R.O.D: Do I-jin Dream of Electric Books 03
Chapter Title: We Can Build You
Rating: M
Length: 4786
Warnings: Will eventually include depictions of violence, coarse language, spoilers for R.O.D the TV, the English released Manga, and the use of Google as a plot device.
Summary: Follows from the end of R.O.D the TV. In the wake of the fall of Dokusensha and The British Library, there is another organisation seeking control over the information economy. What will come of the Google Books deal? Previous Chapters 00|01|02
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Yomiko Readman had a secret. She'd almost hoped that somebody had asked her what it was. They all knew that she'd seen what the British Library had done to Donnie, that Anita had been there to witness her rage. That it had involved Nancy and Junior and everyone, really. But they didn't seem to know how, and they never thought to ask.
She wondered, some days, if they already knew. It was a pretty simple and lame joke, after all. Joseph Carpenter, Jo-Car, the Joker, he had loved puns. He'd always had a rotten and twisted sense of humour. The thought of sweet little Wendy, giggling at them in awe of the man, letting his agenda warp her sense of rightness and dignity...
Ah, Yomiko had too many memories inside her. She rolled over, kicked her legs against the mattress of her bed, just kicking until her calves throbbed and stung from it. She was trying to read, but her mind kept on returning to Donnie. She couldn't focus on the words on the page, there were too many already swimming around in her head.
It made a sort of sense, in a way. They'd had the final confrontation. They'd been traumatised and then they'd had that down-time to reconnect. Only now that Nancy had left - and without any warning - Yomiko had found herself abruptly alone with her own thoughts for the first time in years. It was like she'd had a self-protective mechanism in place to hold back the true horror of it all, because if she allowed herself to even think that sort of thing around Nancy, well then...
So, the joke. She'd been thinking about the joke behind it all. The name, the I-jin. The nickname they used for the genetic origins of the various clones. In Japanese if you were Nihon-jin, Japan-jin, you were born to Japanese parents (for the most part). The same with America-jin, India-jin. The word for person and the word for nationality or ancestry. Yomiko was one half England-jin, which was why she'd been allowed to travel there to the British Library so easily during her youth.
I-jin was a terrible pun based on ancestry and nationality and inheritance. Also, maybe, one based on the recent popularity of Apple's gadgets, given the secrecy and designer nature of the clones that had been produced. I-jin 3.0, running OS-X wasn't too far from the truth. But more than anything else it was a cruel joke at Yomiko's - and Donnie's and eventually Ridley's - expense that she should have recognised much sooner than she had.
Donnie-jin. I-jin, for short. In Japanese, spelt out phonetically, you could see the resemblance. No way was it a joke. DonnI-jin, the British Library's big damned secret weaponry, and Joseph Carpenter snickering into a teacup as Wendy blinked in confusion. Yomiko was never sure now, whether thinking about it made her want to choke to death, or cry, or just let go and lash out again in a burst of emotion, paper whirling around as her mind turned blissfully blank. It came on like hysteria, in sobbing gasps. She couldn't ever remember if she started laughing or crying first, but it always turned out to be fists clutched in her hair, fingernails digging in and legs curling up into her body, as if she could shrink herself down into someone much smaller. Someone who wouldn't be capable of feeling all this.
Because the first Nancy had the cocky grin that Donnie used to have, when he was showing off a flashy special move in training, or sharing a secret laugh with Ridley while Yomiko practised her lessons. Michelle had that exuberance, found that joy in others that Donnie had always shared with his friends. Maggie had his silence, strength, shyness, and his blush - she had his blush! Anita, despite their colour, she had his eyes. The same eyes that looked at Yomiko, straight into her, the day she thought she had killed him. First hateful and cold, then melting into desperate aching hope and forgiveness and love. It was unfair that Anita watched her through those eyes.
She saw him in Junior, even. A boy who was the offspring from two I-jin, second generation, who would maybe display even more of Donnie's genetics and traits as he aged. He seemed to carry all of Donnie's childhood trauma and depression. He'd probably been trained the same way, which only made things worse. When Donnie had episodes like that, all distant and closed-off and stiff, Yomiko hadn't had any idea what had been going on. Not until years later when Ridley revealed the true extent of the British Library's abuse, and the terrible things that had been done to all those children, Donnie and Ridley included. When Junior was emptied and shut-down psychologically from the horror of what Wendy and Joker and by inaction Yomiko herself had done to him, she couldn't even see Junior. She saw a boy that might have been Donnie, slumped in some imagined prison, knuckles scraped raw and numb with terror.
She hoped none of them knew. Partly because it hurt her own heart, and if she had to live with that and Donnie's sweet understanding pity and love in all their eyes, she'd go mad. For certain, she'd go utterly mad. Partly because it was such a stupid joke, and a cruel one to be allowed to persist in either Japanese or English words, and partly because as long as they assumed that the label I-jin was irrelevant in their current lives, they might have the chance at a happy free life.
Small parts of Donnie, living on in his genetic descendants, reading and living and loving and communing with paper. It would have been beautiful, if it wasn't for the image in Yomiko's memory of his face half cut away, his brain and organs and skin being slowly regrown and harvested over and over again. The tanks.
Joker had told her that they had needed to keep him both conscious and alive. They needed his brain functioning, like Gentlemen's, so that they could copy the important parts of his mind across accurately. She had seen the video footage of electric probes and magnets being used on the cloned meat-shells, forcing the I-jin brains to mimic and learn the emotions that triggered supernatural abilities, and...
And sometimes Yomiko wondered if she herself was one of them. Not cloned from Donnie, of course, but from a previous paper user. She was number nineteen. There had been more than enough before, to run experiments on. She'd had parents, but they had sent her quite willingly over to train at the British Library, and they hadn't been home or in contact for years, and...
Ahh! She was supposed to be reading, not thinking like this! But she supposed that the thoughts all had to come trickling out eventually. She couldn't stop her own brain from working through what it needed to, to keep functioning sanely. It would be unhealthy to repress it all.
But it hurt too much. No. She didn't care enough about mental health or long-term benefits, it hurt too much. Yomiko reached for one of the other books around her bed, knowing exactly which one she wanted now. It was one of Nenene's earliest, and she read the thing whenever she was depressed for one reason alone: there was a side character who watched over the female lead, caring and distant. A professor-type, gentle and intelligent and well-read. In those short moments he was in the story, though hardly anything about him was described, she could almost feel Donnie sitting beside her.
For the next few hours she was held together by prose alone. Feeling her heart slowly fade and relax until it was no longer stuck in her throat. She began to feel a little silly and sheepish about the scabs she'd probably end up with on her scalp, and a little regretful about her depression. Donnie had probably died years ago, now. Even before they destroyed the British Library and all it stood for. He would have become discarded pieces of biology, leftover meat that didn't hold the real him any more. What she had now with her friends? It was something more than she'd ever been able to hope for, when she'd met his eyes and stabbed right through his heart.
Now she had the chance to make Nancy and Junior and Anita and maybe even the other Paper Sisters happy. It mightn't count in law or any technical sense, but these people were as good as Donnie's children. His legacy to the world. They'd already undone a lot of the evil that Donnie and Yomiko had wrought on behalf of the Library. They'd undone the Library itself, even!
With the Google books deal in the news and shining in their eyes, Yomiko could see that they'd probably get involved again. If they were, she'd be there right alongside them. If Donnie got to sacrifice himself for her sake, all those years ago, then she'd be damned if she didn't take all opportunities she had to protect what was left of him.
All romanticism aside, she was still a coward who wanted to die. She had to be honest with herself. She just wanted, on a deeper level, to escape this all and read. And read. And read. And never have to face the world again. She reached blindly for the next best book as she felt the tears rise like a tide to the back of her eyes. Her current one wasn't being an effective distraction at all.
But then the door was opening, letting light into the room, and Anita was pushing in. She'd brought another pile of papers along with her. Boring legal documents and news articles. Angry on behalf of Nenene, Hisami and all authors everywhere, the kid had joined this international network of information. Taking copyright laws and the settlement and trying to empower authors globally to respond to the US legal system's handling of the Google Books settlement.
They had longer now that the judge had insisted on revising the information, as if he felt bad that the Author's Guild had effectively sold out. Yomiko had agreed helplessly to be a translator and help - she could only do English to Japanese, but that was still good enough. She passed her completed Japanese documents on to a shopkeeper in Jinbochou, who in turn copied them out in Korean.
“Got some more work for you today.”
Anita dropped the pile down on the mattress beside Yomiko, and began inspecting the most recent piles of books nearer to the door. After a few half-hearted arguments, Yomiko had agreed to let her borrow a few every now and then. But Anita didn't pick up anything, just scrutinised the titles and fidgeted with the dustcovers.
“Bah, it's like this!” She burst out with suddenly. Yomiko's attention had drifted back to her book, and it came as a bit of a shock.
“Pardon, sorry?”
“It's that brat, Junior. He's not bad, as such, but he's just... a boy. In my house.”
It was an odd juxtaposition to Yomiko's own train of thought, to say the least. She blinked, remembering that sharing a house wasn't always the best of situations. “I see,” Yomiko spoke cautiously, not wanting to touch upon any sensitive points. “I can't say I've had to live with any boys myself, before. I don't think that fathers count. Do they count?”
Anita gave Yomiko a baffled glance, as if she'd said something entirely absurd. The girl made a scoffing noise and turned away, continuing to talk as she browsed one of the more stably stacked shelves in the room.
“How should I know? Closest I've ever come to a father is Gentleman! Anyway, he does gross things. Like, he pairs his dirty socks, which is weird. And stinks. And he stares at Michelle's tits, like he's never seen a woman before. What the hell is wrong with him? Get your eyes off my sister, you jerk! Just because you're one of us, doesn't mean you're family!”
Yomiko took a moment to process the jumble of sounds that had come out of Anita. “So it's okay for family to ogle each other? Wait, no, sorry.” Yomiko held her hand up to stop Anita, whose mouth was already open and gasping to retort.
“Sorry. That last part confused me a bit, but it makes sense. But I um, I've heard on good authority that all boys about Junior's age - even highly educated boys in British Library boarding schools - think about that sort of thing. I think it's hormonal. Not that it makes that kind of behaviour any better...”
Anita made a disgusted face and stuck her tongue out. “Yuck. You'll never catch me doing that.” Anita turned her back on the room, checking out one particular book more closely.
Yomiko shrugged, and eyed the papers for translation. She could get to them later. It wasn't like there was any rush. Well, no more than usual. If they were really pressed for time, Anita would be nagging her instead of pottering about the place and making idle chatter. She flopped onto her back on the bed and picked up her book again. She was halfway through the last sentence she had been reading, when-
“Really? Really?!” Anita sounded curious, a bit astonished. “Did you spy on what they were doing with him, then? What else do you know?!”
Sighing, Yomiko closed her book around her index finger and gave up on reading any time soon. “Him? No, not Junior. The British Library used to run a whole schooling program. Even before my time. When I was in high school, I met someone who'd been through it. He told me a few, ahem, stories.”
“Really? Who was it?”
Yomiko delayed answering for a few seconds, holding her breath against that familiar clutching ache in her chest and slipping a bookmark into her place instead of her finger. She'd have to find a way to mention Donnie in passing - she'd brought him up anyway, thoughtlessly and instinctively - without getting tense or emotional.
Before she had gathered herself enough to answer, Anita's mouth was opened in a silent “oh”. She put the book she was holding down and looked at Yomiko apologetically. “Sorry, of course it was Nakajima.”
“How did you find out about him, anyway?” It could be useful, if Yomiko knew how much they knew about Donnie. Know what she had to pretend not to know herself.
Anita shrugged. “I'm not sure. There was some stuff on him in the stuff we found out, when Dokusensha and The British Library were still around. But when that Gentlemen thing showed up? I think I got some information from that, somehow. Weird things that stuck around. Sometimes when I think about things, especially library catalogues, I get these ideas in my head that don't feel entirely like me.”
“Oh, my.” There wasn't much more that Yomiko could say in response. How had they gotten onto this topic, anyway? She hadn't meant to come off on this tangent, or to get so close to the secrets that she still wanted to be keeping close to her chest. She stared down at her own fingers for a long three seconds, before she remembered what Anita had been worried about in the first place.
“In any case, Donnie was a very well read and polite young man. But, he told me, he still liked reading porn best at that age. Boys just develop a high sexual drive early in life, and then it slowly slows down over life. Girls are different, I think. We have this slow incremental development, and the highest sexual activity is about what, thirty, or so? I think that's what it was...”
Yomiko was rambling, she knew it, and winced at her own words, but they worked; Anita was staring into space herself and connecting what Yomiko had said back with the start of their conversation. She was obviously less furious than she'd been when she came in. Whatever it was about Junior that was upsetting her most had faded away. Instead of talking more about boys, Anita was looking at Yomiko thoughtfully.
“Like you, you mean?”
“I am going to pretend that you didn't say that. Please, don't think about me and sex. The last time a schoolgirl had a crush on me...”
Anita scrunched her face in disgust. “Shit, you mean Nene-ne, don't you? Oh, ew!”
It was, maybe, a little too easy to bait someone like Anita. She didn't blush like Donnie had, just looked affronted and upset, but it was still easy to get a reaction. “Oh don't be like that, poor Sumiregawa-Sensei! You mean you've never had a crush on anyone?”
All right, maybe it was just as easy to make Anita blush as it was Donnie, if you knew the right things to touch upon. Instead of yelling like she often did, Anita just scuffed her feet about and tried to hide her pink cheeks. They went back to their books, and an awkward kind of comfortable silence fell between them. Often, Yomiko found it hard to know when conversations were over, or when people wanted to leave. When it was and was not rude to say goodbye, when it would upset someone. She was pretty sure she had thoughtlessly and entirely unintentionally hurt Nenene's feelings that way.
Luckily Anita needed no such considerations. She just picked up a few books here and there, nodded and saluted Yomiko with them on her way out through the door. Unlike most of the admittedly few guests Yomiko had in her apartment, Anita didn't knock over any piles. The books simply shrugged and sighed and amicably accommodated the presence of a paper user.
So, there was silence. Now that she had the space to focus on her book alone, she couldn't. Too full of words. Even more words, now. Too many. Yomiko gave up on them and turned to the easier job of translation. It was easier to focus on words that meant nothing, and needed a dictionary for the tougher legalese. Before she knew it, she was fading out into a meditative state, palms flat-down on the documents on the table before her.
She finished it all in record time. Not even very late in the evening, and the streets below were still bustling with activity. Yomiko decided to walk the papers to the storekeeper right then, rather than waiting till morning. In the end, it was that that made all the difference in the world. She'd handed the copy of her translation over in a tidy envelope, and was making polite conversation about the new stock arrivals - having some set aside for herself - when the newspaper article pinned to the wall behind the register caught her eye. It was a photograph of the new President Cole, shaking hands with someone familiar looking, beneath the large headline that proclaimed Book Me Into the White House! - President Cole wins election on literary merits!
Yomiko apologised when she realised she'd trailed off and stopped listening to Mr. Murai. “Sorry, I just... I hadn't read about that. Could I take a closer look?”
He smiled eagerly and pulled the pins out, laid the rough greyish paper on the counter between them. “Yeah, scandalous, isn't it? They're saying that he's just a middleman, that Google's behind the government. But I know something different, from a friend in China, who paid close attention to Dokusensha after that mess you got yourself into with them. It's the government that's behind Google's book deal. Governmental representatives from that guy's state, they bought out Dokusensha. And the US military are the blokes who showed up to clean up London after it all. I bet -”
Yomiko didn't register anything else he said. She knew that profile, that half-smile, even those glasses anywhere. It was Donnie, shaking hands with President Cole. But it also wasn't. His posture, it was more reminiscent of Joker than the Donnie that she knew. What Mr. Murai was saying just confirmed her own suspicions. Donnie hadn't died, or at least his genes hadn't. President Cole must have known enough about the British Library's machinations to know exactly what to look for in the remains of The British Library and the various labs and training centres scattered around the world. She wondered if they'd used all of Donnie, of whatever was left of him... or if they'd just made the simplest clone they could make, with the genetic information that came from his remains. He didn't look like he was poorly made. He looked stable and sane and all there - for all that you could tell from a photograph. But he probably wasn't Donnie. Yomiko doubted if there had been enough left of his mind, his personality, for it to ever be truly Donnie again.
“It's disgusting.” She said vehemently, agreeing both with Mr. Murai's sentiments and her own revulsion. She patted the envelope on the counter, and nodded decisively. “But we're working on it.”
She didn't want to go home quite yet, but she also didn't want to stay in Jinbochou. Not that she wasn't comfortable in the bookstores, but she didn't want to chat happily with any of the regulars or shopkeepers. She'd had about enough conversations on the topic of books, America and Google for one day. Instead she walked along the streets beside small apartment blocks and local businesses. She craned her neck to look up at the electric hazy orange lights of Tokyo's skyline, and the blue-green of traffic lights. The place looked so different to London that somehow it reminded her of it. The yellowish bright streetlights, the sharp fluorescence of the tube stations and the tall imposing marble buildings that sat solemn and anachronistic between skyscrapers and shopping centres. In winter, even when snow made things fuzzy around the edges, there was this cool sharp edge to everything. Crisp like an apple at the back of your throat.
It had been wonderful perfection, to run up the stairs to Donnie's apartment. When she got to the top her hair was messy, her cheeks bright pink-red. He'd open the door to her, and suddenly she'd be in the easiest place in the world to be. In Japan, she was a half-caste madwoman, taller and softer and sweatier and hairier than was acceptable. She intimidated people just by being a polyglot, which was weird because fully Japanese people learned languages all the time without being thought strange. In England she was a short, timid shy-looking Asian girl. Cute, too-thin and too-frail and nobody ever believed that she'd spent holidays in the country every year for her entire childhood. But Donnie was just as half-caste as she was, and just as bookish as she was, and until she'd met him she'd never known you could feel that way with anyone other than your own family.
It woke something tribal up in her. Like she was recognising her own species, or at least her own culture. Donnie saw it in her too, she knew it. Without speaking or having to quantify it they both knew that whether they shared mentorship, friendship or something deeper they would cleave together as kindred souls for the rest of their lives. Falling in love was really just an afterthought. Sexual attraction came and went, but people that really belonged to each other were rare.
She'd cried over Donnie, felt depressed over Donnie, missed Donnie. But Yomiko had never done this before, strolling and remembering him fondly. There had always been that ache, even earlier in the day, when she was talking to Anita. This was something entirely new. She didn't miss him, didn't feel any regret or heartache. She didn't even feel guilt over having slept with Ridley - thinking all the while it was Donnie - or fury over how Joker had manipulated all of them into a hopeless self-destructive mess.
She just felt content and at peace. It was odd. Shouldn't she be angry or hurting inside? That photograph touched right back on everything that had motivated her for the last few years; the abuse and cloning, the betrayals and lies and revenge. She paused halfway across an overpass and leant against the barrier. She took her glasses off - Donnie's frames and her prescription lenses - and turned them in her hands so that she was looking at them, eye to eye, so to speak.
Maybe it was because there was no chance they weren't going to do something about it. Nancy had obviously disappeared earlier because she'd wanted to spare Yomiko the trauma of meeting a cloned Donnie. Perhaps the others were aware of it, too. At the very least the Three Paper Sisters and accompanying Best Writer Ever were already knee-deep in plotting regarding the Google Books affair. So she knew, just looking at that photograph, that somehow in the next year or two she'd get to America or Britain or wherever he was at the time, and meet him. She'd discover just how much of Donnie was left in him, if anything at all. More importantly, they would destroy President Cole and whoever else was at the core of this conspiracy. Whatever evil was represented by the newspaper article, they would find in in time enough to stop it.
Yomiko wasn't in any rush to have another big fight. She could wait a few months. In a way it was easy, even though it should be complicated. If the man was Donnie himself, in any way at all, he would work to help them. If he was not then he was just another I-jin; one that was possibly less familiar to her than the Paper Sisters, Nancy, and Junior were. If it came down to it she would of course choose to protect the true successors of Donnie's bibliomania and legacy. There was more to it than just genetics and appearances. It had to do with the way that you recognised people that were in your tribe. Yomiko mightn't have warmed to everyone as easily as she had to Donnie, but she still recognised them in that deep profound way. She was a part of them, and they of her.
She had to admit to the glasses as she held them before her face, silently, that if she was offered the original Donnie back, complete and sane and himself, she would sacrifice anyone in the world. Everyone in the world. But there was no chance in hell that his mind had survived the years in the clone-farm, let alone the aftermath of that final fight with Joker.
The cars of Tokyo squalled and bickered on the street below, and Yomiko found herself looking north-east. If she could see through the tall buildings and past the ocean, she was almost certain that she'd be able to see Wendy looking right back. Yomiko with her fingers tight around Donnie's glasses - Wendy's clutching a familiar teacup as she handed it to the exhausted shell of Joseph Carpenter's body - and both of them feeling the same. Knowing that they'd never get back what they had lost, but feeling fortunate to have had anything at all in the first place. It wasn't enough when you thought that there was still a chance for recovery. But now, with all hope and despair gone, there was peace enough to be had in that.
It was Christmas day, which wasn't celebrated so much in Japan even now, but Wendy and Joker were probably surrounded by snow and cards and well-wishers. Yomiko sighed and slipped her glasses back on. She must be getting old, if she was feeling this nostalgic about people. She'd seen Joker and Wendy more recently than she had her own parents, and certainly more recently than she'd seen most of her old acquaintances and friends. But at the very least, she felt capable of facing a book again, and if she was becoming an old spinster already then that was a good thing. She had maybe only another forty years of solid reading ahead of her before her eyes truly went beyond the point of no return. She took one more look at the skyline then turned sharply on her heel and headed to the companionship and solace of paper.
(chapter four)
This entry was originally posted at http://kurushi-ficage.dreamwidth.org/37343.html. Links to subsequent and previous chapters are updated at LJ every couple of months, until then everything may redirect to DW pages. Please comment there using OpenID.
Rating: M
Length: 4786
Warnings: Will eventually include depictions of violence, coarse language, spoilers for R.O.D the TV, the English released Manga, and the use of Google as a plot device.
Summary: Follows from the end of R.O.D the TV. In the wake of the fall of Dokusensha and The British Library, there is another organisation seeking control over the information economy. What will come of the Google Books deal? Previous Chapters 00|01|02
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Yomiko Readman had a secret. She'd almost hoped that somebody had asked her what it was. They all knew that she'd seen what the British Library had done to Donnie, that Anita had been there to witness her rage. That it had involved Nancy and Junior and everyone, really. But they didn't seem to know how, and they never thought to ask.
She wondered, some days, if they already knew. It was a pretty simple and lame joke, after all. Joseph Carpenter, Jo-Car, the Joker, he had loved puns. He'd always had a rotten and twisted sense of humour. The thought of sweet little Wendy, giggling at them in awe of the man, letting his agenda warp her sense of rightness and dignity...
Ah, Yomiko had too many memories inside her. She rolled over, kicked her legs against the mattress of her bed, just kicking until her calves throbbed and stung from it. She was trying to read, but her mind kept on returning to Donnie. She couldn't focus on the words on the page, there were too many already swimming around in her head.
It made a sort of sense, in a way. They'd had the final confrontation. They'd been traumatised and then they'd had that down-time to reconnect. Only now that Nancy had left - and without any warning - Yomiko had found herself abruptly alone with her own thoughts for the first time in years. It was like she'd had a self-protective mechanism in place to hold back the true horror of it all, because if she allowed herself to even think that sort of thing around Nancy, well then...
So, the joke. She'd been thinking about the joke behind it all. The name, the I-jin. The nickname they used for the genetic origins of the various clones. In Japanese if you were Nihon-jin, Japan-jin, you were born to Japanese parents (for the most part). The same with America-jin, India-jin. The word for person and the word for nationality or ancestry. Yomiko was one half England-jin, which was why she'd been allowed to travel there to the British Library so easily during her youth.
I-jin was a terrible pun based on ancestry and nationality and inheritance. Also, maybe, one based on the recent popularity of Apple's gadgets, given the secrecy and designer nature of the clones that had been produced. I-jin 3.0, running OS-X wasn't too far from the truth. But more than anything else it was a cruel joke at Yomiko's - and Donnie's and eventually Ridley's - expense that she should have recognised much sooner than she had.
Donnie-jin. I-jin, for short. In Japanese, spelt out phonetically, you could see the resemblance. No way was it a joke. DonnI-jin, the British Library's big damned secret weaponry, and Joseph Carpenter snickering into a teacup as Wendy blinked in confusion. Yomiko was never sure now, whether thinking about it made her want to choke to death, or cry, or just let go and lash out again in a burst of emotion, paper whirling around as her mind turned blissfully blank. It came on like hysteria, in sobbing gasps. She couldn't ever remember if she started laughing or crying first, but it always turned out to be fists clutched in her hair, fingernails digging in and legs curling up into her body, as if she could shrink herself down into someone much smaller. Someone who wouldn't be capable of feeling all this.
Because the first Nancy had the cocky grin that Donnie used to have, when he was showing off a flashy special move in training, or sharing a secret laugh with Ridley while Yomiko practised her lessons. Michelle had that exuberance, found that joy in others that Donnie had always shared with his friends. Maggie had his silence, strength, shyness, and his blush - she had his blush! Anita, despite their colour, she had his eyes. The same eyes that looked at Yomiko, straight into her, the day she thought she had killed him. First hateful and cold, then melting into desperate aching hope and forgiveness and love. It was unfair that Anita watched her through those eyes.
She saw him in Junior, even. A boy who was the offspring from two I-jin, second generation, who would maybe display even more of Donnie's genetics and traits as he aged. He seemed to carry all of Donnie's childhood trauma and depression. He'd probably been trained the same way, which only made things worse. When Donnie had episodes like that, all distant and closed-off and stiff, Yomiko hadn't had any idea what had been going on. Not until years later when Ridley revealed the true extent of the British Library's abuse, and the terrible things that had been done to all those children, Donnie and Ridley included. When Junior was emptied and shut-down psychologically from the horror of what Wendy and Joker and by inaction Yomiko herself had done to him, she couldn't even see Junior. She saw a boy that might have been Donnie, slumped in some imagined prison, knuckles scraped raw and numb with terror.
She hoped none of them knew. Partly because it hurt her own heart, and if she had to live with that and Donnie's sweet understanding pity and love in all their eyes, she'd go mad. For certain, she'd go utterly mad. Partly because it was such a stupid joke, and a cruel one to be allowed to persist in either Japanese or English words, and partly because as long as they assumed that the label I-jin was irrelevant in their current lives, they might have the chance at a happy free life.
Small parts of Donnie, living on in his genetic descendants, reading and living and loving and communing with paper. It would have been beautiful, if it wasn't for the image in Yomiko's memory of his face half cut away, his brain and organs and skin being slowly regrown and harvested over and over again. The tanks.
Joker had told her that they had needed to keep him both conscious and alive. They needed his brain functioning, like Gentlemen's, so that they could copy the important parts of his mind across accurately. She had seen the video footage of electric probes and magnets being used on the cloned meat-shells, forcing the I-jin brains to mimic and learn the emotions that triggered supernatural abilities, and...
And sometimes Yomiko wondered if she herself was one of them. Not cloned from Donnie, of course, but from a previous paper user. She was number nineteen. There had been more than enough before, to run experiments on. She'd had parents, but they had sent her quite willingly over to train at the British Library, and they hadn't been home or in contact for years, and...
Ahh! She was supposed to be reading, not thinking like this! But she supposed that the thoughts all had to come trickling out eventually. She couldn't stop her own brain from working through what it needed to, to keep functioning sanely. It would be unhealthy to repress it all.
But it hurt too much. No. She didn't care enough about mental health or long-term benefits, it hurt too much. Yomiko reached for one of the other books around her bed, knowing exactly which one she wanted now. It was one of Nenene's earliest, and she read the thing whenever she was depressed for one reason alone: there was a side character who watched over the female lead, caring and distant. A professor-type, gentle and intelligent and well-read. In those short moments he was in the story, though hardly anything about him was described, she could almost feel Donnie sitting beside her.
For the next few hours she was held together by prose alone. Feeling her heart slowly fade and relax until it was no longer stuck in her throat. She began to feel a little silly and sheepish about the scabs she'd probably end up with on her scalp, and a little regretful about her depression. Donnie had probably died years ago, now. Even before they destroyed the British Library and all it stood for. He would have become discarded pieces of biology, leftover meat that didn't hold the real him any more. What she had now with her friends? It was something more than she'd ever been able to hope for, when she'd met his eyes and stabbed right through his heart.
Now she had the chance to make Nancy and Junior and Anita and maybe even the other Paper Sisters happy. It mightn't count in law or any technical sense, but these people were as good as Donnie's children. His legacy to the world. They'd already undone a lot of the evil that Donnie and Yomiko had wrought on behalf of the Library. They'd undone the Library itself, even!
With the Google books deal in the news and shining in their eyes, Yomiko could see that they'd probably get involved again. If they were, she'd be there right alongside them. If Donnie got to sacrifice himself for her sake, all those years ago, then she'd be damned if she didn't take all opportunities she had to protect what was left of him.
All romanticism aside, she was still a coward who wanted to die. She had to be honest with herself. She just wanted, on a deeper level, to escape this all and read. And read. And read. And never have to face the world again. She reached blindly for the next best book as she felt the tears rise like a tide to the back of her eyes. Her current one wasn't being an effective distraction at all.
But then the door was opening, letting light into the room, and Anita was pushing in. She'd brought another pile of papers along with her. Boring legal documents and news articles. Angry on behalf of Nenene, Hisami and all authors everywhere, the kid had joined this international network of information. Taking copyright laws and the settlement and trying to empower authors globally to respond to the US legal system's handling of the Google Books settlement.
They had longer now that the judge had insisted on revising the information, as if he felt bad that the Author's Guild had effectively sold out. Yomiko had agreed helplessly to be a translator and help - she could only do English to Japanese, but that was still good enough. She passed her completed Japanese documents on to a shopkeeper in Jinbochou, who in turn copied them out in Korean.
“Got some more work for you today.”
Anita dropped the pile down on the mattress beside Yomiko, and began inspecting the most recent piles of books nearer to the door. After a few half-hearted arguments, Yomiko had agreed to let her borrow a few every now and then. But Anita didn't pick up anything, just scrutinised the titles and fidgeted with the dustcovers.
“Bah, it's like this!” She burst out with suddenly. Yomiko's attention had drifted back to her book, and it came as a bit of a shock.
“Pardon, sorry?”
“It's that brat, Junior. He's not bad, as such, but he's just... a boy. In my house.”
It was an odd juxtaposition to Yomiko's own train of thought, to say the least. She blinked, remembering that sharing a house wasn't always the best of situations. “I see,” Yomiko spoke cautiously, not wanting to touch upon any sensitive points. “I can't say I've had to live with any boys myself, before. I don't think that fathers count. Do they count?”
Anita gave Yomiko a baffled glance, as if she'd said something entirely absurd. The girl made a scoffing noise and turned away, continuing to talk as she browsed one of the more stably stacked shelves in the room.
“How should I know? Closest I've ever come to a father is Gentleman! Anyway, he does gross things. Like, he pairs his dirty socks, which is weird. And stinks. And he stares at Michelle's tits, like he's never seen a woman before. What the hell is wrong with him? Get your eyes off my sister, you jerk! Just because you're one of us, doesn't mean you're family!”
Yomiko took a moment to process the jumble of sounds that had come out of Anita. “So it's okay for family to ogle each other? Wait, no, sorry.” Yomiko held her hand up to stop Anita, whose mouth was already open and gasping to retort.
“Sorry. That last part confused me a bit, but it makes sense. But I um, I've heard on good authority that all boys about Junior's age - even highly educated boys in British Library boarding schools - think about that sort of thing. I think it's hormonal. Not that it makes that kind of behaviour any better...”
Anita made a disgusted face and stuck her tongue out. “Yuck. You'll never catch me doing that.” Anita turned her back on the room, checking out one particular book more closely.
Yomiko shrugged, and eyed the papers for translation. She could get to them later. It wasn't like there was any rush. Well, no more than usual. If they were really pressed for time, Anita would be nagging her instead of pottering about the place and making idle chatter. She flopped onto her back on the bed and picked up her book again. She was halfway through the last sentence she had been reading, when-
“Really? Really?!” Anita sounded curious, a bit astonished. “Did you spy on what they were doing with him, then? What else do you know?!”
Sighing, Yomiko closed her book around her index finger and gave up on reading any time soon. “Him? No, not Junior. The British Library used to run a whole schooling program. Even before my time. When I was in high school, I met someone who'd been through it. He told me a few, ahem, stories.”
“Really? Who was it?”
Yomiko delayed answering for a few seconds, holding her breath against that familiar clutching ache in her chest and slipping a bookmark into her place instead of her finger. She'd have to find a way to mention Donnie in passing - she'd brought him up anyway, thoughtlessly and instinctively - without getting tense or emotional.
Before she had gathered herself enough to answer, Anita's mouth was opened in a silent “oh”. She put the book she was holding down and looked at Yomiko apologetically. “Sorry, of course it was Nakajima.”
“How did you find out about him, anyway?” It could be useful, if Yomiko knew how much they knew about Donnie. Know what she had to pretend not to know herself.
Anita shrugged. “I'm not sure. There was some stuff on him in the stuff we found out, when Dokusensha and The British Library were still around. But when that Gentlemen thing showed up? I think I got some information from that, somehow. Weird things that stuck around. Sometimes when I think about things, especially library catalogues, I get these ideas in my head that don't feel entirely like me.”
“Oh, my.” There wasn't much more that Yomiko could say in response. How had they gotten onto this topic, anyway? She hadn't meant to come off on this tangent, or to get so close to the secrets that she still wanted to be keeping close to her chest. She stared down at her own fingers for a long three seconds, before she remembered what Anita had been worried about in the first place.
“In any case, Donnie was a very well read and polite young man. But, he told me, he still liked reading porn best at that age. Boys just develop a high sexual drive early in life, and then it slowly slows down over life. Girls are different, I think. We have this slow incremental development, and the highest sexual activity is about what, thirty, or so? I think that's what it was...”
Yomiko was rambling, she knew it, and winced at her own words, but they worked; Anita was staring into space herself and connecting what Yomiko had said back with the start of their conversation. She was obviously less furious than she'd been when she came in. Whatever it was about Junior that was upsetting her most had faded away. Instead of talking more about boys, Anita was looking at Yomiko thoughtfully.
“Like you, you mean?”
“I am going to pretend that you didn't say that. Please, don't think about me and sex. The last time a schoolgirl had a crush on me...”
Anita scrunched her face in disgust. “Shit, you mean Nene-ne, don't you? Oh, ew!”
It was, maybe, a little too easy to bait someone like Anita. She didn't blush like Donnie had, just looked affronted and upset, but it was still easy to get a reaction. “Oh don't be like that, poor Sumiregawa-Sensei! You mean you've never had a crush on anyone?”
All right, maybe it was just as easy to make Anita blush as it was Donnie, if you knew the right things to touch upon. Instead of yelling like she often did, Anita just scuffed her feet about and tried to hide her pink cheeks. They went back to their books, and an awkward kind of comfortable silence fell between them. Often, Yomiko found it hard to know when conversations were over, or when people wanted to leave. When it was and was not rude to say goodbye, when it would upset someone. She was pretty sure she had thoughtlessly and entirely unintentionally hurt Nenene's feelings that way.
Luckily Anita needed no such considerations. She just picked up a few books here and there, nodded and saluted Yomiko with them on her way out through the door. Unlike most of the admittedly few guests Yomiko had in her apartment, Anita didn't knock over any piles. The books simply shrugged and sighed and amicably accommodated the presence of a paper user.
So, there was silence. Now that she had the space to focus on her book alone, she couldn't. Too full of words. Even more words, now. Too many. Yomiko gave up on them and turned to the easier job of translation. It was easier to focus on words that meant nothing, and needed a dictionary for the tougher legalese. Before she knew it, she was fading out into a meditative state, palms flat-down on the documents on the table before her.
She finished it all in record time. Not even very late in the evening, and the streets below were still bustling with activity. Yomiko decided to walk the papers to the storekeeper right then, rather than waiting till morning. In the end, it was that that made all the difference in the world. She'd handed the copy of her translation over in a tidy envelope, and was making polite conversation about the new stock arrivals - having some set aside for herself - when the newspaper article pinned to the wall behind the register caught her eye. It was a photograph of the new President Cole, shaking hands with someone familiar looking, beneath the large headline that proclaimed Book Me Into the White House! - President Cole wins election on literary merits!
Yomiko apologised when she realised she'd trailed off and stopped listening to Mr. Murai. “Sorry, I just... I hadn't read about that. Could I take a closer look?”
He smiled eagerly and pulled the pins out, laid the rough greyish paper on the counter between them. “Yeah, scandalous, isn't it? They're saying that he's just a middleman, that Google's behind the government. But I know something different, from a friend in China, who paid close attention to Dokusensha after that mess you got yourself into with them. It's the government that's behind Google's book deal. Governmental representatives from that guy's state, they bought out Dokusensha. And the US military are the blokes who showed up to clean up London after it all. I bet -”
Yomiko didn't register anything else he said. She knew that profile, that half-smile, even those glasses anywhere. It was Donnie, shaking hands with President Cole. But it also wasn't. His posture, it was more reminiscent of Joker than the Donnie that she knew. What Mr. Murai was saying just confirmed her own suspicions. Donnie hadn't died, or at least his genes hadn't. President Cole must have known enough about the British Library's machinations to know exactly what to look for in the remains of The British Library and the various labs and training centres scattered around the world. She wondered if they'd used all of Donnie, of whatever was left of him... or if they'd just made the simplest clone they could make, with the genetic information that came from his remains. He didn't look like he was poorly made. He looked stable and sane and all there - for all that you could tell from a photograph. But he probably wasn't Donnie. Yomiko doubted if there had been enough left of his mind, his personality, for it to ever be truly Donnie again.
“It's disgusting.” She said vehemently, agreeing both with Mr. Murai's sentiments and her own revulsion. She patted the envelope on the counter, and nodded decisively. “But we're working on it.”
She didn't want to go home quite yet, but she also didn't want to stay in Jinbochou. Not that she wasn't comfortable in the bookstores, but she didn't want to chat happily with any of the regulars or shopkeepers. She'd had about enough conversations on the topic of books, America and Google for one day. Instead she walked along the streets beside small apartment blocks and local businesses. She craned her neck to look up at the electric hazy orange lights of Tokyo's skyline, and the blue-green of traffic lights. The place looked so different to London that somehow it reminded her of it. The yellowish bright streetlights, the sharp fluorescence of the tube stations and the tall imposing marble buildings that sat solemn and anachronistic between skyscrapers and shopping centres. In winter, even when snow made things fuzzy around the edges, there was this cool sharp edge to everything. Crisp like an apple at the back of your throat.
It had been wonderful perfection, to run up the stairs to Donnie's apartment. When she got to the top her hair was messy, her cheeks bright pink-red. He'd open the door to her, and suddenly she'd be in the easiest place in the world to be. In Japan, she was a half-caste madwoman, taller and softer and sweatier and hairier than was acceptable. She intimidated people just by being a polyglot, which was weird because fully Japanese people learned languages all the time without being thought strange. In England she was a short, timid shy-looking Asian girl. Cute, too-thin and too-frail and nobody ever believed that she'd spent holidays in the country every year for her entire childhood. But Donnie was just as half-caste as she was, and just as bookish as she was, and until she'd met him she'd never known you could feel that way with anyone other than your own family.
It woke something tribal up in her. Like she was recognising her own species, or at least her own culture. Donnie saw it in her too, she knew it. Without speaking or having to quantify it they both knew that whether they shared mentorship, friendship or something deeper they would cleave together as kindred souls for the rest of their lives. Falling in love was really just an afterthought. Sexual attraction came and went, but people that really belonged to each other were rare.
She'd cried over Donnie, felt depressed over Donnie, missed Donnie. But Yomiko had never done this before, strolling and remembering him fondly. There had always been that ache, even earlier in the day, when she was talking to Anita. This was something entirely new. She didn't miss him, didn't feel any regret or heartache. She didn't even feel guilt over having slept with Ridley - thinking all the while it was Donnie - or fury over how Joker had manipulated all of them into a hopeless self-destructive mess.
She just felt content and at peace. It was odd. Shouldn't she be angry or hurting inside? That photograph touched right back on everything that had motivated her for the last few years; the abuse and cloning, the betrayals and lies and revenge. She paused halfway across an overpass and leant against the barrier. She took her glasses off - Donnie's frames and her prescription lenses - and turned them in her hands so that she was looking at them, eye to eye, so to speak.
Maybe it was because there was no chance they weren't going to do something about it. Nancy had obviously disappeared earlier because she'd wanted to spare Yomiko the trauma of meeting a cloned Donnie. Perhaps the others were aware of it, too. At the very least the Three Paper Sisters and accompanying Best Writer Ever were already knee-deep in plotting regarding the Google Books affair. So she knew, just looking at that photograph, that somehow in the next year or two she'd get to America or Britain or wherever he was at the time, and meet him. She'd discover just how much of Donnie was left in him, if anything at all. More importantly, they would destroy President Cole and whoever else was at the core of this conspiracy. Whatever evil was represented by the newspaper article, they would find in in time enough to stop it.
Yomiko wasn't in any rush to have another big fight. She could wait a few months. In a way it was easy, even though it should be complicated. If the man was Donnie himself, in any way at all, he would work to help them. If he was not then he was just another I-jin; one that was possibly less familiar to her than the Paper Sisters, Nancy, and Junior were. If it came down to it she would of course choose to protect the true successors of Donnie's bibliomania and legacy. There was more to it than just genetics and appearances. It had to do with the way that you recognised people that were in your tribe. Yomiko mightn't have warmed to everyone as easily as she had to Donnie, but she still recognised them in that deep profound way. She was a part of them, and they of her.
She had to admit to the glasses as she held them before her face, silently, that if she was offered the original Donnie back, complete and sane and himself, she would sacrifice anyone in the world. Everyone in the world. But there was no chance in hell that his mind had survived the years in the clone-farm, let alone the aftermath of that final fight with Joker.
The cars of Tokyo squalled and bickered on the street below, and Yomiko found herself looking north-east. If she could see through the tall buildings and past the ocean, she was almost certain that she'd be able to see Wendy looking right back. Yomiko with her fingers tight around Donnie's glasses - Wendy's clutching a familiar teacup as she handed it to the exhausted shell of Joseph Carpenter's body - and both of them feeling the same. Knowing that they'd never get back what they had lost, but feeling fortunate to have had anything at all in the first place. It wasn't enough when you thought that there was still a chance for recovery. But now, with all hope and despair gone, there was peace enough to be had in that.
It was Christmas day, which wasn't celebrated so much in Japan even now, but Wendy and Joker were probably surrounded by snow and cards and well-wishers. Yomiko sighed and slipped her glasses back on. She must be getting old, if she was feeling this nostalgic about people. She'd seen Joker and Wendy more recently than she had her own parents, and certainly more recently than she'd seen most of her old acquaintances and friends. But at the very least, she felt capable of facing a book again, and if she was becoming an old spinster already then that was a good thing. She had maybe only another forty years of solid reading ahead of her before her eyes truly went beyond the point of no return. She took one more look at the skyline then turned sharply on her heel and headed to the companionship and solace of paper.
(chapter four)
This entry was originally posted at http://kurushi-ficage.dreamwidth.org/37343.html. Links to subsequent and previous chapters are updated at LJ every couple of months, until then everything may redirect to DW pages. Please comment there using OpenID.