Authors: Hideaki Sena
Parasite Eve
Parasite
Eve
Parasite
Eve
by Hideaki Sena
Translated by Tyran Grillo
Copyright © 2005, 2008 by Hideaki
Sena
All rights reserved.
Published by Vertical, Inc., New
York.
Originally published in Japanese
as Parasaito Ibu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo,
1995.
Notes courtesy of Prof. Shigeo
Ohta translated selectively from the Kadokawa
paperback edition.
ISBN 978-1-932234-20-6
Manufactured in the United States
of America
First Paperback Edition
Second Printing
Scanned, proof-read and EPUB/PDF
by Chapu.
Digital edition 1.5 march 2011
Vertical, Inc. 1185 Avenue of the
Americas 32nd floor New York, NY 10036
www.vertical-inc.com
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
Everything vanished suddenly
before her eyes.
Kiyomi Nagashima had no idea
what had happened. The houses she passed every day were reflected in the
windshield only a moment ago. Just ahead, the street took its familiar slope
downward and bore slightly to the right, where a traffic light had just changed
to yellow, before vision failed her.
Kiyomi tried to blink, but
her sight did not return. No matter how much effort she put into it, nothing
appeared. They had all gone away: the white sedan driving in front of her; the
tail light of the bus waiting at its stop; the cluster of high school girls
hastening along the sidewalk. Kiyomi looked down in her confusion to check the
steering wheel. Then, she was truly shocked. The steering wheel was gone. In
fact, she did not even know where her hands were. She could not feel the seat
belt around her waist nor her foot on the gas pedal, for neither was where it
was supposed to be. There was only darkness fanning out, continuing endlessly
in all directions.
There was a churning around
her, and she was floating in a warm, viscous liquid. She was naked. Her clothes
had vanished without her ever noticing.
That dream again.
That dream she had once a
year, on Christmas Eve, in which she felt herself writhing in some pitch-dark
world without beginning or end. She’d always had that strange dream. This was
the dream, and she was now entering into it again. But she did not know why she
was having it just now. Like the stars’ orbits, the dream always came to her
with regulated precision. She never dreamt it on any other night but Christmas
and had certainly never entered into it while she was awake.
Her body was changing
profoundly. She lost all feeling in her arms and legs. Maybe they’d actually
vanished. Head, torso, and hips gone, a body long and narrow like a worm’s, she
felt herself to be. Kiyomi shook and slithered ahead through the slightly
sticky blackness.
What is this place?
It
was a question she had asked many times before. Her body seemed to recall this
place, yet no matter how much she tried, Kiyomi herself could not remember.
Once, in some far-off place, Kiyomi was just like this, not understanding
anything, just squirming and swimming. That much was true. Had it been
yesterday, a recent year, or in the more distant past? She could not tell. To
begin with, it was not clear that time flowed in this vast gloom.
Kiyomi felt her body changing
again. Something small divided slowly deep inside of her. At the same time, she
felt a gentle constriction in her very center, and the ends of her body flowed
quietly in opposing directions.
She was becoming two.
It was a strangely tranquil
feeling. Time seemed to pass so gently, slowly.
Where am I? When is this?
What am I?
Such mundane concerns no longer mattered. She wanted only to
remain floating like this in the dark.
She gradually split in half.
There was no pain. Rather, she was insensate and that was bliss. Everything
sedate. No turmoil. Dividing like it was natural. Calm. All was calm.
Kiyomi let all her nerves
relax as she slowly surrendered herself to the flow...
Her vision was then
completely restored just as unexpectedly as it had abandoned her. She clearly
saw now her own two hands grasping the steering wheel. Kiyomi blinked, then
looked straight ahead.
She was heading straight into
a telephone pole.
PART ONE
1
Until the phone rang that
morning, it was the beginning of an average, uneventful day for Toshiaki
Nagashima.
At 8:20 am Toshiaki parked
his car at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The lot was still more than
half empty. Briefcase in hand, he got out of the car and locked it. He looked
up indifferently at the Pharmaceutical Center. Rising six stories high, the
building was steeped in somber gray beneath the cloudy sky.
In the entrance lobby,
Toshiaki changed into a pair of sterile sandals, then took the elevator to the
fifth floor. Double doors opened to reveal a corridor extending in both
directions. Far back to the right was the lecture hall where he taught his
course on Advanced Methods in Biofunctional Sciences. It appeared that most of
the students and other staff members had yet to arrive, for not a sound could
be heard. However, late mornings were not unusual. The other organic science
courses were quite different, entire staffs assembling and seminars beginning
at 8 am. Toshiaki’s course was an exception in that they wasted no time on
finding fault with their students’ time management skills. Instead, he and his
colleagues stressed that what mattered was for the students to conduct their
experiments and present the data.
As a mere research associate,
Toshiaki made an effort to arrive by 8:30, but this was not a commitment
required of him.
He opened the door to Lab 2,
which housed his desk, turned on the light, and entered. After hanging his
coat, he placed his briefcase next to the bookshelf. Two chemical agent order
forms had been written up and left for him on the desk by his students the
night before: specifically, requests for the restriction enzymes EcoR I and
BamH I.
[1]
Toshiaki attached the
forms together with a paper clip and pinned them to the desk-side wall.
Looking over the notes he’d
made the day before, he began to prepare for his experiment. First he left the
lab and keyed open a door just down the hall which led into the Cultivation
Room. The room’s interior was imbued with a ultraviolet sterilizing light,
which he switched to an ordinary fluorescent light as he stepped inside. He
took two plastic culture flasks from the incubator and placed them under a
microscope. He adjusted the focus and peered through the lenses, gazing at the
cells at the other end. After ensuring he was satisfied with their condition,
he returned the cells to the incubator, then removed a few implements from the
autoclave and placed them into the clean bench.
[2]
Toshiaki returned to his lab
and removed several testing chemicals from the refrigerator. Just then, Sachiko
Asakura, a second- year master’s student he had been mentoring, walked in.
“Good mor-ning,” she
enunciated pleasantly as she entered.
Toshiaki returned the
greeting like an echo.
Asakura put her coat away,
revealing a figure shrouded in a white summer sweater and jeans. She had her
long hair tied behind her back. Removing her sweater, she donned a white lab
coat.
At nearly 5’9”, Asakura was
quite tall for a woman, shorter than Toshiaki by only an inch or so. When she
passed by, she acknowledged him with a smile and a small bow. Asakura’s height
was greatly accentuated in her long coat, and it was always pleasant to watch
her stately figure as it fluttered about the lab during an experiment.
Toshiaki informed her he
would be in the Cultivation Room and, with that, left the lab.
Once the clean bench
preparations were complete, he removed the culture flasks and commenced his
work. The cells he was using, known as NIH3T3,
[3]
were relatively common. He had, however, introduced
retinoid receptor
[4]
genes into the
cells of one of the flasks. Two days before, he’d placed each respective cell
culture into a new flask and bred them; then, the following day, he’d added a
dose of β-oxidation enzymes
[5]
into the indicator solutions. Today, he planned on collecting mitochondrial
data from both cultures. His expectation was that the activity of the
β-oxidation enzymes would be higher for the cells receiving the gene
transfer than for the control cells.
Just when he began the
procedure, there was a phone call.
Toshiaki heard the lab phone,
but his hands were occupied and Asakura was over there in the lab. He assumed
she would take the call. After three rings, she seemed to have picked up the
receiver; for a dozen seconds, the morning’s peace was restored. But soon there
was the sudden echo of rushed footsteps. Toshiaki continued working, wondering
what was the hurry. Not knowing why, he chanced a glance at the wall clock. The
hands indicated exactly 9:00 am.
The lab door burst open.
“Dr. Nagashima, you have an
urgent phone call.”
As he lifted his gaze slowly,
he saw Asakura’s face in the doorway, her mouth trembling slightly.
“It’s from the hospital.
Y-your wife. She’s been in an accident.”
“What?”
With that he rose.
2
The streets around the
university hospital were congested, rows of outpatient cars spilling over onto
the public roadways. Unable to suppress his mounting impatience, Toshiaki
sounded his horn furiously.
The person on the phone had
been a staff member from the emergency ward. Kiyomi was driving her car, he
said, when for some reason she veered off a turn, crashing straight into a telephone
pole. Considering how bad the wreck was, he doubted she had even tried the
brakes. Kiyomi had suffered a potentially fatal impact to the head. Toshiaki
asked about the location of the accident, only to discover that it was a main
drag he used too. It was an easy road to speed on, but its unobstructed view
made it anything but dangerous.