
??"Youkai were living in that infinitely small world beyond."
Those were the opening words to the fanzine the two of them wrote.

The eighth edition of mysterious and addictive sounds played by the Shanghai Alice Illusionary Band.

Story
#01 Natural History of the Childlike Duo 
"Our Supernatural History"

"All right, most of the work is done."
"So all that's left is the personal account and the essay, then.
Or perhaps I should say, your parts are the only ones we haven't made progress on, Merry."
"Whoops. Found out, did you?"
"Remind me which of us suggested this project to begin with?"
Much like how an excess supply of goods causes the goods' value to drop, all of humanity becoming well-off is equivalent to rich people disappearing from the world.
Ever since information began to be digitally recorded, one could obtain vast quantities of information nigh-instantaneously. At the same time, things like speed and volume, which had held absolute authority since primitive times, lost their value.
What gained value in exchange was quality.
More than anything else, special information held by only a select few was what excited society's qualitative celebrities.

#02 The Frozen Eternal Capital 
"Unstained Dystopia"

"You're the one who said you wanted to make a book together, right, Merry?"
"Well, yes.
Writing it all out is just so tiring, though..."
"Work that's not tiring would hardly be enjoyable at all.
There's no dystopia more dull than a world where everything works out just how everyone wants it."
In a world where digitization of info had progressed as far as it could, there was no such thing as an e-book. "E-books" were nothing more than things created based on original, physical books. So when one said "a book," they meant one made of paper.
At the suggestion of Maribel Hearn (Merry), the two decided to make a book about the mysterious worlds they had seen. It seemed that they had come to realize that the worlds they saw weren't just dreams.

#03 Dr. Latency's Sleepless Eyes 
"Dr. Latency's Freak Report"

Shrine maidens, itako, mediums, psychics, economists...
People who could see supposedly-nonexistent things have been around since long ago. All of them had eventually been treated like frauds. The things Merry saw, too, had sometimes been diagnosed as delusions brought on by a virus.
However, while having a drink and relaxing, she sometimes thought:
If you're going to deny things you can't see, then unobservable physical principles and astronomical objects too far to reach may as well be a load of bunk too, right?
Since those are all facts that dominate our world, couldn't I go so far as to call Merry's visions a 'truth' surpassing those facts?
To Renko Usami, Merry appeared to be a scholar of truth, who would open the eyes of all the delusion-spouting physicists.
"If writing it out is a pain, how about saying it to me out loud now?
I can just transcribe it later."
"Oh, you can do that, Renko? You're a lifesaver.
Let's start right away, then. Lately, I..."

#04 September Pumpkin 
"Parallel Communication"

Is it possible to see different things in the same place?
Merry said that she'd recently started to see multiple worlds at the same time. According to her, people all see slightly different worlds all the time. What was particularly interesting was that apparently, even though they're seeing different worlds, they can still communicate with each other.
Merry started to tell a mysterious story.
She spoke of a strange world that only some humans could see.
It was a story taking place in an extremely small world, one where our common sense didn't apply. A bizarre world where elementary particles flew across both time and space.
"...by 'only some humans,' do you mean physicists?"
"Correct. Good on you, Renko.
But, did you know that there are actually strange creatures lurking in that world without common sense?"

#05 Beyond Planck in an Instant 
"Very Very Short Time"

Merry said that if we refer to the world we humans observe, which is dominated by photons, as "the world here," then there are also countless "worlds beyond" dominated by other types of particles. And in those "worlds beyond," there are life-forms living there as well.
"Those life-forms that are invisible, but exist very close to us, and can appear to us via fluctuations... I believe they're youkai."
"Youkai...
Although when you say it like that, it sounds kind of crazy all of a sudden."
"Well, you could call them angels or devils or ghosts or UMAs, whatever's fine. But when I think of something that can't be seen, yet definitely exists as a phenomenon, I'd say 'youkai' is the best descriptor?"
The existence of youkai certainly had been supported since long ago.
However, as the world was dominated by science and philosophy that demanded falsifiability, the topic of youkai faded away.

#06 Schrödinger's Bakeneko 
"Schrodinger's Black Cat"

"So as I was thinking, 'where did the youkai disappear to?', I became able to see it. A world where youkai live even now."
"Perhaps that could be another brane world..."
"A what."
"Oh, just one of the worlds only physicists can see."
She didn't know if it was for some geographical reason, or a geological one, or just coincidence, but places where different worlds were easily visible had been called 'holy ground' since long ago. Shrines and stuff were definitely holy ground.
Merry said she saw a cat at a shrine.
However, the cat never caught anyone's attention, and moved around freely without hitting any obstructions.
Merry knew what it was at once. It was a youkai cat, she said, lurking within quantum gaps.
"Huh, a quantumly-unobservable cat...
Until it's observed, it's both alive and dead.
Just like Schrödinger's Cat, really."
"Although since I observed it, it settled into being alive."

#07 The Shining Needle Castle Sinking in the Air 
"Gravitino World"

Apparently, the "world beyond" didn't just have living things. It truly was bizarre and without common sense.
"I saw a castle floating in the sky once, too.
Upside-down, at that."
"If the gravitons have a different structure, the world's properties would be different too.
That might've been the kind of brane you saw."
"It felt mysterious, and nostalgic too.
The wooden castle keep looked really nice."
"Wait, wooden?
Oh. When you said 'a castle,' I thought you meant like Cinderella's."
"If I had to say which it resembled, it was more of a Matsumoto."
Merry had been somewhat enjoying her talk about this mysterious world, but she briefly remembered something, and began to shiver.
It seemed that not all of her memories were fun ones.

#08 Membrane Wall of Taboo 
"Another Membrane"

According to physicists who can see hallucinations, this world is apparently composed of a very thin membrane. Furthermore, many of these branes exist separately from us, and so forth.
Perhaps Merry is seeing one of those brane worlds.
According to her, "there's a slight boundary between the world here and those beyond, and there's something there that strongly resists travel back and forth. If I could just slightly get the hang of it, I could easily cross over."
"Maybe that transit-resisting 'something' could be the Sanzu River?"
"The people from long ago who "could see" probably did name it that, yes."
Perhaps a brane is something like a dyed object exposed to the flow of a river.
The patterns dyed on the object flow properly down the river, and transfer to another object. Merry's behaviour might be that sort of thing, simply put. Of course, it's hardly simple to do.
But when the pattern seeps into the other object, what happens?
It'd probably be recognized as just a stain, not a pattern.
"...if contaminants get mixed in, they've got to be eliminated"
"Huh? What's wrong, Merry?
You're kind of zoning out."
"Oh, what?
Sorry, what part was I talking about?"
"You were talking about the things you saw in the "world beyond", remember.
The theme of this book is a natural history record of what you saw there, after all."

#09 The Sea Where the Home Planet is Reflected 
"Unstained See"

I saw a forest filled with diversity.
I saw a proud, holy mountain, its gates shut to creatures who preferred the lower ground.
I saw a deep lake covered in arcane mist.
Those sights weren't just beautiful, but filled with nature too.
They were all hidden there, in the invisible gaps of the quantum world.
By the way, just what would happen if one went to a brane dominated by particles with different properties?
Merry remembered, and scrunched up her face in terror.

#10 Pure Furies ~ Whereabouts of the Heart 
"Pure Furies"

"When they see me, the youkai living there try to attack me."
"What?!
--actually, Merry, you kind of have a habit of getting attacked by monsters."
"Eh, well, I'm used to it by now.
I suppose it is only natural that they'd realize I'm a foreign presence."
She said the attacking youkai came soaring through the sky, just like formless quantum particles racing to and fro in a vacuum.
"So, what kind of youkai were they?
Kappa? Tengu?"
"They were humanoid, actually.
Although physical form has no meaning in that world beyond anyway."
Before she could even think "can't we come to a mutual understanding?!", Merry awakened from her dream.

#11 Eternal Short-Lived Reign 
"Everyday Affairs"

"Since we went to all this effort, how about we write it like a big final battle scene?"
"I thought this was a natural history record."
"I think an adventurous history record would still go over well!
All the natural history records from the Age of Discovery are pretty much written like tales of adventure, you know?"
"Well, you're the one transcribing it, Renko, so I guess it's fine."
"Alright. With that in mind, let's resume gathering material.
Okay, Merry-- or should I say, 'Dr. Latency'?"
"...Are we seriously going with that pen name?
It's kind of embarrassing..."
"I mean, you're a professor who saw the world within the quantum gaps!
It's totally fitting.
Plus, it's unisex, and feels both Western and Eastern too."
With the book's contents being what they were, they omitted any details about the author.
Anyone could see that it was an oddball of a book, but maybe it would become popular with some fans of pseudoscientific texts.
Nonetheless, it was a true story.


Afterword

Hello, it's ZUN. It's been four years since my last music CD.

AIs have been evolving in amazing ways lately, haven't they?
You see AIs wining against Go champions, painting pictures you'd swear were done by a human, swiping prizes for novels, and so on.

These are phenomena that occur as the value of technological information grows lower.

I think giving lectures on making art, music, games, etc. was pretty popular a short while ago, but things that you can teach a human can be practiced by an AI as well.

Lately, (although I don't actually think so myself,) you get people saying day in and day out that the world is getting more stifling.

Their reason being that you see celebrities and ordinary people alike punished harshly for a single mistake, and frightened companies issuing more apologies than they need to, and so on.

Why have things become like that?
The fact that nowadays, just about anyone can send out information... is the first of two reasons.

The second reason is probably because even though there's an overload of information, the value of said information is still very high.

If you try tossing your faith in information aside, you just might be able to get more enjoyment out of the fanzine(?) that Renko and Merry wrote.

Team Shanghai Alice: ZUN (really enjoyable things can't be found with Google)