Episode 22: Defining a Witch
M-particles changed the world.
And they transformed humanity.
M-particles are particles that transmit thought.
By smoothly converting thought into electrical signals, they enabled countless devices optimised for M-particles to operate according to human thought. Bullets containing M-particles trace trajectories exactly as their users intend, while motorcycles connected through M-particles race along under precise control, moving as freely as the human body itself, guided by thought alone.
And those thoughts can be transmitted not only to machines, but to other human beings as well.
The human brain, too, operates through electrical signals.
Neuronal firing, connections, impulses, switches. These are all that make up the things humans possess: [Thought], [Personality], and [Reminiscing].
They are merely composed of organic matter.
Merely so extraordinarily complex that modern technology cannot reproduce them.
There is no other difference between human beings and machines. None at all.
Machines wear down with continued use.
The brain, too, wears down as it continues to think.
And so humans die.
[Thought], in other words, is nothing more than irreversible wear and tear.
And for magical girls, who wield M-particles, who wield [Thought] itself, as a weapon, the rate of that wear can reach roughly one hundred to three hundred times that of an ordinary person.
To reduce the strain, magical girls are ordinarily forbidden to engage in [Thought] outside combat.
It is an attempt to cool the barrel of a red-hot Gatling gun, even if only a little.
When the brain has worn down and deteriorated beyond the point of recovery, when [Thought] becomes muddled and the electrical signals grow clouded, leaving the individual profoundly deficient in the capabilities expected of a [human being], the phosphorescence of M-particles turns black.
Wear and tear changes the shape of the brain.
Grinds it down.
And transforms it into something that can no longer be called human.
A [Witch] is a degraded [Magical Girl].
Fifty years after the discovery of M-particles, these facts came to light, twenty years before the Battle of Hakodate.
It has already been confirmed that they can never return to what they were.
A broken machine does nothing but malfunction.