Less Than Human

by Maxine McArthur

  “Perhaps you will volunteer your head?” said Gen politely.

  Ishihara laughed loudly.

  Eleanor pushed past him back into the main room. She must do something to find Mari.

  “Can we go?” she said.

  “Wait a minute.” Ishihara turned to Gen. “Do you think the Angels could be dangerous?”

  Gen grimaced noncommittally. “I don’t know. There are only a few of them, but they have significant technical know-how. And I don’t think Adam is stable. He could suddenly decide society is out to get him and strike first.”

  “Like Soum in the nineties,” said Ishihara. “Do they have a commune?”

  Gen shook his head. “I don’t think so. They communicate electronically.” He caught Eleanor’s eye to include her in his audience. “There are no shortcuts to enlightenment. You must live, create karma, die, and repeat this until you become Buddha. All souls will eventually achieve this. Anyone like Adam who wishes to be immortal is to be pitied, for immortality does not mean escape from the Wheel. Remember the Enlightened One’s dying words—‘All that has form, dies.’”

  There was a moment of silence, the only sound the susurration of her own breath and the thud of her own pulse.

  “All right, let’s go,” said Ishihara. “Thanks, Gen. Don’t come out.”

  “I won’t.” Gen smiled at Eleanor, an expression both innocent and lecherous. “I get a sunburned head.”

  Eleanor and Ishihara walked back past the other flats to his car. The sunlight sizzled on Eleanor’s skin. She could almost feel the freckles popping out.

  “I dunno if that helped.” Ishihara glanced at her as they got into the car. “Don’t believe everything the old fellow says. He gets a bit mystical sometimes.”

  Eleanor was touched by his concern. Gen hadn’t given her any idea how to find Mari, but at least she knew what kind of nuts the girl was involved with.

  “I’m an engineer,” she said. “Mystical isn’t my thing.”

  He grunted in amusement. “I’ll drop you back at the subway.” He pressed the key into the start button. “You’ll be wanting to get back to work, eh?”

  “I suppose so.” She stared out the window at the greasy gray concrete.

  Neither of them said anything more until Ishihara dropped her at the station.

  She didn’t go to work. After Ishihara’s car disappeared around the corner, she walked away from the subway entry. Along the narrow footpath she dodged people running for trains, bicycles leaning against poles and shop fronts, women pushing prams, automatic vending machines and the occasional robot hawker, chained firmly to its shop to discourage casual thieves.

  Her feet seemed to know where to go. She’d been here before, must have been a long time ago, probably when she was a student. The buildings around the station didn’t seem familiar, but the small park in front of the station was distinctive. So, too, were the roads leading off from the park like spokes from a hub. She remembered the bus stop, tucked under a large tree—rare in Osaka—by the side of the tracks.

  She should get back to Tomita, but she was overcome by a desire to see if the whole memory remained. After her accident so many memories were left as fragments that sometimes she tried to forget the lot. She didn’t like to think about the memories that were lost completely, the ones she’d never know because she didn’t realize they were gone.

  If she’d been here as a student, she would have waited for the bus or walked. She’d never had enough money in those undergraduate years. Her father was dead by then, and her mother had expected Eleanor, when she thought about her at all, to work like her sister. None of them approved of her going back to Japan, and they couldn’t afford to support her.

  She worked, teaching English, waitressing, whatever. Not bad money, given gaijin wages, but she hated every minute of it. Thank god she had enough money now, enough to live in security.

  She stopped and stared into a bookshop window. Seikai—Are We Building Big Enough? asked the latest best seller.

  She and Masao couldn’t afford the loss of her present job, whatever he thought about her working too hard. His teaching gave them enough to live on, but not enough to pay off the huge debt of Betta residency. If they sold their Betta apartment, they’d have to start from nothing again.

  Did Masao really think she’d be happy running a small business—no infrastructure, no economies of scale, no knowledge base …? She supposed it might be fun to find a new product that could bring Kazu and Grandpa out of debt …

  She kept walking, past a hairdresser with pinkish faded posters of forgotten pop stars in the window. Past a display featuring a huge vase of ikebana centered on lilies, NAKANO & SONS, FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS. PLEASE DO US THE HONOR OF INQUIRING WITHIN.

  Gen’s words echoed, unwanted, in her mind “All the future holds is death.”

  She kept thinking of Nakarnura’s smashed head. She wished she’d looked at it properly, because now her imagination kept trying to supply details. Nakamura had been such a thoroughly unlikable person. Yet now he wasn’t anything. Like her father, one minute sobbing in lachrymose resentment at her mother and life in general, the next curled up and motionless on the old sofa in the garage, flies drowned in his half-empty glass.

  Death was so very definite. A person was here, then not here. As though a switch had been turned off. Like a robot, but final.

  If the Silver Angels thought they could use technology to cheat death, they were mistaken. They would merely exchange one kind of off switch for another.

  Just forget it. She strode on, angry now at herself for not going straight back to work, at Ishihara for taking her to see Gen, at Mari, at Tomita … It was hot work, striding. Sweat soaked her blouse, and the skin of her nose and cheeks burned.

  She turned a corner about three blocks along one of the main “spoke” streets. There was a post office on the ground floor of the corner building, perhaps that had given her subconscious the sign. Halfway along the next block she remembered, with a feeling of release. Another memory that could be salvaged from the accident.

  This was the way to the Manga Museum. She’d come here in her first year of university with some friends. They all wanted to recapture the magic of comics remembered from childhood. Or maybe they simply wanted to escape from the unfamiliar pressures of university. In any case, the trip wasn’t a success. Eleanor’s memory supplied dark rooms and colorless exhibits, overlaid with a musty smell of disappointment.

  The sign over the gates looked more than twenty-one years old. It was almost covered by tall camellias on both sides. Eleanor turned in the gate with a sigh of relief at their heavy shade. The rest of the small front yard was shaded, too, by pine trees that spread branches right over the two-story wooden house. And by the tall buildings on either side.

  That was one reason she’d been disappointed, she remembered. Because the old-fashioned reality of this house and the colorful, dramatic, high-tech world of the comics seemed so far apart.

  It didn’t bother her now—she was grateful for the shade. She wasn’t interested in seeing inside, either. Her subconscious had taken advantage of her while she was preoccupied with Nakamura’s death and the problem of Mari, that was all. She’d sit on the bench next to the main doorway for a few minutes until she cooled down.

  As soon as she sat down, the door opened and a wrinkled sallow face like a dry tangerine peered out, accompanied by short phut-phut sounds.

  “Are you wanting a ticket, then?” the elderly woman asked.

  She opened the door farther, and Eleanor could see that the sound came from a round paper fan flicked energetically.

  “Not really. I just want to sit in the shade,” said Eleanor. She stood up politely, but the old woman must have taken that to mean yes, or she hadn’t heard Eleanor properly.

  “It’s five hundred yen to get in,” she said. “We keep it cheap because of the children. Most of them don’t have enough pocket money for more.”

  “Thank you. But I’m rea
lly not interested,” said Eleanor.

  “In you come, then.” She swung the door right open and disappeared down a corridor, phut-phutting the whole way.

  “Excuse me,” called Eleanor. “I’m not …” What the hell, she thought. I can afford five hundred yen. And at least she didn’t compliment me on my Japanese.

  The illusion of coolness was no more than that. The house wasn’t air-conditioned, and, as in Gen’s rooms, the air stayed motionless and suffocating. Eleanor wiped sweat off her upper lip and vowed not to complain about how cold Masao set the air conditioner at home.

  The corridor’s dark wooden walls were covered with posters old and new, although she had to peer closely in the windowless gloom. New Treasure Island, Dash, Mighty Atom, Tomorrow Joe, Sazae-san, Space Cruiser Yamato, Tale of Kamui, Rose of Versailles, Totoro, Pat Labor, Evangelion … The newer ones gleamed, the old ones blended into the walls.

  The sound of the fan came from a room halfway down the corridor. On the other side of a waist-high divider, the old lady perched like a bathhouse attendant on a high stool topped with a cushion.

  “Five hundred yen, yes?” She held out her hand for the money and passed Eleanor a pamphlet in exchange.

  “A guided tour is five hundred extra?” she added hopefully, but Eleanor shook her head firmly.

  “No, thank you.”

  The woman looked away sulkily and picked up her fan.

  Eleanor walked along the corridor to where some light was coming in from the next room. The museum rooms were now divided by theme, unlike the historical progression she remembered. She headed for the third door along, the one that said ROBOTS.

  Talking robots, helping robots, fighting robots—lots of the latter. Working robots, cyborgs, human/robot interfaces … from the walls lined with bulging bookcases to the open comics in glass display cases, robots of every size, shape and intent.

  If the Silver Angels wanted material for human-machine dreams, they need look no further. But Mari wasn’t a fool—if the Angels had offered her only a cartoon, she would have laughed at them. What more did they have?

  She stopped at one of the glass cases. Inside, an early Journey to Life episode lay open, the one in which the robot protagonist Sam Number Five meets the second of the enigmatic figures of the Masters, who propel him on his quest and protect him from the shadowy pursuing figures of Kaisha. In this chapter, Eleanor remembered, Sam Number Five first considers why he wants to become mortal. Until then, he had sought replacement organic parts for his artificial body without really considering the reason he yearns to be flesh and blood.

  Sam Number Five has a barrel-like body topped with a flat screen that shows a holographic face, but human arms are attached to the metal torso and human legs sprout beneath it. Both arms and legs seem to be from a child.

  He stands at the bottom of a space that has mecha parts instead of walls and an abattoir instead of a ceiling. Frost-rimmed pipes form a maze among the bio parts hanging above. Arms, legs, paws, claws, tails, torsos, heads of many species …

  Hello, says a grotesquely wrinkled human being, leaning into Sam’s visual pickups. I’ve been waiting for you.

  Is this the Second Master? Sam isn’t sure. This tiny person in his museum of mutilation is not at all like the First Master.

  You want a face, don’t you? says the human.

  Only a Master would know that.

  Yes, says Sam Number Five.

  Why? asks the Second Master.

  Because I’m programmed to want to be human, says Sam.

  Are you sure? Did Kaisha program you to run away and hide from them?

  Of course not, Sam retorts. The Second Master must mean he has risen above his programming. This craving to be human is all his own.

  What do humans do? says the Second Master.

  Sam ticks off on his fingers, enjoying the feel of them. Be born, live, eat, drink, work, have sex …

  A shiver runs through all the bio parts hanging above them.

  Die, says the Second Master.

  Eleanor stepped back from the case. This was too close to her own thoughts. The Manga Museum was no longer a quaint anachronism. The comics, far from being childish flights from reality, now held reality hostage to unguessable ends.

  She must find Mari.

  She left the room, swept past the ticket office with a curt thank-you, and strode through the white-flowered shade into the baking street.

  On the way, she stopped at a secondhand bookstore and bought a copy of the last episode of Journey to Life. It was a link between herself and Mari, however small.

  Mari’s apartment was on the third floor of a residential block near the university, but not inside the Betta that housed many of the students. Eleanor had visited the area once with Masao, as the Buddhist University where he worked was part of the “academic town” area.

  The apartment block corridors were neatly swept, and well-tended potted plants decorated the elevator lobby. Clean, bright, and new, it was the type of residence to appeal to young women living away from home.

  The door of apartment 305 opened to reveal a tousled female head leaning over from the entry step to open the door. For a second, Eleanor felt a thrill of delight. Then she saw that the hair was too light to be Mari’s.

  “Oh.” The girl stared at Eleanor. “I thought you were a friend. He’s got dyed hair.” She blinked at Eleanor’s head and giggled. She was wearing a tank top and long underpants, or maybe short shorts.

  “I’m looking for Mari,” said Eleanor quickly before the girl could shut the door. “Mari Kitami. I’m her aunt.”

  The girl stepped down into the narrow entry and crossed her arms defiantly. She was much shorter than Mari, a thin creature dwarfed by a mop of bleached straw hair.

  “She moved out. There was three months’ rent left, so she let me stay here. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” soothed Eleanor. “It was good of you to help her out.”

  Mollified, the girl uncrossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Yeah, I keep the place nice.”

  A glimpse of clothes-strewn floor behind her suggested otherwise.

  “Trouble is, I’ve got some discs to give Mari, but she didn’t tell me where she’d moved,” said Eleanor.

  “Try mailing,” suggested the girl. She twisted a strand of hair around her finger and stared unself-consciously at Eleanor’s face and clothes.

  “I did, but she’s not answering.”

  “Sounds like she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  Eleanor shrugged. “Maybe. But I’d like to at least leave these discs at her new place for her. They’re too good to send over the Net.”

  The girl straightened up. “What are they, music? I’ll give them to her.”

  “I’d rather do it myself,” said Eleanor. “We could go together?” she added, willing to put up with the girl if it meant finding Mari.

  “Ooh, no, it’s too hot.” The girl’s lip curled. “I don’t go out during the day in summer.”

  “Do you know the address, then?”

  She hesitated, then stepped back into the room. Something thudded to the floor.

  “Here you are.”

  In round, childish characters—one of them a mistake—on the back of an old receipt, the girl had written an address in the south of Osaka. Eleanor sighed. Back in the subway again.

  “Thank you.”

  “S’all right. I don’t usually open the door to strangers, you know.” She seemed to think it was important. “But I saw you in the security camera …”

  Eleanor nodded. “I know, you thought I had dyed hair.”

  The girl leaned forward. “Is it real? The color, I mean?”

  Eleanor was so pleased to get Mari’s address she didn’t care. “It’s real. Some gray in it, though.”

  “Gaijins go gray, too?” The girl patted her own hair as if to reassure herself it was still unnatural and ungray.

  “Sure do.” Eleanor waved. “Bye
.”

  “Bye-bye.” The girl waved back cheerfully.

  Masao didn’t answer his phone, he must be teaching. She left him a message, saying that she was going to meet Kazu at what might be Mari’s new address. She hesitated to call the police yet—if the address was wrong, she’d look pretty silly. And if she did find Mari, the girl certainly wouldn’t talk with policemen in the background.

  Mari’s new address lay in a southwestern inner town, Ashigawara. Eleanor had to ask one of the station staff how to get to the address. The area around the station was a mass of people, bicycles, buses, and stalls. It reminded her of the area near Gen’s flat, but newer.

  This wasn’t the Japan she knew. It was as far from the pristine surfaces of the Bettas as the stubborn ordinariness of Hirano, where the Tanaka family lived. Canyons between buildings rose in tiers of electricity lines and advertising banners, garlanded with lights. The asphalt below was almost invisible under passing feet, and makeshift hovels against every blank wall were covered with blue vineel sheets.

  The shop fronts looked authentic—Golden Pagoda Chinese Restaurant, Aquarium Karaoke, Fun Phones, more karaoke—but the interiors were dark, and bouncers guarded many of the entries. Groups of teenagers gathered everywhere, talking, comparing phones, and punching game machines. Many of them wore garish clothes and implants, or had shocks of dyed hair. Their faces carried more definite expressions than she was used to, and many of their gestures were unfamiliar and un-Japanese. It made her uneasy, as though she’d strayed into a foreign country where the people were unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

  Free from the constraints of the double hegemony of big companies and government, small companies vied desperately for consumer attention. Icons flashed in her eyes, vid-screens and billboards leaned from every wall, and recorded voices assaulted her ears. Buy me! Buy me!

  Her heart beat uncomfortably fast, and she remembered Ishihara’s comment about the streets being unsafe. But she’d come this far and—the irony gave her courage—her foreign features blended in quite well. She followed the station-master’s directions into side streets, past a grassless park crowded with blue tents like an army bivouac, and found Mari’s new address. The two-story concrete building looked nearly as old as Gen’s block of flats. It stood out from the other buildings because of the cats.