by Jude Fawley
“You might also think that a gun would be too loud to shoot in a building.” When he said that, he would take a shot at one of the rats, and more often than not he would hit it, causing it to explode. If he was lucky, it would explode in the direction of his guest, covering them in rat guts. The sound of the shell exploding would resonate through the cramped, white room. “And you’d mostly be right, although there are much quieter guns than this. Rifles like this weren’t designed to be quiet, they were designed to keep their owners alive.
“This building has no shortage of rats in it, that’s what I’ve found. So I bring them in here for a demonstration, for your sake. Did you know, incidentally, that if that expression, ‘for your sake’, was written on paper in English, it would be indistinguishable from ‘for your sake’, or in other words ‘for your alcoholic rice water’? I bring these rats in here for your alcoholic rice water, Mr. Guest, even though I absolutely despise sake. That’s why I brought such a large supply of American whiskey with me. Distracted again.
“Mr. Guard, could you show him the Evaporation Pen? Mr. Guest, the rifle is a crude thing, from a crude time. It maims, and hopes that maiming is sufficient. It is our good fortune that science progresses, and the aim of most sciences is complete eradication. In a building like Kenko, most of you are trying to eradicate disease, not just maim it where you can. In warfare, eradication is much more tangible. You want the entire body gone. When those clever scientists dropped those very advanced bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they completely eradicated those cities.
“What we have here, in Mr. Guard’s hand, can be thought of as the nuclear bomb of firearms. It’s deceptively small. You Japanese have yet to realize the magnitude of its advent—my guard was able to walk straight through your maglev security station with it, because they didn’t know what it was. It looks just like a pen, doesn’t it? Mr. Guard, show our guest what it does.”
The guard would change the range of the Evaporation Pen with a dial to match the approximate distance of the remaining rat, and would fire the Pen at it. A harsh red beam of light would emit from the tip, and the rat would disappear in a cloud of smoke. When the smoke cleared, nothing remained but a scorch mark on the ground.
“Impressive, isn’t it? I have no idea how it works, just that it causes a very fast chain reaction that practically in an instant degrades every component of the body into smoke. Very good, very American science. If you ask me, I’d say it’s tenfold scarier than being shot by a gun. Even if you die from a gunshot, there’s the last comforting hope that something of your body will remain, a little piece of you reserving space for itself in the universe. But this Pen takes even that small comfort away.
“All my personal guards have this Pen. I don’t carry one, because I find even these state-of-the-art things a little crude, but I will always be able to command their use in a second’s notice. Don’t disagree with me again, Mr. Guest, because I have no scruple about giving the word for someone to be Evaporated away. And your modern Japanese forensics won’t be able to make sense of where you went, since you’ll be nothing but vapor, and my American superiors stationed here in Japan won’t give a damn about you, since I’ve been authorized to do it. Am I clear?”
Even if they didn’t answer, which often happened, his conversation was over. He would have the guard take them back to the elevator, and he himself would go extinguish the fire, and do what he could about the smoke that filled his entire house by that point. After he made some calls to have his little white room cleaned up, he would sit back in his overstuffed chair and enjoy what was left of their drink he had made, which was usually untouched.
Other times he would have to leave the comforts of his home to patrol the Kenko building, and suppress any rebellions he found. In general it wasn’t difficult for him—he had a special sense for detecting the more dangerous elements of his employees, and he would either fire them outright, subtly threaten them, or invite them to his house, depending on the circumstance. His day became full of such threats, only leaving a small amount of time for him to think about the larger picture of the direction he was to take the company in.
What was most important, as directed by Karma, was that Kaishin finish their product at all costs. He had removed Mr. Okada from leadership there because although the man was extremely capable, which Mr. Perry knew from the moment he met him, he wasn’t absolutely necessary to the project, and would have proved more of a hindrance than an asset moving forward. If Mr. Okada discovered the American’s motives with Kaishin, he might have had the foresight to destroy all of their research, or some similar form of obstruction. At the same time, Mr. Perry didn’t want to seem too interested, and furthermore had other things to attend to, so was forced to install Mr. Laurel as their manager in his stead.
Late at night, in spite of himself, Mr. Perry would think about what uses Karma would have with something like Kaishin. Karma was, at heart, an information-analyzing program, and Kaishin transformed human impulses into information. Many uses suggested themselves for such a combination—the device could be used for perfect interrogations, as a substitute to more crude forms of torture; it could be used to form an elite, connected task force that would be monitored directly by Karma; perhaps to give the computer program a somewhat eerie understanding of the human consciousness, which seemed the least practical but the most profound of the possibilities. The ultimate reason didn’t concern Mr. Perry, but as a curiosity the thought sometimes crossed his mind.
In his spare time he would read all of the documented information about Kaishin, to understand its methods and its capabilities, and to be better informed about the project he was overseeing through the stewardship of Mr. Laurel. Besides the fact that the science was entirely incomprehensible to him, he was almost convinced he knew more about Kaishin than Karma, since he had Mr. Laurel bring him private files that described a lot of different aspects of Kaishin, the accumulation of years of unpublished research. He would sit in his leather chair, late at night, with perfect ambient lighting from floor lamps all over his house, and read what he could understand on his laptop. The thought occurred to him that he should share some of the documents with Karma, but for the moment he wanted to keep them to himself.
He was surprised by the loyalty of the employees to their company. He had expected it, but the magnitude was larger than he anticipated. Whenever they had objections to his policies, they would always bring the company’s viewpoint into discussion, as if they had access to such an abstract thing. He would always tell them, when they made their appeals to vague authority, “Do you think you even know what the company is anymore, after all of the changes I’ve brought? Kenko isn’t what it used to be, for better or for worse. I’ve made sure of that. So before you tell me again that this isn’t what Kenko stands for, try to think about what Kenko is now.”
In a way he felt sorry for those people—they were so confused. For a company that was in the technology sector, Kenko had a history of atypical stability. That history of stability lent credibility to the employee’s claims, claims that actions not in accordance with the ‘viewpoint’ of Kenko were probably not in its best interest, but what he had to explain to those people was that Kenko’s best interests were no longer what mattered to the people in charge, namely Mr. Perry. A harsh reality like that had to be difficult for them to accept.
A week after his arrival, there was a particular incident he had that involved one of the top executives of the company, who had attended the meeting on Mr. Perry’s first day. He had overheard the man saying indecent things about Mr. Perry’s character, which he naturally had to take offense to.
His method of overhearing was somewhat indirect. At night, when no one was in the building except the janitors, thousands of hidden audio recorders had been installed in every imaginable place, by Mr. Perry’s order. Mr. Perry then arranged that all of their recordings be forwarded to Karma for inspection, since they were far too numerous to be gone through by a human intermediary. He
submitted the simple request to Karma that should his name and some profane word appear in the same sentence, it should be documented, along with the likely identity of the profaner. Every morning, he found a new edition of the list, which he scanned for names he recognized.
On that particular occasion, Mr. Ishiba had called him a “murderous, lying bastard, who should have been drowned as a child,” a statement made in private conversation between Mr. Ishiba and one of his direct underlings in Mr. Ishiba’s office on a quiet Tuesday afternoon.
The house was reserved for people that had disagreements with Mr. Perry on a concrete issue, which couldn’t exactly be said of Mr. Ishiba. Mr. Ishiba had, as Mr. Perry liked to think of it, a belligerent attitude, one that wouldn’t be improved by exploding a rat in front of him. He decided instead to perform a specialized lesson for Mr. Ishiba.
On Thursday, in the late afternoon, Mr. Perry sent a “last minute reminder” to “all of the main executives and other pertinent employees” that a special meeting would be held first thing on Friday morning. Mr. Perry made sure to reserve the same room that was used before, when he had first arrived in the company. When the time for the meeting came, Mr. Perry was the only one in the room.
The man seemed perplexed when he saw only the foreigner, he said, “My apologies sir, I thought the meeting was scheduled for eight o'clock, but I must be wrong...” the man offered the excuse like an invitation for an explanation, since Mr. Perry’s presence seemed to indicate that perhaps something else was going on.
Mr. Perry said, “Not at all Mr. Ishiba, please take a seat.”
Mr. Ishiba grew more irritated by the moment, exposing the attitude that Mr. Perry had set out to correct. He said, “You’ve killed all of the rest of them, have you? And I’m the only one that’s left.”
Mr. Perry said, “It is very awkward, Mr. Ishiba, that you’ve hit the nail so squarely on the head. But you’ve spared me the necessity of explaining it myself, for which I thank you. I think I only killed half of them, and the others were either disappeared or run away. I admire your tenacity, to still be here when that is the case.”
Mr. Ishiba sat and waited for the punch line of the joke that he was sure was being told. He said, “But really, the others will be here shortly? Was it delayed to 8:30?”
“I promise you that this is the meeting, and we are the only ones who will be in attendance.”
“I’m tired of these charades.”
“I thought we could discuss,” Mr. Perry said, ignoring the ire of the other man, “as a matter of official business, how it is that you would prefer to die. I don’t want to make the wrong decision, so I’ve called all of the remaining brass to advise me. Unfortunately that is only you, so you’ll have to decide for yourself, the best way to get rid of you. And please be as objective as you can.”
“I am a serious man,” Mr. Ishiba said.
“If you can’t make the decision, I will make it for you, and I regret to inform you that I am a very crude man.”
Mr. Ishiba stood up. “They’re really all gone, aren’t they.” He left his briefcase under the table, where he forgot it entirely in leaving. “I need out of here. I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said as he walked out of the door, leaving Mr. Perry alone.
Mr. Perry called out after him, “Take the weekend to think it over.”
In a few minutes, or maybe after an entire weekend, he would find out that he had been deceived, and that a majority of the people who would have been at such a meeting were still alive. But Mr. Perry would let him figure that out on his own.
Ronin 6
The Erratic Life of Haru
ALL OF THE rats knew four tricks, and exactly the four they were expected to know. The rats did not know the tricks that the other group of eight knew. It seemed like perfectly good evidence of success, to Reiko.
They also had a much harder time not responding to names that belonged to any of their other partners, which Reiko found a little frustrating, and slightly disappointing, but they were just rats after all. So she tried not to expect too much out of them.
She tried a few other experiments, mostly for her own entertainment. She put a huge stack of food in one of the other rooms, now that she was starting to know her coworkers better, and she took one rat from each group to the room, making sure they had enough time to see the way to get there. She then let one rat at a time go from her room, to see if it would find its way to the food. As they were crossing the perilous hallway between the rooms, she yelled, “Don’t step on them! Experiment in progress.”
Invariably they all made it to the food, and without a single moment of deviation between the two points. Before they could eat too much, she brought them all back to her room.
She put food on a table, three and a half feet above the ground, to see what they would do. It was just outside of the range that Kiiro could jump up to, so they would have to figure something else out if they wanted to get any. Reiko waited to see what their solution would be, if anything.
Their actions amazed Reiko. Even though they couldn’t climb up the table legs, they could stand on their hind legs and hold on to it—the next rat would climb on top of the first rat, and do the same thing, until they built two separate rat pyramids. The rat pyramid that had Kuro in it didn’t reach the top of the table, because of the rat’s continued resistance to cooperation, but the other group was able to send a single rat to the top of the table, where it dropped food down to the rest in its group. The members of the unsuccessful pyramid broke up to try to catch some of the falling food, which caused a fight that Reiko had to break up by putting them all back into their cages.
Later, Reiko tried the same thing, but she brought Toru in to watch, since she wanted someone else to see it with her, and had no intention of showing Mr. Laurel. “Isn’t it the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?” she asked Toru.
“It’s pretty disgusting,” he said, as the rat’s edifice was nearing completion.
Reiko ignored him, too enthusiastic to care about his distaste. “Natural rats cooperate as well, but not to this extent. It’s like they don’t recognize the separation between their bodies—to them, they’ve just become a bigger, more complex rat. And they’re adapting perfectly.”
“Do you think it will be safe for humans, then?” he asked.
“What the hell do I know,” she said. “I just know it seems to be safe for rats. That’s all I’m here for. I’m just trying to figure out the nature and completeness of their connection, at this point. It’s hard to see into their minds.”
“They don’t really have minds, that’s probably what’s making it so hard,” Toru said.
“If they don’t have minds, then neither do you, I’m afraid. If a brain isn’t good enough.”
“You’ll be going to lunch here soon, won’t you? At the cafe? You usually go around twelve.”
“That’s what I do.”
“Then let me go with you. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“I’ll let you know when I’m leaving,” she said, glancing at the time on her cell phone.
They sat in Reiko’s corner, which she had conquered as her own in the two weeks of her employment with Kaishin. The cashiers all knew her by name, and the store manager. They even prevented people from sitting there, entirely for her sake, when it was noon.
“They all seem to like you,” Toru said, as they sat down.
“And you don’t? That’s the benefit and the price of being such a habitual person, coming to the same cafe every lunch. The people you see every day, if you say at least one word to them every time, slowly become either a friend or an enemy, one word at a time. There’s no in between. That’s what we’ll be, either friends or enemies, if we keep talking. Don’t you think so? You think you’ll always be indifferent to me, Toru? Of course in a couple months I’ll be gone and it will all disappear, so what does it matter.”
“If you hadn’t spent your first week alone in a room, maybe I’d know what yo
u meant, but at the moment I feel like those cashiers know you better than I do. Seems sort of unfair.”
“I have my priorities, I’m afraid. First I have to spend all of my energy making sure I have a secure source of food, by making the proper relationships. Physiological needs. Step two is safety. Only then can I start with step three, love and belonging, and making friends. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in case you were wondering. Some very basic psychology.” Reiko laughed at her own joke of seriousness she had been making.
“If step two is safety, you might never make it to step three,” Toru said. He looked at the people around him, to see if any of them were listening in on their conversation. “It’s impossible to feel safe back at work right now, don’t you think?”
“It’s just a little hard,” she said, nodding sternly, although her mood was too light to take even serious matters seriously. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?” she asked.
“No, not exactly,” he looked around again, paranoid. “It’s about what we were talking about, last time we were here. You thought maybe Haru would still be interested in our project. I talked to him, and he said he would help us out.”
“You know where he is?” she asked in hushed voice, leaning in over the table.
“I have a number you can call, if you want to talk to him. He moves around a lot, so maybe seeing him in person will be difficult, but he told me we could always talk to him over the phone.”
“Why is he so paranoid? Mr. Perry, as deranged as he is, said that he would gladly welcome Haru back, if we could find him. And I believe him, I think he would be safe, as long as he did the job. Can’t we just tell Haru that, and be a team again?”
