Tokyo Zero

by Marc Horne

  The screwdriver fits to the screw. The hand turns. The laws of physics spare time to deal with the minute problem of how the flows of sweat on a palm react to the twisting, how the barrel of the screwdriver rolls and shears and longs to fall to the floor like the end of a hard day.

  But if you want it, it happens… if it is easy.

  The screws get very loose, the grid twitters. It almost falls, it twitters full of clang and "what are you doing" and "bang bang bang" but stays in place and he gets the hell out. He disappears into legend, into faces on posters. He is the man who did it. But not the master. Hated a little, sought a little. He left too early to get the taste of death. Was he stupid or afraid? Or the usual mix.

  The usual mix. So he leaves the picture. Farewell, maligned fat man. I am sorry that I never looked beneath your flesh. I never saw your bones or brains. I was busy, but we were married for a while. So I am sorry.

  Honda strolls by, his face deep in a newspaper. Tomorrow his face will actually be in the newspaper. He sees the crowds starting to plump up and is pleased: quietly, of course.

  He walks past the niche, the dead end. Dead end. He sees the candy wrapper gummed to the wall and quietly plucks it away. He mumbles into his Walkman. His voice invades Junko's newfound world. She looks like she wants to spit. His voice is so masculine and arrogant and meaningful. She pulls it back together and tells him that now is indeed a very good time to start things.

  Junko then pulls her Walkman down from her ears and looks up. She sees all the people and remembers her dead friend Benny, who she sort of loved and who let her play that sort of game. She remembers the little demons that he used to see in the blazing flames of a super aggravated atom. She sees them all now. All the demons, all the faces of hate that are glued together. Shinjuku station is the atom and she is the eye and the heat… the heat is deplorable 'life' which finds its way into everything that makes the mistake of getting complicated.

  Just splitting the atom. That's all they are doing. As harmless as that. She smiles her straight smile. She gets it. She gets it. She slinks away to her exit. People have to put up with pictures of her on trains and busses for months because she never gets caught. Not that she is grotesque or anything but the one picture of her that the police manage to get hold of is unfortunately a very good one and captures that look, that acid in the mouth look, that "why you?" look.

  Honda moves to defensive position 1, Mayumi to position 2. This means I must move to my position. With such protection, I am calm. I am the third point in a triangle and as I walk into the slightly shady little corridor where all the action has been happening.

  I walk down to the vent, pop it open and then put the plastic tray down. Quickly I pop the skeleton and the springs into place then the funnel. All that remains is to put in the pseudo-sarin that will put a few people in brief comas, maybe blind a couple of kids for a month or two, sicken thousands and convince these paramilitary cultists (and good friends of mine) not to kill me, and mask the true intent of the attack long enough for it to succeed.

  Next I introduce a viral agent that is most assuredly NOT Ebola. It is a virus that attaches to human DNA and does something very specific to it. It disables, totally and irrevocably, for male and female, the ability to reproduce. It then (to add insult to injury) reproduces itself, moves to the lungs and you cough it out on everyone and it is as infectious as a virus can be when so much time has been spent teaching it the secrets of the humans in a way that other viruses have to pick up at 'the school of hard knocks.'

  Based on the random incubation period we were able to engineer and some very sophisticated computer predictions (from a very sophisticated (and surprisingly affectionate (nice letters it used to send me) computer) the human race will be sterilized within two point five generations. Just fading away. There will be some wars, but strange ones… probably breeding camps will be set up in remote areas and the women will be raped and treated as brood mares. I'm not saying I'm in favor of that, but you know, worse things would happen in the future of any world with this much technology and populace and secret governments and the XCIA (you don't think the CIA is anything over than a cover do you?) and Atlantean Masonic Illuminati and worse even.

  Thinking about the size of our opposition and their power I am sure… so sure… for a good minute that I am a pawn in their game. They own gAIa, I am sure. They killed my Dad. They want me to do this. I am so sure of it that I freeze for a second.

  How can I beat them? What was I thinking. The moment I put this machine in operation they will either rub their little hands together or a nuclear bomb will render Shinjuku Station historical.

  But I do it anyway, because the momentum of my life is something I cannot and possibly should not ignore.

  The a-bomb doesn't come, and then, because even the pseudo-sarin is something you don't want to be breathing, I put the hatch back on and I walk briskly away from the fulcrum of human history, which, as I mentioned, strongly resembles a drinking bird toy.

  The only thing that the fanatic mind cannot believe is reality. I can believe that the human race has to go, its finest achievements digitized and purified. But I can't believe I have just done it.

  The triangle of Honda, Mayumi and I should be spreading, getting non-euclidean if possible as we get to extreme points of the globe. I will try and fly to Spain right now before they close the airports down. I have tickets and a suitcase in a locker back at Narita Airport.

  I think about that and not the tiny tiny boy who is so close to the release point and will be scorched and stabbed by the gas. And who will be an old man when the human race is as small and sad as he looks now in the station.

  I think about the suitcase, about the SPF of the sun block I requested be in it and not any of the many, many people who are going to be changed by me and hurt by me. I am not thinking of any people.

  Mayumi is suddenly where she should not be: in front of me at the top of a long escalator.

  "Is it real?"

  An excellent question. I cannot believe how many people will be in my cloud.

  "Mayumi… stop being … We both know that it isn't real. Don't kill me. But you have always known that it… "

  Her hand turns as it thrusts up and catches me under the jaw. My jaw claps like thunder and my brain makes lightning. All I can think about is my tongue and if I can't feel it because I don't have it anymore. That is all I can think about. I can't think about how the grooves of the escalator comb down my back like hair clippers on your neck, or how my clothes are being pulled from me and snipped up. Or how I don't know what to do, where to put my hands and I can finally think of something else only when I lie at the bottom of the escalator surrounded by all manner of concerned and surprisingly calm people. And what I think is "What was that shiny glass thing in her left hand?"

  Chapter 44

  I blacked out for no more than five or ten seconds. I have blood all over my face. I apologize to all of the people around me… to shut them up. I get on the up escalator, mopping my face. I hope I didn't black out for very long. I get to the top of the escalator and she is gone. I try and walk to the end of the target corridor. I am getting near it. Mayumi is not in the corridor but she is very fast and I could have been out for as long as thirty seconds. The vent that covers the gas release mechanism looks different. It is at an angle, like it was replaced hastily. Not my tidy work.

  I cannot rule out the possibility that Mayumi has replaced my placebo death gas with some of the real Sarin that I developed when I was being watched more carefully: the stuff she made me kill that family with, that she stole while I lay post-coital. And although that Sarin does not contain the designer-ebola her boss wants… since such a virus has never existed… it could kill easily several thousand people. And when I say kill I mean now and today. Not kill like the abortion of a billion future people. I am pro-genothenasia.

  I have to go and do something… but I am not sure.

  Honda puts his hand on my shoulder.
r />   "Lets get outta here," he says in a thick Hollywood accent. It is hard to say that phrase any other way.

  I should go and stop the machine because if Mayumi has changed it then I will kill thousands for no reason. But was that just a bottle of coke in her hand? Would she really bring her own Sarin? And if I stop the Tokyo insertion, then we will be severely set back in our plan, as the tiny sample of the virus I carried in my blood took almost a year to cultivate. And we don't have years now we have made our move like this. The enemy (enemies?) has an inkling of who we are and what we are trying to do. They could come and kill us all within a year or two.

  Suddenly, questions are over. Through all the noise, Honda and I hear something that you would think we couldn't possibly. We hear the tinkle of broken glass from inside the vent and we turn and we run.

  As we run, I notice that my little gun is showing quite prominently through a rent in my shirt. My little gun, which I carry for emergencies, flashes before the eyes of a policeman for long enough to shake him out of his long, long lethargy. He is obliged to act: my bloody face seals the deal. He taps his partner on the shoulder and there is no way I am going to stop running. So we run. Honda and I run through all these people and we have to learn how to pass through this substance, how to tack into its currents, ride its waves. The police with the small guns chase us. A few warning shots go off and people start to panic. I think of Mayumi almost all the time in thoughts that start in my jaw and get into my brain. The police chase us and we almost get away until we find ourselves in front of a small kiosk with guns pointed right at us.

  We are at the Butch and Sundance moment that I told you about when I started this story… guns pointed right at us.

  The guns point: the kiosk man drops to the floor and the real shooting has to start. But I want to live.

  I don't know why the gas came out as it did. It was supposed to be practically invisible, slow moving. But in some mighty feat of condensation and air conditioning a pale gray cloud fell from all the vents and everyone started screaming. Honda shot both policemen in their chests so quickly that the second one was probably still thinking the same thought as the first one had when he was shot. They both fell looking like Honda had shot some spring out of them rather than horribly wounding them. They squirmed on the floor, calm and not attempting to get up: like sportsmen waiting to be stretchered off the field. The crowd no longer existed. It was just hundreds of people screaming and alone. I covered my face. That doesn't protect you against real Sarin… nothing does. I ran away but Honda was going nowhere.

  I turned back when I realized he wasn't coming with me. A man with blood coming out of his mouth ran straight into me. His pink eggs of eyes instantly knew I was to blame. He was about to choke me when I screamed in his face and he ran away.

  Through the fog, I could see the figure of Honda slowly positioning himself for that suicide that couldn't wait any longer. Then no more waiting, or anything to do with time because Honda was dead.

  I coughed and I ran.

  We all did. We all crawled out of the earth like worms. I was the only one who didn't think the gas was going to kill us all, because there would already be dozens of corpses if this gas was the real thing: Mayumi had gone with my betrayal rather than any of the others.

  In the evacuation, manners did not change much. No real riot or anarchy. Patiently escaping, all in the same boat finally. Amazingly little carnage. It was too quick for carnage… not long enough to realize that the rules no longer applied. Everyone got out but I could not go to the airport in this condition so I went wandering the streets.

  I saw a few white people being shot by the police. They looked very surprised. They were all Avon School of English teachers who would never receive the "level up" they had been so keenly anticipating.

  The efficiency with which these teachers were culled suggests either a level of double bluff within the Japanese establishment concerning the attack that I can't even begin to diagram OR long pent up frustration at being shouted at over plurals and the pronunciation of the word 'rural.'

  As I wandered the streets, alive and victorious, infected with a virus and longing to get to work coughing it, far away Mr Maruhashi was telling Mr Sato about the dream that had changed his life… . a dream of the future where he was the last man alive and where the machines trapped him in a little room and wiped him out. Sato patiently waited for the end of the dream, and politely avoided a Schwarzeneggerism as he shot Maruhashi so many times in the face before going to Russia, which was fine with him anyway.

  This was taped and played on TV a lot. This was enough justice for most people in the country. Samsara was never found, no one was ever found. Not even me.

  Chapter 45

  I went underground for a few days. I had enough cash for a few nights in a small b&b type place. My shredded shirt was easily replaced. No one could bring themselves to care about me. I was in a little room, very traditional, watching a small Sony as all of the news came out.

  The initial panic was followed by a disappointment they didn't even try to conceal. It was clear that they had thought this was the beginning of something big. But it wasn't the apocalypse that it had seemed early on. Lots of people went to hospital, but no one died. No one had their gonads examined, so no one knew what had happened to them, what they were coughing up. It was several days before even the Maruhashi tape got to the media. I think I know who sent it.

  Maruhashi had died as soon as it became evident that no one else was doing so. Sato had left all kinds of devilish curses on the tape… he clearly planned to try something like this again. It was clear that he would do some terrible things up in Russia, in one of those towns where the authorities practically encouraged vast, distancing crimes. Flushed with the success of my mass sterilization I kidded myself that I would head up to Russia and bring down the Gulag that Sato no doubt planned to lord over. Really I would do no such thing. I lived quietly for a week or two, which is as long as thousands of sore throats can realistically dominate the media, even if a bizarre cult is involved.

  I was described hundreds of times on television. As 'a white man.' I felt confident that I would escape scott free.

  One day, I realized with horror what was waiting for me if I went back to England. A huge cyber fetus that could pretend to be my dad, possibly full of other plans for thinning down the human ranks as its robotic limbs fleshed out in human and robot minds around the world.

  Slave to a vast machine, semi-intelligent, vastly scary in its infinite potential and near ability to feel emotions. It was intimidating… overwhelming in fact.

  But I had to go back, because sometimes you just have to go home. When the day is done, when a whole chapter of your life is done.. you have to go home… . somehow or other. If I did not go home then the thing would never crystallize into a story and would continue to be something I felt in the flesh of my hands, in the tingling of my nerves, in the substance that had replaced sleep during the hours of the dark… the strange new mind that came to me where darkness and rest had once been.

  So after a few weeks, when I was getting really sick of seeing pictures of my old pals plastered on every train and bus, of the life-sized figurines of them, I went to Narita airport and I got my stuff from the locker, the papers and the clothes that made me look like some Kabuki-loving tourist and I started to leave Japan. The fact that I appeared to be about to get away with this shocked me. In that case how could anything happen in this world, if little bugs like me could strike a nation so? Why didn't assassination and counter assassination flicker in relay around the world. Why was New York still standing, so many awful Kings and Queens still breathing? Where was the protection? Were the vast conspiracies just clubs, just shows? Did they add nothing to the genocides really… the genocides just happened like tides in the sea of hate?

  Feeling the flickering eyes of all the machines, cameras, I did not dread arrest. I merely felt uncomfortable that the big thought, the new mind, the computer, gAIa, o
ur child, our successor… that he might be watching me.

  Because although he was designed to love, to never divide but always synthesize, to sacrifice always what some other part needed most, though he was perfect… . he owed me one. A big one.

  All the police didn't scare me. The future did not scare me. The work to make sure the sterilization continued… the L.A. insertion that we had vaguely planned when we were all alive… that did not scare me.

  There was nothing to fear, once one accepted that life arced between buildings, between cities, between lavas, continents, planets, and that life was good and that people wouldn't really miss it. There was nothing to fear.

  It was all music anyway. The notes made the music and the music heard itself and made sure it was good. That was all.

  About to check in, I saw her. The girl that had more than distracted me. Mayumi. She was in a dark denim jacket, and underneath, a short black dress. She had spectacles, new ones with half frames that made her look happy and sarcastic at the same time. This must have saved her a lot of effort.

  She approached to kill me. I had led her boss to die, Honda to die, but no one else to die. She could kill me in front of everyone and be ok. But really I knew. I knew when I saw her walk. Because she walked like she never had before… like she wanted something.

  She came right up to me and didn't really look at me. I waited for her. People left the country around us.

  "What's your name?" she asked?

  "Mike," I told her.

  "Then if it's a boy, it will have a boring name," she said and bit her bottom lip.

  Rather than laugh at the bitter irony, or swoon at the world he would inherit, rather than scream, rather than cry, I lived with her and we became happy in a secret world that is reserved for those who know too much and those who know too little.

  The end of the world (as we have made it) continues.