I thought about posting this in 'How would you handle it, but I'm hoping this will need its own thread.
You're sitting at home, work, or whatever one day, when you find yourself floating in a void, with Ayanami Rei floating in front of you. She tells you that the world as you know it, is the result of Shinji's wish, during Third Impact. Before the Impact, you were a fictional character, the protagonist (or just a character that Shinji liked, or identified with) of a failed TV pilot from 1999, about the world ten years in the future. Misato had had a copy of the pilot, subtitled in Japanese (unless you currently live in Japan, in RL), and watching it with her and Asuka was his last happy memory, before Third Impact; so, he remade the world in the image of that show, letting Rei and the souls of humanity fill in the very many blanks. The work is nearly complete, but there are still pieces needing to be put into place, and as Shinji did not want to exist, even in this world, it falls to you to complete his work. After all, before he destroyed everything that made up Ikari Shinji, you were him.
The bigger the changes you make to the world as you remember it, the more work you have to put into maintaining internal consistency, or the whole thing collapses. Just adding a few people to your personal life isn't going to be much of a problem, but changes to the memories of thousands of people is a significant burden.
Because Rei and Asuka were the last people he cared about to both still be alive, and still retain their individuality, Shinji would not unmake them, nor can you. In fact, he wants you to take care of them, though you have some options as to how they'll be inserted into your life. You can take them as is, and add them to your personal history as relatives (adopted or otherwise), close friends, girlfriends, lovers, et cetra. You don't have to give both the same cover, you could make one your sister, and the other your wife, for example (if they're legal in your area). You could also add a few years of maturity to them, as you have the experiences of two billion people to draw on - you might want to do that whether you plan to have sex with them or not, as it allows you to help them get over some, perhaps most, of their psychological problems. If you want, you could tweak the local laws to let you marry both of them (unless you live in an area where that's already legal), but that sort of change can have far-reaching consequences, as mentioned above. The only real limitation, imposed on the world by Shinji, as his last act before unmaking himself, is that you have to be a significant part of their lives, and they, yours.
The Black Moon, Tokyo 3's geofront, remains unchanged from the old world, filled with idle machines, uninvented technology, and empty uniforms. At the moment, it is in geosynchronous orbit over Japan, unless you choose to reposition it. If you leave it, you'll need to insert memories of its arrival, or people will have problems with it just popping out of nowhere.
At the time of Third Impact, there were only two billion (two thousand million, on the European scale) human souls in the world, whereas the opening sequence for the show the new world is based on clearly mentioned a world population of well over six billion. So, over six billion living human bodies have been formed, but more than two-thirds of them are currently soulless drones, doing a good imitation of sentience, but not truly self aware. If you leave them as they are, its possible that they might develop new souls naturally over time, but how long is another matter. You don't know, nor can you be sure that the child of two soulless people will be born with a soul. Alternatively, you could take the souls of animals, of which there are far more than six billion, and place them in the soulless bodies, and hope it works. If you wish, you may choose what bodies get souls, or even put specific souls into specific bodies. You could even recreate people like Misato, who lost their individuality in the Sea of Tang, but they won't be the same as they were before, not really. Of course, in a way, that might be for the best. Finally, you could absorb the bio-energy and AT fields of those four billion soulless bodies, using the power to ascend yourself, and a few people of your choosing, to a form of godhood. You could also choose to let others ascend, while remaining human, yourself.
You will also need to decide whether to awaken humanities psychic potential, which is to say, the ability to accomplish many strange things within the fields of our Absolute Territory. (Think Thousand Shinji/The Open Door, or Shinji & Warhammer40K - though unlike the latter case, psi/super/magic powers are the result of AT field control, rather than the ability to use one canceling out the ability to use the other.) Only beings with souls can do this.
If you choose to dissolve the soulless bodies, but would rather not be nor create a god, you could distribute their energy to the remaining two billion people, leaving every soul with not only active psychic potential, but with more power than they would otherwise have had. An average person would be equivalent to a low Epsilon-level Psyker, I think. If you dissolve the soulless bodies without changing any memories, it will be very traumatic, but won't violate internal consistency.
If you choose not to become a god, you will 'merely' be a powerful human, on par with an Omega-class mutant from Marvel, or an Alpha-level psyker from WH40K (though saner than they tend to be). Of course, you could choose to seal away some or all of your power, along with your memories of having remade the world.
Whatever you do, recall that whatever sent the Angels may still be out there, and Third Impact may have attracted their attention, or that of other beings. (If you make yourself a precog, you realize that something is coming, and other things are out there, and its to late to hide away. You don't know how long we have, though.)
The fate of the word is in your hands. What will you do?
EDIT: The pilot they saw was of your real life, or someone you know's real life.
EDIT 2: You can't eat souls. You can create some sort of afterlife, but you can't eat them. Absorbing souls would cause you to start loosing your individuality, so you probably wouldn't want to, anyway.
This is not Thousand Shinji/The Open Door, it just has some similarities.
You're sitting at home, work, or whatever one day, when you find yourself floating in a void, with Ayanami Rei floating in front of you. She tells you that the world as you know it, is the result of Shinji's wish, during Third Impact. Before the Impact, you were a fictional character, the protagonist (or just a character that Shinji liked, or identified with) of a failed TV pilot from 1999, about the world ten years in the future. Misato had had a copy of the pilot, subtitled in Japanese (unless you currently live in Japan, in RL), and watching it with her and Asuka was his last happy memory, before Third Impact; so, he remade the world in the image of that show, letting Rei and the souls of humanity fill in the very many blanks. The work is nearly complete, but there are still pieces needing to be put into place, and as Shinji did not want to exist, even in this world, it falls to you to complete his work. After all, before he destroyed everything that made up Ikari Shinji, you were him.
The bigger the changes you make to the world as you remember it, the more work you have to put into maintaining internal consistency, or the whole thing collapses. Just adding a few people to your personal life isn't going to be much of a problem, but changes to the memories of thousands of people is a significant burden.
Because Rei and Asuka were the last people he cared about to both still be alive, and still retain their individuality, Shinji would not unmake them, nor can you. In fact, he wants you to take care of them, though you have some options as to how they'll be inserted into your life. You can take them as is, and add them to your personal history as relatives (adopted or otherwise), close friends, girlfriends, lovers, et cetra. You don't have to give both the same cover, you could make one your sister, and the other your wife, for example (if they're legal in your area). You could also add a few years of maturity to them, as you have the experiences of two billion people to draw on - you might want to do that whether you plan to have sex with them or not, as it allows you to help them get over some, perhaps most, of their psychological problems. If you want, you could tweak the local laws to let you marry both of them (unless you live in an area where that's already legal), but that sort of change can have far-reaching consequences, as mentioned above. The only real limitation, imposed on the world by Shinji, as his last act before unmaking himself, is that you have to be a significant part of their lives, and they, yours.
The Black Moon, Tokyo 3's geofront, remains unchanged from the old world, filled with idle machines, uninvented technology, and empty uniforms. At the moment, it is in geosynchronous orbit over Japan, unless you choose to reposition it. If you leave it, you'll need to insert memories of its arrival, or people will have problems with it just popping out of nowhere.
At the time of Third Impact, there were only two billion (two thousand million, on the European scale) human souls in the world, whereas the opening sequence for the show the new world is based on clearly mentioned a world population of well over six billion. So, over six billion living human bodies have been formed, but more than two-thirds of them are currently soulless drones, doing a good imitation of sentience, but not truly self aware. If you leave them as they are, its possible that they might develop new souls naturally over time, but how long is another matter. You don't know, nor can you be sure that the child of two soulless people will be born with a soul. Alternatively, you could take the souls of animals, of which there are far more than six billion, and place them in the soulless bodies, and hope it works. If you wish, you may choose what bodies get souls, or even put specific souls into specific bodies. You could even recreate people like Misato, who lost their individuality in the Sea of Tang, but they won't be the same as they were before, not really. Of course, in a way, that might be for the best. Finally, you could absorb the bio-energy and AT fields of those four billion soulless bodies, using the power to ascend yourself, and a few people of your choosing, to a form of godhood. You could also choose to let others ascend, while remaining human, yourself.
You will also need to decide whether to awaken humanities psychic potential, which is to say, the ability to accomplish many strange things within the fields of our Absolute Territory. (Think Thousand Shinji/The Open Door, or Shinji & Warhammer40K - though unlike the latter case, psi/super/magic powers are the result of AT field control, rather than the ability to use one canceling out the ability to use the other.) Only beings with souls can do this.
If you choose to dissolve the soulless bodies, but would rather not be nor create a god, you could distribute their energy to the remaining two billion people, leaving every soul with not only active psychic potential, but with more power than they would otherwise have had. An average person would be equivalent to a low Epsilon-level Psyker, I think. If you dissolve the soulless bodies without changing any memories, it will be very traumatic, but won't violate internal consistency.
If you choose not to become a god, you will 'merely' be a powerful human, on par with an Omega-class mutant from Marvel, or an Alpha-level psyker from WH40K (though saner than they tend to be). Of course, you could choose to seal away some or all of your power, along with your memories of having remade the world.
Whatever you do, recall that whatever sent the Angels may still be out there, and Third Impact may have attracted their attention, or that of other beings. (If you make yourself a precog, you realize that something is coming, and other things are out there, and its to late to hide away. You don't know how long we have, though.)
The fate of the word is in your hands. What will you do?
EDIT: The pilot they saw was of your real life, or someone you know's real life.
EDIT 2: You can't eat souls. You can create some sort of afterlife, but you can't eat them. Absorbing souls would cause you to start loosing your individuality, so you probably wouldn't want to, anyway.
This is not Thousand Shinji/The Open Door, it just has some similarities.
