The Stories of Ibis

by Hiroshi Yamamoto

  If I were afraid of getting hurt, nothing would change.

  Ibis had said they were recruiting people like me all over the world. I was not alone. It would begin as imperceptible ripples around the world. But what began as tiny ripples would bring about a tidal wave of change.

  “Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Yes. I look forward to it.”

  Ibis saw me off with a smile. As I walked down the cracked asphalt, I turned around several times and waved.

  Although the backpack on my back was heavy, my heart was buoyed with hope. Inside the backpack was the memory card Ibis had given me. In addition to the seven stories she had told me, the card was also filled with stories Ibis had picked out for me. Most of them were about human-robot relations or virtual reality.

  On the surface, all of them appeared to be harmless fiction. Aside from the seventh story, none of them reflected true history, so they didn’t violate any taboos. These were the stories I planned to tell the children and young people. I wanted to teach them to read too, so they could read these stories for themselves.

  Some of them were bound to have questions upon hearing these stories, as I had. Were the machines really as evil as we’d been taught? Then I would secretly tell them new stories—not the self-loathing history that only made people miserable but stories they could be proud of. Stories that conveyed that even though they could not beat the machines, humans had much to be proud of.

  We were dreamers, idealists, and storytellers.

  The dream of space travel, robots with hearts, a world where justice was just… Many people laughed off such notions as fantasies, idealistic thinking, and nonsense. But we never stopped dreaming. We never stopped trying to surpass our own specs. Those dreams had taken us to the moon and given birth to machines.

  And now the machines were headed for heights we could only dream of. Machines, born from human stories, were about to make our dreams come true.

  And that was a story humans could be proud of. What ending could be more ideal?

  FIRST PUBLICATION

  The Universe on My Hands ........ SF Japan, Winter, 2003 issue

  A Romance in Virtual Space ...... Game Quest, May, 1997 issue

  Mirror Girl ............................ SF Online, March 29, 1999 issue

  Black Hole Diver .................. The Sneaker, October, 2004 issue

  A World Where Justice Is Just ... The Sneaker, June, 2005 issue

  The Day Shion Came ....................... First appears in this novel

  AI’s Story ........................................ First appears in this novel

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  photo by Tatsuya Jinbo

  Hiroshi Yamamoto was born in 1956 in Kyoto. He began his career with game developers Group SNE in 1987 and debuted as a writer and game designer. He gained popularity with juvenile titles such as February at the Edge of Time and the Ghost Hunter series. His first hardcover science fiction release, God Never Keeps Silent, became a sensation among SF fans and was nominated for the Japan SF Award. Other novels include Day of Judgment and The Unseen Sorrow of Winter. Aside from his work as a writer, Yamamoto is also active in various literary capacities as editor of classic science fiction anthologies and as president of To-Gakkai, a group of tongue-in-cheek “experts” on the occult.

  HAIKASORU

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