Aneurysm: Part 1 of 2
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Please read this. It is long, very long, so long that it must be split into two posts. It is entirely worksafe. I will provide all disclaimers at the end of the second post. The story takes place in on Earth, in Nagasaki, in 2011.
I am very proud of it.
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Aneurysm
or there are no such things as ghosts, just ghosts in the machine
Mithrigil Galtirglin
2011.02.17
13:30
Puccini was wrong, wrong, wrong.
According to Bock’s little toolbar-history-thingie, Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala on this day-Bock counted-a hundred and seven years ago. The paper mentioned it this morning too. Bock doesn’t have enough Japanese to actually read the paper, but the katakana in the headlines made that pretty clear, not to mention the picture under it of all the tourists and the surrounding festival. There’s a memorial to Cio Cio San on one of the hills just outside Nagasaki proper. A memorial to a fictional character, in an anti-American opera, set in Japan, written by an Italian.
…Not that Bock’s really any better, but he’s pretty sure Puccini was wrong about a lot.
Bock closes the popup and goes back to work-well, tries to get started. He may be working in Nagasaki but he’s still operating under American logic. Most of the programmers in his division come in late and stay late, work until a solid stopping place. Means he hasn’t seen the park that AVATAR overlooks in anything approaching daylight, but that could change.
The window pops up again. Apparently also on this day in history, the battle of Eniwetok began, some guy named Robert K. Preston stole a helicopter, and some other guy beat a supercomputer in chess. That last was in 1996.
Back to work. Seriousl-
Three more items. That little fact-finder never quits. Bock sighs. 2008, a state breaks off from Serbia. 2010, there’s only one Korea. And then, today.
Bock doesn’t think anything of note’s going to happen to-
--
17:12
David hisses in air through his teeth, loudly. “Bock.” He repeats it, and the disbelief isn’t gone. “Bock.”
“Did he know about what happened to the other four?”
“No,” David sighs. One of the forensics nudges him with an elbow, David steps aside and lets her work. The flash on her camera stutters. They’ve already chalk-circled where Bock’s body had been, already put up little placard numbers where the blood still is. Little drops between the laptop keys, longer streaks on the cubicle carpet. “No,” David repeats, “we’ve been keeping that under wraps.”
Asahi nods. His knuckles tighten uneasily around his Blackberry, his nails whiten on his stylus. David’s pretty sure he’s never looked Asahi in the eyes, not full-on, but now’s really not the time to. “You said you would tell your employees of the new risk.”
“And I did.” Another forensic needs him to move. This one’s got cotton swabs and tweezers and David’s about fed up with being in here. “That’s the thing. Bock didn’t have any AVATAR programs running. He clocked in at 1:15, logged on to the network at 1:30…hit the floor at 1:31,” David’s the first out into the alley between the cubicles, dodges the fire extinguisher on the far wall and really, really wants to get out of here. “He only had the code open.”
Behind him, Asahi says that phrase that means, ‘is that so’, under his breath. David doesn’t hang back, doesn’t even look back until he’s gotten to the elevator and hit the call button for it. Thankfully, Asahi doesn’t say anyth-
“He is the fifth to die like this.”
“There isn’t a pattern,” David says.
“He is the fifth to die, here,” Asahi’s brass reflection in the elevator doors says, “of a-” the English word apparently escapes him. “Noudoumyakukobu,” he says instead. “It is not the kind of thing one should get from computers.”
The elevator comes. David steps into it. “I don’t disagree.”
“Your backers already know,” Asahi says. “This is not acceptable to them.”
“I’m not accepting it either.” David’s fingertips are sweating on the key that allows him to get to his office, in the penthouse. The bouncing sound when the card actually misses its slot actually echoes off the mirrors, the buttons. David gets it right, the second time. “Shit, Asahi, my hands are shaking. I’m not exactly rejoicing that I’ve got five dead programmers.”
-right. Language barrier also blocks sarcasm.
David sighs, just as the elevator decides to function. “What do the backers want?”
“They understand that you are taking steps to prevent any software-grinches?”
“Glitches.”
“-thank you. Glitches. But a few have suggested that you consider other potential causes for the death.”
“There’s no one on the security cameras, Asahi. Three of these happened in broad daylight.” The elevator arrives. “It’s not murder.”
“The backers are not suggesting that that is so.”
“What are they suggesting?”
David’s secretary is on the phone-Asahi bows at him quickly before answering. “They wish for you to hire an onmyouji.”
David’s card misses the reader again. “A what?”
“A…spiritual leader?”
-and again. David gives up, actually looks at Asahi for that one. “A priest?”
“No, not a priest.” Asahi’s…also visibly shaken, there’s sweat along his hairline, and David’s pretty sure that takes effort. “A man who balances the worlds of the living and the dead.”
“An exorcist.”
“I do not know. But it is what your backers insist.” Asahi closes his eyes, tilts forward, almost into David’s shadow. “They have given me leave to contact the best that Japan has to offer. I ask your permission.”
This time, David gets the slot to read the card, pries the door open and shoves his way in. “This is ridiculous.”
“I am sorry you feel that way, Gale-san.”
The sun’s setting, the shadows of his desk and chairs reach almost to the door. Most of the windows overlook the park; the trees down there are that bizarre cross between appearing dead and appearing snow-covered, even though it hasn’t snowed. Early blooming. Global warming. “They want me to hire a shaman.”
“Yes,” Asahi says. He stands over one of the facing chairs, waits for David to sit first. Don’t worry, David will, David needs to, does. His laptop’s closed and should probably stay that way.
“There aren’t any ancient Indian burial grounds in Nagasaki, are there?-don’t answer that,” David sighs. “How much is it going to cost?”
“At least two thousand-American dollars-for accommodations. He is coming from Kyoto. But for his services, that will depend on what is required of him. I assure you, he is of a good name. He would not charge you unfairly.”
“That’s reasonable,” David says, but can’t help sighing along with the cushions of his desk chair. “If he’s used to being inconvenienced like this. Called down here for nothing.”
“He will be relieved if it is nothing,” Asahi says.
--
2011.02.18
10:49
The-exorcist-isn’t what David expected, but probably should have. Asahi escorts him into the office, standing aside like a butler would, holding the door, but the exorcist, if anything, looks uncomfortable with the gesture, even if his nod is polite. He’s taller than most Japanese people David’s seen, thin, wearing a plain grey suit, pale grey like the sidewalk, a long brown trenchcoat, darker brown shoes and darker brown gloves and a darker-than-that-brown tie. David’s still not sure how to read Japanese people for age but the exorcist is definitely younger than Asahi, probably older than David, maybe almost forty. He’s beautiful and it doesn’t seem wrong to think so-and then he looks up.
David reminds himself not to stare. Did he trade that eye for wisdom?
“Hajimemashite,” the exorcist says, bowing fully at the waist. The shadows in the room are going the wrong way and his hair is the same color, just long enough to hide behind. “I am Sumeragi Subaru, from the Sumeragi estate. Please look kindly upon me.”
David’s glad he remembered to stand first, but still raps his thigh on the edge of the desk, coming around it. “How do you do,” he says, extending a hand just into Sumeragi’s space, before the man’s straightened. “David Gale.”
The other eye, the left, is that weird almost-green, another suit color, or like a console after brownout. “There is no excuse, but I do not often associate with my clients in English. If I am slow to understand, please forgive me.” He takes David’s hand in his glove but doesn’t quite shake it. His grip is…not assertive, but evident.
“Your English is better than my Japanese,” David says, shaking it once, “don’t worry.”
“Do you speak any Japanese at all?” It’s not a hopeful question, just a question.
“I’ve been here two months, so I’ve picked up a little, but not enough to communicate, really.”
“I understand,” Sumeragi says, without sounding disappointed. “I hope our barrier does not inconvenience you.”
Something else echoes. “I’m sure it won’t,” David says. He takes a step back (tries not to think of it as retreating-and why would he?), then turns around and gets a face-full of sun before sitting back down at his desk.
Sumeragi waits until David is sitting, but doesn’t sit himself. He stands between the chairs, listening for, at, something. Asahi leaves the room. The door closes, loud enough to hear. “Asahi-san has explained some of your company’s predicament to me,” Sumeragi says, quieter than the door, “but I would like to know the situation as you do.”
David twines his laptop’s adaptor cord in his fingers. The machine’s still closed. It’s making him a little nuts by now. “I think Asahi does know the situation better than I do. I’ll be frank, I really don’t see the need for a spiritualist or a medium or feng shui or whatever it is you do, and I don’t expect you’ll solve the problem, but my backers pretty much demanded I hire you.”
“Of course,” the exorcist says.
“We’re keeping this under wraps, you understand?”
“No, I do not.”
An idiom. Right. “…himitsu desu?”
“I understand,” Sumeragi says. “I have no intention of publicizing your company’s situation.”
David lets down the cord, decides to stop staring at it-tries to avoid looking at the missing eye, on his way up. Tries. Manages to look at Sumeragi’s forehead instead, after that impolite second. “As of yesterday afternoon…five of my employees are dead. Cerebral aneurysms.”
“…noudoumyakukobu,” Sumeragi says. It’s not a question.
“I think that’s what Asahi called it.”
“It is.”
“-Right.” That eye is distracting. Is it glass or just dead? It’s shining.
Thankfully, Sumeragi closes it-both of them-and glances at the corner. Processing. “You are assuming it is a flaw in your own system?”
“You’d think, but no. First, we haven’t made any changes to the program itself since coming to Japan. Second, of the five of them, only three of them were using AVATAR. I’ve taken everyone off the network as of last night.”
“But all the ones to die were on their computers?”
“Four of the five.” The last thing David did before nuking the wireless was print out all of the dead programmers’ files. “There’s nothing linking the five of them except biological sex, profession, and cause of death.”
“That you are aware of, you mean.”
“Yeah,” David admits.
Sumeragi steps forward only enough to take the folder once David extends it over the desk. “I will review this information and investigate it further once I am off-site.”
“Fair enough.”
“I would also like to look around,” Sumeragi says, sliding the files into the shadows of his coat.
“Of course.” David stretches his arms out, but clarifies anyway, “Have free reign of the place. If you need to get behind any locked doors, just call me or Asahi. Since the wireless is down I can’t watch your back from here, but there are wired security cameras just about everywhere, so if you run into any trouble we’ll be able to help out.”
“I appreciate your concern.” Funny, David thought that remark would somehow faze him. He’s…not exactly glad that it didn’t. Sumeragi goes on, “After I have looked around, I also wish to discuss the nature of your company with you. If that is all right.”
“Over dinner at your hotel, I insist.” He’ll hear from Asahi where they put Sumeragi up later.
“Thank you,” Sumeragi says.
David shrugs. “It’s the least I can do for dragging you all the way out here for nothing.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he says again, no differently.
There’s a silence, then, one of those cloud-covering silences that mean there’s something not being said. David can’t tell who by. When the sun comes back, and Sumeragi’s still there, gloves at his sides and mismatched eyes down and-the general sense of not being all there, David still doesn’t know what to say, what to do.
“Oshitsureiitashimasu.” It’s the longer version of the words for ‘please excuse me’, and here, longer means more polite, more deferent. David still doesn’t know. Again, Sumeragi bows at the waist, his hair hanging into his eyes. He turns around and shows himself out, which David doesn’t watch or listen to.
It’s February, he remembers, but not which day-
-According to his cel phone, the eighteenth. It’s Aunt Margot. He answers. “Madame! Congratulations.”
“Hello, David. So you know what I am calling about?”
“My USA Today is your USA Yesterday, but yeah, I do.” He smiles, and repeats it. “Congratulations.”
“Yes, David, but knowing that we’ve made a breakthrough does not preclude a complete awareness of why I am calling you.” He can hear her blind smile. “Or do you think that I am currying for congratulations from all my relatives?”
“I wouldn’t dare to think it, Madame.” He’s exasperated enough but throws a few words around the sigh and hopes she doesn’t notice. “Is this something you want AVATAR for, or something you want me for? Both of us aren’t really in a position to negotiate with you right now.”
“A bad time for your make-believe world, then.”
“Also the real one. But I’m not at liberty to say.”
He knows what she’s going to say, though-and she says it. “The real world should be your first concern, David. Not escaping it, not adapting to it, but living in it.”
“I know, I know,” he says, and it’s not a lie, but.
“How much are you pouring into this AVATAR project, David?”
“More than I was yesterday,” he grouses.
“And is that because you are mending the problems of your virtual world?”
“I’m really not at liberty to say.” He grits his teeth, runs a thumbnail along the phone’s bruised leather cover. Sumeragi’s gloves were, are, like it. And the rends are the color of that eye.
“The Bureau has recognized the existence of the Syndrome, David-”
“And you now have a wasting disease named after you, I know, congratulations-”
“-and while there will always be a place for you here, there won’t always be time.”
His thumb shivers still on the cel phone’s spine. “I’m exempt from American tax breaks out here. And it’s not only my money-”
“Your father’s money.”
“-on AVATAR, it’s something a lot of really important Japanese people think is worth investing in. Try calling them. They’ve got enough to go around.”
“They are also exempt from American tax breaks.”
“So move the Environmental Stabilization Committee to Japan. Less land to stabilize and more people who’ll actually appreciate your effort.”
This silence isn’t as awkward as the one when Sumeragi was here, just filled with absent long-distance buzzing, garbled and gentle.
For the fourth time, he tells her, “Congratulations, Madame.”
“I will call again when you are at liberty to talk, David,” she says, and cuts the line.
--
14:46
Randall Hopkins. Michael Barnes. Brian Ferguson. Michael Faryna. Louis Bock Jr.
None of them are still here.
There are ghosts in this building, the same as everywhere else. Not restless ones, not ones to be dismissed. The ghosts of ideas, the ghosts of objects, and yes, the ghosts of people, but the walls are too new for hostility and the ground doesn’t reach this high.
The ghosts of the victims were dispelled long ago, given the rest they deserved by Subaru’s grandmother. She’d told him of this, of walking through acres of rubble, leaving a trail of ink and fire for the spirits to follow. She’d gotten scars of her own from sending so many on, explained them to him and to Hokuto when they were bathing in the creek at the Estate. And then she’d taken them here, and explained only as much as she had to. Hokuto had never been back. Subaru has.
But there’s no confusion here, no trauma, nothing vindictive or hateful or wanting; only the weathering of minds to forces that they cannot comprehend. He’s wandered down fifteen of twenty-two floors and it’s not like any site he’s ever purified.
He casts wards as he goes, leaves ofuda in a knot of cords that resonates more than it has to. Five victims, all male-all American, Gale-san neglected to say, though it might not have occurred to him that such a thing would matter-all programmers, but not all at work. He’s nearest Bock’s cubicle now, and there’s the shadow of the chalk they used to outline him, there’s the stain of his blood on the carpet. Subaru kneels, runs his hand through the air, not at the perimeter but the depth.
No indignation. No confusion, no hate.
There are ghosts in the land as well, Subaru thinks. Melted into the surface and flattened there in tracks, yes, but those are still human. And then there are those who aren’t, who are the earth, the same way that the thing becomes the symbol and the symbol becomes the will. The feelings that impress themselves in stones.
Subaru knows of someone he needs to call, later.
His head clears, the closer he gets to the ground floor. Of course this stairwell doesn’t go into the basement, that’ll take another-locks, and discussion. He’ll call Asahi when he gets to the ground floor. And then, later, when he’s sure they’re both off work, the others. But for now, just him, a thousand stairs, and this void in the heart of Nagasaki.
--
15:13
“What’s he done so far?”
“Only walked around, kaicho.” Kido rolls his chair aside, motions with his shoulder for David and Asahi to take a close look. “He has taken the stairs from the twenty-one floor and only walked all afternoon.”
On the screen that Kido’s pointing out, Sumeragi is doing just that. Walking, arms at his sides, close to the walls. He’s on the fifth floor now. A group of people passes him and ignores him.
“He also has taken out some paper and put it on the walls,” Kido goes on, typing something, zooming in one of the higher screens and then reaching up to it, to point. “It is almost the Nagasaki flag.”
David squints. Just over the press of Kido’s finger on the monitor, there’s a white square of paper with a red five-pointed star-pentagram, upright-smoothed against the wall near one of the outlets. It’s the eighteenth floor. “How many times has he done this?”
Kido hesitates a moment, counts. “Ten, fifteen.”
“Ofuda,” Asahi explains, behind David. “They are charms to ward off evil spirits.”
“This is ridiculous.” David pushes off the security console, steps back-could have accidentally stepped on Asahi’s foot, but doesn’t. “The only ghosts in this machine are the bugs in the program. And we can’t work those out by sticking paper to the walls.”
“They are harmless even if you are right, Gale-san.” Asahi comes around front, peers up at that screen.
“And how much do those little magic post-it-notes go for? Two hundred a head?”
Kido gets it and chuckles, Asahi doesn’t. “Occasionally,” Asahi answers. “It depends on how great the evil is.”
David sighs. He could pay for a replacement eye with that, he thinks- “I hope he buys a new suit with that,” he says aloud.
Sumeragi slows up on his screen, focuses on a particular corner. He stops. He doesn’t seem to be near any air ducts but there’s definitely something moving the hem of his coat. And then he’s standing still, but it’s still twitching, still sending ripples through the screen-
And he just keeps walking, hands at his sides. There’s no audio feed but David can practically feel the tread of his shoes on the carpet, louder and closer than he should. Sumeragi walks into the next screen, calm, unfazed. Coat, still rippling. Lighting, still not entirely fluorescent or logical. Shadows, still too many. His missing eye is glowing faintly.
“Holy shit,” David says. “I’m in an anime.”
“No, kaicho,” Kido laughs, scrolling up on that corner that Sumeragi just left. Sure enough, there’s another one of those little papers, plastered to the wall, the top point of the red star hidden behind the leaves of the plant. “I see everything that goes on in the building. There are no giant robots here.”
--
17:14
There are sakura petals all over the bathtub.
Subaru swallows audibly.
There are sakura petals all over the bathtub. Which is drawn, three-quarters full, and slightly steaming.
There’s the last of a pleasant sunset outside, creeping in between the drapes, stretching the shadows of the toiletries across the bathroom floor in sharp columns, all the way to the tips of Subaru’s socks. There’s brightly-shining tile in the gaps. There’s sweat on his ankles and a gaseous hiss in the heating system and a towel dangling out of his hand, almost touching the floor.
Subaru turns around, steps out of the bathroom, and pulls the door closed.
A moment later, he opens the door again, folds the towel neatly, sets it on the nearest rack and then steps out and closes the door.
He’d been holding his breath, and he still can’t let it out now. He leans into the doorjamb, clenches his elbows to his sides, digs his heels into the carpet until he can feel the terries through his socks. That helps, some. Enough, at least, to get his chest to loosen and his throat to open and his eye to stop aching, mostly, but his head’s still throbbing. Another long moment, and he’s on his way to the service phone. That’s right, he has to call Tokyo later. This first.
The receptionist answers, at length and cheerfully.
Subaru stutters, trying to get his name and room number out, and the apologies that follow it.
--
18:50
“So, was the room all right?”
David’s been waiting in the Best Western Nagasaki’s Premier Lounge but not very long at all, not long enough to be accosted by an eager waiter. Sumeragi pulls up from bowing and somehow, this second grey suit has even less color than the first. Maybe I’m not in an anime, David thinks, I’m in a comic book.
“There is no excuse-I truly do apologize-but I requested that my room be changed.” He sounds-somehow-like he truly means it. Younger, a bit undone. David’s more relieved than he should probably be. “I am sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”
“None,” David, well, lies. “I thought Asahi had you put up in the best suite in the house.”
“Perhaps their service was a little too good, Gale-san. Again, I apologize.” Sumeragi bows again. Quicker, more deferent. “I was moved to a washitsu-a Japanese style room. It is what the hotel had available. I assure you, this is more than sufficient.”
“Oh,” David says.
The host comes up to summon them before the resultant silence gets too awkward. He focuses on David, addresses him in practiced and polished English but only nods at Sumeragi-with more of a different kind of dignity, David thinks, than Sumeragi had apologized with earlier. They’re seated at the hotel’s specifically Japanese restaurant, Kaname, in silence; at a tall table, with cursory thanks and low candles and full Western silverware. There are lanterns, everywhere, lit electrically from inside, some in animal shapes like piñatas with ribcages instead of fringe. Sumeragi’s unfazed and distant again, hasn’t looked at his menu.
“Do you drink?” David asks.
“I do not mind if you do,” Sumeragi non-answers.
David nods, rules sake out. “Not something that goes with your job?”
He’s still wearing those gloves, David notices. The same ones. They’re clasped together, fingers interlaced against the vertex of the table, and he’s looking at them, not at David. “No,” he answers, the grammatical way that means, ‘you’re correct, I agree with your assertion of the negative’. “I will not, tonight. But I do not mind if you do.”
“Right.” Looks like David’s going to be the one to open his menu first. He should be used to it by now, isn’t, does. “People who deal with ghosts in America tend to drink. Usually to excess.”
Sumeragi nods, leaves his menu where it is. “American…shaman?” He’s bothered for the word. “Shaman have their method. It is not the same as mine.”
“What is your method?-if you don’t mind my asking.”
The waiter comes by, introduces himself in English but with all the mannerisms that seem appropriate in a Japanese restaurant (at least, to David, and Sumeragi doesn’t flinch). David figures it would be rude to forego drinks if Sumeragi’s made it this clear that he does not mind, so it’s Maker’s Mark, neat, for David, and tea for both of them. Tea, he confirms with one of those inquiring glances, and Sumeragi shrugs, or something like it. And water, apparently, which Sumeragi does ask for on his own-mineral water, David takes the liberty of correcting. Sumeragi concedes.
“-Where was I?” David asks when the waiter’s gone.
“What kind of program is AVATAR?” Sumeragi asks.
“User interface.” Shit, David forgot to ask for chopsticks. “It’s a program best used with virtual reality and gaming applications, things like Second Life used to be, if you’ve heard of it?”
He has.
“Incredibly sensitive voice-recognition software and, well, the best motion-directed interface out there right now, if I do say so,” David explains. “We’re getting pretty close to translating mental impulse into data.”
Sumeragi has that ‘sou desu ka’ expression on, but doesn’t say it. His look of interest isn’t feigned but there’s just enough skepticism in it to put David on the defensive. “Which explains why a lot of your company computers do not have a mouse,” Sumeragi says.
“Right. Even the people not using AVATAR are mostly on voice-recognition at this point. The ones with keyboards are specifically for coding, it’s easier that way. At least until you get carpal tunnel.” David chuckles, rolls his left wrist to demonstrate. “I think I’m going through something like that.”
“You are a programmer yourself, Gale-san?”
“Yeah. AVATAR 1.0 was all mine, did it for my M.A. back in the States. I’ve moved into administration since. The company’s all mine also. My father died two years ago, I built AVATAR with my inheritance.”
Sumeragi nods. “If you do not mind my asking, how old are you, Gale-san?”
“I don’t, and twenty-eight.”
He nods again-making notes in his head? though why this could matter, David’s not sure. Wait. Astrology. David tries not to roll his eyes.
“I observed that many of your employees are American. Why did you bring the company to Nagasaki?” Sumeragi asks.
David unwinds his napkin, smoothes it in his lap. Someone starts putting service on the table in neat rows, faceted goblets first for the water, then short rounded cups for the tea. Sumeragi keeps his eyes down when the busboys are pouring, and a third runner slides David his drink, on an efficiently angled paper napkin. On the wrong hand, not that the runner knows. David lifts the glass, passes it from his left to his right hand, smiles bemusedly when the napkin sticks to the glass’ underside and when his wrist isn’t cramping as much as it was yesterday.
“I brought the company to Japan because a lot of our market is here, and in Korea,” David answers, taking up the water. It’s a little crowded on that side of his plate. “Other reasons. Real estate, the ease of actually starting a company overseas…and who my backers are. Who’s most interested in a program like mine. America’s…not exactly the land of hopes and dreams anymore-if it ever was-because there are so many dreams, and they’re all just huge, and they compete with each other, slaughter each other.” He sips. Mineral water tastes the same here as there. “It’s not a case of the nail sticking up getting hammered down, over there. The nails that stay low get hammered down, because they’re closer to the plank, easier to crush. The nail that sticks up gets pried out and straightened out and primed for peak efficiency.” He smiles. “Then it gets hammered down.”
It seems like the metaphor’s not lost on Sumeragi. He closes his gloves around his teacup, lowers his eyes again-that missing one is jarring, and David’s pretty sure he shouldn’t ask, but. But. “And what do you make of dreams in Japan?” Sumeragi asks, prompts.
“I admit to not knowing much about it,” David says.
Sumeragi savors the tea, smells it more than drinks it. Steam curls around that eye. “In Japan, the nails matter as much as the wood they hold together. If a nail does not get hammered down, it is because the nail is bent and unfit for use.”
“AVATAR is unfit for use?”
“That is not my business.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Sumeragi rotates the teacup before setting it down. “Gale-san does not believe in reading the hearts of others. It is no surprise that Gale-san is incorrect in his assessment of mine.”
-And that would be the waiter. Sumeragi hasn’t touched his menu, and David’s not entirely sure what he wants either, but the waiter lists the specials in English and the prix fixe-teishoku, the waiter adds in Sumeragi’s direction-sounds appropriate enough. Sumeragi has a few other words with the waiter, in Japanese-the waiter speaks fast, but Sumeragi uses Japanese the same way as English, apparently, just more fluidly. There’s a faint red cast to his cheeks. When he’s done talking, he takes up his teacup again and the waiter clarifies things with David. It makes enough sense. He bows a bit, wishes them a happy new year.
“So you’re not thinking that AVATAR is useless,” David goes on, lifting his elbow so that the waiter can take the menu away. “What’s your reservation, then?”
This sip of tea takes Sumeragi longer, maybe actually touches his lips. “I have sent on the spirits of machines and programs before. Your case is still the first of its kind that I have come across.”
“Oh?” -That’s right, Sumeragi still hasn’t explained his method yet.
“When an object or a concept becomes…the word for not alive, but feeling?”
“Sentient.”
“Thank you. When an object becomes sentient, it is usually because of strong human feelings that surround it, that give it life. There is no such situation in your company. I do not believe that AVATAR itself is causing the problem.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Or if it is,” Sumeragi goes on, “that it is an error in the programming, which I am not equipped to fix.”
“Then I really am sorry for dragging you down here,” David says, pushing his chair back and nodding at the runner, setting down bowls of soup.
Sumeragi doesn’t touch his, but leans forward, as if to tell David to go ahead. An ascetic. It figures. David does. Sumeragi waits for David to have hissed in a good drawl of seaweed before going on, “But I am certain that there is an imbalance in the building itself. The manner of these deaths is not,” He says, and then restarts, corrects, “The manner of these deaths implies a spiritual cause. You did not ‘drag me down here’ for nothing, Gale-san.”
David swallows another mouthful of broth and paste and seaweed.
“When I was sixteen,” Sumeragi says, gloves interlaced on the table’s edge again and the green of a hanging lantern in-both-eyes, the one sharp and the other murky and both damned disturbing, “I met a woman who could touch human feeling in glass, and a man who collected the shards of construction sites. It is called post-cognition. The woman…I first met in a subway in Tokyo. The police used her skill at the scene of a murder, which she relived by laying her hands on the stone.”
“Is that why you wear gloves?”
Sumeragi doesn’t answer, but quickly. “The stone of your building is new, but there is already an impression upon it.”
David sets down his spoon in the bowl, curved side down, handle resting on the rim. “So you need to exorcise the building?”
“I do not yet know.” He shifts in his seat, sits straighter, overshadows the lanterns that had recast his eyes. “Again, it is not a situation I have been in before. There are no ghosts in stone that is new. Even your employees who are dead did not remain behind.”
A dollop of tofu misses David’s lower lip, at that. “You’ve looked for them?”
“Yes.” The man’s still unflappable. Or, well, this is what he does for a living. Good at keeping up the illusion of the ordinary, this man. “They do not linger, do not question what became of them. Either they were at peace as they died, or something else has sent them on.”
“Or there are no such things as ghosts, just ghosts in the machine,” David says.
Sumeragi sighs, over the creak of leather on porcelain, shifting his grip on the tea. A long moment later, he drinks it. It occurs to David that it might have just been too hot, earlier.
“Can you exorcise a building?” David asks, once the last of his soup is down.
“I have exorcised a Chanel suit,” Sumeragi answers. He’s completely serious.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” David says, even though he does.
Sumeragi could have laughed-David thinks-but doesn’t even really smile. The waiters must be watching this table, because the soup bowls are cleared before David even really has a chance to notice that Sumeragi’s was still full. Another runner sets two ornate trays of appetizers, one of cold sashimi and one of little hot-looking things. David recognizes eel but forgets what the word for it is.
-Apparently, at some point, Sumeragi got chopsticks. Shit, David forgot to ask again. No matter. He moves the other one of what Sumeragi just took off the serving plate and onto his own small one, scrapes a sliver of wasabi to deck it with. Apparently it’s squid. It’s the same color as his eye. Sumeragi mutters that ‘grace’ thing under his breath once there are a few things on his plate-David’s already started eating by then, but he’s not sure there would have been a permitting glance anyway.
Man, this is awkward.
David’s not sure he likes the squid. It’s kind of cartilagey. He chews it a few more times before trying to, well, continue this? Salvage this? It’s not broken but it does need fixing. “You probably get this a lot, but did you always want to be…what you are?”
Sumeragi eats very little, and very delicately, lifting his plate and chopsticks very close to his face and chest. He sets everything down before he answers, eyes closed. “I did not really have a choice, and I did not question that.”
“Family business?”
“Yes,” Sumeragi says. “It is something I want to do, and am…it suits me,” he says after a shadow blacks those lanterns out again, just for a moment. “But I cannot imagine myself doing anything else.”
It’s almost a textbook response, David thinks, wonders how clichéd this sounds. “There’s really nothing else you can see yourself doing? You’re good with English, maybe you’d make a good diplomat.”
“Thank you,” Sumeragi says, closing his gloves around each other again, “but I do not think so, and no, there is not. I was born to be what I am. I would not forgive myself if I was to change.”
“That’s a different answer.” David spears some kind of dumpling and chews it thoughtfully. Not pork, not vegetables-duck? No, that’s Chinese. It doesn’t taste like anything really and the texture’s on the flaky side. “Just because there’s a lack of options doesn’t mean you might not be happier doing something else.”
“What I do is not about my being happy.” Sumeragi lifts his teacup again. This must be the last of it-he glances into the cup before he drinks. “It is about enabling other people to be happy. The well-being of other people matters more to me than my own.” He drinks, and looks into the glass again. Something he sees makes his eyebrows twitch inward, just enough that David forgets that eye for a moment.
“You sound like there’s more to say about it than that.” David puts his fork down. No sense in filling up on the appetizer. And chopsticks, right, chopsticks.
Sumeragi rotates the teacup on the tablecloth and it squeaks in his glove. There’s another slice of squid on the central plate, or something that looks enough like it. He seems to notice, then-almost-looks David in the eyes (and David’s not sure whether that’s because he’s not looking or not). “An early client of mine had two children, who were very ill. She had given up her-jinzou. An organ there are two of, it processes waste.”
“Her kidney,” David answers.
“Her kidney, thank you. She gave up her kidney to prolong the life of the girl, but the girl had rejected it and died. When the boy became too ill to survive on his own also, the mother only had the one left, and feared she would lose her son as well. I offered one of mine.” He curls his fingers on his chopsticks. David’s ache. “My sister was opposed to it. She said the same things then that you are saying now, Gale-san. That I cannot continue giving of myself until there is nothing left of me. I did not tell her then, but I think that is what I want to do.”
That’s sick, David thinks. “Did you?” he asks instead.
“I did not,” Sumeragi says. “My client was also opposed to the idea.”
“And did the child die?”
Sumeragi’s hands still, his mouth stills, his eyes were already still but now they’re green again, the lanterns, the lanterns. “I do not know. I did not see my client again after that discussion.”
There’s not much for David to say to that.
Lucky for him, Sumeragi goes on. “You are concerned with your own happiness, Gale-san?”
“Yes,” David says, more assertively than he probably means. “That’s part of, well, why this, why AVATAR. I’m not in it for the money-even though that’s nice-but I’m definitely not in it for the altruism either. I…” He chuckles, waits for the busboy to refill his water and not-refill Sumeragi’s tea. “I want to change the way people see people, the way people interact with each other. I think it’s inherently flawed. I think that’s ultimately more important than changing how they live and what they do. And I want to use what I have to the best of my ability, toward that end.” He lifts his glass. “Which is pretty much what you just said, only difference being that’s what makes me happy. Using what I’ve got to make some kind of long-term change.”
Sumeragi lifts his water glass as well. His glove is paler under it. “That is not what I said.”
They drink, almost together. David keeps his eyes open now that Sumeragi’s are closed. The busboy’s coming again to take the appetizers away. “Chopsticks?” David asks when he’s close enough. The busboy nods appreciably, says hai, hai.
“It is not what your family expected of you, then?” Sumeragi fills the silence.
Aunt Margot called this morning. “They didn’t mind it. Or they don’t. My family’s always been pretty well-off. Dad was an Environmental Lawyer, Mom’s a social worker. My first tax break bought my first car. So as long as I’m not doing something entirely self-serving they’re pretty much okay with it.”
“But are you not encouraging others to be self-serving?”
“What people do with the program is their own business. I just created it.”
Someone at another table bursts out into deep, yawping laughter. At something else entirely, of course, but Sumeragi turns and looks, stays swiveled. David can only see a sliver of Sumeragi’s profile like this-and it’s the side with the white eye, dead and overcast and-sad, really, just sad. Pitiful.
Without turning around, without raising his voice, Sumeragi almost sighs. “I knew a young man like you. Younger, then. He is dead now.” The laughter dies down at that table, the painted lanterns jostle in the wind. “He was given a choice, one he did not wish to make. And so he did not decide, did not realize all he could have done, until the choice was made for him, almost. Once the choice was made, he could not deal with the repercussions of it, and withdrew from the world.
“I found him there, reliving the moment of decision. He could not undo that he had made the choice, or made it so that he did not have a choice. He did not understand…nobody understood…that even when you have two choices, that does not mean you can make only one of them.”
David sips the water again. “Sounds like the choice he made was to kill himself.”
“He did.” Sumeragi turns around. “But that was the second choice of the two. First, he chose to live for others. And the trouble with living for others is that you keep living.”
David laughs. “In America, there’s a trope-a cliché-that when you talk about ‘someone you know’ like this, you really mean yourself.”
One of Sumeragi’s eyes locks on to his. It stays there even after the waiters come, setting new larger plates and bowls of noodles and fish and God only knows what else-but. There, all through this. The chatter of the room buzzes and tangles. Babble. Clacking silverware and the rush of wind through paper. Electric lanterns in the shape of snarling beasts. Peaked paper triangle teeth. White. Green.
-his cel phone. Asahi.
David trips over some kind of apology, snapping his eyes away, fumbling with his left hand in his jacket for the thing. Asahi’s ringtone is a joke, an oldie, “Blackberry” by the Black Crowes. Seeing as he’s so attached to it and all. Altogether too loud at a time like-
“What’s the trouble?”
“Gale-san, Kido-san is dead.”
David remembers that he’s had Maker’s Mark sitting on the wrong side of the table this entire time. He grabs the glass in his good hand and drinks it down so it burns.
--
.
on to Part 2:
.
Please read this. It is long, very long, so long that it must be split into two posts. It is entirely worksafe. I will provide all disclaimers at the end of the second post. The story takes place in on Earth, in Nagasaki, in 2011.
I am very proud of it.
.
Aneurysm
or there are no such things as ghosts, just ghosts in the machine
Mithrigil Galtirglin
2011.02.17
13:30
Puccini was wrong, wrong, wrong.
According to Bock’s little toolbar-history-thingie, Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala on this day-Bock counted-a hundred and seven years ago. The paper mentioned it this morning too. Bock doesn’t have enough Japanese to actually read the paper, but the katakana in the headlines made that pretty clear, not to mention the picture under it of all the tourists and the surrounding festival. There’s a memorial to Cio Cio San on one of the hills just outside Nagasaki proper. A memorial to a fictional character, in an anti-American opera, set in Japan, written by an Italian.
…Not that Bock’s really any better, but he’s pretty sure Puccini was wrong about a lot.
Bock closes the popup and goes back to work-well, tries to get started. He may be working in Nagasaki but he’s still operating under American logic. Most of the programmers in his division come in late and stay late, work until a solid stopping place. Means he hasn’t seen the park that AVATAR overlooks in anything approaching daylight, but that could change.
The window pops up again. Apparently also on this day in history, the battle of Eniwetok began, some guy named Robert K. Preston stole a helicopter, and some other guy beat a supercomputer in chess. That last was in 1996.
Back to work. Seriousl-
Three more items. That little fact-finder never quits. Bock sighs. 2008, a state breaks off from Serbia. 2010, there’s only one Korea. And then, today.
Bock doesn’t think anything of note’s going to happen to-
--
17:12
David hisses in air through his teeth, loudly. “Bock.” He repeats it, and the disbelief isn’t gone. “Bock.”
“Did he know about what happened to the other four?”
“No,” David sighs. One of the forensics nudges him with an elbow, David steps aside and lets her work. The flash on her camera stutters. They’ve already chalk-circled where Bock’s body had been, already put up little placard numbers where the blood still is. Little drops between the laptop keys, longer streaks on the cubicle carpet. “No,” David repeats, “we’ve been keeping that under wraps.”
Asahi nods. His knuckles tighten uneasily around his Blackberry, his nails whiten on his stylus. David’s pretty sure he’s never looked Asahi in the eyes, not full-on, but now’s really not the time to. “You said you would tell your employees of the new risk.”
“And I did.” Another forensic needs him to move. This one’s got cotton swabs and tweezers and David’s about fed up with being in here. “That’s the thing. Bock didn’t have any AVATAR programs running. He clocked in at 1:15, logged on to the network at 1:30…hit the floor at 1:31,” David’s the first out into the alley between the cubicles, dodges the fire extinguisher on the far wall and really, really wants to get out of here. “He only had the code open.”
Behind him, Asahi says that phrase that means, ‘is that so’, under his breath. David doesn’t hang back, doesn’t even look back until he’s gotten to the elevator and hit the call button for it. Thankfully, Asahi doesn’t say anyth-
“He is the fifth to die like this.”
“There isn’t a pattern,” David says.
“He is the fifth to die, here,” Asahi’s brass reflection in the elevator doors says, “of a-” the English word apparently escapes him. “Noudoumyakukobu,” he says instead. “It is not the kind of thing one should get from computers.”
The elevator comes. David steps into it. “I don’t disagree.”
“Your backers already know,” Asahi says. “This is not acceptable to them.”
“I’m not accepting it either.” David’s fingertips are sweating on the key that allows him to get to his office, in the penthouse. The bouncing sound when the card actually misses its slot actually echoes off the mirrors, the buttons. David gets it right, the second time. “Shit, Asahi, my hands are shaking. I’m not exactly rejoicing that I’ve got five dead programmers.”
-right. Language barrier also blocks sarcasm.
David sighs, just as the elevator decides to function. “What do the backers want?”
“They understand that you are taking steps to prevent any software-grinches?”
“Glitches.”
“-thank you. Glitches. But a few have suggested that you consider other potential causes for the death.”
“There’s no one on the security cameras, Asahi. Three of these happened in broad daylight.” The elevator arrives. “It’s not murder.”
“The backers are not suggesting that that is so.”
“What are they suggesting?”
David’s secretary is on the phone-Asahi bows at him quickly before answering. “They wish for you to hire an onmyouji.”
David’s card misses the reader again. “A what?”
“A…spiritual leader?”
-and again. David gives up, actually looks at Asahi for that one. “A priest?”
“No, not a priest.” Asahi’s…also visibly shaken, there’s sweat along his hairline, and David’s pretty sure that takes effort. “A man who balances the worlds of the living and the dead.”
“An exorcist.”
“I do not know. But it is what your backers insist.” Asahi closes his eyes, tilts forward, almost into David’s shadow. “They have given me leave to contact the best that Japan has to offer. I ask your permission.”
This time, David gets the slot to read the card, pries the door open and shoves his way in. “This is ridiculous.”
“I am sorry you feel that way, Gale-san.”
The sun’s setting, the shadows of his desk and chairs reach almost to the door. Most of the windows overlook the park; the trees down there are that bizarre cross between appearing dead and appearing snow-covered, even though it hasn’t snowed. Early blooming. Global warming. “They want me to hire a shaman.”
“Yes,” Asahi says. He stands over one of the facing chairs, waits for David to sit first. Don’t worry, David will, David needs to, does. His laptop’s closed and should probably stay that way.
“There aren’t any ancient Indian burial grounds in Nagasaki, are there?-don’t answer that,” David sighs. “How much is it going to cost?”
“At least two thousand-American dollars-for accommodations. He is coming from Kyoto. But for his services, that will depend on what is required of him. I assure you, he is of a good name. He would not charge you unfairly.”
“That’s reasonable,” David says, but can’t help sighing along with the cushions of his desk chair. “If he’s used to being inconvenienced like this. Called down here for nothing.”
“He will be relieved if it is nothing,” Asahi says.
--
2011.02.18
10:49
The-exorcist-isn’t what David expected, but probably should have. Asahi escorts him into the office, standing aside like a butler would, holding the door, but the exorcist, if anything, looks uncomfortable with the gesture, even if his nod is polite. He’s taller than most Japanese people David’s seen, thin, wearing a plain grey suit, pale grey like the sidewalk, a long brown trenchcoat, darker brown shoes and darker brown gloves and a darker-than-that-brown tie. David’s still not sure how to read Japanese people for age but the exorcist is definitely younger than Asahi, probably older than David, maybe almost forty. He’s beautiful and it doesn’t seem wrong to think so-and then he looks up.
David reminds himself not to stare. Did he trade that eye for wisdom?
“Hajimemashite,” the exorcist says, bowing fully at the waist. The shadows in the room are going the wrong way and his hair is the same color, just long enough to hide behind. “I am Sumeragi Subaru, from the Sumeragi estate. Please look kindly upon me.”
David’s glad he remembered to stand first, but still raps his thigh on the edge of the desk, coming around it. “How do you do,” he says, extending a hand just into Sumeragi’s space, before the man’s straightened. “David Gale.”
The other eye, the left, is that weird almost-green, another suit color, or like a console after brownout. “There is no excuse, but I do not often associate with my clients in English. If I am slow to understand, please forgive me.” He takes David’s hand in his glove but doesn’t quite shake it. His grip is…not assertive, but evident.
“Your English is better than my Japanese,” David says, shaking it once, “don’t worry.”
“Do you speak any Japanese at all?” It’s not a hopeful question, just a question.
“I’ve been here two months, so I’ve picked up a little, but not enough to communicate, really.”
“I understand,” Sumeragi says, without sounding disappointed. “I hope our barrier does not inconvenience you.”
Something else echoes. “I’m sure it won’t,” David says. He takes a step back (tries not to think of it as retreating-and why would he?), then turns around and gets a face-full of sun before sitting back down at his desk.
Sumeragi waits until David is sitting, but doesn’t sit himself. He stands between the chairs, listening for, at, something. Asahi leaves the room. The door closes, loud enough to hear. “Asahi-san has explained some of your company’s predicament to me,” Sumeragi says, quieter than the door, “but I would like to know the situation as you do.”
David twines his laptop’s adaptor cord in his fingers. The machine’s still closed. It’s making him a little nuts by now. “I think Asahi does know the situation better than I do. I’ll be frank, I really don’t see the need for a spiritualist or a medium or feng shui or whatever it is you do, and I don’t expect you’ll solve the problem, but my backers pretty much demanded I hire you.”
“Of course,” the exorcist says.
“We’re keeping this under wraps, you understand?”
“No, I do not.”
An idiom. Right. “…himitsu desu?”
“I understand,” Sumeragi says. “I have no intention of publicizing your company’s situation.”
David lets down the cord, decides to stop staring at it-tries to avoid looking at the missing eye, on his way up. Tries. Manages to look at Sumeragi’s forehead instead, after that impolite second. “As of yesterday afternoon…five of my employees are dead. Cerebral aneurysms.”
“…noudoumyakukobu,” Sumeragi says. It’s not a question.
“I think that’s what Asahi called it.”
“It is.”
“-Right.” That eye is distracting. Is it glass or just dead? It’s shining.
Thankfully, Sumeragi closes it-both of them-and glances at the corner. Processing. “You are assuming it is a flaw in your own system?”
“You’d think, but no. First, we haven’t made any changes to the program itself since coming to Japan. Second, of the five of them, only three of them were using AVATAR. I’ve taken everyone off the network as of last night.”
“But all the ones to die were on their computers?”
“Four of the five.” The last thing David did before nuking the wireless was print out all of the dead programmers’ files. “There’s nothing linking the five of them except biological sex, profession, and cause of death.”
“That you are aware of, you mean.”
“Yeah,” David admits.
Sumeragi steps forward only enough to take the folder once David extends it over the desk. “I will review this information and investigate it further once I am off-site.”
“Fair enough.”
“I would also like to look around,” Sumeragi says, sliding the files into the shadows of his coat.
“Of course.” David stretches his arms out, but clarifies anyway, “Have free reign of the place. If you need to get behind any locked doors, just call me or Asahi. Since the wireless is down I can’t watch your back from here, but there are wired security cameras just about everywhere, so if you run into any trouble we’ll be able to help out.”
“I appreciate your concern.” Funny, David thought that remark would somehow faze him. He’s…not exactly glad that it didn’t. Sumeragi goes on, “After I have looked around, I also wish to discuss the nature of your company with you. If that is all right.”
“Over dinner at your hotel, I insist.” He’ll hear from Asahi where they put Sumeragi up later.
“Thank you,” Sumeragi says.
David shrugs. “It’s the least I can do for dragging you all the way out here for nothing.”
“I appreciate your concern,” he says again, no differently.
There’s a silence, then, one of those cloud-covering silences that mean there’s something not being said. David can’t tell who by. When the sun comes back, and Sumeragi’s still there, gloves at his sides and mismatched eyes down and-the general sense of not being all there, David still doesn’t know what to say, what to do.
“Oshitsureiitashimasu.” It’s the longer version of the words for ‘please excuse me’, and here, longer means more polite, more deferent. David still doesn’t know. Again, Sumeragi bows at the waist, his hair hanging into his eyes. He turns around and shows himself out, which David doesn’t watch or listen to.
It’s February, he remembers, but not which day-
-According to his cel phone, the eighteenth. It’s Aunt Margot. He answers. “Madame! Congratulations.”
“Hello, David. So you know what I am calling about?”
“My USA Today is your USA Yesterday, but yeah, I do.” He smiles, and repeats it. “Congratulations.”
“Yes, David, but knowing that we’ve made a breakthrough does not preclude a complete awareness of why I am calling you.” He can hear her blind smile. “Or do you think that I am currying for congratulations from all my relatives?”
“I wouldn’t dare to think it, Madame.” He’s exasperated enough but throws a few words around the sigh and hopes she doesn’t notice. “Is this something you want AVATAR for, or something you want me for? Both of us aren’t really in a position to negotiate with you right now.”
“A bad time for your make-believe world, then.”
“Also the real one. But I’m not at liberty to say.”
He knows what she’s going to say, though-and she says it. “The real world should be your first concern, David. Not escaping it, not adapting to it, but living in it.”
“I know, I know,” he says, and it’s not a lie, but.
“How much are you pouring into this AVATAR project, David?”
“More than I was yesterday,” he grouses.
“And is that because you are mending the problems of your virtual world?”
“I’m really not at liberty to say.” He grits his teeth, runs a thumbnail along the phone’s bruised leather cover. Sumeragi’s gloves were, are, like it. And the rends are the color of that eye.
“The Bureau has recognized the existence of the Syndrome, David-”
“And you now have a wasting disease named after you, I know, congratulations-”
“-and while there will always be a place for you here, there won’t always be time.”
His thumb shivers still on the cel phone’s spine. “I’m exempt from American tax breaks out here. And it’s not only my money-”
“Your father’s money.”
“-on AVATAR, it’s something a lot of really important Japanese people think is worth investing in. Try calling them. They’ve got enough to go around.”
“They are also exempt from American tax breaks.”
“So move the Environmental Stabilization Committee to Japan. Less land to stabilize and more people who’ll actually appreciate your effort.”
This silence isn’t as awkward as the one when Sumeragi was here, just filled with absent long-distance buzzing, garbled and gentle.
For the fourth time, he tells her, “Congratulations, Madame.”
“I will call again when you are at liberty to talk, David,” she says, and cuts the line.
--
14:46
Randall Hopkins. Michael Barnes. Brian Ferguson. Michael Faryna. Louis Bock Jr.
None of them are still here.
There are ghosts in this building, the same as everywhere else. Not restless ones, not ones to be dismissed. The ghosts of ideas, the ghosts of objects, and yes, the ghosts of people, but the walls are too new for hostility and the ground doesn’t reach this high.
The ghosts of the victims were dispelled long ago, given the rest they deserved by Subaru’s grandmother. She’d told him of this, of walking through acres of rubble, leaving a trail of ink and fire for the spirits to follow. She’d gotten scars of her own from sending so many on, explained them to him and to Hokuto when they were bathing in the creek at the Estate. And then she’d taken them here, and explained only as much as she had to. Hokuto had never been back. Subaru has.
But there’s no confusion here, no trauma, nothing vindictive or hateful or wanting; only the weathering of minds to forces that they cannot comprehend. He’s wandered down fifteen of twenty-two floors and it’s not like any site he’s ever purified.
He casts wards as he goes, leaves ofuda in a knot of cords that resonates more than it has to. Five victims, all male-all American, Gale-san neglected to say, though it might not have occurred to him that such a thing would matter-all programmers, but not all at work. He’s nearest Bock’s cubicle now, and there’s the shadow of the chalk they used to outline him, there’s the stain of his blood on the carpet. Subaru kneels, runs his hand through the air, not at the perimeter but the depth.
No indignation. No confusion, no hate.
There are ghosts in the land as well, Subaru thinks. Melted into the surface and flattened there in tracks, yes, but those are still human. And then there are those who aren’t, who are the earth, the same way that the thing becomes the symbol and the symbol becomes the will. The feelings that impress themselves in stones.
Subaru knows of someone he needs to call, later.
His head clears, the closer he gets to the ground floor. Of course this stairwell doesn’t go into the basement, that’ll take another-locks, and discussion. He’ll call Asahi when he gets to the ground floor. And then, later, when he’s sure they’re both off work, the others. But for now, just him, a thousand stairs, and this void in the heart of Nagasaki.
--
15:13
“What’s he done so far?”
“Only walked around, kaicho.” Kido rolls his chair aside, motions with his shoulder for David and Asahi to take a close look. “He has taken the stairs from the twenty-one floor and only walked all afternoon.”
On the screen that Kido’s pointing out, Sumeragi is doing just that. Walking, arms at his sides, close to the walls. He’s on the fifth floor now. A group of people passes him and ignores him.
“He also has taken out some paper and put it on the walls,” Kido goes on, typing something, zooming in one of the higher screens and then reaching up to it, to point. “It is almost the Nagasaki flag.”
David squints. Just over the press of Kido’s finger on the monitor, there’s a white square of paper with a red five-pointed star-pentagram, upright-smoothed against the wall near one of the outlets. It’s the eighteenth floor. “How many times has he done this?”
Kido hesitates a moment, counts. “Ten, fifteen.”
“Ofuda,” Asahi explains, behind David. “They are charms to ward off evil spirits.”
“This is ridiculous.” David pushes off the security console, steps back-could have accidentally stepped on Asahi’s foot, but doesn’t. “The only ghosts in this machine are the bugs in the program. And we can’t work those out by sticking paper to the walls.”
“They are harmless even if you are right, Gale-san.” Asahi comes around front, peers up at that screen.
“And how much do those little magic post-it-notes go for? Two hundred a head?”
Kido gets it and chuckles, Asahi doesn’t. “Occasionally,” Asahi answers. “It depends on how great the evil is.”
David sighs. He could pay for a replacement eye with that, he thinks- “I hope he buys a new suit with that,” he says aloud.
Sumeragi slows up on his screen, focuses on a particular corner. He stops. He doesn’t seem to be near any air ducts but there’s definitely something moving the hem of his coat. And then he’s standing still, but it’s still twitching, still sending ripples through the screen-
And he just keeps walking, hands at his sides. There’s no audio feed but David can practically feel the tread of his shoes on the carpet, louder and closer than he should. Sumeragi walks into the next screen, calm, unfazed. Coat, still rippling. Lighting, still not entirely fluorescent or logical. Shadows, still too many. His missing eye is glowing faintly.
“Holy shit,” David says. “I’m in an anime.”
“No, kaicho,” Kido laughs, scrolling up on that corner that Sumeragi just left. Sure enough, there’s another one of those little papers, plastered to the wall, the top point of the red star hidden behind the leaves of the plant. “I see everything that goes on in the building. There are no giant robots here.”
--
17:14
There are sakura petals all over the bathtub.
Subaru swallows audibly.
There are sakura petals all over the bathtub. Which is drawn, three-quarters full, and slightly steaming.
There’s the last of a pleasant sunset outside, creeping in between the drapes, stretching the shadows of the toiletries across the bathroom floor in sharp columns, all the way to the tips of Subaru’s socks. There’s brightly-shining tile in the gaps. There’s sweat on his ankles and a gaseous hiss in the heating system and a towel dangling out of his hand, almost touching the floor.
Subaru turns around, steps out of the bathroom, and pulls the door closed.
A moment later, he opens the door again, folds the towel neatly, sets it on the nearest rack and then steps out and closes the door.
He’d been holding his breath, and he still can’t let it out now. He leans into the doorjamb, clenches his elbows to his sides, digs his heels into the carpet until he can feel the terries through his socks. That helps, some. Enough, at least, to get his chest to loosen and his throat to open and his eye to stop aching, mostly, but his head’s still throbbing. Another long moment, and he’s on his way to the service phone. That’s right, he has to call Tokyo later. This first.
The receptionist answers, at length and cheerfully.
Subaru stutters, trying to get his name and room number out, and the apologies that follow it.
--
18:50
“So, was the room all right?”
David’s been waiting in the Best Western Nagasaki’s Premier Lounge but not very long at all, not long enough to be accosted by an eager waiter. Sumeragi pulls up from bowing and somehow, this second grey suit has even less color than the first. Maybe I’m not in an anime, David thinks, I’m in a comic book.
“There is no excuse-I truly do apologize-but I requested that my room be changed.” He sounds-somehow-like he truly means it. Younger, a bit undone. David’s more relieved than he should probably be. “I am sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”
“None,” David, well, lies. “I thought Asahi had you put up in the best suite in the house.”
“Perhaps their service was a little too good, Gale-san. Again, I apologize.” Sumeragi bows again. Quicker, more deferent. “I was moved to a washitsu-a Japanese style room. It is what the hotel had available. I assure you, this is more than sufficient.”
“Oh,” David says.
The host comes up to summon them before the resultant silence gets too awkward. He focuses on David, addresses him in practiced and polished English but only nods at Sumeragi-with more of a different kind of dignity, David thinks, than Sumeragi had apologized with earlier. They’re seated at the hotel’s specifically Japanese restaurant, Kaname, in silence; at a tall table, with cursory thanks and low candles and full Western silverware. There are lanterns, everywhere, lit electrically from inside, some in animal shapes like piñatas with ribcages instead of fringe. Sumeragi’s unfazed and distant again, hasn’t looked at his menu.
“Do you drink?” David asks.
“I do not mind if you do,” Sumeragi non-answers.
David nods, rules sake out. “Not something that goes with your job?”
He’s still wearing those gloves, David notices. The same ones. They’re clasped together, fingers interlaced against the vertex of the table, and he’s looking at them, not at David. “No,” he answers, the grammatical way that means, ‘you’re correct, I agree with your assertion of the negative’. “I will not, tonight. But I do not mind if you do.”
“Right.” Looks like David’s going to be the one to open his menu first. He should be used to it by now, isn’t, does. “People who deal with ghosts in America tend to drink. Usually to excess.”
Sumeragi nods, leaves his menu where it is. “American…shaman?” He’s bothered for the word. “Shaman have their method. It is not the same as mine.”
“What is your method?-if you don’t mind my asking.”
The waiter comes by, introduces himself in English but with all the mannerisms that seem appropriate in a Japanese restaurant (at least, to David, and Sumeragi doesn’t flinch). David figures it would be rude to forego drinks if Sumeragi’s made it this clear that he does not mind, so it’s Maker’s Mark, neat, for David, and tea for both of them. Tea, he confirms with one of those inquiring glances, and Sumeragi shrugs, or something like it. And water, apparently, which Sumeragi does ask for on his own-mineral water, David takes the liberty of correcting. Sumeragi concedes.
“-Where was I?” David asks when the waiter’s gone.
“What kind of program is AVATAR?” Sumeragi asks.
“User interface.” Shit, David forgot to ask for chopsticks. “It’s a program best used with virtual reality and gaming applications, things like Second Life used to be, if you’ve heard of it?”
He has.
“Incredibly sensitive voice-recognition software and, well, the best motion-directed interface out there right now, if I do say so,” David explains. “We’re getting pretty close to translating mental impulse into data.”
Sumeragi has that ‘sou desu ka’ expression on, but doesn’t say it. His look of interest isn’t feigned but there’s just enough skepticism in it to put David on the defensive. “Which explains why a lot of your company computers do not have a mouse,” Sumeragi says.
“Right. Even the people not using AVATAR are mostly on voice-recognition at this point. The ones with keyboards are specifically for coding, it’s easier that way. At least until you get carpal tunnel.” David chuckles, rolls his left wrist to demonstrate. “I think I’m going through something like that.”
“You are a programmer yourself, Gale-san?”
“Yeah. AVATAR 1.0 was all mine, did it for my M.A. back in the States. I’ve moved into administration since. The company’s all mine also. My father died two years ago, I built AVATAR with my inheritance.”
Sumeragi nods. “If you do not mind my asking, how old are you, Gale-san?”
“I don’t, and twenty-eight.”
He nods again-making notes in his head? though why this could matter, David’s not sure. Wait. Astrology. David tries not to roll his eyes.
“I observed that many of your employees are American. Why did you bring the company to Nagasaki?” Sumeragi asks.
David unwinds his napkin, smoothes it in his lap. Someone starts putting service on the table in neat rows, faceted goblets first for the water, then short rounded cups for the tea. Sumeragi keeps his eyes down when the busboys are pouring, and a third runner slides David his drink, on an efficiently angled paper napkin. On the wrong hand, not that the runner knows. David lifts the glass, passes it from his left to his right hand, smiles bemusedly when the napkin sticks to the glass’ underside and when his wrist isn’t cramping as much as it was yesterday.
“I brought the company to Japan because a lot of our market is here, and in Korea,” David answers, taking up the water. It’s a little crowded on that side of his plate. “Other reasons. Real estate, the ease of actually starting a company overseas…and who my backers are. Who’s most interested in a program like mine. America’s…not exactly the land of hopes and dreams anymore-if it ever was-because there are so many dreams, and they’re all just huge, and they compete with each other, slaughter each other.” He sips. Mineral water tastes the same here as there. “It’s not a case of the nail sticking up getting hammered down, over there. The nails that stay low get hammered down, because they’re closer to the plank, easier to crush. The nail that sticks up gets pried out and straightened out and primed for peak efficiency.” He smiles. “Then it gets hammered down.”
It seems like the metaphor’s not lost on Sumeragi. He closes his gloves around his teacup, lowers his eyes again-that missing one is jarring, and David’s pretty sure he shouldn’t ask, but. But. “And what do you make of dreams in Japan?” Sumeragi asks, prompts.
“I admit to not knowing much about it,” David says.
Sumeragi savors the tea, smells it more than drinks it. Steam curls around that eye. “In Japan, the nails matter as much as the wood they hold together. If a nail does not get hammered down, it is because the nail is bent and unfit for use.”
“AVATAR is unfit for use?”
“That is not my business.”
“But you’re thinking it.”
Sumeragi rotates the teacup before setting it down. “Gale-san does not believe in reading the hearts of others. It is no surprise that Gale-san is incorrect in his assessment of mine.”
-And that would be the waiter. Sumeragi hasn’t touched his menu, and David’s not entirely sure what he wants either, but the waiter lists the specials in English and the prix fixe-teishoku, the waiter adds in Sumeragi’s direction-sounds appropriate enough. Sumeragi has a few other words with the waiter, in Japanese-the waiter speaks fast, but Sumeragi uses Japanese the same way as English, apparently, just more fluidly. There’s a faint red cast to his cheeks. When he’s done talking, he takes up his teacup again and the waiter clarifies things with David. It makes enough sense. He bows a bit, wishes them a happy new year.
“So you’re not thinking that AVATAR is useless,” David goes on, lifting his elbow so that the waiter can take the menu away. “What’s your reservation, then?”
This sip of tea takes Sumeragi longer, maybe actually touches his lips. “I have sent on the spirits of machines and programs before. Your case is still the first of its kind that I have come across.”
“Oh?” -That’s right, Sumeragi still hasn’t explained his method yet.
“When an object or a concept becomes…the word for not alive, but feeling?”
“Sentient.”
“Thank you. When an object becomes sentient, it is usually because of strong human feelings that surround it, that give it life. There is no such situation in your company. I do not believe that AVATAR itself is causing the problem.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Or if it is,” Sumeragi goes on, “that it is an error in the programming, which I am not equipped to fix.”
“Then I really am sorry for dragging you down here,” David says, pushing his chair back and nodding at the runner, setting down bowls of soup.
Sumeragi doesn’t touch his, but leans forward, as if to tell David to go ahead. An ascetic. It figures. David does. Sumeragi waits for David to have hissed in a good drawl of seaweed before going on, “But I am certain that there is an imbalance in the building itself. The manner of these deaths is not,” He says, and then restarts, corrects, “The manner of these deaths implies a spiritual cause. You did not ‘drag me down here’ for nothing, Gale-san.”
David swallows another mouthful of broth and paste and seaweed.
“When I was sixteen,” Sumeragi says, gloves interlaced on the table’s edge again and the green of a hanging lantern in-both-eyes, the one sharp and the other murky and both damned disturbing, “I met a woman who could touch human feeling in glass, and a man who collected the shards of construction sites. It is called post-cognition. The woman…I first met in a subway in Tokyo. The police used her skill at the scene of a murder, which she relived by laying her hands on the stone.”
“Is that why you wear gloves?”
Sumeragi doesn’t answer, but quickly. “The stone of your building is new, but there is already an impression upon it.”
David sets down his spoon in the bowl, curved side down, handle resting on the rim. “So you need to exorcise the building?”
“I do not yet know.” He shifts in his seat, sits straighter, overshadows the lanterns that had recast his eyes. “Again, it is not a situation I have been in before. There are no ghosts in stone that is new. Even your employees who are dead did not remain behind.”
A dollop of tofu misses David’s lower lip, at that. “You’ve looked for them?”
“Yes.” The man’s still unflappable. Or, well, this is what he does for a living. Good at keeping up the illusion of the ordinary, this man. “They do not linger, do not question what became of them. Either they were at peace as they died, or something else has sent them on.”
“Or there are no such things as ghosts, just ghosts in the machine,” David says.
Sumeragi sighs, over the creak of leather on porcelain, shifting his grip on the tea. A long moment later, he drinks it. It occurs to David that it might have just been too hot, earlier.
“Can you exorcise a building?” David asks, once the last of his soup is down.
“I have exorcised a Chanel suit,” Sumeragi answers. He’s completely serious.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” David says, even though he does.
Sumeragi could have laughed-David thinks-but doesn’t even really smile. The waiters must be watching this table, because the soup bowls are cleared before David even really has a chance to notice that Sumeragi’s was still full. Another runner sets two ornate trays of appetizers, one of cold sashimi and one of little hot-looking things. David recognizes eel but forgets what the word for it is.
-Apparently, at some point, Sumeragi got chopsticks. Shit, David forgot to ask again. No matter. He moves the other one of what Sumeragi just took off the serving plate and onto his own small one, scrapes a sliver of wasabi to deck it with. Apparently it’s squid. It’s the same color as his eye. Sumeragi mutters that ‘grace’ thing under his breath once there are a few things on his plate-David’s already started eating by then, but he’s not sure there would have been a permitting glance anyway.
Man, this is awkward.
David’s not sure he likes the squid. It’s kind of cartilagey. He chews it a few more times before trying to, well, continue this? Salvage this? It’s not broken but it does need fixing. “You probably get this a lot, but did you always want to be…what you are?”
Sumeragi eats very little, and very delicately, lifting his plate and chopsticks very close to his face and chest. He sets everything down before he answers, eyes closed. “I did not really have a choice, and I did not question that.”
“Family business?”
“Yes,” Sumeragi says. “It is something I want to do, and am…it suits me,” he says after a shadow blacks those lanterns out again, just for a moment. “But I cannot imagine myself doing anything else.”
It’s almost a textbook response, David thinks, wonders how clichéd this sounds. “There’s really nothing else you can see yourself doing? You’re good with English, maybe you’d make a good diplomat.”
“Thank you,” Sumeragi says, closing his gloves around each other again, “but I do not think so, and no, there is not. I was born to be what I am. I would not forgive myself if I was to change.”
“That’s a different answer.” David spears some kind of dumpling and chews it thoughtfully. Not pork, not vegetables-duck? No, that’s Chinese. It doesn’t taste like anything really and the texture’s on the flaky side. “Just because there’s a lack of options doesn’t mean you might not be happier doing something else.”
“What I do is not about my being happy.” Sumeragi lifts his teacup again. This must be the last of it-he glances into the cup before he drinks. “It is about enabling other people to be happy. The well-being of other people matters more to me than my own.” He drinks, and looks into the glass again. Something he sees makes his eyebrows twitch inward, just enough that David forgets that eye for a moment.
“You sound like there’s more to say about it than that.” David puts his fork down. No sense in filling up on the appetizer. And chopsticks, right, chopsticks.
Sumeragi rotates the teacup on the tablecloth and it squeaks in his glove. There’s another slice of squid on the central plate, or something that looks enough like it. He seems to notice, then-almost-looks David in the eyes (and David’s not sure whether that’s because he’s not looking or not). “An early client of mine had two children, who were very ill. She had given up her-jinzou. An organ there are two of, it processes waste.”
“Her kidney,” David answers.
“Her kidney, thank you. She gave up her kidney to prolong the life of the girl, but the girl had rejected it and died. When the boy became too ill to survive on his own also, the mother only had the one left, and feared she would lose her son as well. I offered one of mine.” He curls his fingers on his chopsticks. David’s ache. “My sister was opposed to it. She said the same things then that you are saying now, Gale-san. That I cannot continue giving of myself until there is nothing left of me. I did not tell her then, but I think that is what I want to do.”
That’s sick, David thinks. “Did you?” he asks instead.
“I did not,” Sumeragi says. “My client was also opposed to the idea.”
“And did the child die?”
Sumeragi’s hands still, his mouth stills, his eyes were already still but now they’re green again, the lanterns, the lanterns. “I do not know. I did not see my client again after that discussion.”
There’s not much for David to say to that.
Lucky for him, Sumeragi goes on. “You are concerned with your own happiness, Gale-san?”
“Yes,” David says, more assertively than he probably means. “That’s part of, well, why this, why AVATAR. I’m not in it for the money-even though that’s nice-but I’m definitely not in it for the altruism either. I…” He chuckles, waits for the busboy to refill his water and not-refill Sumeragi’s tea. “I want to change the way people see people, the way people interact with each other. I think it’s inherently flawed. I think that’s ultimately more important than changing how they live and what they do. And I want to use what I have to the best of my ability, toward that end.” He lifts his glass. “Which is pretty much what you just said, only difference being that’s what makes me happy. Using what I’ve got to make some kind of long-term change.”
Sumeragi lifts his water glass as well. His glove is paler under it. “That is not what I said.”
They drink, almost together. David keeps his eyes open now that Sumeragi’s are closed. The busboy’s coming again to take the appetizers away. “Chopsticks?” David asks when he’s close enough. The busboy nods appreciably, says hai, hai.
“It is not what your family expected of you, then?” Sumeragi fills the silence.
Aunt Margot called this morning. “They didn’t mind it. Or they don’t. My family’s always been pretty well-off. Dad was an Environmental Lawyer, Mom’s a social worker. My first tax break bought my first car. So as long as I’m not doing something entirely self-serving they’re pretty much okay with it.”
“But are you not encouraging others to be self-serving?”
“What people do with the program is their own business. I just created it.”
Someone at another table bursts out into deep, yawping laughter. At something else entirely, of course, but Sumeragi turns and looks, stays swiveled. David can only see a sliver of Sumeragi’s profile like this-and it’s the side with the white eye, dead and overcast and-sad, really, just sad. Pitiful.
Without turning around, without raising his voice, Sumeragi almost sighs. “I knew a young man like you. Younger, then. He is dead now.” The laughter dies down at that table, the painted lanterns jostle in the wind. “He was given a choice, one he did not wish to make. And so he did not decide, did not realize all he could have done, until the choice was made for him, almost. Once the choice was made, he could not deal with the repercussions of it, and withdrew from the world.
“I found him there, reliving the moment of decision. He could not undo that he had made the choice, or made it so that he did not have a choice. He did not understand…nobody understood…that even when you have two choices, that does not mean you can make only one of them.”
David sips the water again. “Sounds like the choice he made was to kill himself.”
“He did.” Sumeragi turns around. “But that was the second choice of the two. First, he chose to live for others. And the trouble with living for others is that you keep living.”
David laughs. “In America, there’s a trope-a cliché-that when you talk about ‘someone you know’ like this, you really mean yourself.”
One of Sumeragi’s eyes locks on to his. It stays there even after the waiters come, setting new larger plates and bowls of noodles and fish and God only knows what else-but. There, all through this. The chatter of the room buzzes and tangles. Babble. Clacking silverware and the rush of wind through paper. Electric lanterns in the shape of snarling beasts. Peaked paper triangle teeth. White. Green.
-his cel phone. Asahi.
David trips over some kind of apology, snapping his eyes away, fumbling with his left hand in his jacket for the thing. Asahi’s ringtone is a joke, an oldie, “Blackberry” by the Black Crowes. Seeing as he’s so attached to it and all. Altogether too loud at a time like-
“What’s the trouble?”
“Gale-san, Kido-san is dead.”
David remembers that he’s had Maker’s Mark sitting on the wrong side of the table this entire time. He grabs the glass in his good hand and drinks it down so it burns.
--
.
on to Part 2:
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