La Gioconda

#10 A thought

　Ultimate, a word that people sometimes use, sounds somewhat empty to me.

　There is actually a reason why I feel this way. And it has a lot to do with the novels I write.

　It started when I was 15 years old, then became something close to a conviction after listening to a lecture in college, and has been warming up inside me all this time.

　The first time it happened was when I was a junior high school student watching a TV program at home. The program was on a channel that broadcast educational content and featured a special on the evolution of living things.

"This is how the creatures made their way from the sea to the land."

The TV was showing images of a spindly creature related to the ancestors of amphibians crawling out of the sea onto a rock, breathless in some way.

　Suddenly I was seized by a strange sensation. Somehow it was not emanating from the amphibian itself, but from its surroundings.

(!? What is this?)

　The sensation that gripped me was something akin to an idea. It was not that the amphibian had evolved accidentally through mutation, but that some will surrounding the amphibian had altered its body structure to reflect the will of the amphibian to crawl on land. That was how it felt.

　The second time was when I went to college and was learning about a biomolecule called ATP synthase in a molecular biology course. This biomolecule is an enzyme that exists in cell membranes and produces a chemical substance called ATP, which is the source of energy necessary for living organisms to survive [Note 23][Note 24].

　ATP synthase uses the difference in concentration of hydrogen ions between the inside and outside of the cell membrane to produce ATP while rotating at high speed.

(Huh ? Could that be ......)

　It was much like the principle of hydroelectric power generation, which uses the difference in height of water to rotate a turbine to generate electricity.

(Can this really be said to have been spontaneously produced in the process of biological evolution?)

　At that moment, that feeling I had when I was in junior high school came back to me.

（It's impossible. It can't happen spontaneously.It takes an idea to create something like that. It is some kind of technical idea. Because, isn't that right ? Cars, smartphones, erasers, and other things around us were designed with the idea of solving a problem.)

　Since then, a thought has been sitting in my mind.

（There is. There is an entity in this world that designed that biomolecule. No, not just that molecule, but every living thing on this planet.)

Sometimes people call such a creator God. But I did not think of such a specific entity called God. What I felt within me was will , the existence of a great will that governs the spiritual civilization built in the far-off spiritual world.

(Could it be that a spiritual civilization that has existed in another dimension, different from this dimension, since time immemorial, still breathes in our immediate vicinity?)

Once I talked to a master's student who was in the same lab at the university, but he hardly took me seriously. No wonder. I could not prove the existence of this phenomenon.

(Thinking about it, even if I could sense its existence, what does it have to do with me now? I'm just a student who can't even conduct an experiment, let alone write a thesis!)

　And since then, I sealed that thought inside me. No, I thought I had sealed it.

　In fact, it was different. I suddenly realized that I had been living with it, rather than sealing it off. Before I knew it, I had become involved in every field of study. I mean, I would only look things up on the Internet or read books, but that is about all I did.

　For example, when I went to a bookstore or a library to choose a book, many of the books I picked up seemed to have something to do with my inner thoughts. The selection criterion of relevance or non-relevance was unconsciously at work.

　In the end, I could not separate myself from the thought, and only accumulated more and more knowledge. As I was spending my time in this way, the time came suddenly. An irresistible urge to write came over me.

　Then I wrote. I kept writing. As long as I had the time and energy to wander through my thoughts. I believed that doing so was the only way to get closer to the thought inside me.

　As I mentioned earlier, the word ultimate rarely resonates with me. Perhaps it is because, in the face of a faraway spiritual civilization, the very act of deeming something created by people who can only live for a limited time as the ultimate thing seems meaningless and shameful.

　In fact, everyone knows that technology invented by humans becomes obsolete from the moment it is created and is eventually replaced by new technology. Rather than seeking the ultimate, we humans are passing the baton from the past to the future.

　Of course, to someone like me, Leonardo's works are all amazing and could truly be called the ultimate work of art. It is like looking up at a giant sequoia tree from its base, and I have no idea how tall it is.

　But what about Leonardo? Would Leonardo himself recognize his own work as the ultimate ?

　I am not saying that Leonardo felt the existence of a spiritual civilization as I do. However, I find it hard to believe that he, a perfectionist with an inquisitive mind and a thorough knowledge of various studies, would have chosen such an ambiguous theme as ultimate beauty, with no goal in sight.

"What's the matter with you, sis? You suddenly shut up."

　My sister's words brought me back to myself.