Accel World - Volume 4 - Chapter Aft

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AFTERWORD

Reki Kawahara here. Thank you for picking up my first book of this year.

And here it is, 2010. It’s just too far in the future. I’m a bit stunned. It’s an everyday thing for us that all these exist now, but when I was a kid, things like SD memory cards, Blu-ray discs, and touch-panel cell phones were straight out of science fiction. Incidentally, the first HDD I bought had a capacity of twenty megabytes, but apparently, this spring, an SD card with sixty-four gigabytes is going on sale…

These days, I’m feeling like I can’t keep up with advances in technology, but since a full-dive-type VR machine doesn’t seem likely to show up any time soon, I’m thinking I’ll just keep trying until then. My dream is to become a net game wreck in my old age, so I hope you’ll manage something by then, please, all you manufacturers out there.

Now, here we come to our usual apology corner.

I am so sorry for ending the previous book, The Twilight Marauder , on such an incredibly terrible note! The biggest reason for having that kind of ending was simply because it wasn’t finished, but you could say it was also the tiniest bit on purpose.

For a long time, I’ve been vaguely dissatisfied with the pages in a book. As you read, the number of pages gradually decreases, and whether you like it or not, this phenomenon communicates the information, “Once you read this much, it’ll be over.” Taking movies as an example, it would be like having a bar with the remaining time displayed in the lower right of the screen the whole time! But maybe my getting stuck on something so matter-of-fact is just because I’ve been a reader and writer of novels online for so long. There, you never have any physical sense of when it’s going to end. (LOL)

Anyway, about all I could think of to avoid the spoiler information coming from the paper book was to make the text smaller and smaller, or to make the paper gradually thinner, but I was pretty sure that if I asked my editor to let me do anything like that, he’d tell me “no way” with a smile and that would be the end of that. So I tried something relatively more practical: not ending the book.

I’m sure that those of you who read the third volume without any prior information were probably outraged when you got to the last page, and no doubt felt a certain amount of surprise. If that was indeed the case, my objective was achieved. Of course, splitting a story into two books without any forewarning is nothing other than a kind of betrayal, so I apologize humbly and sincerely. I really am terribly sorry! Apologies! I won’t do it again! Probably!

And having written this far, I feel like this afterword won’t fit in the usual two pages. So we’ll take a serious turn and continue into the excuses corner.

Although the end of this volume does mention that the quanta inside microtubules in the brain create human consciousness, this is in fact a complete fabrication I made up from the words of the very real theory of quantum mind. The actual quantum mind theory is a totally different thing and exceedingly difficult, which means I can’t understand a word of it. For those of you who are interested in the subject, a man called Roger Penrose has written a book on the topic, so please read that. And then please break it down and quietly explain it to me. (LOL)

And one more thing. Another new female character has arrived on the scene, but I’m sure you’ve all already given up in this regard! Right?! I, too, have given up, and Kuroyukihime must have also given up…

I am indebted once again to illustrator HIMA, who designs at minimum one new female character for me in every volume! And I once again deeply and unconscionably inconvenienced my editor, Miki, by being later than late with my manuscript. At a meeting we had the other day, Miki’s head looked newly neat, so I said, “Oh, you cut your hair,” and he said, “I finally got the time to go get it cut.” I was honestly touched by that. I hope we can enjoy working together again this year as well! (That said, at the present moment, I’m already ten minutes past the deadline for this afterword…)

And in conclusion, I would ask that all of you who have read my books would continue to join me this year as well!