by Kōji Suzuki
Even if the roads were clear, it would still take his family two hours to get here from his house in Kunitachi. When they arrived, he would go back down and meet them. All he could do now was pray that the wormhole didn’t open before then. He just finished another couple of calls to close friends when Isogai stopped him.
“That’s enough already.” His voice bubbled with frustration. All this time Isogai and Chris had been silent, listening to the others making calls to relatives and loved ones. Hashiba realized that the two of them only had each other.
“Okay. Just one more.”
Hashiba felt a duty to call Kitazawa and tell him the whole story since he’d been instrumental in helping them come this far. It had been thanks to him that they had been able to put together the important pieces of the puzzle and link the disappearances to tectonic activity in the first place.
Kitazawa listened quietly as Hashiba explained what was going to happen in the next few hours. Then he asked, “Is Saeko there?”
“She’s in Takato, at the Fujimura residence.”
“Takato …”
“Theoretically, a wormhole should appear there too.”
Kitazawa let out a sigh of relief. “Good. But she’s going to have to find her own way again, isn’t she?”
Hashiba urged Kitazawa to come and join them in Atami, but Kitazawa just laughed him off. He didn’t seem to care whether he survived or not.
“Don’t worry about me. It’s not for me, all that effort just to find a new place. I’m ready to move on. Time to be reunited with my parents and all that. It’s better that way, just going to let be whatever happens.”
“We’re indebted to you,” Hashiba entreated. “We’re all waiting here. If you jump in a taxi and use the highways …”
Kitazawa seemed to brighten a little. “Thanks, I’ll take your advice. My son, Toshiya, will be heading your way. Could you look after him when he gets there?”
“Of course, but you should come together.”
“Ha ha. No, really, I’m okay—trust me.”
“Get off your phones already!” Isogai shouted.
Jolted, Hashiba put a hand around the phone’s mouthpiece. “Just make sure you get here, okay?” he insisted, ending the call.
“What the hell’s gotten into you? Have you all gone mad?”
Hashiba had a hunch as to why the four of them making so many calls vexed Isogai. He hurried forward to catch up with the scientist to find out for sure.
“How many people can get through the wormhole?” Hashiba asked, suddenly worried.
“That depends on how long the wormhole remains open. I don’t know—that’s the answer. It could be a few minutes. It could be just a few seconds. It’s impossible to know. But it won’t be open for long. It could be just an instant.”
“Ninety-one people went missing here, we know that.”
“Only God knows whether the next wormhole can carry the same amount.”
So that was the reason for Isogai’s anger. There was simply no way to gauge how long the wormhole would be open. The more people here, the more likely a mad rush. Out of fear that their last moments on earth could end in blind panic, Isogai wanted everyone to stop calling. It made sense, at least until they had a better idea of how long the wormhole would stay open.
“That’s why I told you to just call your family!” he screamed.
Kagayama, Kato, and Hosokawa lowered their voices and made, one by one, to finish their calls.
Hashiba was unsure how to handle the dilemma. They held the info needed to survive this. Was it unfair of them to use that advantage to save only the people they loved? No, there was no such thing as fairness in this situation, no correct answer. Surrendering such a decision to the authorities would not alter that. Maybe if it were up to divine will the most deserving would be chosen, but humans couldn’t be so objective, all they could do was surrender to emotion. It was inevitable that they would choose their loved ones over everyone else.
The six men came to the hub where the garden’s paths converged. They’d come up the hill at such a pace everyone was close to gasping, and everyone paused to catch their breath. It made sense that this was the spot where everyone had gone missing, and the crater was almost directly above. If the wormhole was going to appear in either of the two places, they should wait somewhere in between to maximize their chances of getting to it.
Each of them found somewhere to wait. Hashiba sat on a bench next to Isogai and Chris, who were holding hands and staring out at the gradual shifts in texture of the darkening night sky. They had a gentle wistfulness on their features. There was something noble in the way they looked now that Hashiba hadn’t seen before. He didn’t want to interrupt their moment together, but there were still so many enigmas.
“Er, sorry, do you mind if I ask a question?” he began.
“About God?” Isogai responded with a question of his own without missing a beat.
For a moment, Hashiba forgot what he had wanted to ask, then remembered. Isogai was right, the question would have eventually led to that topic. “All of us here, will we all go to the same world?”
“I believe so. All of us here should go to the same place. I don’t think that a single wormhole would send us off in different directions.”
“And that world would be somewhere in the past?”
“That’s right.”
“What makes you believe that, would you mind telling me? What makes you sure that the wormhole won’t send us to the future or a completely different world?”
“The progress of civilization hasn’t always taken a straight road. There have been spurts of development and periods of regression. It’s been an uneven, hesitant progression. It just doesn’t look like human civilization developed in an orderly, step-by-step way. Every now and then we see the emergence of a particularly advanced civilization. But instead of continuing to progress, as you’d expect with the march of time, they start to backslide and their sites are abandoned. It’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.
“Take Stonehenge, which was built around five thousand years ago based on accurate observations of the stars that shouldn’t have been possible at the time. Or the Ancient Sumerians, their knowledge of medicine and mathematics way beyond their time, who described their gods as ‘people who descended from the heavens.’ There are maps that show the landmass of Antarctica long before it was discovered. Some Mayan reliefs contain depictions of what appear to be spaceships. There are so many examples like this, so many advanced civilizations that have just withered and died, and all without any discernible reason. So many legends from Africa and South America that describe peoples arriving from overseas, teaching law and order, moving on when their work was complete. Isn’t it beginning to look like we’re not the first people to be facing this eventuality? That it has, in fact, happened many times before?”
Messengers from the future were sent by wormholes into our own historical past, too … They tried to seed their advanced knowledge but were unable to train successors and saw decline …
Hashiba remembered reading a bestseller that said much the same. One theory was that the purveyors of knowledge were survivors from Atlantis or Mu, nations lost to the bottom of the sea after some cataclysm, and another was that an alien race had arrived in spaceships.
“That’s exactly why we need to be ready for this.”
“Like gods …”
“Exactly. That’s what we will be to the people of the world we’re heading to.”
“But how can we possibly prepare for that?”
“Our knowledge of the world will be far superior to theirs. All we can do is try to use that knowledge to bring happiness to as many people as possible. We have to be careful. If our scientific knowledge is shared with the wrong people, it would give them the power to rule their world. Knowledge equals power. It’s down to us whether we become gods or devils. And you can be sure that temptation will come.”
Such a question had never seem
ed relevant to Hashiba until this point. He had never considered himself as a bad person, though he had often sensed a potential within himself to stray that way. To be a god or a devil—everything they did would define their very essence. In a new world it was inevitable that one force would claim victory, a person’s true nature taking over. If they were not vigilant at all times, a single slip could end up staining the course of history.
“One last question. The wormhole at the Fujimura residence … Will that lead to a different past?” He felt he already knew the answer, but had to ask nonetheless.
“Same world would be unlikely. You know, if you define life as a collection of information, there’s a chance that crossing a wormhole could simply cause a system reset.”
“A system reset?”
“In other words, there’s even a chance that we could be reborn as different people.”
Isogai’s words washed over him. He would never be able to see Saeko again. They would never have the chance to work together, to travel together. They would never again be able to relate stories to each other. Even if they both survived, they would be in different worlds. They would, in all respects, be dead to each other. A few silent tears ran down his cheeks.
After an hour or so of waiting, people began to filter in to the park. The flow began to accelerate as groups of people started to come up the paths. Each time a new one appeared, the number of people that no one knew seemed to increase. Kagayama, Kato, and Hosokawa had already stopped rushing to greet the new arrivals and looked bewildered. After two hours, Hashiba’s wife arrived with his son, Yusuke. The new arrivals continued, and at this rate they would have over a hundred people. Isogai was becoming increasingly frustrated and voiced accusations freely.
Hashiba felt unable to account for what was happening and sat cradling his head in his hands. He had clearly told Kagayama and the rest only to call their immediate family, and now even they didn’t know half of the people that had turned up. Maybe he hadn’t been clear enough and should have given instructions for the families not to call anyone else. It was increasingly evident that the people they had called had called others and that the circle had spiraled outwards. The question was whether or not the flow of new arrivals would reach an endpoint. All Hashiba could do now was to ask the people already there not to call anyone else, then just sit back and hope.
The more people arrived, the more Hashiba felt a dilution of his sense of responsibility towards the past. During his conversation with Isogai, he realized that they would have to prepare themselves to shoulder god-like responsibilities. Now it felt like the simple purity of that purpose was being soiled. He stood helpless, looking around at the faces of those gathered. Then it struck him:
These people don’t actually believe that the world is going to end.
Their features held none of the despair, the pathos, the fear that he would have expected to see. Most of the crowd looked, in fact, like they were just out to have some fun, tourists at some spectacle, relaxed and carefree. There had been so many false calls of the end of the world throughout the course of history, and it had been no different at the end of the twentieth century. Of course the doomsday talk had all been unfounded, and everything had just continued as normal. These people had heard the same stories many times, and each time nothing had happened. For them this was just a party, “prophecy tourism.” That was what the atmosphere in the park was changing into, a big mock end-of-the-world party. Hashiba couldn’t stand the flippancy.
Isogai exploded again. “Shut the hell up! Can’t someone do something about this racket?!” He kicked at the ground in frustration and turned to look away. He was trembling, but it looked to Hashiba that it was out of fear, not anger.
“What is it, Isogai?” Hashiba asked.
Isogai answered without turning around. “I just have this really bad feeling. That all this is just tempting fate. We’re going to be punished. A terrible punishment …”
He looked helpless, passive. Suddenly he called to Chris, walking over to where he sat, taking his hand in his own. His fear was not of the phase transition itself, but of something else. He didn’t seem willing to share his thoughts.
“Are you worried that there are too many people to get through the wormhole? That something terrible is going to happen because of that?”
Isogai just shook his head, noncommittal. “I don’t know …”
“If you don’t know, why are you trembling like that?”
“Something we can’t predict is going to happen. Do you think that this … ruckus will lead to any good?”
Hashiba had to admit that he had a point. Most of these people were here to have fun—it was clear on their faces. They were not ready to play a role as gods in a new world. They looked more like members of a cult following some nonsensical creed.
He saw Isogai’s attention turn to a mixed group of people sitting on a bed of white rosemary plants. They were drinking beer and eating convenience-store sushi. Isogai’s face went blank, his emotion indiscernible. Then he ran over to where the group sat and kicked up their food.
“Stop it.” Hashiba ran over and grabbed his arms, locking them behind his back, just managing to keep the situation from turning violent. He slapped his hand against Isogai’s back to calm him down. He was breathing heavily. “You’ve got to control yourself. Acting like this will only make things worse.”
“Shut up! It’s over for us, this is the end …”
Hashiba called Chris over to help calm him down. After a while, the flow of people seemed to slow; the acceleration was well over its peak, and gradually the crowd grew quieter. A more serious mood seemed to have descended over the area. As the trickle of people came to a stop, Hashiba thought of the stars disappearing one by one in the night sky. By this time, Isogai seemed to have regained his sense of calm.
“So that’s the last of them, then.”
“Seems that way.”
The two surveyed the scene around them.
“How many people do you think there are?”
“Well …” Hashiba made a quick estimate in his head—probably about two hundred people.
“Have you noticed that it’s mostly women?”
It was true, there were clearly many more women than men gathered. He called Kato and Hosokawa and asked them to try and count the number of people; it would be important to know exactly how many of them there were. He wanted a name list if they had the time.
As Kato and Hosokawa were finishing up the headcount, Hashiba saw a single, overweight-looking man making his way up the hill. Even from a distance Hashiba recognized him as Kitazawa’s son, Toshiya. They had met before at Kitazawa’s office.
“Hashiba!” Toshiya called out, out of breath from the effort of climbing the hill. He crouched on the ground looking exhausted, and explained that he had heard everything from his father.
“You’re the last then, the 173rd,” Kato told him from where he sat. He stretched, tired from the effort of counting.
“The 173rd …”
“The number of people here.”
“One hundred seventy-three people, including me?”
Hashiba saw something cloud his features. He couldn’t be sure what it was. “Something wrong with that?”
Toshiya was still gasping for breath, and now his eyes darted this way and that. He was acting as though he had seen some sort of significance in the number, but he remained hesitant. Toshiya began to shake his head as though to say that whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him.
7Saeko remembered how Seiji had looked her up and down, openly staring at her chest and her legs that first time they had met here. She had felt defenseless and disgusted as he had sized her up with those eyes; she had regretted wearing a skirt.
“Do you mind if I sit?”
She pulled out a chair from under the table and sat without waiting for his reply. The real reason she wanted to sit was that she felt completely drained both emotionally and physically. She positioned he
rself on the end of the chair and tried to think about how the situation was likely to unfold. If a wormhole appeared in the room here, they would both be transported to the same place. According to what Hashiba had said, that was likely to be sometime in the past. She couldn’t bear to think about living in a world without anyone she cared for, where the only person she knew was Seiji … The hairs on her arms prickled at the idea. It would be worse than being cast into a stinking pit full of squirming insects.
She forced herself to think clearly. Seiji had no right to follow her into this other world. Was there a way to get through the wormhole without him? She was conscious of time passing but forced herself to slow down; she wouldn’t be able to think properly if she gave herself to panic. She had to examine all the available information and find the thread that would lead her out of this safely.
Somewhere, there was a link between her father’s disappearance in 1994 and that of the Fujimura family. There was some causal relationship. What was it? Then Saeko realized: there had always been someone in the background pulling strings. That someone was Seiji Fujimura.
The carving of the bird-like creature leering out from behind Viracocha had caught her father’s attention back at the Tiwanaku site in Bolivia. Haruko had seen it and pointed out its resemblance to Seiji. She must have said something else. Her father wouldn’t have come all the way to Takato because of a chance resemblance, no matter how much the image looked like Seiji. No, there had to have been something else. Greek and Roman carvings were known to be realistic, but ancient carvings tended towards the abstract. Her father had discovered something else that compelled him to cancel his trip to Takamatsu and head directly for Takato on coming back to Japan. What could have had that effect on him?
