

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