The Three: A Novel

by Sarah Lotz

  I got him back into the tent and he fell asleep straight away. The next morning he refused to talk about what had happened.

  I didn’t tell Jakey this, but when I told Yoji about it, he said, ‘Japanese ghosts don’t have feet.’ And he told me that the Japanese witching hour–the ushi-mitsu, no way can I forget that word–was 3 a.m. Got to admit, I got spooked again when I heard Pamela May Donald’s message. Stuff she said, well, it sounded too similar to what Jake said that night. I guess I assumed he’d been influenced by what Yoji had told us.

  The other guys busted Jake’s balls about it for weeks afterwards of course. Carried on even when we got back to Camp Courtney. You know the kind of thing: ‘You seen any dead people today, Jakey?’ Jake just took it. I guess it was around that time that he’d started emailing that pastor down in Texas. Before then, he was never into religion. Never once heard him mention God or Jesus. Guess he must have done some Googling about the forest and the crashes, come across that pastor’s website.

  Jake didn’t deploy with the rest of the unit when we were sent to help with the rescue effort after the floods in the Philippines; he got sick, really sick. Stomach pains, suspected appendicitis. Course, now they think he was faking it. They still don’t know how he got off the island. Reckon he must’ve bribed a fishing boat or whaler to take him, something like that; maybe one of the Taiwanese crews who smuggle eel fry or meth in the area.

  I’d give anything to go back in time, ma’am. Stop Jake going into that forest. I know there’s nothing I could have done, but for some reason, even now, I feel responsible for what he did to that Japanese kid.

  Chiyoko Kamamoto, the eighteen-year-old cousin of Sun Air 678’s only surviving passenger, Hiro Yanagida, first met Ryu Takami on the forum of a popular online role-playing game. The majority of the players are otaku (slang for geeks or obsessives) in their teens or twenties, and as one of the few female gamers, Chiyoko became extremely popular.

  It’s a mystery why Chiyoko chose Ryu, an under-achiever and hikikomori (recluse) as her chat buddy, although this has been the subject of endless speculation. Until events overtook them, the pair messaged each other every day, sometimes for hours. The messages were retrieved from Chiyoko’s computer and smart phone after her disappearance, and leaked onto the Internet.

  The original was written predominantly in ‘chat speak’, but for ease of reading and consistency, with the exception of Ryu’s use of emoji [emoticons], this has been modified. Translation by Eric Kushan.

  (Chiyoko refers to her mother, with whom she had a frosty relationship, as ‘Mother Creature’ or ‘MC’. ‘Android Uncle’ or ‘AU’ denotes Kenji Yanagida, Chiyoko’s uncle and one of Japan’s most celebrated robotics experts.)

  Message logged @ 15.30, 14/01/2012

  CHIYOKO: Ryu, you there?

  RYU: () Where you been?

  CHIYOKO: Don’t ask. Mother Creature ‘needed’ me again. Did you hear? The flight attendant. She died in hospital an hour ago. That means Hiro is the only survivor.

  RYU: It’s all over 2-chan. So sad. How is Hiro?

  CHIYOKO: He’s okay, I think. A dislocated collarbone, scratches; that’s all as far as I know.

  RYU: So lucky.

  CHIYOKO: That’s what Mother Creature keeps saying. ‘A miracle.’ She’s set up a temporary altar for Auntie Hiromi. I don’t know where she got the photograph of her from. MC never liked Auntie, but you’d never know that now. ‘Such a shame, she was so pretty, so serene, such a good mother.’ All lies. She was always saying Auntie was stuck up.

  RYU: Did you find out what they were doing in Tokyo? Your aunt and Hiro, I mean.

  CHIYOKO: Yeah. MC says Auntie Hiromi and Hiro were visiting an old school friend. I can tell that MC’s pissed that Auntie didn’t visit when she was here, but she won’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be respectful.

  RYU: Have any reporters tried to talk to you? That footage of them trying to climb over the hospital walls to get pics of the survivors was crazy–you hear about the one that fell off the roof? There’s a clip of it on Nico Nico. What a moron!

  CHIYOKO: Not yet. But they found out where my father works. Not even something like this, the death of a sister, is enough for him to take a day off work. He refused to speak to them. But it’s Android Uncle they’re really interested in, of course.

  RYU: I still can’t believe you’re related to Kenji Yanagida! Or that you didn’t tell me when we first met–I would have bragged about it to the whole world.

  CHIYOKO: How would that have sounded? Hey, I’m Chiyoko, and guess what? I’m related to the Android Man. It would’ve sounded like I was trying to impress you.

  RYU: You impress me? It should be the other way round.

  CHIYOKO: You’re not going to start all that self-pitying stuff again, are you?

  RYU: Don’t worry, you’ve got me out of that bad habit. So… what is he really like? I need details.

  CHIYOKO: I told you. I don’t really know him. Last time I saw him was when he, Hiro and Auntie Hiromi came for New Year two years ago, just after we got back from the US, but they didn’t stay over and I only said about three words to him. Auntie was really pretty, but quite distant. I liked Hiro though, cute kid. MC says Android Uncle might come and stay with us while Hiro is at the hospital. I don’t think she’s happy about it. I overheard her saying to Father that Android Uncle is as cold as his robot.

  RYU: Really? But he comes across as really funny and cool in that documentary.

  CHIYOKO: Which one? There’s like a thousand.

  RYU: Can’t remember. You want me to look it up for you?

  CHIYOKO: Don’t bother. But how you are on camera might be different to how you really are. I think it’s a genetic thing.

  RYU: What is? Being on camera?

  CHIYOKO: No! Being cold. Like me. I’m not normal. I’m cold. A sliver of ice in my heart.

  RYU: Chiyoko, the ice princess.

  CHIYOKO: Chiyoko, the yuki-onna.

  CHIYOKO: So we’ve established I have an ice princess genetic condition that can only be cured by… what?

  RYU: Fame? Money?

  CHIYOKO: That’s why I like you, Ryu, you always have the right answer. I thought you were going to say love and then I was going to be sick.

  RYU: o( _ _ )o What’s wrong with love?

  CHIYOKO: It doesn’t exist outside of bad American movies.

  RYU: You are not completely cold. I know you aren’t.

  CHIYOKO: Then why do I not care more? Listen, I’ll prove it. How many people died in the Sun Air crash?

  RYU: 525. No, 526.

  CHIYOKO: 526. Yes. Including my own aunt. But all I’m feeling is relief.

  RYU: ??()

  CHIYOKO: Okay… let me explain. Since the crash, since she heard about Auntie Hiromi and Hiro, MC hasn’t been on my back about going back to cram school once. Is that a bad thing to think? That because of someone’s tragedy I get some peace in my personal life?

  RYU: Hey you have a personal life. That’s something. Look at me.

  CHIYOKO: Ha! I knew it was too good to last. Never mind, you can be my own personal hikikomori. I like to picture you locked in your small room, the curtains shutting out the light, chain-smoking and messaging me when you get tired of playing Ragnarok.

  RYU: I am not a hikikomori. And I don’t play Ragnarok.

  CHIYOKO: Didn’t we say we would always be honest with each other? I told you what I was.

  RYU: I just don’t like that word.

  CHIYOKO: Are you going to sulk now?

  RYU: _|7O

  CHIYOKO: ORZ????? Neraa! How long have you been saving that one up? Do people even use that any more? You sure you’re really 22 and not 38 or something? And when are you going to grow out of posting all that ascii shit?

  RYU: <(_ _)> Let’s change the subject. Hey… when are you going to tell me about your life in the States?

  CHIYOKO: Not again. Why do you want to know so badly?

  RYU: Just interested.
Do you miss it?

  CHIYOKO: No. It doesn’t matter where you live, the world’s messed up. Another subject please.

  RYU: Okaaaay… The message boards are still going wild about why the plane crashed into Jukai. There’s this whole theory that the captain crashed it on purpose. The suicide captain.

  CHIYOKO: I know. That’s old news, it’s everywhere. What do you think?

  RYU: I don’t know. Some of the things they are saying might be true. The forest does have a history and it’s miles off the Osaka route, why crash there?

  CHIYOKO: Maybe he didn’t want to land in a populated area. Maybe he was trying to save more lives that way. I feel bad for his wife.

  RYU: You feel bad? I thought you were the ice princess.

  CHIYOKO: I can still feel bad for her. Anyway, that Sun Air corporate drone mouthpiece said the captain was one of their best and most reliable, that he would never have done something like that. Also, they said he had no money worries, so he didn’t need the insurance and his medical showed he was in good health.

  RYU: They could be lying. And anyway, maybe he was possessed. Maybe he was made to do it.

  CHIYOKO: Ha! Brought down by hungry ghosts.

  RYU: But you have to admit… Why so many planes on the same day? There has to be a reason.

  CHIYOKO: Like what? Don’t tell me, a sign that we’re facing the end of the world?

  RYU: Why not? It is 2012.

  CHIYOKO: You’ve been spending way too much time on conspiracy sites, Ryu. And we’d know by now if it was terrorism.

  RYU: Can the real Chiyoko come back now please? You are the one who is always saying the government and the press use us like pawns and lie to us.

  CHIYOKO: Doesn’t mean I have to believe some half-baked conspiracy theory. Life isn’t like that. It’s dull. The politicians lie to us, of course they do. How else are we going to be their little good soldiers and not step out of line?

  RYU: You really think they’d tell us the truth if it was terrorists?

  CHIYOKO: I just said they lie to us. But some secrets are too big even for them to hide. Maybe in the US, but not here. The cover-up would have to go through eight levels of bureaucracy first to be approved. People are so lame. Do they not have better things to do than talk all day about conspiracy theories? Malign a dead man who was more than likely trying to save as many people as he could?

  RYU: Hey… I’m really getting worried now. Could the ice princess be thawing? Is this a sign she really cares after all?

  CHIYOKO: I don’t care… Okay, I half care. But it still makes me mad. The freaks on the conspiracy sites are as bad as the useless girls who witter all day on Mixi. Can you imagine what would happen if they spent as much energy talking about the things that really matter?

  RYU: Like what?

  CHIYOKO: Changing the system. Stopping the nepotism, stopping people turning into slaves. Stopping people dying, people being bullied… all of that stuff.

  RYU: Chiyoko the ice princess revolutionary.

  CHIYOKO: I’m serious. Go to school, go to cram school, study hard, make your parents proud, get into Keio, go to work every day for eighteen hours straight, don’t stray, don’t complain, don’t be a non-conformist. Too many don’ts.

  RYU: You know I agree with you, Chiyoko. Look at me… But what can we do?

  CHIYOKO: Nothing. There’s nothing we can do. Just suck it up or drop out or die. Poor Hiro. He has a lot to look forward to.

  RYU: ( _ _ ) .……… o

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTES:

  Ascii: The term for text art (such as that used by Ryu above). It was popularised on forums such as 2-channel.

  ORZ: A popular Japanese emoji or emoticon that denotes frustration or despair. The letters resemble a figure banging its head on the ground (O is the head; R the torso and Z the legs).

  Yuki-Onna: (Snow woman). In Japanese folklore the Yuki-Onna is the spirit of a woman who died in a snow storm.

  Hikikomori: Someone who is socially isolated to the extent that they rarely (or never) leave their room. It is estimated that in Japan there are almost a million socially isolated adolescents or young adults who have chosen to cut themselves off from society in this manner.

  Controversial British columnist Pauline Rogers, known for her confessional style of journalism, was the first to coin the term The Three to refer to the children who survived the crashes on Black Thursday.

  This article was published in the Daily Mail on 15 January 2012.

  It’s been three days since Black Thursday and I’m sitting in my newly constructed private office, staring at my computer screen in utter disbelief.

  Not, as you may think, because I’m still stunned at the horrendous coincidence that resulted in four passenger planes crashing on the same day. Although I am. Who isn’t? No. I’m scrolling through the staggering list of conspiracy websites, all of which have a different–and more bizarre than the last–theory on what caused the tragedy. Just a five-minute Google session will reveal several sites dedicated to the belief that Toshinori Seto, the brave, selfless captain who chose to bring down Sun Air Flight 678 in an unpopulated area rather than cause more casualties, was possessed by suicidal spirits. Another insists that all four planes were targeted by malevolent ETs. Crash investigators have pointed out in no uncertain terms that terrorist activity can be ruled out–especially in the case of the Dalu Air crash in Africa where the traffic controllers’ reports confirm that this disaster was due to pilot error–but there are anti-Islamic websites being created by the minute. And the religious nuts–it’s a sign from God!–are fast catching up with them.

  An event of this magnitude is bound to transfix the world’s attention, but why are people so fast to think the worst or waste their time believing in frankly bizarre and convoluted theories? Sure, the odds of this happening are infinitesimal, but come on! Are we that bored? Are we all, at heart, just Internet trolls?

  By far the most poisonous are the rumours and theories being circulated about the three child survivors, Bobby Small, Hiro Yanagida and Jessica Craddock, who, for the sake of brevity, I’m going to call The Three. And I blame the media who are ensuring that the public’s greed for information about these poor mites is fed on the hour. In Japan, they’re climbing over walls for pictures of the poor boy who, let’s not forget, lost his mother in the accident. Others rushed to the crash site, hampering rescue operations. In the UK and the US, little Jessica Craddock and Bobby Small are taking up more front-page space than the Royal Family’s latest gaffe.

  More than most, I know how stressful that relentless attention and speculation can be. When I split from my second husband and chose to write about the intimate details of our separation in this very column, I found myself in the centre of a media storm. For two weeks I could barely step outside my front door without a paparazzo popping up to try and snap me without my make-up on. I can empathise completely with what The Three are going through, and so can eighteen-year-old Zainab Farra, who, ten years ago, was the only survivor of another devastating air accident, when Royale Air 715 crashed on take-off at Addis Ababa airport. Like The Three, Zainab was the only child survivor. Like The Three, afterwards she found herself in the centre of a media circus. Zainab recently published her autobiography, Wind Beneath my Wings, and has publicly called for The Three to be left alone so that they can come to terms with their miraculous survival. ‘They are not freaks,’ she says. ‘They are children. Please, what they need now is space and time to heal and process what they have been through.’

  Amen to that. We should be thanking our lucky stars that they were saved at all, not wasting our time building bizarre conspiracy theories around them or making them the subject of front-page gossip. The Three–I salute you, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you all find peace while you deal with the terrible events that took your parents.

  Neville Olson, a Los Angeles-based freelance paparazzi photographer, was found dead in his apartment on 23 January 2012. Although the bizarre mann
er of his death became front page news, this is the first time his neighbour, Stevie Flanagan, who discovered his remains, has spoken publicly.

  You got to be a particular kind of person to do what Neville did for a living. I asked him once if he felt dirty doing it, hiding in bushes waiting to get an up-skirt shot of whichever starlet was flavour of the month, but he said he was just doing what the public wanted him to do. He specialised in the dirt, like those shots he got of Corinna Sanchez buying coke in Compton–how he even knew she’d be in that neighbourhood, he never said; least not to me. He was cagey about how he got his info.

  It kinda goes without saying that Neville was a little weird. A loner. I guess his work suited his personality. I met him when he was moving into the unit downstairs from me. The place where we lived at the time, it’s this split-level complex in El Segundo. Lots of people who lived there worked at LAX, so you got people coming and going at all hours. I was working for One Time Car Rental, so the place suited me. Convenient. I wouldn’t say we were close friends or anything like that, but if we ran into each other, we’d shoot the shit. I never saw anyone visiting him and I never saw him with a woman, not once, or a guy. He kinda came across as asexual. A couple of months after he moved in, he asked me if I wanted to come over and ‘meet his roommates’. I thought maybe he’d asked someone in to help share the rent, so I said, sure. I was curious to see what type of person would get along with him.

  I almost puked when I went into his unit the first time. Shit, man, it stank. Don’t know how to describe it, guess you could say it was kinda like a mix of rotten fish and meat. It was hot and dark in there, too–the curtains were drawn and the A.C. wasn’t on. I was like, what the fuck? Then I saw something moving in the corner of the room–this large shadow–and it looked like it was heading straight for me. I couldn’t take in what I was seeing at first, then I realised it was a massive fucking lizard. I yelled and Neville laughed liked crazy. He was waiting for my reaction. Told me to chill, said, ‘Don’t worry, that’s just George.’ All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there, but I was trying not to be a pussy, you know? I asked Neville what the fuck he was doing with a thing like that in the apartment and he just shrugged, said he had three of the fucking things–monitors from Africa or whatever–and that most of the time he let them run around, rather than keep them in their cages or aquariums. He said they were really intelligent, ‘Clever as pigs or dogs.’ I asked him if they were dangerous and he showed me this jagged scar on his wrist. ‘Big flap of skin came off it,’ he said, and you could tell he was proud of it. ‘But they’re usually cool if you treat them right.’ I asked him what they ate, and he was like, ‘Baby rats. Live ones. Get them from a wholesaler.’ Imagine that being your job, huh, baby rat merchant? He went into this whole spiel about how some people were against feeding rodents to monitors, and all that time I just watched that thing. Willing it not to get too close to me. That wasn’t all, he kept his snake collection and his spiders in his bedroom. Aquariums everywhere. Went on and on about how tarantulas make the best pets. Later, they said he was an animal hoarder.