I looked at him. He hadn’t done a good job shaving that morning; it looked like he used a real razor and not a depilatory laser. Maybe his ticket said he’d be killed by a laser?
“I don’t know. I like this one. What if it changed to something worse?”
“That doesn’t really happen. They don’t change. Sometimes they get more specific—we think yours would get more specific.”
“I think I’m good with vague, thanks. Vague and poetic is okay with me.”
“Are you sure? You could retake now…” I noticed that he had a test kit, too, next to his chair.
“Nah. I’m okay.” I put my ticket in my bag, careful not to fold it. Some people framed theirs, and kept it somewhere safe, especially if it was a cool one, like “saving a child.” Mine was totally frameable.
“If you change your mind, here’s a number to call.” He beamed a number to my phone from his pen. “And we’d like your permission to keep a tracer on you, so that our department will be alerted when you die.”
Wow—I was important enough to have a tracer? That was also cool. I couldn’t decide if I’d tell anyone about the ticket, but I could definitely tell people I had a tracer.
“Sure, okay.” He pushed another form to me.
“We have to let you think about this one for twenty-four hours, and your parents have to sign it, too. I have to disclose to you that tracer information is subpoenable, which means that if you are accused of a crime the data from the tracer can be used by the prosecution and the defense. It cannot be requested for civil matters in this state, but it can in New York, California, New Mexico, and Mississippi. You can drop off the form in homeroom tomorrow, or you can ping us if you sign it earlier and someone will come by to get it from you and your parents.”
He stood up, so I got up, too. He shook my hand. “I think you are a remarkable young woman,” he said, like he didn’t say that to everyone. “Please use this knowledge to focus and direct your life, and to live while you can.” Then he recited the machine motto, Dum vivimus vivamus. Although nobody really knows Latin anymore, everyone knows that bit. It means “while we live, let us live.”
On my way home, Kells texted me. “OLD AGE OMG YAY!!!” was her whole text, so I just sent back a smiley and an “IM OK” and another smiley. Mine really wasn’t something you could text. I was glad for her, though. I bet she was going to be the great-grandma-in-the-room-full-of-flowers kind of old age dying.
My folks were home, and I think they had been crying. It’s hard to think of people you love dying. Like they thought if they didn’t know, I’d live forever or something. My dad gave me a big hug and kind of sniffled, before I even showed him the ticket, which was weird.
I didn’t really know what to say about the ticket, so I just pulled it out and showed it to them. “The guy said it was from a poem.” My folks looked a little shocked, but then my mom just googled up the poem on the living room screen. We just stood there and read it, and clicked through to read about the poet. It was by somebody named Stevie Smith, who I first thought was a guy but who turned out to be a woman. The poem was kind of famous, but pretty old, older than my parents. Stevie died of a brain tumor, which was as close as you could get back then to knowing for sure how you were going to die. Not a lot of people survived brain tumors. I kind of liked that she died that way. Not that she died, of course, but that she probably knew.
My grandpa, for all he talks about how he hates the machine, came in while we were clicking around. My dad hates that he just walks in, but my grandpa always forgets to use the bell, or even to set his phone to ping us when he’s close, and of course the house is set to let him in. My dad didn’t notice him until he was right there, close, and then he said “Jesus, Pops!” in a kind of shaky voice.
Grandpa didn’t even ask, he just looked at my ticket. “Ho ho!” he said. (He’s the only person outside of the vids who ever says “ho ho!” in that old-timey way, instead of in the “ho ho ho” Santa way.) “Now that’s a poetic death. I could almost warm up to a machine that spits that out.”
Anyway, that’s when my mom and dad and grandpa started arguing about whether it was good or awful, and my dad started in again telling my grandpa he should get tested, so I kind of sneaked away and went up to my room. I didn’t know myself, but I kind of liked the not-knowing. The fact that it was a line of a poem: cool. The fact that I could get a tracer: cool. Drowning: not so bad. I’d heard it was peaceful, and I really hate swimming anyway (it messes up my hair) so that was good to have an excuse not to swim.
I pulled up the poem again and made it the background on my screen. I think I’ll leave it there for a little while.
Story by Erin McKean
Illustration by Carly Monardo
IMPROPERLY PREPARED BLOWFISH
ISHIKAWA TSUENO AND HIS JUNIOR, KIMU MAKOTO, SAT HUNCHED IN THEIR CHAIRS, PANTING IN THE HUMID, DARK RECEPTION OFFICE. Kimu removed his suit jacket and plaintively massage-punched himself in the arms, while Tsueno just cracked his neck and upper back with a slight tilt of his head, sat back, and breathed deeply. The air in the little upstairs room was faintly curdled by the persistent scents of ancient sweat and menthol cigarettes. The ceiling fan did nothing to banish those odors, nor to dissipate the heat in the room that had built up all day.
Relaxing, Tsueno slipped off his shoes, and looked down at them. He noticed a wide smear of gooey blood on the left one. Shaking his head, he tugged a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wiped it off. As he was leaning forward, he noticed that there were bits of brain and clotted blood spattered on his pant leg, too. He cussed to himself: stupid bastards. Why couldn’t they have just handed the damned machine over? It would have saved him a trip to the dry cleaners.
As he finished wiping his shoe and picking bits off his pant leg, and crumpled the handkerchief in one hand, Ito’s woman Yukie entered the room through the back door. Yukie was not Ito’s wife, but his 22-year-old lover. She was young enough to be his daughter, and looked sexy as ever: miniskirt, skintight black t-shirt, big amber-tinted sunglasses, all kinds of jewelry, heavy makeup. She was carrying a tray of some kind, though it was too dark to see what was on it from across the room. She shut the door behind her with a high-heeled foot, closing off the inner sanctum of the mens’ boss, “Father” Ito.
Yukie walked right up to the machine, bent forward a little, and gave it a close look.
“Heavy,” she mumbled.
Tsueno nodded, shoving the bloodied handkerchief into his pocket. Kimu nodded, too, and smiled toothily at her. It was indeed a heavy machine, about the size of a small photocopier but apparently densely solid inside. Carrying it up three flights of stairs at a leisurely pace would have been bad enough, but hurrying the thing up to Ito’s office had just about killed Tsueno. Once again, he regretted that the smaller models Kimu had found online had not been released in Japan before the machines had been banned. Yukie smiled as she looked at them, still trying to catch their breaths, and then turned back to the machine. She started sounding out some of the English labels on the buttons.
Tsueno turned and saw Kimu staring at Yukie’s backside, and sighed. Damn undisciplined Zainichi. Yes, he thought to himself as his eyes brushed her long bare legs, her body was perfect—not that his own wife’s was anything to sneeze at—but you don’t stare at your Oyabun’s woman like that. He’d worked with Korean-blooded Japanese before, and had been reluctant to take Kimu on because of his experience with crap like this. Tsueno wondered just how foolish Kimu was. The guy was young, and fit. There were thousands of girls in Fukuoka alone who’d sleep with him, many of them almost as sexy as Yukie. Was the chip on his shoulder that big? Tsueno wondered whether Kimu’s father hadn’t perhaps been killed for the same exact behaviour, leaving his son orphaned over a momentary leer.
“Here,” Yukie said, turning and setting her tray out on the table. On it were some paper cups and a few glistening bottles of iced green tea.
“Arigato gozaimasu,” Tsueno said
, conspicuously polite without even thinking about it. Yukie was the boss’s woman. The last man who’d spoken to her too familiarly had, rather famously, been chopped up and fed to one of Ito’s pet crocodiles. Tsueno reached for one of the bottles. It was ice-cold, and the droplets of condensation on the plastic felt wonderful in his hand, against his forehead as he raised it to his skin to cool himself. He felt like shoving the bottle down his shirt-front. Why the hell hadn’t Ito ever installed an air conditioner in the reception room?
Yukie just smiled, and sat down to wait. She turned her head, and looked at the machine some more.
She doesn’t usually serve drinks, Tsueno observed. She must’ve been sent to fill time. Was their Oyabun—their boss—stalling? But why? Ito had always had a predilection for old things: An old sword hung on the wall behind his desk, and he was always reading old novels. Perhaps he was even old-fashioned enough to be terrified of tempting fate, by actually using the Machine of Death? Some kind of Kawabata-type dramatic crap? Tsueno had read a book by that guy. He much preferred manga. Especially vampire manga.
After a few long minutes, Yukie said, almost sang, “It’s very big.” Her voice was high-pitched, melodious. Tsueno quipped silently to himself about how her conviction was very well-practiced on this familiar line.
“Yeah. It’s an older model, ya know,” Kimu said, and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He was slouching noticeably, where Tsueno had sat up a little.
Tsueno wrinkled his nose, scratched it with the tip of a finger, looked at Kimu and Yukie.
“Do the older ones work as well?” she asked, mellifluous.
“Sure, they’re all the same inside. Like men,” Kimu blurted, with a smirk. “The newer machines are lighter, but there still aren’t many of them around. They’ve been banned.” Kimu flicked his lighter, and lit the cigarette. After a few puffs, he sighed in obvious satisfaction.
She nodded again. Tsueno watched the two of them talking. He felt hungry. He slid his chair toward the wall, away from the other two. He wished softly to himself that she would go back into their Oyabun’s office.
“Does it plug in?” Yukie inquired, suddenly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kimu said, and winked.
“Where’s the cable?”
Tsueno sat up, alarmed, and looked at the box on the table. He cussed mildly at Kimu. “Hey, where is the cable?”
“Probably in the trunk,” Kimu said with a shrug.
“Go get it,” Tsueno said, suddenly speaking with all the authority of a proper senpai, an elder whose orders were to be respected without question. “Now.”
A defeated look crossed Kimu’s face, but he nodded and rose to his feet. A bottle of iced green tea in one hand, he left the room. That, at least, Kimu seemed to understand: senpai orders, and kohai obeys. The relationship between junior and senior was something even a depraved, orphaned Zainichi like Kimu understood to the bone.
Tsueno looked at the machine some more.
“It’s a lucky thing I asked,” Yukie said, after a few moments.
“Yes, miss.” Tsueno took a swig of the iced tea, and then held the bottle to his face. The chill moisture on the surface of the bottle moistened his skin, cooled him a little.
“Very hot today,” Yukie said stiffly.
Tsueno didn’t respond except to nod. She didn’t really expect him to. They just sat there in silence awhile, and then Yukie turned and picked up the remote control for the TV on the far counter. She turned the TV on, and laughter filled the room.
It was a sitcom about a salaryman and an alien and a licensed chef and a talking dog. The dog was a real one, a German shepherd with its voice dubbed on; it spoke Japanese with a funny accent that was supposed to be canine but sounded more Chinese than anything. It was fed caramel toffee or chewing gum or something to make it move its mouth like it was talking.
Tsueno had seen the show before and wasn’t really interested, but he found himself watching just the same, counting the passage of time by the explosions of laughter that emerged from the tinny speaker on the front of the old TV. The alien was trying to buy the dog a business suit so it could get a job like the salaryman’s. The dog was complaining that it didn’t want to have to go to an office and work like stupid humans have to do.
Kimu came back, cautiously, the cable coiled in his hand, and shut the door behind himself. A slow snaking trail of smoke rose from the cigarette that was still hanging from his mouth.
“Has he come yet?” he asked.
“No,” Tsueno mumbled, and sipped his iced green tea. “Hurry up and plug it in.”
Kimu hurried around the table, and jammed one end of the cable into the back of the machine. Then he bent down, his cheap black pinstriped slacks wrinkling around the bend in his knees, and he plugged the other end into the wall.
“It’s got an adapter,” he said. “Foreign plug.”
“Mmm. Black market.” Tsueno watched him carefully, and Yukie muted the volume on the TV, suddenly banishing all laughter from the room. The sudden silence drew Tsueno’s attention back to the screen. The dog was wearing a business suit now, and speech bubbles showed it moping and whining about its ill luck in actually getting a job at its first interview ever. The poor animal was being hired straight into middle management, because it couldn’t read or write or do math.
That last bit made Tsueno grin.
Kimu pushed a button on the main display, and lights started flickering on the side of the machine as it came to life. A strange whirring sound filled the room, and then a slow, rhythmic clicking.
“Did you drop that thing on the way up?” Yukie asked, a little leery.
“No,” Kimu said, conspicuously not calling her ma’am. “I think this is just how it boots itself up. We’ll see in a bit.”
Tsueno cleared his throat. “Kimu. Maybe we should test it?”
“Do you think so?” Kimu asked. “Elder brother,” he added a moment later, a gesture of respect.
“I don’t see why not,” Yukie said. “I won’t tell him if you won’t,” she smiled. Tsueno could see how a man could get into serious trouble with this woman.
“What if he walks in, right now?”
“He won’t,” she said, and made a pained face, and pointed at her groin. “Pissing,” she whispered. “It’s his prostate…”
Kimu turned to Tsueno and chuckled out loud. Tsueno’s only response was to frown at him and say to Yukie, “I don’t think you ought to tell us that, miss. He’s our Oyabun.”
“It’s okay,” she smiled, and her eyes went to Kimu. “Why don’t you try it out?”
Tsueno followed her gaze to Kimu and gave him one of those don’t do it looks, but the younger yakuza took the bait. Boldness and intelligence rarely roost together, Tsueno reflected.
“Okay,” Kimu said loudly, and stuck his finger into a hole in the side of the machine. With his free hand, he searched around the buttons slowly, until he found the one he was looking for. He pronounced the word aloud, a foreign word that Tsueno had never heard before, and then he pushed the button and held it down.
A sudden hiss and a mechanical clanking sound emerged from the machine. Kimu cursed, and his cigarette fell to the floor as he yanked his finger out of the machine’s blood sampler.
“Are you okay?” Yukie asked immediately, moving toward him. Tsueno remained seated, looking annoyed.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay, Yukie,” he said, and cursed again. He held up his finger. It was bleeding, more of a small cut than a puncture. “I don’t think it’s supposed to cut me like that.”
Tsueno looked on as Yukie examined the finger, and then stuck it into her mouth. She sucked the blood right off it. Tsueno inhaled sharply, and by reflex glanced over to the door to Ito’s inner sanctum. He could almost swear he saw a shadow move across the glass, just for a moment, and his stomach fluttered.
“What does the paper say?” he asked, hoping to break up the scene.
“Paper?” Kimu asked, his eyes
still locked with Yukie’s, and then his attention returned to the machine. “Oh. Yes, yes, the paper. It should come out of this slot.”
But nothing did. The machine whined a little, as if some internal feed were broken. It whirred, and whirred, and whirred. A green light was blinking as it whirred.
Kimu bent down to read the label under the button. “I can’t read it,” he said.
Yukie leaned toward the machine, and sounded out the label for the light. “Processing.” She clapped. So she can speak English, Tsueno thought. Maybe she is a college girl, after all. “It works! Now, you, Tsueno. You should try.”
“I don’t think...”
“Try it,” she said, her voice suddenly low.
“But…”
“Ito told me to tell you to try it.”
Shit. Tsueno’s heart sank, and he wondered what the hell Ito was planning.
Tsueno nodded, and went over to the machine. He stuck his finger into the same hole that Kimu had, and Yukie pushed down on the same button. A nasty little flash of pain stabbed at his finger—worse than a nurse drawing a sample of blood—and he yanked his hand back, squeezing his thumb against the pricked spot.
The machine began whirring louder, and the blinking light kept going, but only for a minute or so. Then the whirring stopped completely, and a humming sound started up. The hum was followed by a kind of mechanical cough, and then silence. Then a red light began blinking.
Yukie leaned toward the display, and sounded out the button. “Paper jam,” she translated it aloud immediately. “The paper is stuck inside.”
“Shit,” Tsueno said. “We broke it.”
“No, no,” Kimu said. “I used to work in an office, when I was a teenager. Machines do this all the time. I just need to clear the jam, and…”
Ito’s door swung open into the room, just then, and he entered. He was an imposing man, though physically small. He was shorter than Kimu, and only a little taller than Tsueno. But he was solid, thick and bull-faced. A scar ran across his face, from one eyebrow down his nose to the corner of his mouth.
Machine of Death Page 16
