The Complete Karma Trilogy (5 page)

“The bathroom,” Will said. He had his eyes half-closed when he opened the door, expecting to not want to see whatever it was. And there was a lot of blood, all over the floor, and the wall, and in the sink. But the man that was propped up in the shower, the spring of all that blood, was still moving, and looked up at him when he entered. The bathroom was too small for Eric to fit in, he just stood outside and watched.

“Oh good, you came,” the man said slowly, slurring his words. There were several empty bottles of alcohol scattered along the ground in the blood, Will saw. “Could you help me? I almost got it.” The man swallowed heavily, and a fresh stream of blood left his exposed skull. “It’s deep, real deep.”

Will looked back at Eric. Eric made a silent gesture for him to turn back around. “Sir, what you’ve done is a felony,” Will said in an official tone. “I’m going to Evaporate you now.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he said. “Do you think I don’t know that? I know that.”

Will’s hand trembled heavily as he held up the small Pen, pointed at the man. He had to be within five feet, that’s what the range selector said. He had to hold his breath. Carbon monoxide, he would feel really tired and then he wouldn’t feel anything at all. “You knew the consequences,” he said quietly, weakly.

“Back out of the bathroom,” Eric said, when he thought that Will might push the button from inside. “Your head has to be behind the doorway. Back up.”

Will nearly tripped on his new legs, since he wasn’t used to walking backwards in them yet, and he didn’t turn around to do what Eric said, he just moved.

“That’s good. Turn on the fan.”

Will fumbled for the switch with his left hand, his right one still pointing the Pen at the man that was incoherently muttering something to his shower faucet. “Goodbye,” he said, and pressed the button.

He shouldn’t have watched it happen, although he felt like he should, felt like it would be better for him if he desensitized himself to it as soon as possible. But he shouldn’t have watched it happen. The Pen emitted a bright red beam that hit the man on the right side of his chest. Radiating from that point, he became a cloud, which engulfed his entire body in the space of a second. And Will could feel it, the wind that followed. He dropped his Pen and threw up violently.

“That was really good,” Eric said. “You’ll do really great. Now pick your Pen back up.”

Ronin 1

Rats

From where she
sat in the corner of a small waiting room, waiting to be interviewed, Reiko could hear the unmistakable sound of a bird crying. She was on the tenth floor of a building in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo, a place with no real nature to speak of for kilometers and kilometers around it, so the sound struck her as coming from some other reality entirely. Out of curiosity, she stood up and went to the only nearby window, to see if the bird could be seen, wherever it was.

Outside, the natural light of day was waning, slowly being replaced by the lights of the countless cars traversing the roads below, and the lights of offices and other waiting rooms, where people were still working and waiting into the coming night. There wasn’t a bird in sight. The sound had stopped as well. Not wanting to lose it, she strained her ears to see if it could be found again, through the double-paned glass and over the sound of bustling that constantly emitted from the city’s surface. In that state of concentration, she was startled when a woman behind her announced, in a stately voice, “Mr. Okada will see you now, Mrs. Ishida.”

“Yes, of course, thank you,” Reiko replied, quickly gathering her belongings from where she had left them beside her seat. Reiko followed as the woman led her down a long, narrow hallway, towards a room with an opaque glass wall, through which a light and a vague shape of a man could be seen. The woman, the secretary of the business, was unnaturally short and took small, jarring steps that nevertheless carried her forward effectively. She opened the door, made a short introduction to the man in the room, and stood aside to let Reiko pass by.

In her life, Reiko had only been formally interviewed once, and so she was not very confident about the formalities, but she tried her best to bow and smile when appropriate, and she waited until a seat was offered to her. The table at which she sat was uncomfortably long for a conversation between two people, and on the other end of it sat a portly, partially balding man, who had to be in his fifties. He appeared to have aged gracefully though, and wore a well-tailored, black suit that made his girth seem more noble than anything else. He was Mr. Okada, owner of Kaishin Enterprise, personally conducting the interview for his business. It gave Reiko the impression that the business must have been small, for such an important-looking man to be wasting his time speaking with her.

She really didn’t know much about Kaishin Enterprise, even though she had invested a large effort attempting to research it, which she took to mean that it was either very unimportant or very secretive. They had contacted her themselves, shortly after she had graduated from college, and since she hadn’t tried yet to find a job of her own accord, she decided to take the opportunity and see where it led.

All of her reflections made her very nervous. She decided she was glad the table was as long as it was, because she knew that she was visibly trembling. She though that perhaps, from where he was sitting across the room, his middle-aged eyes wouldn’t notice. They seemed to be boring intently into her own eyes, as he sat in silence, making her feel more uncomfortable every second that went by. Finally his intentness dissolved, and the tension left the room. The fact that he could have such a profound effect on the environment around him seemed exceptional to her.

“I apologize,” he said, in a commanding voice that took for granted it would be forgiven. “You have the exact likeness of someone that I knew as a young boy, and it took me a while to remember who it was you reminded me of. But that is neither here nor there—this is an interview, is it not?”

Reiko didn’t think it was a question that needed answered, but he wore the face of an expected reply, and so she said, “That is my understanding.”

“Very, very good. We need new people around here, we’re doing big things. Grand things. Probably things you’ve never dreamed of. And I’m not trying to insult your dreams, I’m sure they’re all very lovely, I’m just talking about strict probability. There are so many possibilities out there, so that you can’t very well just go dream about them all. Not if you have to be awake a majority of the time, anyway. We contacted you, is that correct? Do you have any idea what you are here for?”

“Forgive me, sir,” Reiko started, “but I do not. I tried my best to learn about your business, but I was unsuccessful.” She felt like she was losing already.

“Don’t be so gloomy,” he said, noticing her frown. “That is no fault of your own, not at all. Until all the patents go through, we aren’t letting anything through the cracks. We want to get a head start, we want to explore all of the possibilities ourselves, before we let anyone else have a chance. That’s just the nature of the business.”

She attempted a smile, and he sifted through some papers that were on the table in front of him, the nature of which she couldn’t make out. He said, in apparent connection to one of the papers, “You have a master’s degree in psychology?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve worked extensively with rats?”

“My master’s thesis did involve the effects of certain psychoactive drugs on rats, correct.”

“Good results?”

Reiko took a moment to interpret the vague question. “I saw a lot of sad things, I’m not going to lie. And since the quality of life of those rats was in fact a result of the research I was doing, it’s hard to unequivocally say yes. But I’ve been told by people that know far better than me that my findings will be very beneficial to the field of pharmacology, and I suppose that makes it worth it.” As an afterthought, she said, “So yes.”

“I enjoy your humanity,” Mr. Okada said. “I can tell that you’ve been in a position to know this is true—that we can’t simply experiment with humans, even when humans are exactly what we are trying to improve. You’ve seen the consequences of that simple truth, and that’s what makes you qualified for what we’re doing. I don’t want to make promises that sound too good to be true, but I can very nearly guarantee you that the rats you would be working with here will not be another ‘sad thing’ to add to your list. Even though we haven’t yet tested on a live organism, we have a lot of confidence.

“That being said, we are heavily modifying these rats, which is perhaps of questionable ethics. I don’t really know. I’ll admit, I’m too entranced by the end goal to reflect much on the means by which we’ll get there. I would need you to monitor them, similar to what you’ve done in pursuit of your thesis. I realize this all sounds very abstract, but if we’re successful, we’d be expanding the consciousness of these rats, giving them an experience no human has ever attained. I’m actually jealous that they’ll get there first. We would need your expertise on the success of this goal, and also the potential downsides, should they exist.”

After pausing for a moment, he asked, “Do you think rats are roughly equivalent to people?” The way he said it, it sounded more conversational than intended as an interview question, but it caught her off guard.

She said, “It depends on the context, I suppose. So many of the natural processes are the same. They eat, sleep, and communicate with each other. Some people, that’s all they do, so the similarities are entirely there. But they don’t watch television and their tail is a little better developed. What is it you’re doing with them, exactly?”

He gave a hesitant smile. “It’s our unfortunate circumstance that I don’t feel I can answer that question, until you commit. Because of that omission of information, I’m going to be much more direct about other things that would normally be omitted, which I hope isn’t distasteful. We’d be running these experiments for three months, for which we will pay you a lump sum of one and a half million yen. Should it turn out we need you further, we would discuss an extension at the end of that term, the details of which would have to wait for that moment.”

“It’s not a permanent job, then?” Reiko felt a surge of ambivalence rise inside her. She was in a peculiar stage of her life, where half of her wanted stability and longevity, and the other half would run from any long-term commitment that was offered to her.

“Like I said, it all depends. But I feel safer saying that it is not.” He interlaced his fingers, and lowered them to the table, waiting patiently for her to consider.

“When would I start?”

“I was hoping tomorrow, although I understand if the notice is too short. I’ve been busy with other things, and delayed this far longer than I should have.”

Reiko was somewhat confused. “Aren’t you interviewing more people? Or have you already? Aren’t there more questions? There isn’t much time between now and tomorrow for more interviews.”

“I’ve already decided for myself,” he said. “If you say yes, it is yours. The only thing is, I can’t give you much time to decide. I could give it another day, if I had to, but the timing of this is very important.”

“I don’t need another day,” Reiko said. “I’ll do it, and tomorrow. Where should I be, here? And what time? Can you tell me more about it now?”

Reiko arrived to Kaishin Enterprise at eight in the morning the next day. Mr. Okada greeted her there himself, in the lobby as she entered. He was first to speak. “Your commute is tolerable, I hope? I forgot to ask.”

“I can handle three months of it, yes. Thanks for asking.”

“That is good, very good. Well, if you will follow me, there’s something in progress right now that I’d like you to partake in. And I can explain more while you do.”

She followed him down the hall, turning that time into a doorway on the left side. It was a small room, with specialized tools scattered all over and a few cages stacked in a corner. Seven people were already jammed inside of it, and they had to make room for Reiko and Mr. Okada when they entered.

By way of introduction, Mr. Okada listed out all of their names and areas of expertise. “Not that I will expect you to remember all of this right away, but those two over there are Nami and Saori, biomedical engineers. Next to them are Ichiro and Hideo, electrical engineers. Haru, in the corner, does programming for us. And that’s Noboru, he cultivates our image. And finally, Toru. He watches over the whole affair when I’m busy, as I often am. And that gives you an indication of what we’re about.”

As they were being introduced, the people briefly raised their hands or turned to smile at her, even those that appeared to be intensely busy. The attention of the room was focused completely around a lab table, which was entirely filled with complicated-looking machinery.

“Does it work?” the man named Noboru asked, after the interruption Reiko caused, trying to peer over the shoulders of the people standing around the lab table.

“Is it necessary that Noboru be here?” one of the people working at the table asked. “He’s not actually doing anything, and I’m feeling a little crowded.”

“Don’t kick me out,” Noboru complained. “This is the big moment.”

“One of the big moments,” the man named Toru corrected him. “Hopefully there will be others. But let him stay, Hideo. You’ll be fine.”

“No one answered if it works,” Noboru insisted.

“How do
you
think this works?” Hideo asked, while using what looked like a soldering iron on a rat’s head. He quietly consulted a woman standing next to him before everything that he did, and occasionally addressed the people watching behind them. He continued to say, after waiting for a response, “No, really, how do you think it works? Instantaneously? Tell me how it works.”

“Let it go, Hideo,” Mr. Okada said.

Reiko stood alongside Mr. Okada, where she could barely see anything that was happening on the table. She asked, in a hushed voice, “Can it really be the case that they’re not hurting them? I can’t see it, but I can smell burning.”

“Well, they are grafting things to their brains, which can’t be entirely pleasant, but they’re using a local anesthetic, which is assumed to be sufficient. And the operation is not debilitating, which it might seem like. Sorry that you can’t see much. Space is really limited around here, and it’s a problem. Anyway, after all the appropriate connections are made with the nerves, they will close off the skull using as much bone as possible, and a metal plate on both sides that’s aseptic and treated to be biologically stable. All that’s left, when it’s done, is a little wire that protrudes from its head. We attach a little transmitter to that, and it will look just like a rat again, wearing a small little hat.”

“And this little hat will let the rats share perception?” Reiko asked, incredulous. It was something that Mr. Okada had hinted at, during her interview the night before—the nature of the project. “That just doesn’t seem possible. The parts would have to be so small, and there are so many nerves in there.”

“That’s what makes a lot of our materials proprietary,” Mr. Okada responded. “It self-assembles with the nerves in the head, in a way that’s not disruptive of normal brain function. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell you much more about it than that. That’s what I have Nami and Saori for. Truly gifted people.”

The man named Toru, who was supposedly a sort of manager, pushed his way to the back of the room to be next to Mr. Okada and Reiko. He shook Reiko’s hand firmly as he reintroduced himself, and said, “It’s good to have you here, Reiko. We’re very close to a phase that we’ll be needing you in. We’re going to slowly add rats to the network and give them time to adapt. And you’ll be monitoring them the whole time you’re here. And then another group of rats, if that proves necessary.”