United States of Japan (14 page)

                              6:39PM

It took twenty minutes of driving to reach a road full of decimated buildings. Throngs of impoverished Americans surrounded oil cans and formed globules of activity that seemed to vanish whenever he turned his head. Most of the walls had graffiti of words he didn’t recognize. The city was divided into square structures that were essentially makeshift shacks, designed without any regards to aesthetics. Streets split up the blocks in asymmetrical clumps and there were occasionally bigger buildings, like the one that resembled a Shinto shrine and another that was identical to the high school he attended, though both were in shambles. Out in front of the school, three USJ soldiers had been hung. Two were Asian men. The left one even resembled Ben, despite his hands and feet having been chopped off. The final one was a woman wearing a bloodied uniform. She looked more like a wax statue than someone who had once served the Empire. Their bodies were still fresh as they twirled in place.

They crossed a broken through truss bridge. Piles of gravel begged for attention, but were ignored. Grain elevators and storage bins that hadn’t been used in years littered the geography, while grass built up bivouacs against penstocks that only carried air and blood. The Americans stopped in front of a four-story building. Scaffolding attempted to hide old antiaircraft missile launchers and artillery cannons that were placed inside the glassless windows. The weapons had been purloined from the USJ a decade ago and set up to defend against enemy attacks, older models with minimal security against kikkai incursions. He opened up his portical to see if he could access the control systems for the missile launchers.

“What are you doing?” one of the Americans asked.

“Checking the weather,” Ben answered. Surprisingly, they did not try to stop him. “Where are you taking me?”

“Congress.”

A pregnant woman breastfed her baby while she played the
USA
game on her portical. Five teens were advising each other on how best to defeat more Japanese soldiers. A row of strangers competed in a
USA
match against one another. Many of the Americans gave in to the invisible portical leashes that tied them to the alternate history in which they were the victors of a land of liberty and freedom.

The hall of Congress was a dilapidated room with the sheen of respectability. There were no decorations, no designs to reveal their identities aside from a big American flag. A group of a hundred sat in a circle, holding hands, praying out loud in a chant. They were mourning someone and the chaotic jumble of their words formed a jarring choir that veered between eulogy and paean. The poetry of their religion was tempered by a hope emerging from the riptide of circumstance. There were empty caskets that represented their fallen brethren. Ben knew their leaders were named after historical personages. Whenever one fell, another would replace them. This George Washington, the tenth Washington so far since the conflict a decade ago, was a black man who had lost his right leg in a mining accident in La Jolla (if Ben remembered the reports correctly). He had broody eyes and a rigid jaw from the time it was stitched back after he’d been beaten to a pulp by the USJ. Underneath the mask of suffering was a shrewdness that regarded Ben with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. Next to Washington was someone he assumed was Abraham Lincoln, part of their “Congress.” He wore a mask to help him breathe after one of his lungs had been shattered in a poison attack – they said he hunted down the soldiers who’d done this to him, carved out their lungs, and put them into jars he kept as souvenirs.

“Jesus Christ died on the cross for you,” George Washington preached. “And almost two thousand years later, Yillah, the daughter of Christ, came to rescue us from our iniquities. The promised rapture happened. Jesus came back and saved those who trusted in Him. The world fell into despair without God. The Axis exploited the world God had abandoned. Billions were murdered. Looting was rampant. We were fallen. But because He was merciful, because He did not want those left behind to be given so hopelessly to the enemy, He sent Yillah to lead us back, to give us a chance at a second salvation. She was an American who promised us deliverance from the tyranny of the Axis Alliance, but only if we trusted in God. We must believe in Her so that our souls can be delivered from the hellfire of existence. If we believe, if we have faith, we can receive salvation, a Third Coming, Jesus and Yillah together. For God is both man and woman, human and deity. Our Lord teaches us that faith transcends history, gender, race, culture, even death.”

He pointed to his missing leg. “After I lost my leg, I thought for certain I was dead. The Empire brutalized me, beat me, did everything they could to wipe away any trace of my humanity. But I clutched to my faith. I cried out to Yillah for succor. She was by my side; she wiped away my pain. And later, when I was rescued, and shortly after that had my captors at my mercy, I prayed for them. A prayer of forgiveness before I executed them. ‘Turn your cheek’ only works with physical slaps, only works pre-Second Coming. Against guns, bombs, and the most inhumane practices ever conceived, we must protect ourselves. We must become the agents of God’s vengeance. Yillah was not like Christ, allowing herself to be murdered. She conceived of…”

Even as he spoke, George Washington’s eye turned to Ben with a compassionate, inviting look. Abraham Lincoln was taking long draughts from his mask, struggling to breathe. So many of the American faces were unctuous, foreign, and hostile.

“Do you know what the most important line in the Bible is?” George Washington suddenly asked Ben.

Everyone turned their heads in his direction.

Ben shrugged. “No idea.”

“‘Jesus wept.’ Two words. So simple. It came right after his close friend, Lazarus, died and He saw everyone around him mourning. It was a symbolic moment, the metamorphosis of a God who had evolved from a cruel creator with no idea how much His creation was suffering, to a God incarnated as a man, filled with empathy and sorrow for the plight of humanity. Regardless of your background, your past beliefs, your worst sins, that line represents the struggle all of us face. It is the trinity within every individual, the contradictory capacity to be creator, destroyer, and savior. It is also the acknowledgment that, in making a choice, someone will suffer. If Jesus hadn’t delayed, Lazarus wouldn’t have died. I don’t hate the United States of Japan. I sympathize, even as I fight you.” Ben had no care for religion and listened dubiously, wondering why George Washington wasted his time lecturing him. “I know you don’t believe in God, but I would appreciate if you would pray with us.”

“My god lives in Tokyo,” Ben said.

“Your god wants you dead. My God wants salvation and blessings for you.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Dear Father and Mother in Heaven, we thank you for bringing us these pilgrims safely and we praise you for…”

As the Americans prayed, Ben was surprised that they appeared so sincere, so yearning, so eager for salvation. This George Washington truly believed he was in some kind of communion with a supernatural being, simply by speaking. It reminded him of Claire. Ben did not even believe in the
Tenno
– the Heavenly Sovereign Emperor. But he didn’t have any more faith in the American’s God who was murdered by Romans thousands of years ago and, more recently, Yillah at the hands of the Nazis. He knew that the individual George Washington leaders had ordered the deaths of countless of his compatriots.

“In Jesus and Yillah’s name we pray, amen,” George Washington concluded. “This is a day of mourning and celebration for us. Why are you here?”

The hostility was palpable. “I’m looking for General Mutsuraga,” Ben replied.

“On the anniversary of our great defeat, you seek the one who gives us hope, a dream of a world in which the conquerors were turned back. Why don’t you join us? Surely our message can appeal to you. Believe in the Father, the Son, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit, and you will have salvation. After your blasphemous
yaoyorozu no kami
,” which was a Shinto collective of eight million, or many, gods, “four seems easy in comparison, doesn’t it? Four that actually care about you.”

Ben had heard the idea before of the four distinct but identical beings

“There is only one God. Like water that’s vapor, ice, and liquid,” George Washington explicated. “The forms are different, but the base molecules are the same.”

“If I became an ice cube or vapor, I’d be dead.”

“That’s why you need faith to help your disbelief.”

“Faith in an ice cube doesn’t sound that reassuring.”

Washington had a pitying expression. “Do you always question everything?”

“Why would a god sacrifice her life if she was God? Just show real power and send an army of angels and there’d be no debate.”

“Jesus and Yillah showed they were superior to the world by dying for it.”

“Doesn’t sound so superior,” Ben commented.

“The word ‘samurai’ comes from the character,
saburau
– to serve,” George Washington said. “Sacrifice is the ultimate form of service, the ultimate transcending act.”

“Sacrifice and service haven’t done much good for your cause.”

“How would you know?”

“Because your attempt at ‘sacrifice’ failed,” Ben said. “Martha Washington was taken captive.”

“So I’ve heard,” George Washington replied. “But are you sure we’ve failed? How would you know when you don’t even understand sacrifice or service? The salvation of one soul is just as precious as any military victory. I ask you again: will you join our cause and serve?”

“Let me talk to Mutsuraga and I’ll consider it.”

George Washington laughed. “We value freedom, and we give people the opportunity to choose the right path. You’ve made your choice. The light entered the world, and you, like the rest of humanity, loved the darkness.” Washington and his assembly stood up and began to leave.

Ben was about to follow Washington when two Americans seized him and forced him down into a chair. They stripped him of his portical and ripped off his boots. Another of the Americans brought a bowl of water and a cart with a machine on top that looked like a defibrillator. Washington had vanished, but Lincoln lumbered over to him.

“Jesus washed the feet of His disciples. Yillah did so too, as she found it an effective way to transform her enemies,” Lincoln said. “Purify their hearts and bodies.”

The Americans dipped his feet in water and washed his toes with rubber gloves on. Ben hated the sight of his toes, a gangly, alien set of nubs.

One of the Americans put a charged wire into the water.

Electric bolts seized Ben’s entire body. His cells sent out millions of warning signs to the metropolises within. The civilizations were in denial about the legions of volts racing a marathon through them. Ben could feel the nerves trying to placate their followers, the dendrites and axons sending prophetic messages of doom, ignored in the malaise of exorbitance. The pain wasn’t overt, but a searing miasma paralyzed him. He felt like a jet blasting off into a hurricane to get sucked into a vortex and splattering into a million C-sections of nirvana. As suddenly as it came, it stopped.

“That’s the first setting,” Lincoln said.

“What do you want?”

Lincoln frowned. “There’s nothing I want. Nothing you can give other than to God almighty. Ready yourself.”

The second setting was much more painful. Ben thought the veins from his neck would spurt out, his head screaming in pain. He wanted to faint, but heard a rant in the form of pulsating migraines. The voices were enthralling, noises sloshing above him that made him think of exhausted rats committing suicide. He saw lightning leaves growing out of his arms, tree bark covering his fingers with sparks. He was immobile and his ribs were decaying from bacteria of discontent, nibbling on his cartilage to feed their insatiable appetite. His cells dissolved into a photon cycle that gave them a home to consume until the next portable body was in place. The electricity intensified. The water gargled and he could smell his skin burning. He recognized the malodorous scent from San Diego, a potpourri of gasoline and crisp meat. There’d been so many charred bodies there. His tongue was scorched and his throbs were a blaring whisper, more vociferous than reverberating echoes. His torment was an inflamed affliction ascending into the stratosphere of an abscess that vomited pus in the shape of grapes. The grape turned into the head of a young Claire Mutsuraga.

“You should have told me,” she said, the complex five-rig portical she’d used to break all the classified reports next to her.

“How could I?”

“We’ll all burn in hell for this,” she said.

“If there is a hell.”

“I didn’t know my father caused this.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it? We’re all guilty of someone else’s sins until they become our own. Then we try to pass it off, but I won’t do that anymore.”

“You can’t be serious about making this game–”

“Will you help me?”

“How could I help?”

“Let’s use the simulation and set new parameters. If I did it myself, it would take too long. If we work together, we can remind the Americans how close they were to winning.”

Claire, with her pony-tailed hair and her sandy skin, her caramel eyes that melted away into the dissipation of anguish. She was the reverse Mutsuraga, a woman who mocked and satirized the absurdities of contemporary civility, scoffing at the rituals that made men men and women women.

The volts stopped. The Americans were laving his legs, his arms, and his face.

“Four decades ago, our fathers and mothers fought to keep on this continent a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal. You destroyed that. Yillah always pointed out, Saul was our faith’s greatest enemy until he was blinded and became Paul. The persecutor, the executioner, and murderer of everyone connected to our faith became our greatest proselytizer and proponent,” Lincoln said. “Isn’t that a strange irony? Prepare to be blinded.”