Loop (24 page)

He answered her queries one by one, and then said, "It's alright. I want you to just relax and wait for me."

Then he ended the call. There was no reason to talk forever.

He decided to take a nap on the bed while he waited for Amano's response.

Kaoru figured he was the only one in the world to suspect the connection between the Loop and the cancer virus. It was of course possible that somebody else had arrived at the same conclusion differently, but he hadn't had any information to that effect, and besides, if it hadn't occurred to Amano, the man in charge of maintaining the Loop, then Kaoru felt that chances were he was the only person pursuing this angle. He hoped that by following his hunch, he might be able to shine some light on things that nobody had noticed before. He was sure that the Loop's demise had been investigated any number of times. But that was twenty years ago, before MHC.

The Loop had turned entirely cancerous. Not long thereafter, the real world had seen the isolation of the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus, which was now starting to infect non-human populations, too. It certainly looked like it had spread from the Loop.

Then there was the strange coincidence that the nine genes which made up the MHC virus all had base totals that came to 2(
n
) x 3. This suggested to Kaoru that perhaps the source of the virus was a computer, something that thought in binary code.

Just as he started to nod off, the computer came to life. He went and sat down at the desk. Just as he'd thought, a reply from Amano. The screen displayed several steps for him to follow.

He followed the instructions, tapping on the keyboard. Then it was simply a matter of letting this computer access the relevant portion of the Loop memory.

Access complete.

Kaoru donned the helmet display and data glove, knowing this time what it meant.

The chronicle he'd been sent covered things seen and heard by a certain individual beginning in the summer of 1990, Loop time.

Everything was there for the viewing. If he specified, say, a time of 1990/10/04/14:39 and a place of 35.41°N/139.46°E, he'd be able to watch everything that took place there and then. By advancing the time coordinates while remaining in the same place, the chronicle would unfold on the display. There was a zoom function for a more exact location fix.

He could watch from a fixed viewpoint if he wished. He could specify, say, the fourth block of the Ginza district, and be able to observe any event taking place there in any age. The observer had the ability to look in absolutely any direction, could dart his gaze in between people on the street, could look around at everything like a ghost. The Loop inhabitants would be unaware of the observer, while the observer would be able to explore their world with the freedom of an invisible man.

Alternatively, the observer could lock into the perceptions of a single individual. This would allow the observer to meld his senses with his chosen character in the virtual world.

What Kaoru had in hand now were the memories etched in the brains of several persons. He wanted to observe the cancerization of the Loop from the perspective of someone intimately involved with it, just as he'd lived the entire life of a Native American man in a few minutes. He had at his disposal the experiences of several people, beginning with the one known as Takayama.

So what kind of life had this Takayama led? Kaoru was curious, but his fear outweighed his curiosity. He could be about to experience more unbearable heartache.

But by hesitating he'd only lose his courage. Kaoru started the program.

Of his own free will, Kaoru plugged into the Loop.

He seemed to be in a downtown coffee shop. Flashing neon signs outside the window cast brightly coloured shafts of light into the shop. Takayama, the man onto whom Kaoru had locked, was seated at a table across from another man. The other man was the one known as Asakawa, Takayama's friend. Asakawa was haggard; the sight of him aroused Kaoru's pity. But of course he was haggard: the night before, he'd watched a videotape hideous like no other. Seeking someone to rescue him from the straits he'd found himself in, Asakawa had chosen Takayama. He'd called him here to the coffee shop today to explain the circumstances and ask for his advice.

Takayama took a piece of ice from the glass on the table, threw it in his mouth, and crushed it with his teeth. The chill spread through Kaoru's mouth, too.

Asakawa was scared and keyed up, and as he told his story he was prone to get the order of things mixed up. Takayama was forced to reorganize Asakawa's account in his own mind.

Asakawa's miseries all stemmed from a cab ride he'd taken with an overly talkative driver. The driver had related to him an incident he'd witnessed at an intersection.

The driver had been stopped at a light when a motorcycle next to him had tipped over. The rider had died on the spot from what looked like a heart problem. With the glee of a kid telling scary stories, the cabbie spoke of how the rider had writhed and struggled, trying to take off his helmet. Asakawa's life had changed forever as a result of this useless information.

On the basis of what the cab driver had told him, Asakawa had started looking into sudden deaths. He soon uncovered the fact that along with the motorcyclist, three other young people had died at the exact same time, with exactly the same symptoms, but in different places. One was Asakawa's own niece. His curiosity was aroused. All four deaths had been recorded as the result of sudden heart failure, but his reporter's instinct detected something untoward going on. Given the utter improbability of four kids dying of the same thing at exactly the same time, he felt there had to be a more convincing explanation.

He'd decided to look for commonalities between the four dead kids. It turned out that they were friends, and that exactly a week before their deaths they had been staying in a rented cabin in the mountains. Asakawa decided to check the place out: he departed immediately for the site, a members-only mountain resort, guessing that whatever had caused their deaths, they'd picked it up there.

Evidently Asakawa had initially suspected a virus. He thought they might have all contracted the same illness at the cabin, and thereby been scheduled for the baptism of death a week later.

But to his surprise, what Asakawa had discovered in the cabin was a videotape.

At that point, Takayama broke in and said, "First why don't you let me have a look at that video."

Asakawa looked to be stifling his irritation. "I told you, if you watch it your life might be in danger."

Takayama took another piece of ice from his glass, put it in his mouth, and bumped it around a bit. Asakawa seemed to think he was being mocked.

But in the end, mortal danger or no, nothing was going to get done if he didn't see the video. Takayama decided to go to Asakawa's place and watch the video he'd brought home from the mountains.

Takayama sat in Asakawa's living room, eyes glued to the TV screen. Through his eyesight, the images on the tape found their way into Kaoru's brain. The images were chaotic and fragmentary. The tape started with an erupting volcano. Next up was a newborn infant's face in close-up. The sequence was fragmentary, and shifted quickly from one image to the next, but each scene left a strangely vivid impression, underlain by a baby's cries and other sounds.

The images were neither computer graphics nor the result of filming with a television camera. They were made some other way. One might think of them as shots of another, lower virtual world created by some sentient being within the Loop.

At length there appeared the face of an unknown man, shot from beneath at close range. A close-up of his shoulder showed blood streaming from it. His face was twisted in pain. He went away, and when he came back his face was transformed: the rage was gone, replaced by mingled fear and resignation.

The field of vision narrowed, until it was just a small round patch of sky, through which fist-sized black clumps were falling. They landed on something with a dull thud. Kaoru's body registered unexpected pain.

What's going on?
he muttered.

No answer was forthcoming. The field of vision narrowed further, until it was perfectly dark.

As the tape came to an end, writing flashed across the screen. It looked like it had been written with brush and ink, but poorly: the characters were all of different sizes. This was what it said:

Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly.
..

Then the screen switched to something completely different, bright images and voices. Fireworks on a riverbank, people in light cotton robes enjoying a summer's evening. The dark, creepy visions had been cut off, replaced by a healthful mundaneness.

A few seconds after that, the images stopped entirely.

Kaoru and Takayama looked up from their respective displays at the same time.

Boiled down, one thing became clear.

Those four dead kids had to have all watched this video. And a week later they were all dead, just like the video warns. So there's a video that kills people a week after they watch it, and the instructions for averting death have been erased. There was no saving those kids.

After watching that video in the cabin, Asakawa had been shaken, and now he was despairing, but Takayama was neither. He couldn't be happier than to be involved in this game, this death-wager. He was whistling a happy tune. Kaoru began to realize what a stout-hearted subject he'd locked onto.

He tried to take a step back from Takayama's consciousness so he could analyze things a little more rationally.

Common sense said it was impossible for an intra-Loop life form to construct a videotape that killed anyone who watched it a week later. Of course, it was possible to introduce something from the real world into the Loop that took that form-a computer virus, for example. That would explain everything.

Kaoru put his own doubts on hold again to rejoin the bold and fearless Takayama.

Takayama had Asakawa make him a copy of the tape so they could each apply their intellect to analyzing it.

It wasn't long before Takayama was informed that Asakawa's wife and daughter had watched the videotape, which had been carelessly left for them to find. So now Asakawa was driven by the need to save not only his own life, but those of his family.

Takayama began by trying to figure out how the images on the tape had been filmed. His research and guesswork led him to an unexpected conclusion.

The images on the tape had not been created mechanically, by a television camera or any similar device. Instead, the individual responsible had utilized his or her own psychological power to project them directly onto the videotape. Psychic photography, "thoughtography". Psychic power had imprinted those images onto a blank tape that had been left in the VCR by pure chance.

The Loop was a closed world. Going strictly by the physical laws that obtained there, such a thing was not possible. That wasn't the way the set-up worked.

Kaoru began to feel as if he were watching a movie-a well-made one, to be sure, but based on some pretty juvenile premises.

The two men investigated the identity of their paranormal thought-projector making full use of the information networks at their disposal. Finally, they settled on a name.

Sadako Yamamura.

At that point, based on what they knew, it was definite that the individual in question was female. They visited the island that had been her home, gathering as much data about her as they could.

What they learned as a result was that this Yamamura possessed power that far exceeded what was thought realistic. They ascertained her movements from birth through her graduation from high school and her move to the metropolis. But then Sadako Yamamura seemed to disappear some twenty-odd years ago, Loop time.

It was time for a new perspective. They decided to shift the focus of their inquiry to the question of why those images had appeared on that video, in that mountain cabin.

Takayama and Asakawa decided to go back to the cabin, but on the way they took the opportunity of meeting someone. They had discovered that before the resort was built the land was occupied by a treatment facility for a certain viral illness, and that a physician who had worked there was now in private practice nearby.

They called on him, and when they saw his face, Kaoru himself gasped. It was the man from the final scene of the video, the man with the bleeding shoulder, the man with the expression of terror and resignation.

Unable to withstand Takayama's interrogation, the doctor confessed to having killed Sadako Yamamura twenty-some years previously, and to dumping her body into a well. These days, they suspected, the cabin in question stood atop that well. So Sadako Yamamura, supposedly twenty years dead at the bottom of a well, had projected her rage and resentment straight upward, imprinting those mysterious images on a videotape inside the VCR inside the rental cabin. And it turned out that the woman Sadako Yamamura, in actuality, had possessed physical characteristics of both sexes.

Takayama elected that they crawl beneath the cabin's floor, remove the well cap, enter the shaft, and look for her remains. The idea was to give her rest, in the hopes that it would release them from the curse on the videotape.

In Loop time, exactly a week had passed. Asakawa was still alive. The riddle had been solved. Asakawa fainted with relief.

But it wasn't over yet. The following day, as Takayama's own deadline came, he began to experience inexplicable heart failure. It appeared therefore that exhuming Yamamura's bones and putting her to rest was not what the videotape was after.

Just before Takayama's death, Kaoru unhesitatingly switched subjects, locking onto Asakawa instead. Death, even in the virtual world, was a draining experience, one that he'd rather avoid if he could.

The news of Takayama's death plunged Asakawa back into worry. They hadn't figured out the mystery of the videotape after all.