Author's note: This has to be a fusion, since I have no illusion that
there's absolutely nothing incompatible in these two series (for one thing,
the flood in YSD was gradual), but I hope I've kept the changes to a minimum.

                                 After the End
                                by Ken Arromdee

(March 2001 part)

    My name is Alpha.  I may look like a human girl, but I'm a robot...  I
keep my owner's coffee shop running.  I've kept it running since he went
away.  He once sent me a camera as a gift, but with it came a message.  "I
don't think I'll be back for a while." He wanted me to use it to record things
I wanted to remember, and at that point I suspected he might not be coming
back.  Humans are like that.

    At times I ride my scooter all the way to the ocean and look at the lights
under the sea.  I know that humans once lived there; the lights and the
underwater buildings are what is left of the old Yokohama, before a meteor hit
the South Pole.  But the ocean level rose, and the people could not stay.
Since the Second Impact, Yokohama has been a small, quiet, city living in the
twilight era of the world.

    I listen to the radio at times; there are still huge metropolises out
there, where humans live in the millions.  Somewhere there are lights that
still stand, lights which make the city a place for enough people that if
each bought a cup of coffee, I could not serve them all before my circuits
would fail.  I knew that they must have their own hopes and desires, their own
pleasures, and their own problems.  Perhaps some day I would visit them, but
not yet.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    One day the news on the radio told of a danger, but one to far off Tokyo.
A secret group had really been planning the ultimate destruction of the world.
But troops were being sent in.  I may have been living in the same world with
that distant group, but what they did would not affect me, after all.  At
least this is what I thought.  I ignored it and later I closed the shop and
left, walking over the hills to a place where I could watch the sun as it set.

    But the sky darkened and brightened, a glow I had never seen before.  There
was noise and there was thunder...  I wondered then if I should have stayed
indoors where I wouldn't be in danger from lightning, but instead I stayed
outside to listen.  After the sounds came the winds, and sprays of salt water
and other, stranger, smells.  And then I saw a human figure, but it was huge.
It stretched from beyond the horizon to where I had to lift my head to see the
top.  It would have to have been tens of kilometers...  no, hundreds...  tall,
and it was creating its own cloud patterns that soon obscured it from view.
I looked around myself, and my gaze travelled back to the nearby village.
There were specks of light there, which looked like crosses.  I knew that some
unimaginable disaster had befallen us, as I turned back.  First I walked, and
then I ran, but it didn't make a difference.

    I tried to find the old man, but I couldn't see him.  I looked for
Takahiro, but found only what seemed to be his clothes, and an orange puddle,
and at that point I knew what had happened, even though I didn't know the
details.  I returned to the shop, and waited, but knew that it would be about
as likely for any customer to come as for my owner to suddenly step in that
door.  The sun must have set soon afterwards; but even if the sky had been
clear, I would have been too busy with my tears to have noticed.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    The next day I stepped out of the cafe to look for signs of life.  There
were trees and grasses, there were insects and birds...  but all the humans in
the village had dissolved away.  I kept searching, hoping that the scale of
the disaster was not as large as it seemed and that the peace of the
countryside had not been replaced by the peace of the grave.  I never found
anything, but as I continued to wander for days, I eventually saw them.

    It was in a place near the ruins of old Yokohama, where massive pieces of
metal, and statues, and other things still stood, half-buried in the water.  
I didn't realize at the time just how unique these people were, at least at
the time, but after all they did have to land somewhere, and that somewhere
happened to be here.  They were a boy and a girl, somewhat younger than my
apparent age.  The boy's hair was brown, and the girl's was redder.  They
were injured, but not as much as I would have expected from someone who had
just fallen out of the sky.  They seemed to be trying to strangle each other.
I approached them, glad to find a sign of life while dismayed that it would
have to be two people who hurt themselves, hurt each other, and didn't seem to
pay any attention to the world around them.

(November 2001 part)

                                *   *   *   *   *

    I approached them and said "hello", but carefully did not approach too
closely.  The air of turmoil and tragedy around them was too obvious, and
their reactions could be anything.  

    The two looked at each other in embarassment, and then scrambled to push
each other away.  They looked at me, and the boy spoke.  "They're coming back",
he said.  "Please...  they're coming back, aren't they?  Mom said that everyone
could come back if they wanted.  You're back, aren't you?  And Asuka.  So
everyone else must be back, too, right?"

    "I'm sorry", I told him.  "I don't have any idea what you're talking about.
I'm Hatsuseno Alpha.  And you two are...?"

    "But you're *back*.  Everyone died because of me but people have to be
back now.  You're back.  Tell me there's still a city there, that there are
still people alive.  Tell me that there's someone I can talk to, someone that
I can stand to be with.  Tell me!"

    Perhaps I should have slapped him then and there.  From what I later
learned, he was constantly wallowing in his own sorrows, even when there was
no disaster like the one I had seen.  Instead I grabbed their hands and tried
to lead them away.  The cafe was far away, but it would have to do.

                                *   *   *   *   *

    I was met along the way by another girl.  The same age as the others, she
had a towel wrapped around her.  Her hair was pale, her eyes red.  She seemed
to move awkwardly, somehow.

    "So Shinji and Asuka are okay", she said.  "That's good.  Nobody should
have to go through anything like this at that age."

    I shook my head.  "Miss?  We don't get a lot of visitors all the way
around here.  Whatever happened, the first I knew about it was yesterday when
every human being in the area melted away.  I assume Shinji and Asuka are
these children.  I just found them... they wouldn't say anything."

    "I'm Misato Katsuragi", she said, and then looked down at herself.  "Rei
wasn't using this, and she gave it to me after I died.  I'm not sure how, or
even why."

    "What?" I asked.  This girl was a lot more coherent than the children, but
she had clearly been under a lot of stress.  "All I know is that something
happened.  Everyone lived her in the country, quietly, and the big city
seemed so distant...  like it was a whole other world.  The only time it
mattered was when the trains came by or when people refilled the vending
machines.  I gather that something happened.  A great disaster that nobody is
immune to, even out here."

    "Well, let me explain", she said.  "It's not going to matter now how many
secrets I give out.  Shinji's wonderful father...  Shinji's the boy over
here."  She reached for him, but he showed no sign that he was aware of her
presence.  "Shinji's father was working with a secret group whose plan was to
destroy the world.  He may have had plans of his own; I don't know.  But I
think it worked.  I could sense that Shinji reached some kind of compromise,
and the people can all come back.  Everything else...  Even if that wasn't a
real explosion, or if it was contained somehow, Tokyo must have disappeared off
the map."

    "Tokyo...  gone?"

    "There must be thousands of car and train crashes, when everyone melted
away.  Airplanes falling to the ground, machinery working without
supervision...  Just the fires would destroy a city."

    "We're okay", I told her.  "If the humans come back, I think we can all
make it.  It must be awful back there.  Come on, you can all stay at the
cafe.  There's room, I doubt my owner will be getting back."

    "Your owner...  Oh.  You must be a robot.  That's the only way you could
have survived this without turning into LCL yourself."

    I nodded.  "Yes...  Anyway, the city may be gone, but we're going to be
the way we always were, if the people who disappeared will return.  I don't
think there will be many car crashes out here.  It's a lot different from
what you must be used to.

(out of time)