Status Updates From 消滅世界

We were, all of us, under the world’s curse. Whatever form the world took, there was no escaping it. The newborn babies in rows before my eyes, the warm baby in my arms. Faced with the obligatory rightness of the spectacle of connected life, unable to resist, we continued to obey it, moved by its wonders.

Amane is NOT okay guys.

“Life belongs to all humanity, so we have to give it back to everyone. If you give birth yourself,
Amane, you’ll understand. There’s no such thing as your own child. However much you suffered through the pregnancy, the Kodomo-chan belongs to all humankind.”

Normality is the creepiest madness there is. This was all insane, yet it was so right.

A new works was being imprinted in me. Like a newborn baby, I had absorbed everything in the world in front of me and had steadily become human. Even now I was still absorbing the world around me. And I was transforming into a person who took the shape of this world.

“I wanted to get back to my nice clean room as quickly as possible. I wanted to eat what I liked, how I liked, and if I started to feel a sexual urge, I would dispose of it from my body quietly by myself.”

“Why had I ever wanted a family? There were times when I no longer knew the answer to this question. The biggest motive had probably been loneliness. But here in this world everyone lived alone, and yet any sensation of loneliness had simply vanished. The system we called “family” was just one of many systems animals had for breeding.

Oh my god. Saku’s been fitted with an artificial womb just like he said he wanted.

People were now the only animals to reproduce by scientific means. If artificial insemination hadn’t developed to this extent, we would still be copulating the way my mother had done. If there were a parallel world in which artificial insemination hadn’t developed this far, what kind of animal would we be?

Amane. It’s entirely too late to be asking these questions now.

Amane being like “this world is insane” is so funny given her blowout fight with her mother

Numerous research centres have published papers showing that the family system is an unsuitable method of reproduction for highly intelligent animals. In Paradise-Eden everyone is the child of all humankind, and everyone the mother of all humankind. This recalls the love filled world that existed before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.

“I was flabbergasted. Was this place a kind of factory to manufacture uniformly convenient people?”

“The Kodomo-Chans all had different genetic backgrounds.. but the kodomo-chan with a big nose in my husband’s arms and the dark skinned kodomo-chan gazing up at the landlord’s face were both using precisely the same facial muscle movements to narrow their eyes and open their mouths to smile.”

“It was as though the whole town were keeping human children as pets.”

“In this city, everyone was expected to live alone. The concepts of couples and family were considered disruptive for public morals and unsuitable for Experiment City.”

So we just traded one set of norms for another? Guys, I don’t think you can raise a child in secret..

“Let’s run away together to a world where romantic love doesn’t exist,” Saku said hoarsely.

Next stop: Experiment City! Again, just thinking about how all the conventional meanings of love and marriage and purpose and birth and family are turned around over and over.. I too am as confused as Saku and Amane.

“After all, even we don’t really know what makes us family, do we? We met at a marriage party, agreed on conditions, had the feeling we get along and now we live like brother and sister. How are people who designate themselves family any different from strangers? Nobody knows what makes family different from strangers. In reality, we’re already lost.”

Saku isn’t wrong but this is.. sad..

I gave myself five years to recover from Earthlings and I fear I'll need another five after this one