act42side

...There you are, Federico.

Your Holiness.

Did you see the new products on the tea table?

'Yvangelista XI Ice Cream Cake Tower'. Eleven scoops of ice cream, eleven flavors of cactus, the eleventh cake named after a pope...

I am a trained executor. I cannot say the same for my ability to evaluate desserts.

Just a token of gratitude, for not forgetting an old man on the brink of death as you withdrew.

Of course, I plan to promote it throughout the city, in the hopes that the people may rediscover the taste of life, sooner rather than later.

Considering the flavor, I suspect it may cause even more controversy.

It is true, however, that the citizens of Laterano are in dire need of a return to orderly life.

Suicides and crime rates have soared in the past three months.

Small-scale disturbances to large-scale exodus... there are more than a thousand cases in the Notarial Hall's records. The rebuilding of the city has only just begun.

The calamity has revealed too much and changed too much.

The Law was a cold machine. Our saint was a loathsome abomination. All of us share the same roots as the devils...

Any one of these truths is enough to destroy an individual's faith.

This rebuilding will be a tremendous undertaking.

Reconstruction of the damaged plates on which the Third and Fourth Tribunals are located has just begun. Efforts are underway to revitalize the economy.

Laterano has not been so busy in a long time. I hope that the busy times will provide a way for the people to repair the cracks in their hearts.

Speaking of which... what is your outlook on all this, Federico?

Sankta, Laterano, faith, empathy, communication, and our society... the many important decisions that the Holy City has made overs its millennia-long history, and even your canonization...

It was all the result of Him—a machine. The spiritual light has always been cold.

Your innate lack of empathy has bestowed upon you an outlook of extreme logic. Perhaps He chose you because you were the one who could understand the logic of His simulation the best.

I caught fragments of your conversation with Him.

Even after decades of talking to Him, I must admit... you were more suited to the task.

If I wasn't intimately familiar with the way you talk, I wouldn't have been able to tell who said what.

If the Law is a machine, a system, then the most effective method of communication is to think on His terms, with His language and His logic.

But you arrived at the opposite conclusion from Him.

I remember every word of the tenets, and every name with which I have ever come into contact on my assignments.

As far as Laterano is concerned, there is no great difference in the order required by machines and life.

The existence of life is a miracle, its two sides the opposing aspects of strength and fragility. Out of necessity, for survival and livelihood, we have continuously built and improved order. The Law is simply part of it.

The Law exists to protect...

Federico pauses. The executor known for his mechanical coldness chooses his words carefully, a rare sight to behold—

...the precious fragility of human life.

Precious fragility... such an interesting combination.

Therefore, we rejected Him. It was our joint decision, Your Holiness. Time will tell whether it was the right one.

Go on.

My, my. Now that's certainly something.

What is that in your hand, Lemuel?

A spray can.

This place is deep underground and cold. This big rock is bare and gray. No wonder everyone who comes here leaves with their head hung low, like they got a heavy cold...

I've had enough!

I'm gonna give it a fresh coat of paint, so people who see it will be happy... wanna join me?

Don't look at me like that! I finished third in the Lungmen graffiti competition two years ago!

You didn't forget what that is, did you?

Just think of it as my way of making a wish! Anything you can't figure out, anything you haven't gotten done, spray it on the rock, and maybe it'll come true!

...Wish?

Didn't the Sankta and Laterano come about because the saint made a wish?

But it's scrap now...

A rock is a rock! How do you scrap a rock?

Besides, you're still here. Me, that girl selling ice cream, that gunsmith over there, and all the Sanktas around are witnesses to your wish...

Who's to say it's necessarily this rock that grants it?

Think about all the things that've happened these past three months. Any of them would have made the headlines for an entire week in the old days! The entire Holy City has been turned upside-down.

In the end, though, so many people chose to stay in these ruins... our halos still shine. Life goes on, right?

Just make a new wish! It's not that hard.

I'll show you how!

Apple Pie Logistics is opening up next week, the first civilians logistics company to be officially recognized by the Curia!

My wish is that it will grow and grow and have lots of business, and that I'll have lots of time to stay with Mamma and Tata and my sister...

Can I make a wish for sugar-free ice cream?

Uh...

Sure!

My wish is that Lateran genetics will change, and everybody will support my culinary research, so that their teeth and halos will never get cavities!

With resilient perseverance, the dawn of a new day shines into the deepest reaches of Laterano, illuminating the green graffiti, and the stone that has long grown dim.

The Sanktas look up. Light dances in the drifting dust.

...The Seventh Tribunal proposed a blockade and communications blackout over the area, but the proposal is not feasible.

Hard to block it off when the plates have been so badly damaged.

The Basilica practically hangs over the side of a cliff. How do you stop curious passersby from looking down?

Besides, the First Saint has already revealed the truth to Laterano... all that our people are doing now is to learn to face it.

Notarial Hall records indicate that the last patient in intensive care at Pagus Faber Central Hospital's Halo Surgery division has been discharged to an observation ward.

Which means that all the non-Sanktas who were given halos in this calamity are no longer troubled by an annoying light over their heads. It only took three months.

The Sankta halos that were broken are also gradually recovering...

Empathy continues to exist. It feels different now, but it is still a connection that belongs to the Sankta, and the Sankta alone.

God is dead, is He not?

He ordered Andoain and I to destroy Him, and He revealed His weakness to us.

We destroyed Him with our own hands. I have confirmed that His functions have ceased completely.

But the program that governs the halos persists...

Is the Law still in effect?

Let's look at this from another angle, Federico.

You identified the inherent paradox in the Law. A paradox is a combination of two things that cannot coexist.

If His last command to you was to eliminate the paradox...

Then perhaps, we have not destroyed the Law itself, but only this erroneous conflict... the paradox itself.

The logic stands, but difficult to process. The machine itself, after all, has ceased to operate.

You're certainly correct. It was a thought that came to me suddenly as I was chewing on cactus yesterday.

But I still believe that He left something behind for us.

Perhaps the Law of Laterano was never truly complete. He left behind for us a <i>tabula rasa</i>, waiting for us to communicate with Him.

That is why I have decided to repurpose the underground structure of the Basilica as a public space, which all citizens are welcome to view as they please.

Where Laterano goes from here, and what new meaning the Law will create, is a matter in which every Sankta will have their say.

It is as you said, Federico. Time will tell.

Strange. Where did it go?

The extra grenade launcher maintenance kit is in the bottom drawer. I put the collector's edition disc in the sofa compartment.

Take a break from packing and pour me a cup of cactus juice—I just got back from the hospital, and my throat is parched!

Take a guess. What do you think happened?

A Sankta priest just officiated five straight funerals. He suddenly came down with a case of aphasia, while his wife suffered heart pain at the same time...

But he was located in an Ecclesia Requietum on the outskirts, while his wife was in a gunsmithy downtown!

Many similar cases have been reported. Several hospitals and churches submitted a joint report to the Curia last week, detailing the abnormal diagnoses of over a thousand Sanktas...

The lights above our heads have come on again, but the strength and range of empathy seem to differ from person to person.

Sanktas unfamiliar with one another only faintly sense each other's emotions, even in close proximity. Friends and family, however...

What's your point?

Things seem to have gone back to normal in Laterano, but we both know that fundamental changes have started to take place, after a calamity of such scale.

You shouldn't leave now, Fia.

I told you about Rhodes Island.

Dr. {@nickname} is here in Laterano, and helped us solve a bunch of problems behind the scenes.