Chapter 19: Warriors of Sorrow
At 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Ade awaited Amuro at Copernicus Cosport. To show the importance of this cooperation, Lord Director personally waited at the airport to show his great respect to the Federation.
Standing beside him was an unknown Lunar Army officer. According to the principle of diplomatic reciprocity, the highest-ranking person sent from the Earth side was lieutenant colonel Bright Noa, so the Moon side assigned a colonel as the person in charge of this contact. Ade was glad that General Ghingham did not come in person. He did not like that man very much.
As the time for the meeting drew near, he felt a sudden stirring in his heart. A large, tender, frustrated, mournful will from across the stars was distantly connected to him, and the other side's sullen mood struck a chord with him. Without words, without explanation, he confirmed the other's identity, and his own, in a flash.
The empathy with Amuro made him in a low spirit. The feeling was so clear and vivid that it was as if he could personally experience what Amuro had gone through. But he quickly came to his senses. This was not his feelings, not his perception, this was false empathy, he and Amuro could not possibly understand each other.
But the delusion just now was so real. What would happen if his own consciousness really had empathy with Amuro? Some things are really different between knowing and understanding. He now vaguely understood why Kamille had gone crazy in the anime.
While he was rambling, the battleship Akama had docked at the pier. A group of men in Federation uniforms led by an officer came this way, and the colonel of the Lunar Army beside himself came forward to meet them. Ade recognized Amuro in the crowd at once, not by rank or appearance, but by the senses that were still vaguely at work telling him that this man was the one he had just resonated with. Amuro tightly locked eyes with Ade, and his eyes looked complicated.
"Hello, Dr. Lingus, I am Lieutenant Colonel Bright Noa, the head of this operation." The officer came up to Ade. Because Ade was not a soldier, so Bright Noa did not salute but extended his hand to him.
"Hello, Lieutenant Colonel Noa." Ade took Bright's outstretched hand, "On behalf of Anaheim, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Federation military for their cooperation, and on my own behalf, I would like to thank the Lieutenant Colonel and Captain Ray."
"Doctor, although this is the first time we have met, I have been saved many times by your masterpiece during the One Year War. It's me who should say thank you." Bright showed a sincere smile, "Allow me to introduce. This is the central figure of this operation, Captain Amuro Ray."
"Hello, Dr. Lingus." Amuro came forward and shook Ade's hand without saying much. Both men knew they needed to talk, but not now.
The group drove to the Institute, and Ade explained to Amuro directly in the car about the arrangements he had planned, "We have limited time, so we'll start working today. Captain Ray, we have three primary goals: determine the means of observation, the metric, and the mode of action of psychic sensing. With the information you have provided, we have established a total of fourteen model hypotheses. Our task today is to verify each of these models and see if any of them are truly valid and will respond to psychic sensing."
"Dr. Adrien, please call me by my first name as well if you don't mind." Amuro looked at Bright in the passenger seat, "In a sense, we know each other pretty well."
During the One Year War, Amuro, as Gundam's pilot, had been giving Anaheim regular feedback, and it was the designer Ade himself who was responsible for handling that feedback at the time. Fortunately, Amuro, unlike other semi-literate soldiers, possessed a notable technical level himself, so his reports could accurately reflect the real situation and the problems he encountered, and give Ade a great convenience in the subsequent work.
Although the two had never met and did not speak to each other, they were subtle familiar with each other.
"Well, Captain Amuro." Ade took it in stride, "We will be quite busy these days, so please be prepared."
"Never mind." Amuro smiled at him, "It is the duty of a soldier to obey orders."
The day was intense and busy, and Amuro finally found the correct and valid one after trying twelve models. After sampling a large amount of data using this model, the work was temporarily handed over to the analysts and Amuro was finally free. At Ade's invitation, the two came to Ade's office.
"Could you two leave for a little while?" Ade looked at the two men who were responsible for "protecting" Amuro, "What we are going to talk about is a business secret, so please cooperate."
The two men looked at each other, one of them took out his cell phone and made a call. After getting what was presumably permission from Bright, the two soldiers apologized to Ade and finally left the office.
"Dr. Adrien, I didn't expect the person I sensed on the ship to be you," Amuro said directly. There is no need to circle around because he understood Ade's kindness, and he believed Ade could understand his as well, "You turned out to be a New Type…"
"I just awakened recently under the impulse of emotion, and I couldn't be sure that this is the so-called NewType until this morning. I don't want to disclose it for the time being, so I hope you can keep it a secret for me." Looking at Amuro nod, he asked, "I have another question for you. Do all NTs do what we did this morning? Wouldn't it be impossible to live normally? Can this ability be freely controlled?"
"It seems that I have made you misunderstand, sorry. Generally speaking, there is only a general sense between NTs. this morning, I sensed a strange NT and took the initiative to resonate with you." Amuro looked Ade in the eyes, "But you quickly rejected it, didn't you?"
"Yes, I thought…"
"No need to explain, you were right." Amuro gave a self-deprecating smile, "When I met Lalah, I thought humans were capable of understanding each other. But I was wrong, it just so happened that Lalah and I understood each other, that's all. Even Char and I can't understand each other, how can I let all humans understand each other?"
Ade did not ask who Lalah was, and did not need to recall the story between Amuro and her. A feeling of unstoppable sorrow and loneliness enveloped this office. Ade did not refuse this time, carefully experienced, and even felt a trace of tenderness inherited from Lalah Sune. Obviously, they have never met, but he inexplicably feels close to her. It was as if the director himself held his hand and told him, "Lalah is a good girl. No need to doubt this fact, because I am the director."
A sense of alarm that his mind was distorted made Ade violently cut the mental connection with Amuro, and what appeared before his eyes was Amuro's complicated look.
"You see, that's it." Amuro's voice was somewhat subdued, "Humans can't understand each other because humans don't want to understand each other at all. That's the ultimate answer to NT."
"Captain Amuro, I have not pondered a proposition as big as humanity." Ade carefully weighed his words, "But I can't accept that an emotion I've never experienced before is being written into my mind. It's like my perception is being forcefully distorted by an external force."
"It's amazing that a New Type would say something like that …" Amuro looked a little surprised, "You're very different from us … "
"Captain Amuro, I don't know why you're so hung up on mutual understanding, and my realm of thought doesn't reach that level either." He remembered what C.C. said about perception changing the world, "I have no intention of probing the secrets between you and Char and Miss Lalah, and I have a lot of hidden emotions I don't want you to know, but the fact that we can skip the suspicion and temptation and talk as openly as this, I think is a credit to that ability. This level of mutual understanding is enough. I feel content."
The atmosphere was somewhat strained. Amuro still looked as if he could not understand, and Ade could no longer find better words to describe his thoughts. He hesitated for a moment, then tried to do what Amuro had just done.
It was a whole new feeling that Amuro hadn't experienced before. Unlike Lalah's gentle, all-embracing love, unlike Char's sharp, strong, obsessive thoughts, this was an awkward, agile, confused, obstinate, expectant, indifferent will, struggling to build the last bastion of reason in the frenzied turbulence of consciousness, unyieldingly declaring war on the whole world, and on the initiator himself.
Amuro was shaken.
"… You are not like us. No wonder you were asking how to control this ability as soon as you came up. In your opinion, the power of mental sensing is just a somewhat special tool, not fundamentally different from other powers." There is no point in lying between NTs. Ade nodded frankly, and Amuro continued, "You are neither as pessimistic as I am, nor as superstitious as Char in believing that NTs can lead humans, but just treat it as an objective existence."
"Isn't it an objective existence?"
"Humans are incapable of experiencing all the experiences of others, but isn't the so-called mutual understanding building on the basis of no common sense? Maybe the starting point of the act of mutual understanding is wrong." Amuro laughed bitterly, "The so-called New Type is just a wrong evolution in the million-year history of human evolution, both Char and I are just the remnants of a failed evolution. Maybe you are right, NT is not meant to understand each other at all."
"Captain Amuro, in my eyes, the power of psychic sensing seems is similar to other scientific laws. It's not what it's used for, it's what I want to use it for."
"… Dr. Adrien, you have not experienced war first hand." Amuro bowed his head in silence for a long time, then suddenly spoke, "War veterans like Char and I had some kind of delusion that we could wipe out the war once and for all, and New Type was the only thing we had that was different from other. We bet everything we hoped on it. I failed, gave up, and became what I am now, as you can see. Char hasn't given up yet, but his ideas may have gone down a radical path."
"I'm sorry, I can't understand that. I don't believe the war can be wiped out either."
"So you and we both have a different view of 'understanding' itself." Amuro raised his head to look Ade straight in the eyes, "I was overwhelmed by the joy of complete understanding with Lalah, and Char was just relying on Lalah; neither of us thought rationally. You are the only one who is a New Type, yet you are thinking about New Type's existence from the perspective of an outsider."
Wait, the atmosphere is not right. Is he taking over Kamille's role? No, no, don't do it. It's jinxed.
"You easily cut off the induction with me, and it means that your quality is pretty good. To know that Char once indulged in a similar feeling unable to extricate himself." Amuro's tone was so sincere that it was embarrassing to interrupt, "Seeing you made me realize that New Type could live in a different method, and that proved that Char and I were too narrow-minded. I see in you what the real New Type should be like, maybe you are in the right evolutionary direction."
But he is not evolved at all. To be precise, he is a mutated alien species. He is a fake.
"I can feel that you do not accept my statement, but it does not matter. I see in you the possibility of human." The mournful atmosphere of a moment ago seemed to disappear, "Dr. Adrien, I will actively cooperate with your research. You're right, even as a tool, this kind of ability should be used in the right way."
"Captain Amuro, forgive me for being rude." He could vaguely sense the change in Amuro, "Have you changed your mind?"
"Your reason and your thinking transcend words and communicate directly to my brains, it was a wonderful resonance." Amuro stretched out his fingers and tapped his temples, showing Ade a refreshing smile, "Both of us are New Type, so you understand it, right?"
