"There is only one truth." "God." "Yes." "Me." "Isn't that right, Lain?" "You're God?" "Yes." "I'm God." "Why are you God?" "I don't understand." "You're dead, aren't you?" "A dead human." "Somebody like that can't be God, can they?" "I realized that I had no need for a body." "To die is merely to abandon the flesh." "That's..." "That's just what Chisa said." "I suppose she did, at that." "I caused the protocol that governs the Wired to evolve." "Yeah." "That's what you did." "But a protocol is just an agreement." "Yes, but I incorporated code that operates on a higher phase." "So?" "There is compressed information mixed into the protocol." "What kind of information?" "Human memories." "Mine." "The thoughts, history, memories, and emotions of the man named Masami Eiri." "What does that mean?" "I can live forever as an anonymous entity in the Wired, and will be able to rule it with information." "What do you think a being like that should be called?" "A god." "There is no God." "Yes." "Even if I were an omnipresent being and could influence others, with no one to worship me, I'm no god." "But you had them." "Or made them, I should say." "Knights." "You no longer need a body, Lain." "That's a lie!" "Talk about lame!" "Some people are like that, I guess." "So I said, go ahead and do it." "Anyway..." " Hey, look at this!" " Isn't it cute?" "It was really cheap!" " At that place next door?" " Yeah, over there!" " Let's go, let's go!" " Today?" "Sure, we don't have anything after school today." "Hey, you're right." "Let's go!" "Stand!" "Bow!" "All right, close your books." "I..." "I'm real...!" "I'm alive...!" "I'm here." "Why is this happening?" "Was it something I did?" "I always tried to keep something like this from happening." "I always tried not to say anything weird." "Can it be true...?" "I'm not supposed to have a body?" "That's right, Lain." "You're not needed in the real world." "I'm home." "Dad...?" "This is goodbye, Miss Lain." "You must have figured it out by now." "Our work here is finished." "It was only for a short time, but I know I didn't do enough for you." "You're now free to become anything you want." "No, you were free all along." "I wasn't given permission to say goodbye, but I loved you." "It's not that I enjoyed playing house..." "Maybe I envied a being like you." "Goodbye." "Wait!" "Don't leave me alone!" "Alone?" "You're not alone." "If you connect to the Wired, everyone will welcome you." "That's the sort of being you were." "I'm not alone." "Do you want to do anything, Lain?" "This is your world, Lain." "Who are the Knights?" "They're the ones who made the fake me, right?" "I'm not sure." "No, it's possible." "They say you can trace the origin of the Knights of the Eastern Calculus back to the Knights Templar." "They've used that invisible human network, the collective unconscious, since long before the Wired was born." "What do you want to do, Lain?" "Knights..." "Who are the Knights?" "You really want to know, don't you, Lain?" "The Wired's God is a god because He has worshippers." "Hey, Taro..." "Let's go someplace else." "This place has gotten boring." "Yeah." "Why not come over to my house?" "You don't need to come, Masayuki." "What's the big idea?" "Taro says he doesn't wanna hang out with a little kid like you." "Wha--?" "You're as much a kid as I am, Myu-Myu!" "It's okay for a girl!" "Everybody knows that younger is better for girls." "Right, Taro?" "What's that?" "What's up, Taro?" "ls there something on the Net News?" "It's a list." "Huh?" "What kind of list?" "What's a list of Knights members doing on the Net News...?" "Y-Yes?" "Please remain silent." "W-Who are you?" "Time to pay the piper, all right?" "W-What do you mean?" "Mom, I got killed!" "Mom!" "It's your turn, Mom!" "If you don't hurry up, I'm gonna keep playing!" "Okay, Mom?" "I'm gonna take 'em out!" "A series of suicides occurred today all over the world, and each country's lnformation Control Ministry and police departments have begun investigating the cause." "Each victim was involved in network-related work, and sources tell us that it appears that they were all members of a fraternal order known as the "Knights."" "Why did you do it?" "It was a request from our client." "You hunted down all the Knights in the world." "Our associates are now on their way to dispose of them." "But why...?" "The Wired can't be allowed to be a special world." "It can only be a field that functions as a sub-system reinforcing the real world." "But still..." "You can't be allowed to exist in the Wired, either." "But here you are, safe and sound." "Some god or whatever must be protecting you." "Masami Eiri's residual thought program will eventually be disinfected from the Wired." "Our client is working on a total rewrite of the Protocol Seven code." "We have no need for gods." "Right." "Not in the Wired or in the real world." "We still haven't figured out what you are." "But I love you." "Love certainly is a strange emotion, isn't it?" "What will you do?" "Well, let me think..." "You don't have anyone to pray to you now." "I can't be a god, then." "But I haven't lost all of them." "If only one believer remains, I can still be a god." "Who?" "Come, now..." "You, Lain." "It's because of me that you can stay yourself." "You were originally born in the Wired." "The legend of the Wired." "The heroine of the Wired's fairy tales." "Liar." "The real world's Lain Iwakura is merely a hologram of her." "A homunculus of artificial ribosomes." "You never had a body to begin with." "That's a lie." "A fake family." "Fake friends." "Yes, it was all a lie." "That's a lie..." "That's all a lie..." "Poor Lain..." "She's all alone." "But I'm here." "The man who loves you is here." "You should be able to love me, the man who sent you to this world..." "I am your creator." "Love me." "All right, Lain?" "The other..." "The other me, she's..." "That isn't another you." "It's the real you." "Like it matters!"