The Future Is Japanese (47 page)

“Wouldn’t you like to harvest Imajika’s oil?”

“Oil?”

“I mean Imajika itself, under this armor. There’s so much buried in what people have written, meanings they never even noticed were there. The reason is simple. Hundreds of people separated by hundreds of years have been writing about the same things in hundreds of languages. And there was no way to connect those dots until GEB’s algorithm—its high-speed, multilanguage intertextual semantic relationship generator—stumbled across them.

“But GEB couldn’t deal with these relationships because there was no way to assign them names. Whatever GEB can’t deal with, it discards, and GEB discarded millions and millions of these relationships. It just went on finding and discarding them—until they returned, bringing a dynamic system with them. Imajika.

“That’s what the head of this whale holds. Without names, they are outside the ‘written’ domain. The only alphabet that can write them is the wind.

“The wind is invisible. You can only see it when it leaves its imprint in a twisted contrail. It’s the same with Imajika. You can’t see it, but when it twists texts and turns them to stone you can see that power. You can see that yearning.”

Alice points to the stone. “What do you think, Jundo? You can’t find that anywhere these days. It ought to be amazingly valuable.

“I suppose it would. As valuable as an oil field,” Jundo says.

“Even if that treasure is wasted on GEB, I bet the people who created this domain are hoping you’ll extract that oil and bring a barrel of it back for them.” Alice smiles her best smile.

“I see. And what’s the next interview question?”

“Hm?”

“Drop the pretense. I’m not your enemy. Alice Wong—you’re here to help Imajika, aren’t you?”

Imajika devoured Alice’s poems. For the embryonic Imajika, Alice’s collection—huge and always powerfully moving forward—must have been a towering presence. And Alice herself became collateral damage.

As Imajika absorbed them, Alice’s poems were deformed, crushed, and fossilized. Now they were probably part of this wall of stone.

Jundo Mamiya walks to the gunwale, stretches out his hand and puts a fingertip against the frozen rock.

“I told you,” Alice says. “I’m a ghost. Your words were laid safely to rest in GEB, muscle and bone. CASSYs can dig them up and drench them with electricity. But my words got turned into whale hide.”

Jundo had phenomenal profiling ability. He could draw inferences from almost any behavior and assemble them into a complete personality profile. That gift was now distributed throughout this plain, throughout the Intelligent Textual Organ. With Imajika lashed securely into place, Alice can be read directly from the surface of the stone.

“Jundo, please pay attention.”

“What now?”

“I need to ask you something.” Alice looks up at the sky.
The heavens are clear, but they’re the same material as everything else.

Humanity’s words gently embrace Imajika.

Alice hesitates for a moment. “Did you really kill a bunch of people?”

“Yes, I did. After a bit of conversation with me, they all chose death. They had to.”

Alice winces, exasperated. “You’re so stiff-necked. Okay. Different question for you. You wrote that you talked to them because you wanted to murder them. You said you had a natural urge to kill. But that was a lie, wasn’t it?” Alice is certain. “You wouldn’t have cut your ear off just to push your teacher over the edge. You didn’t have to. You had more than enough power. You wanted to restore her sanity. Or you wanted to amputate your own power. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Jundo is silent.

“I knew right away when I read your books. You were a little Imajika. The people who talked to you—those seventy-three people? Afterward they realized what kind of people they really were, didn’t they? It’s like you put that powerful profiling ability of yours inside of them. Their everyday behavior, their little speech habits, their secret vanity, the sins they’d rather forget, the things they chose to remember—everything went into the profile, until their true makeup was staring them in the face. Everything they did and everything they said came back at them, completely transparent, totally decoded. Twenty-four seven. It must’ve been like being in hell.”

“And that was only the beginning.” Jundo finally speaks. “The transformation is progressive. It doesn’t end with mere self-realization. Ultimately it can go far broader and deeper than that. The psychic structure collapses completely. Very few make it that far, but in the end I could never predict who could possibly survive so long.”

“Weren’t you ever afraid, Jundo? I mean, when all you had to do was talk to someone you were close to, and they died?”

“It’s strange. I could never destroy my own inner structure. Like the hammer that can’t hit itself.”

“Jundo. In GEB, authors are anonymous, but CASSYs still found your works. Imajika wanted to read you, I’m sure of it. It had to be your words or nothing. I guess that shows how precious they really were.”

Again, Jundo is silent.

“You died too soon. You know?”

“I suppose. Yes, too soon. I blundered. I spent years preparing carefully, but if I had known I’d be a witness to such fascinating events, I think I would’ve wanted to go on and on.”

Like a gigantic monument, the whale seemed to be leaping toward the sky, as if it wanted to sink its teeth into it. Alice wondered if the time might come when it would succeed in doing just that to this tender organ.

That would be the end of humanity’s words. They would be drenched in whale oil and vanish.

“What are you going to do now?” asks Jundo.

Alice is silent now.

Only as long as Imajika is captive can these two converse like this.

A monster and a ghost.

“Can I sit here a little longer?” she says finally.

“As long as you like.”

Alice smiles impishly. “Thanks, I owe you.”

Jundo Mamiya reaches out to touch Imajika again, when he suddenly sees that his hand is tightly clenched into a fist.

How long has he been clenching it? He hadn’t even noticed he was doing it. That was because no one wrote him to notice it, but now he has a feeling he’s been doing it all along, even when he was alive.

He tries to spread his fingers. The tendons and joints are contracted and stiff. His fingers are frozen. Jundo tries to pry his fist open with his other hand. Alice helps. She tries to worm her slender fingers into Jundo’s fist. She tries using her teeth. They keep at it for a long time, until they’re both covered in sweat, trying to force that fist open. And finally it does open.

They both cry out in surprise.

There in Jundo’s palm is Niwahiko Taira’s little ear, like the petal of a flower.

I would like to thank Sinjow Kazuma and Jyouji Hayashi for their helpful comments regarding my depiction of GEB.

Foreword © 2012 by VIZ Media

Introduction © 2012 by VIZ Media

“Mono no Aware” © 2012 by Ken Liu

“The Sound of Breaking Up” © 2012 by Felicity Savage

“Chitai Heiki Koronbīn” © 2012 by David Moles

“The Indifference Engine” © 2007 by Project Itoh

From
Project Itoh Archives
, published by Hayakawa Publishing in 2010, originally appeared in SF Magazine (Nov issue) in 2007

“The Sea of Trees” © 2012 by Rachel Swirsky

“Endoastronomy” © 2012 by Toh EnJoe

“In Plain Sight” © 2012 by Pat Cadigan

“Golden Bread” © 2012 by Issui Ogawa

“One Breath, One Stroke” © 2012 by Catherynne M. Valente

“Whale Meat” © 2012 by Ekaterina Sedia

“Mountain People, Ocean People” © 2012 by Hideyuki Kikuchi

“Goddess of Mercy” © 2012 by Bruce Sterling

“Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds”
© 2009 by TOBI Hirotaka

From
NOVA 1,
published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in 2009.

PAT CADIGAN
sold her first professional science fiction story in 1980 and became a full-time writer in 1987. She is the author of fifteen books, including two nonfiction books on the making of
Lost in Space
and
The Mummy
, a young adult novel, and the two Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novels
Synners
and
Fools
. In 1996, she emigrated to the UK and now lives in gritty, urban North London with the Original Chris Fowler, her son, the musician and composer Rob Fenner, and Miss Kitty Calgary, Queen of the Cats. She can be found on Facebook and Google+, and tweets as @cadigan. Most of her books are available electronically via SF Gateway, the ambitious electronic publishing program from Gollancz.

TOH ENJOE
was born in Hokkaido in 1972. After completing a PhD at the University of Tokyo, he became a researcher in theoretical physics. In 2007 he won the
Bungakukai Shinjinshō
(Literary World Newcomer’s) Prize with “Of the Baseball.” That same year brought the publication of his book
Self-Reference ENGINE
, which caused a sensation in SF circles and which was ranked No. 2 on
SF Magazine
’s list of the best science fiction of the year. Since then, EnJoe has been one of those rare writers comfortable working in both “pure literature” and science fiction. In 2010 his novel
U Yu Shi Tan
won the Noma Prize for new authors. In 2011 his “This Is a Pen” was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, and he won Waseda University’s Tsubouchi Shouyou Prize. In January 2012, he won the Akutagawa Prize with “Doukeshi no Cyo” (Butterflies of a Harlequin). His other works include
Boy’s Surface
and
About Goto
.

KEIKAKU (PROJECT) ITOH
was born in Tokyo in 1974. He graduated from Musashino Art University. In 2007, he debuted with
Gyakusatsu Kikan
(
Genocidal Organ
) and took first prize in the Best SF of 2007 in
SF Magazine
. His novel
Harmony
won both the Seiun and Japan SF awards, and its English-language edition won the Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation. He is also the author of
Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots
, a Japanese-language novel based on the popular video game series. All three of his novels are available in English from Haikasoru. After a long battle with cancer, Itoh passed away in March 2009.

HIDEYUKI KIKUCHI
was born in Chiba in 1949. He graduated from the Aoyama Gakuin University of Law and, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, began publishing supernatural fiction in the early 1980s. One of the most prolific authors in the field, Kikuchi has published over three hundred books and still produces approximately one per month. He has enjoyed international success as a novelist, and much of his work has been adapted for manga and anime. Kikuchi is the author of the ongoing series
Vampire Hunter D
.
Wicked City
,
A Wind Named Amnesia
, and
Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula
number among his works available in English.

KEN LIU
(
http://kenliu.name
) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. His fiction has appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Asimov’s
,
Clarkesworld
,
Lightspeed
, and
Strange Horizons
, among other places. Ken’s work was nominated for the 2011 Nebula Award in two different categories. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife, artist Lisa Tang Liu. They’re collaborating on their first novel.

DAVID MOLES
spent six years in and around Tokyo near the end of the twentieth century. He currently lives in San Francisco.

ISSUI OGAWA
is known as one of Japan’s premier SF writers. His 1996 debut,
First a Letter from Popular Palace
, won the Shueisha JUMP Novel Grand Prix.
The Next Continent
(2003, Haikasoru 2010) garnered the 35th Seiun Prize. A collection of his short stories won the 2005 Best SF Poll, and “The Drifting Man,” included in that collection, was awarded the 37th Seiun Prize for domestic short stories. Other works include
Land of Resurrection
,
Free Lunch Era
, and
The Lord of the Sands of Time
(Haikasoru 2009) and a ten-volume epic called
Tenmei no Shirube
(Sign of the Heavens and the Underworld), the fifth volume of which was published in 2011. Ogawa is a principal member of the Space Authors Club.

FELICITY SAVAGE
is an American fantasy author. Born in South Carolina, Savage lived until the age of two in rural France and then in the west of Ireland. At six, she moved with her family to the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, where she joined the Girl Guides and appeared in productions of Robin Hood and Peter Pan at the RAF base on Benbecula. Her first novel,
Humility Garden
, and its sequel,
Delta City
, were published by Penguin ROC in 1994 and 1995, while she was still at Columbia University. Her
Ever
trilogy was published by HarperCollins in 1995, 1996, and 1997. Savage was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1995 and 1996. She currently lives in Tokyo, Japan, with her husband, daughter, and two cats (one fat and one insane). When not writing, she works as a Japanese translator, sings Gregorian chant, and moonlights as a serial houseplant killer.