by Jude Fawley
The difficulty of her experiment was that, as common an experience as hunger was, there was no real quantitative measurement of it, unless she wanted to bleed the rats out and measure the ghrelin expression she found there. She ultimately decided that she would prefer some behavioral indication of hunger.
She inserted a divider between the two halves of the cages, keeping the rats isolated. After she had the rats adjusted to a scheduled time for eating, she began to look at the behavior they exhibited around their feeding time. They nearly universally became somewhat anxious in the minutes before a scheduled feeding, with an accuracy of time that she found outstanding. She took care to arrive at work and leave at the same times every day, to reinforce their biological clock, but it still amazed her.
She took careful note of their behavior after their meals as well. They were slightly indolent, which was entirely within her expectations.
When two days had gone by, she stopped feeding one of the two rats in each cage, selected at random. She wanted to know if, somehow, the mentally paired rats were being provided a sense of satiety from their fed partner.
It was hard for her to believe, but the results seemed to conclusively prove her hypothesis. The control rats stayed anxious long after the scheduled feeding time had passed, whereas the other rats seemed satisfied by the feeding, whether they were actually fed or not. An extreme example of which was Kuro, the obstinate rat, who perhaps had the kind of personality that could easily float along the successes and feelings of his partner Kiiro, even if they weren’t his own, like some sort of emotional leech.
Mr. Okada would come in and visit nearly every afternoon, and on the day she saw her results, he politely knocked and entered at around two. The first thing he said was, “Ready for tomorrow? I’m sure you must be as excited as the rest of us to see this move forward.”
Instead of answering, Reiko said, “I think they share something deeper than information, or at least the way I see it.”
“What do you mean?” he said, smiling and taking a seat in one of the office chairs in the middle of the room.
“Well, so for the most part, they still seem like pretty normal rats. Except, even though I tried teaching them all their own name, they all to some degree associate two names with themselves. And that makes a good deal of sense, they can’t be blamed, because they hear in all four ears, and when I call the other rat they’re mentally right there with it, being called.”
Mr. Okada nodded, saying nothing,
“But it’s deeper than that. When one eats, the other feels less hungry. It’s somewhat abstract, but I feel like hunger is further along the spectrum towards personality, like their personalities are slowly being shared. Like they’re really becoming one organism. I sort of starved one of them from each pair, and fed the other, to test all of this. And it’s as if they said, ‘I ate, and even though these organs I have still feel hungry, these other organs feel nice and full, so I should be okay.’ And then they move on. How far could that go? Could one of them starve to death, and not even know it, because satiety is being fed to it through a wire in its brain? It’s absurd.
“Or what if instead of another rat on the other end of that connection they have, it’s a computer that’s not experiencing anything, yet knows how to make data representative of the most profound rat experiences possible? Could a rat god be made from such a connection? What’s to stop it from happening, the technology?” Reiko was becoming a little overly excited, and had to catch her breath for a moment.
Mr. Okada said, while she breathed, “The possibilities are really endless, aren’t they? That’s why I’m here. Where there’s so much open territory to conquer, that’s where I want to be. Would you like to see that happen, a rat connected to a computer program? I’m sure that Haru could make it happen, if you just asked him. Maybe not a full rat god program, but he’s pretty good. And he could use the distraction, he gets pretty out of hand when he doesn’t have an interesting project. You have people here that can help you answer these questions you have, if you really want them answered.”
Mr. Okada’s visit reminded Reiko that she had hardly spoken to any of the people that she worked with, except for one short meeting that Toru had set up for her with Haru to discuss the inner workings of his program, which had confused her more than anything. She had been extremely isolated for an entire week, even though her coworkers were all just a few doors away, in such a small office suite. She went straight to her room in the morning, straight to lunch, straight back, straight home, never looking to the sides. And everyone else seemed to leave her alone in turn, except Mr. Okada. The thought worried her. Had she been at fault, for isolating herself from the others so early on? She decided to go and see what everyone else was doing, to repair the damages she might have done.
At the end of the hall, she could see that a meeting was being held in the conference room, or at least a gathering of the employees, which she hadn’t been invited to. Even though she couldn’t make out any of their features, since they were obscured by the glass, she sensed a certain tension, like they were all sitting too still. There was another person, standing, that wasn’t any of the people she knew. Whoever he was, he had strikingly blond hair, which caught her eye.
Hesitantly, she made her way down the hall. The door was slightly ajar, and she could hear the words being exchanged between her coworkers and the foreigner.
The man was saying, “...merely to oversee the nature of the project, the quality of the workers being used for it, and the amount and necessity of company resources being used for it.”
It seemed strange to her that a man other than Mr. Okada would be talking about such managerial matters, since she had always assumed that it was Mr. Okada who owned the company. Reflecting, she realized that it had never been said explicitly that Mr. Okada was in fact the owner—he just exuded the confidence of ownership, so she took it for granted. Whoever the stranger was, he seemed to be challenging the authority of Mr. Okada.
She could hear Mr. Okada’s voice responding, “I assure you, Mr. Perry, that if you watched over every single one of us for the next month, you’d find not a single superfluous motion being made. These are all highly qualified individuals, and the quality of science being performed could hardly be greater. Have you seen anything that would lead you to believe otherwise?”
Both men seemed exceptionally in control, which could not have been possible, since they were obviously at war with each other. The other man, Mr. Perry, spoke perfect Japanese, but with a definite American accent, and, whether due to his foreignness or from affectation, his word choice and the small decisions he made in expression all had a sharp edge to them.
“I never doubted the quality of the science, Mr. Okada. And I’ve looked through the merits of all your team members, and as you say they are second to none in the whole company. I’m actually more concerned about how exceptionally qualified they are, and how you ended up with all of these individuals, when they could have been of extreme use in some of the other projects of the company.”
It didn’t seem to Reiko like the kind of conversation that should have been occurring in front of the people that it concerned. Perhaps it was an American way of handling things, but she found it unsettling. Also, the implication that there were other projects similar to their own, in the same building, surprised her. She had heard nothing about them, until that moment.
Mr. Perry continued, “I recognize you from the conversation we had as a group a few days ago, Mr. Okada. You were the only one that never said a thing. Now I don’t know the exact job title this company has given you, but the responsibilities you have for it are very important, and yet you spend a large portion of your day down here, supervising your own project. And you’ve diverted all of the company’s best employees into your own pet project, which seems like a willful abuse of power, to an outsider like myself. Is that a wise use of company’s resources? What do you yourself provide to this little endeavor, this Kaishin?”
> Reiko wanted to burst through the door and hit the man in the face. She clenched her hands into fists, subconsciously. Yet, on the other side of the door, Mr. Okada didn’t sound phased in the least. He responded, “It’s not enough to just assemble the best people you can find into a group, Mr. Perry. If you assembled the best pieces of thirty different deer, a leg here and an eye there, you wouldn’t have made the best deer.”
Mr. Perry laughed. Cold and hard, but a genuine laugh. It sent chills through Reiko’s spine. Mr. Perry said, “Unfortunately a beautiful metaphor like that will not suffice as an answer to my questions. Unless I can be convinced otherwise, I am reassigning this project to someone that has less important things to do with their time, Mr. Okada.”
Reiko couldn’t help it. She had only known Mr. Okada for a week, and had only seen him for about eight hours within that week, but the foreign man’s decision seemed to be an affront to her personally, through Mr. Okada. She burst through the door, startling everyone in the room except for Mr. Perry.
“You’ve been standing out there for a while, young miss,” he said, as he shuffled through some papers in front of him. “Could I have your name, please? You’re not listed as an employee here.”
She ignored him. “Can someone please inform Mr. Perry that he is an extremely impolite human being? If it’s a language barrier that makes you so rude, I would be happy to instruct you myself on the matter. But I have a slight suspicion it’s just the way you are.” After she had said it, regret started forming inside her immediately, but she was still in a state of mind that didn’t agree with her regret, that felt essentially right in defying the man just to defy him.
“My, my,” Mr. Perry said. “If I could find you in this stack of papers, I would recommend disciplinary action for you immediately, young miss. You might not realize it, but in this place I am far your superior, and surely you know that superiors shouldn’t be spoken to in such a manner.” Mr. Perry seemed taller, when looking at him directly, than he had from outside the door. He was not entirely unhandsome, Reiko thought, but foreigners were harder to form such impressions around.
Mr. Okada stepped in. “That is Ms. Reiko Okada, my daughter. You won’t find her in any of those papers, because she is here on my account. As you so rightly noted, I’ve already diverted enough of the company’s resources in my interest, of which I’ve been shamefully aware, so I thought I would make amends somewhat by using something of my own, as a small retribution. I assure you that she as well is essential to the project, at this point. Unfortunately, though, she has inherited my horrendous temper, so you’ll have to forgive her that. On the other hand, in all technicality she is not in fact an employee here, so you are technically not her superior, which means you’ve entirely misspoken, Mr. Perry.”
“My mistake,” Mr. Perry said. “Now that you mention it, the family resemblance is very strong. The penetrating eyes, the commanding demeanor. You breed well, Mr. Okada. And while I don’t think it’s directly against company policy to recruit family members, I would at least appreciate a note to be made about it.”
“I’m afraid my reassignment will prevent me from making such a note,” Mr. Okada responded.
“Can’t be helped, I suppose,” Mr. Perry said. “I’ll tell your replacement to take care of it.”
“What’s the extent of my reassignment, then? Who will you put in my place, and what difference will it make?”
“I have someone in mind,” Mr. Perry said. “And what I think will be best is to forbid you further contact with the members of this group. I can’t prevent you from your daughter, but everyone else, I suppose. That may sound extreme, but I believe it is in the best interest of the company. I have my reasons, and ultimately the decision is mine to make.”
Mr. Okada seemed to think for a while, his physical being collapsing in on itself somewhat, as if to aid in introspection. The room was silent the entire time. He finally said, “What, Mr. Perry, is to stop my involvement in this group? You could force me to spend my entire day in an office upstairs, but at night I could call them all, at my leisure, from a private phone in my apartment. I could stay informed, I could give my input into the process. Purely in a social capacity. Are you in a position, Mr. Perry, to forbid my social interaction with these people?”
Mr. Perry adjusted his tie for a moment. He then said, “If you’re just going to be difficult about this, I suppose there’s nothing I can do. But you’ve been officially warned. If I find that your unsolicited involvement in this group is a hindrance, I can make your life a hellish landscape, I imagine. Not a threat, just an imagination.”
Mr. Perry turned towards the other people that sat around, all eight of the other members of the group. “You’re all unnaturally silent, by the sound of it. It’s just the Okada’s that do all of the talking, is it? Well here’s my final statement on the matter. Your involvement with the project is over, starting at this very moment, Mr. Okada. I’ll send someone to help gather your things. Your daughter’s necessity shall be evaluated, and a decision on that matter will be postponed to a later time, although wouldn’t it seem strange that she should persist here, as necessary as she might be, when you’re not around? If she’s not being paid to be here by the company? But we shall see.”
“Come along, Reiko,” Mr. Okada said, after standing up. “We’ll take the rest of the day off, and let them sort things out around here.”
“Okay,” she said, slightly disoriented from the harsh exchange of words and suddenly becoming someone else’s daughter. “I’ll just gather some things, and I’ll be right there.”
Mr. Okada walked her to the Nakai subway station. Every once in a while he would glance behind them, in a way that made Reiko feel uneasy. She had a lot of questions that she wanted him to answer, but he seemed very distracted. She asked him anyway.
“Why did you say I was your daughter? And I thought Kaishin was a small company, just the ten of us. Who is that man? And—”
“One at a time,” Mr. Okada said, cutting her off. “Kaishin is just a little branch, of a much larger tree. Of which I am an important member, as you may have figured out by now. The whole building is actually the company, not just our floor. And I said you were my daughter because that, back there, is a very dangerous man. I thought I could protect you better if I took ownership.
“I don’t know exactly what he intends to do, but I know he has his eyes set on Kaishin in a very peculiar way. He’s been at the company for two days, pretending to walk around and take the whole thing into account, and all of the thousands of projects going on in that building, but he’s been asking a lot of people about what I do in particular.
“Normally I wouldn’t be telling you any of this, since it all sounds so paranoid, but I really do think something is terribly wrong. Not just with Japan in general, which certainly can’t be ignored, but with what just happened back there. I don’t think you should go back to the company. I know I told him you were necessary for the project, and in many ways you are, but I said that before I knew I would be tossed aside so completely. I don’t think it’s safe for you there. But don’t worry, I’ll send you your full paycheck anyway, because that would only be fair.”
They stood at the station, where a subway that would take her home was only a few minutes from arriving. She asked, “Did you say there was something wrong, with Japan?”
He looked deeply within her eyes, as if to discern if she was telling a joke or not. When he had decided that she wasn’t joking, he said, “Have you been reading any of the papers? Or watching any of the news? Or talked to anyone at all?”
She shook her head. It occurred to her that the world could have been ending, and she wouldn’t have known. For the last week, she had thought of nothing but rats, and experiments, and expansions of consciousness. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said.
“Read a paper,” he said. “The answer will surely be there. But I don’t want to leave you on a terrible note like that, so I won’t tell y
ou myself.” He walked up to her directly, and hugged her. She was startled, but returned the hug. He said, behind her head, “You were doing a great job back there. Whatever you do in life, bring that enthusiasm with you, and it will be all you need. I promise. You were an excellent daughter.”
“Thanks,” she said, not knowing what to say. It was all happening so quickly, she couldn’t keep up. She said, “But is it really all over, just like that?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes it is. Unless things change dramatically. And I’ll be sure to call you, if they do. So plug your phone back in. But for now, goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
On the subway, Reiko attempted to read a paper that someone else was reading, from across the aisle. The title was easy, it said “Changing Times” in big, vague symbols. But to make out the small print of the article she had to lean in, and tilt her head in response to the waves that a tiny change in pressure of the stranger’s hands made on the text.
From what she could make out, Japan had been silently but thoroughly invaded by America, all within the past week. So silently that she hadn’t even noticed. The paper listed the numbers and locations of American troops, American political leaders that had been installed into the National Diet, companies that had been forcefully taken over. Without a single bit of resistance Japan had relented, and it was already over. There was already a policy in place, apparently, that would make English the official language of Japan in the next fifteen years. The reason provided by the Americans, from what she could gather, was some sort of strictly enforced globalization, which was taken as a desirable goal. “To better increase the understanding between the different cultures of the world,” it said.
Her company had been a direct victim of the takeover. It didn’t say so explicitly, in the paper, but she knew it for a fact. She didn’t even know the company’s name, since, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, no one ever said it.
