KARMA RONIN

The Book

Excerpt

Trivia

EXCERPT

Chapter 1

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.”

“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.”