by Yusuke Kishi
If nothing came of the search after all this, everyone would probably hate me for coming up with such an unpleasant idea.
But barely an hour later, Maria’s tiger crab hit the jackpot.
“Looks like it got something again,” Maria peeked under the shrine and grimaced. “Seems like something big this time…”
We all cringed when we heard that. The sight of a tiger crab gorging itself on a larger mammal was something no one wanted to see.
“Pull it out and see,” Satoru said, turning away.
“Help me.”
“You can do it yourself, right? Just use your cantus to pull in the ropes.”
“But it’s creepy,” Maria looked at us imploringly.
I have to confess that I ignored my best friend’s plea and pretended to be occupied with my own tiger crab. I was still feeling slightly ill from having seen Satoru’s crab disembowel its prey just a while ago.
“I’ll do it, then.”
Unexpectedly, Mamoru volunteered.
The two of them started pulling the tiger crab out while the rest of us hung back, expecting something unpleasant to appear.
“Look, they got it,” Shun said.
Hearing that, we turned our attention to the crab.
“The false minoshiro!” Maria shouted.
I put my sunglasses on just in time.
The tiger crab emerged, holding its prey tightly in both claws.
There was no doubt it was the one that had escaped earlier. Even though the tiger crab was clutching it so fiercely that it looked like it was about be cut in half, it was still struggling with all its strength to escape. When it saw us, all the spikes on its back shot straight up and the tips started glowing.
“Shun! Satoru! Hurry and catch it!” I shouted, then realized I was in the same situation that occurred earlier.
Apart from me, everyone else was standing as if petrified. They had all fallen to the false minoshiro’s hypnotism.
I would have to do it myself then. At least this time I had a powerful ally. One with a primitive brain that was impervious to hypnotism, and a stubborn single-mindedness that never let its prey escape–the ferocious, bubble-blowing tiger crab.
Apart from wearing sunglasses, I also knew not to look at the patterns in the flickering lights, so I remained clear-headed. Through half-open eyes, I started systematically twisting and pulling off the shining spikes.
“Please cease your destructive activity.”
An echoing female voice came out of nowhere, startling me.
“Who’s there? Where are you?”
“You are destroying public library property. Please cease your destructive activity immediately.”
The voice was coming from the false minoshiro.
“That’s because you keep trying to hypnotize us.”
“The use of defensive light hypnosis by terminal machines is sanctioned under ordinance 488722, item 5. Please cease your destructive activity immediately.”
“You stop hypnotizing us, then I’ll stop ripping your glowy things out.”
“I repeat my warning. Please cease your destructive activity at once,” the false minoshiro repeated obstinately.
“I’m warning you too. If you don’t stop, I won’t either. I’ll rip out all those glowing things!”
Surprisingly, the false minoshiro stopped shining. Seems like that simple threat was effective enough.
“Are you guys okay?”
The four of them still looked like they were in a stupor.
“Undo the hypnosis, now! Or else I’m going to start plucking again,” I said warningly.
The false minoshiro replied hurriedly, “Effects of light hypnosis wear off in time. The National Institute of Psychiatry’s report, number 49463165, states that there are no observable side effects.”
“Undo it. Now. Or else….”
I didn’t need to finish the sentence. The false minoshiro suddenly let out a piercing noise and I ducked instinctively, covering my ears. The four of them started moving as if waking up from a dream.
I turned slowly back toward the false minoshiro, bursting with questions I wanted to ask it.
“Who are you? What are you?”
“I am the Tsukuba Branch of the National Diet Library.”
“A library?”
“If you are inquiring my model and version, I am a Panasonic Automotive Archive, Autonomous Evolution version SE-778H Lambda.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but no matter what sort of monster it was, that was an absurd self introduction. It was like someone walking up to you on the street and saying “Hi, My name is National Library”, or “I’m a school”.
“Are you saying you’re actually a library?” I asked cautiously.
“Yes.”
I looked over the false minoshiro. Now that it had stopped wriggling and glowing, it definitely looked man-made.
“Where are the books then?”
“All paper based print interfaces have either decomposed, or have been lost through wars or other destructive activity. No remaining existences have been confirmed.”
“I don’t really get it, but the point is there are no books? So you’re just an empty library?”
“All information is archived in 890PB of holographic memory.”
I had no idea what it was saying.
“…if you’re trying to confuse us with big words, maybe I should just tear out all those feeler looking things.”
Making threats wasn’t something I was particularly fond of doing.
“The contents of the books are stored inside me, and can be accessed at any time,” it replied immediately.
That was better, though I still wasn’t completely clear how it worked.
“What kinda books?” Satoru asked conversationally.
“All 38,242,506 volumes published in Japan since 2129 AD and 671,630 reference volumes in English as well as other languages.”
The five of us exchanged glances. Kamisu 66’s largest library, in Hayring, had under three thousand books available to the public, and if you included all the books in storage underground, the total amounted to maybe ten thousand. That a body as small as the false minoshiro’s could hold over four thousand times that number was a lie not even Satoru would dare to tell.
“Accessed at any time means that you can read them whenever you want?”
“That is correct.”
“So if I asked you any question, you’d be able to find the relevant book out of all the ones stored inside you?” I asked doubtfully.
“Yes. The average query time is sixty nanoseconds,” boasted the false minoshiro, or rather, the Tsukuba Branch of the National Diet Library.
I didn’t know how long sixty nanoseconds was, but I assumed it was something like sixty seconds.
“T-then…I want to ask…!”
I suddenly became really excited. I could get answers to everything I’ve ever wanted to up til now. Hundreds of questions came to mind all at once. Just as I was about to speak, Satoru interrupted with the most useless question in the world.
“Why are there so many toads around here?”
“Why do you look like that if you’re a library?” Maria asked.
Shun looked like he wanted to ask something too, but was too out of it from the hypnosis to form a coherent sentence.
“I…I want to ask,” I finally decided what I wanted to know most. “Do fiends really exist? Also, what about karma demons?”
We waited with bated breath. Sixty seconds passed, then two minutes, then three, but the false minoshiro remained silent.
“Hey, why aren’t you answering?” Satoru couldn’t wait any longer.
“User registration is required to access query services,” it said, without a trace of guilt for making us wait for nothing.
“Geez, shouldn’t you tell us that first?” Satoru said reproachfully.
“How do we register?”
The false minoshiro ignored Satoru and addressed Maria’s q
uestion.
“You must be eighteen year or older, and supply proof of name, address, and age with one of the following: driver’s license, insurance card (with address), passport (a copy with full date of birth, and current address), student identification (with address and date of birth), certificate of residence (issued within the past three months), or other official identification. All must be within the expiry date.
“Eighteen? But we’re…”
“Furthermore, the following forms of identification are not valid: employee identification, student identification (lacking date of birth or address), commuter passes, business cards…”
The false minoshiro was probably talking about some papers that were used way back when. We had a rough idea of what it was talking about because we had learned a little bit about the strange age in which pieces of paper were more important than the people themselves.
“What if we don’t have any of those things?” I asked.
“If user registration is not completed, query services will be unavailable,” the false minoshiro said in the same placid voice.
“Guess it can’t be helped it. I’ll just have to tear you apart bit by bit to get to the books inside you.”
“Destructive activity is a criminal offense punishable by law.”
“What should we do? Start by pulling the feelers out, then cutting it in half?” I said to Satoru, miming a ripping action.
“Hmm, look at how rubbery its skin is. We should probably skin in first,” Satoru leered, catching on to my plan.
“…documentation requirements have been waived. Beginning user registration process!” it said loudly, still in the same soothing female voice. “Will each user please pronounce their name clearly.”
Each of us stepped in front of the false minoshiro in turn and said our names.
“Iris pattern, voice print, and head MRI authentication complete. User registration complete. Shun Aonuma, Maria Akizuki, Satoru Asahina, Mamoru Itou, Saki Watanabe, query services are available for three years starting today.”
“Alright then, why are there so many toads…”
Shun covered Satoru’s mouth with his right hand. “There are a mountain of questions we could ask, but I want to hear the answer to Saki’s first. …do fiends really exist? What about karma demons?”
The false minoshiro didn’t pause for a second this time. “The word ‘fiend’ returned 671,441 hits in the database, and can be roughly separated into two groups. ① Creatures that have reportedly been sighted in the ancient past, frequently called demons, ghosts, ghouls and other similar names, that do not exist in reality. ② A term invented in the final years of the ancient civilization to describe those suffering from Raman-Klogius syndrome, also known as ‘Fox in the Henhouse’ syndrome. It is not confirmed to exist in the present, but did in the past, and is highly likely to recur in the future.”
We looked at each other. We couldn’t fully understand what it was saying, but we could tell that it was something we would never be taught, and something we were definitely not allowed to know.
“Karma demons were also discovered before the fall of the ancient empire, and was a common term for severe cases of Hashimoto-Appelbaum syndrome. Along with fiends, their existence in the present in unconfirmed, but there is a high risk of reappearance.
“That…” Shun hesitated.
I saw his face pale and understood painfully well what he was thinking.
We shouldn’t ask any more than this. The warning came unconsciously.
But opening Pandora’s box when we knew perfectly well not to has been human nature since the dawn of time.
Chapter 7
“…in the year 2011 of the Gregorian calendar, scientists conclusively documented the existence of psychokinesis, which until that point had always been a considered an occult phenomenon,” the false minoshiro explained dispassionately.
Its voice gave off the impression of a cultured, intelligent woman, and although it was a mesmerizing voice, it sounded almost too perfect, and thus inhuman.
“Before that, whether it was in public or in laboratories, all PK experiments were complete failures. However, in the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2011, cognitive scientist Imran Ismailov conducted successful experiments in the capital city of Baku. In quantum mechanics, there is a well known paradox of an observed particle affecting another particle, but Ismailov was the first to predict that the microscopic world being magnified to a macroscopic event applied to PK as well. Those doubtful of the success of Ismailov’s experiments were recruited to act as observers with the latent ability to resist PK. {After going through several trials, they were subdivided into various groups so that no observer knew the entire scope of the experiment. These observers were then asked to conceal certain facts from someone who knew of Ismailov’s experiment design. There were multiple control factors…}”
The five of us listened entranced to the false minoshiro’s lengthy speech. Even though we couldn’t even understand a fraction of what it was talking about, we drank up its words like plants after a drought.
Until now, our knowledge of the world was like a jigsaw puzzle missing the most important piece. The false minoshiro’s words were giving us the missing piece, slaking our curiosity.
But we never imagined that we would be hearing about a story so hellish that it would leave our hair standing on end.
“…the first person Ismailov discovered with extrasensory perception, Nona Mardanova, was a nineteen-year-old girl. All she was able to do was move a light plastic ball sealed within a transparent tube, but like a seed crystal that prompts a chemical solution to nucleate, she was the catalyst that awakened mankind’s latent power.”
Unawares, Maria had come up next to me and was clasping my hand tightly. How did humans come to wield such a god-like power? The story of its origin was always vaguely glossed over in history textbooks.
“…the number of PK users grew rapidly and eventually reached 0.3 percent of the entire population. In the ensuing years of societal disorder, further statistical data was lost. However, a rise in the percentage of people diagnosed with schizoid personality was documented.
“Only 0.3 percent?” Satoru muttered doubtfully.
I couldn’t believe it either. What had happened to the remaining 99.7 percent of the population?
“What do you mean by societal disorder?” Maria asked.
“In the beginning, ordinary people ostracized PK users. Even though they only had weak abilities, it was more than enough to potentially destroy the social order of that time, and PK users kept that fact well hidden. For Japan, this destruction began with the Boy A incident.”
“Boy A? Is that his name?” Mamoru’s brows furrowed.
“At that time, it was common practice to withhold the names of minors involved in criminal activities, so a codename was assigned.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
At the worst, I expected the answer to be that he had committed robbery or something like that.
“A’s powers were rudimentary, but one day he realized that he could open any lock he came across. Using this ability, he repeatedly broke into homes in the middle of the night, raped nineteen women in their sleep, and killed seventeen of them.”
We were frozen with shock. I couldn’t believe what I had heard. Rape. And murder. …killing people.
“Wait a sec! That’s impossible! Because wasn’t A human? A human killed another human?” Satoru asked hoarsely.
“Yes. Following A’s arrest, the number of crimes involving PK increased, but most went unsolved often because common methods of surveillance were rendered useless with PK. Normal people began attacking PK users as a whole, beginning with personal harassment and elevating to public abuse that nearly ended in executions. In defense, PK users formed their own factions and the most zealous of them proposed establishing a PK-exclusive society. Indiscriminate terrorism by PK users followed. The resulting political, ethical, and philosophical conflicts plunged the w
orld into an age of violent discord. Without previous experience in this situation, there appeared to be no end to this world war.”
I turned mutely to look at the others. Fear had wiped all other emotions from their faces. Mamoru was cowering on the ground with both hands over his ears.
“…country with the greatest military power, America, started a civil war in order to eradicate all PK users. Using electric shocks to distinguish between normal people and PK users, and the wide-spread availability of guns, the population of PK users in North America dropped from 0.3 to 0.0004 percent in a short amount of time.”
Satoru kept shaking his head, whispering, “This can’t be true.”
“…on the other hand, the scientific superpower, India, successfully differentiated the DNA of normal people and PK users, was researching methods for controlling peoples’ genes. Unfortunately, their search was unsuccessful, but the data garnered were found to be useful later on.”
As if in a dream, I gazed at the animal-machine caught between the pincers of the tiger crab. Could it actually be a demon sent from hell? It would lead us astray with its strange words, and eventually make us go insane.
“…ironically, because their lives were continually being threatened, the surviving PK users’ abilities evolved rapidly. At first, PK was thought to be the projection of energy from the breakdown of sugar in the brain. Because of that, it should have been naturally limited to the amount of sugar in the body. But that was incorrect. In reality, there was no upper boundary to how much energy could be used. At that time, the strongest PK user had enough power to stop a nuclear attack. So the balance of power shifted to the PK users and governments all over the world collapsed. The history books we have now make no mention of the past civilization because it was, in essence, completely reset. The wheel of time was reversed, and we returned to the dark ages. Due to war, famine, epidemics, and other disasters, the human population fell to under two percent of what it was during the Golden Age.”
