The Complete Karma Trilogy (6 page)

“The network?” Reiko asked.

“What did you tell her, Mr. Okada, that they’re sharing consciousness? Well, that’s a fine description in an abstract way, but it makes it sound really spiritual, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s more like the connection between computers, like a network. If you simplify the brain, it’s really just a huge hard drive, with the limitation that it can only be accessed by one person. I know you’re a psychologist, so I hope you don’t resent the simplification, but what we’re doing is just making the data more accessible, by broadcasting it. So each rat will be equipped with a receiver and a transmitter.”

In the background, the smell of burning continued, and the people there talked in whispers that were inaudible to Reiko.

Toru continued, “We don’t want to overload the little things, though. So we’ll be slowly doubling the amount of connections they have. Stopping around sixteen is the plan. We’ll have eight groups of two, then four groups of four, and so on. If we just added one at a time, the first few rats could adapt well, but it might be a tremendous shock for the last one added, experiencing a sixteen-fold expansion in ‘consciousness’.” He said the word as if he didn’t think that it directly applied.

“What’s your first impression,” Toru then asked, a look of genuine interest on his face.

“I think it’s crazy,” Reiko said.

“How do you think the rats will react?”

“I don’t know enough about what they’ll be experiencing, to answer that question confidently.”

Toru looked dissatisfied that she wouldn’t hazard a guess, but let it go. “I’ll set aside some time for Haru to tell you more about that, then, if you really want to know more about the technical side. He’s the programmer, so it might seem strange that he’d be the person to go to, but I promise that he is. After we’re done here, and you’ve had a good look at the rats, I’ll arrange for it.”

“They’re ready,” said a voice from the crowd at the table. They moved aside as much as they could, allowing the small group that had formed around Reiko to see. Two cages were brought from the corner, and one rat was placed into each. Reiko could finally see the extent of the modification, which looked just like a small, metal tack inserted into the rat’s temple. Space was cleared on the table to allow room for both cages to be placed next to each other.

“Go have a look at them,” Toru said, gesturing forward. A path cleared for her to the front.

When she was there, one of the electrical engineers, she thought it was Ichiro, said, “I’m going to turn it on. Just watch them for anything unusual. I don’t know how rats are supposed to behave.”

“You’re not going to let them heal first?” Reiko asked. The heads of the rats had small, fresh sutures radiating from the tack.

“What does it matter?” Ichiro responded. “Nothing like a distraction to ease the pain, right?” He didn’t wait for her to reply before he flipped a switch. She didn’t argue anymore, she turned her attention immediately to the two rats. Everyone behind her pressed forward to see.

At first, nothing changed. They were both perfectly stationary, probably still experiencing the sedation from the surgery. Slowly, the rat on her left began turning in a counterclockwise direction, gradually increasing its speed until it was hopping in a circle. The one on the right continued not to move.

“What are they seeing?” Reiko asked to anyone that would answer.

Haru, the programmer, said from behind her, “From all four of their eyes. None of us know how the data will be processed in their brains, though. My guess is that it looks something like permanently having yours eyes crossed. Which sounds brutal, but maybe if you get used to it, it wouldn’t be so bad. Eyes that travel in different directions, eyes that could look directly at each other, without a mirror in between. And then there’s the sound, and the tactile sensations... I don’t know. But they’re definitely sharing information—look over here.” He indicated a computer monitor that was off to one side, which was displaying a bunch of numbers that had no meaning to Reiko. “This number is the amount of data being sent out, and this one is the amount coming in, for the rat on the left. Huge numbers.”

Reiko turned back to the rats, to look closer at the one on the right. It was lying down. “What about the other one?” she asked.

“The same numbers of course, just in reverse.”

Toru leaned toward the table, to address Reiko as she inspected the rats. “Well, how do they look?”

“They don’t seem terribly abnormal,” she responded. “And I’ve seen some terribly abnormal rats. Whatever is happening to them, it’s no worse than a moderate dose of cocaine. At least not yet. But of course I’ll need to watch them longer.”

“Of course,” Toru said. “If things look good over the next few days, we’ll get the other groups set up, and go from there.”

Apparently that was a signal to the entire group that the show was over, and to file out of the room. But before anyone left, they first approached the rats one by one, and looked at them with a sense of pride, or fondness. It was probably their machines they were looking at, Reiko thought, finally embedded in a living organism. The rats most likely meant nothing to them, except as a mode of transportation for their dream. It occurred to her that they’d probably spent years getting that far, and it was a huge milestone for them. It was her first day. So she stood aside, to let them all have the room they needed.

And eventually she was almost alone in the room, with the exception of Mr. Okada, who had never moved from his spot in the back. “Interesting stuff, right?” he said, stepping forward and smiling. “It’ll be even more interesting if it does any of the things that it’s supposed to do. Anyway, I wanted to apologize for being as vague as I have been about your duties, but I mean it when I say that the only thing I need from you is your best guess about what’s happening to them, and how it affects them. And you can go about formulating that guess however you want, although I prefer you base it on some science or another. Your guess is your final product. It’s all I need from you, but I absolutely need it.

“This is all preliminary work, the things we’re doing here—someone else will test our product, when we get to that stage, and they’ll probably do the exact same types of experiments as we already have, all over again. Some government organization or another. Horribly inefficient. But I would like to know the answers before any of that, using my own resources, and with people I trust.”

Reiko couldn’t understand how his final statement could include her, but he smiled at her again in a warm, reassuring way. His eyes wandered to the cages, and for a moment they became cloudy and distant, as if his soul had left them. He came back, to say, “If you wouldn’t mind grabbing one of those cages, and following me.” While he said it, he picked up one himself. “This is the room for working, not observing. Yours will be down the hall.”

He walked out of the room, and waited in the hallway for her to come out so he could shut the door behind her. He then walked back towards the lobby, turning into the last door on their right before the hallway ended. She followed closely behind.

It was a bright room, with a window facing the morning sun in the distance. There were fourteen other cages, all with their own singular inhabitant, and then a larger cage that housed another ten or so, all arranged on tables that bordered the entire room. The center, although not very spacious, was only occupied by two rolling chairs. He placed the cage he was carrying in an empty space along the far wall, next to the window. She set hers directly next to it.

He said, “And as you can see around you, here are some normal rats. For contrast, if you needed it.” He hadn’t shut the door behind them when they entered, and he went back to stand in the threshold before continuing, “I’ll leave you alone with them now, to give you the chance to become acquainted.”

He had already turned around, but before he completely shut the door Reiko said, “You are really considering putting these things into humans?”

A complex expression crossed his face. He opened the door slightly to allow conversation around it. After a moment, he said, “When I was young, I always thought that a deep connection could be made between two people merely from words, and a true willingness to make the connection. And maybe for some people, that’s true. But not for me. I love everybody, but always at a distance, and with my poor eyesight a distance is more than I can afford. Now that I’m no longer young, I don’t have much time to search for the fault in myself, so I’m trying new methodologies. Maybe I can get around my fault with a few machines, right? That’s what they’re for, machines. But I’m more of an entrepreneur than a scientist, so I can only bring together the right people, and hope.”

He seemed to wait for a response, but she didn’t know what to say, so she just stood silently with her head bowed. Taking that as a sign his response was sufficient, he closed the door, leaving her alone with the rats.

She looked around her at all of the small, timid animals, locked in their cages. “Let’s begin,” she said to herself. A thought then occurred to her, and she looked around the room. “I have nothing to write with.”

Ronin 2

Invasion of America

Matthew Perry sat
quietly in his seat, listening to the conversations around him, as the maglev train hurtled along the vacuum tube that connected New York City to Tokyo. An hour had passed, and four remained until he would be standing in the Japanese metropolis for the first time in his life. There were no windows, so the only indication that he would soon be underwater was a digital map at the front of the cabin that monitored the train’s position. Classical music drifted diffusely from hidden speakers, some baroque piece that he couldn’t quite identify. He had only taken a passing interest in music throughout his educational career.

Half of the people on the train were of obvious Japanese nationality. He could hear the trilling language being spoken on either side of him, providing a counter-melody to the anonymous music all around. The seats were arranged like a subway car, so that he was directly facing a stranger across the hall. The man was already asleep, head tilted painfully to one side, a channel of drool draining the dam of his mouth into the top of his chair. Matthew hated public transportation, and found the seating arrangement especially unfortunate. Five hours made for a long subway ride.

A half of the remaining passengers were people that worked under him, in some capacity or another. Several were personal bodyguards, and a majority of the rest were clerical workers. The guards were constantly glancing at him around newspapers, in performance of their duties. It had taken him a long time to adapt to the nagging feeling of always being watched, but once he had, he found their presence comforting. The clerks all had large briefcases, and nearly all stared blankly forward from where they sat, apparently opting to fill the long expanse of time with nothing.

He had been chosen to lead the operation because, although he had never been to the country, he was one of the few people in his position that spoke the language. Only one other person in their group of fifteen also spoke Japanese, which meant that unless they hired a few interpreters, a majority of the burden of translation would go through him, a thought he found entirely distasteful. He could tell already that he would be far too busy overseeing business to be bothered with such a menial task. He sifted again through papers sitting in his lap, lists of names, descriptions of various sorts. The hours whittled away.

In a slightly different life, there wouldn’t have been a Japan to go to. The thought resonated deep within his consciousness, so he focused on it. Japanese would have been a dead language, like Latin, everything practical about it evaporated away until only historians cared. And he was far from a historian at heart. In a slightly different life, Japan would have sided with Russia and China in a war that saw the complete eradication of both. The map at the front of the cabin was generous in its coloring of landmasses—it painted green across thousands and thousands of miles of black wastelands. He had seen the pictures. The only habitable portion of continental Asia was Siberia, a historical fact that would have made him laugh if he was aware of it. The Atlantic Union had hesitantly but thoroughly desecrated the rest of it, everything and everyone. And why not, Matthew thought to himself. The planet was already on its way out, so why not speed it along? And then the human race would move on to Mars, repeat the process, on and on. It had already started, and in fact would never end. That was his view on the matter, at least.

His job, in Japan, was to manage the takeover of a company that was of interest to the American government. He in particular had been assigned to it because, besides the fact that he spoke Japanese, the takeover was far from voluntary, and he had experience from before in such dealings. It took a somewhat brutal character, which he knew he possessed. As he understood it, he was part of a larger front to install an even larger American presence in every country that was not a member of the Atlantic Union. Similar parties were being sent to Africa, South America, and what remained of the Middle East. The only thing that mattered to him, though, was the performance of his own duties, which he intended to fulfill to the letter.

If a human was in charge of America, he doubted that any of the current events would have happened. A human would have been hesitant to kill six billion people as an expedient, and a human would have felt compunction ignoring the collective will of the Atlantic Union to, for all intents and purposes, invade the satellite governments left in the wake of the explosions. But for the last ten years the leader of America was not a human, but a computer program. A sophisticated computer program, to be fair, one that could predict social outcomes as easily as economic, with surprising accuracy. It seemed somewhat strange to Matthew, even after ten years, but at the same time it supplied him with a certain sense of confidence, similar to the presence of his bodyguards. They protected his physical body with their expertise, and the computer program protected the ephemeral world of right and wrong with its complex algorithms and predictive power.

Ten years. A moment that Matthew personally found hilarious had occurred at year eight of the computer’s reign—a national debate had surfaced, whether the computer had ‘served its term', and someone else should have been elected to succeed it, or another program designed, in the spirit of democracy as defined by centuries of precedence. But since all such matters were ultimately decided by the computer, it had naturally decided that it shouldn’t be displaced, nor modified in any way. Its decision turned out to be final.

That computer program was called Karma, supposedly since it possessed the power to determine the best present actions to bring about the most harmonious future, a concept its designers found similar enough to the spiritual karma to warrant the same name. That same Karma had decided that it was best to use lethal force against entire countries, and now Matthew lived in the harmonious future of those actions, benefiting from their karma.

It was fairly simple—Karma took as an input the current condition of the world, as represented by the countless data floating around in the internet and extra data provided to it by the people that worked for it, and it made clear political and economic decisions as an output, a governmental black box that served all of the same purposes that a body of elected officials might have done.

For those reasons, it nearly didn’t matter to Matthew why he was being sent to Japan and what would happen after he did his job. Its merits had been assessed, decided to be in the best interest of America, and he had been deemed capable and sent off to perform. With that sense of confidence, after a five hour ride he disembarked from the maglev train and into the deep underground station of Tokyo, for the first and last time.

The company in question was a large medical research facility that wore the guise of a nameless building in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. Although it was loosely affiliated with the Japanese government, it was a private business that sold its technologies to other industries, once they were sufficiently developed. Many of the projects under research were strictly kept secret until their great reveal, but Matthew had a list of all projects known by the American government, which was assumed to be nearly complete. Karma had made the list itself, using information from obscure corners of the informational world that Matthew couldn’t fathom. There was one project in particular that he had been sent to oversee, which went by the title of Kaishin. To avoid suspicion, and for simplicity, he had been instructed to simply take over the entire company, but it was only Kaishin that mattered.

He felt very conspicuous, surrounded by fourteen people in business attire, all extremely Caucasian. He could see the Evaporation Pens in the breast pockets of his bodyguards, and wondered to himself if the significance of that device had reached the world consciousness yet. He told them all to wait where they were, at the base of the building, while he went to a cafe across the street, at the corner of a busy intersection.

The cafe had a very Western feel to it. Very modern, full of metallic glint and polished wood and sharp lines, track lighting and the heavy aroma of coffee. Several college-age people sat at the tables, shoulder bags placed underneath their seats. He stood in line, and when it was his turn, ordered a regular coffee.

He hadn’t spoken Japanese in over a year, and he could feel that his fluency had atrophied. He had to search for each word individually as he spoke. “May I have a coffee, please? And no room at the top, if you will. Room is for the weak.”

The barista didn’t seem to know how to respond, but did seem to understand him. He smiled subserviently, and shouted the order back to another worker behind him.

It had been somewhat of a concern to Matthew, that he would come that far just to be unintelligible. He was ashamed of the feeling, but he was very relieved when the few brief words and a couple notes of yen were turned into a coffee, in correspondence with his will. It reassured him.

Before returning to the group of men across the street, he took a seat at one of the tables by a window in the corner of the cafe, at which a young college student was already sitting. The action considerably shocked the man, since Matthew was straightforward to the point of rudeness when taking the seat, but his reaction didn’t slow Matthew down. The man didn’t have time to object before Matthew offered a fairly formal introduction of himself, and extended his hand. With a visible diffidence, the man took his hand.

In Japanese, Matthew said, “And what would your name be, young sir?”

“Hiro.”

“And you attend a university, from what I see?”

“Tokyo University.” The student took great care to use as few syllables as possible to answer.

“So very abrupt, and here I’m just trying to get used to speaking again.”

Hiro responded by making a large, ironic smile, and saying, “Well, I am very busy, so...” He then pulled a book out from the bag at his feet, and flipped it open to a random page.

“How long do you think you’ll remember the things you read in that book?” Matthew asked. “If you are extremely interested by them, and have an excellent memory, maybe a year at best.” Matthew read the title of the book—it was a book on physics. “Unless you become a physicist. But that is the only exception to that rule. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. I’m at the end of my year, only with Japanese instead of physics. One more day, and I’ll lose it all. Wouldn’t you feel compassion, if our situation was reversed—you worked so hard to learn physics, and I, the physicist, refuse to remind you of all of the basic principles you desperately need, because I am too busy?”

“You don’t make sense,” Hiro said.

“Is it my Japanese, or my thought process?”

“Your thoughts, I suppose.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” Matthew said as he stood up, and tousled the man’s hair. It was entirely inappropriate, and Matthew smiled as he did it. Hiro refused to look up at him as he left. “Enjoy being a physicist, little Hiro. Study hard.”

Back across the street, Matthew took the first sip of his coffee. It was tepid, at best. “Wonderfully refreshing,” he said to the men around him, back to comfortable English. They had all been standing in the same place, awkwardly, for the fifteen minutes he had been gone. “And sorry to keep you waiting so long. Certain necessities I had to take care of. But if you’re all ready, I believe it is about time for our appointment.” After saying that, he glanced at his watch for the first time in several hours to make sure that he hadn’t lied. “Very close to our appointed time,” he repeated.

He led the way inside, his guards close behind. The main lobby was unassuming, with white tile floors and a small reception desk, flanked by elevators. Hallways branched off left and right, their length visible only for a moment as he briskly made his way to the reception desk. To the lady that sat there, he said, “I believe we have an appointment, for 3 P.M., with the board of directors? We’re with the American government.”

She nodded, typed a few things into a computer in front of her, and said, “If you will take the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor, you will be escorted from there.”

“Thank you very much,” he said, and led his group to the elevator. No one said a word on the way up.

Eventually he was sitting in a room with a lot of balding, middle-aged Japanese men. They appeared intelligent overall, just a little overfed. Matthew himself was a very slender individual, in his early thirties, who still had plenty of youth at his disposal. Sitting next to him were his bodyguards, although he had to leave the rest of his retinue back in the hallway, since they wouldn’t all fit into the room.

The atmosphere was very tense. It was obvious that every single one of them hated Matthew’s existence, with an inspiring passion. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought. The man who was currently speaking was turning more and more purple with every word he spoke. Matthew thought that he was the CFO of the company, but, because he didn’t know the structure of Japanese businesses very well, and because the term the man was introduced with had no obvious English equivalent, he didn’t really know. That was something for his bureaucrats to worry about, so he didn’t concern himself with the details. Matthew knew that the man at the very end of the table was his only concern, and he focused all of his energy on performing physiognomy from across the table, so he would be ready when the moment came.

The purple man was saying, “... outright insult to the legacy of this company. Thirty years we’ve operated with complete autonomy and complete success, and I can’t help but feel that the two go hand in hand. What’s to guarantee the future success of the company, and the fates of every person that works for it, after that autonomy is lost? We have thousands of employees, who deserve better than their fate to be gambled on by rash changes in company procedure. If this change is even to be considered, it should be implemented slowly and with a lot of forethought, or it will be nothing but disastrous. It is with decades of experience that I make these statements. I believe they reflect the general opinion of the room?”