“Hi. It’s been a while,” Miyoshi said, waving.
“Sure has. Thanks for agreeing to see me today.”
While Toshihiko was a good five feet, eight inches—not short by any means—Miyoshi was much taller. Toshihiko had to look up when he was talking to him. He could already feel his neck aching. Miyoshi claimed he only went to the gym three times a week, but he was surprisingly muscular. Not the kind of person who came to mind when you heard the word researcher. In contrast to his physique, he had a fresh, baby-faced look that made him resemble a rookie athlete.
Miyoshi narrowed his eyes in a friendly smile and waved Toshihiko inside. This floor of the building covered a surprising amount of space. Unlike a regular office, it was split off into several smaller rooms, like classrooms at a university. Miyoshi pointed out one of them as his lab. There was even a plate on the door with his name on it. Toshihiko made an offhand comment about him being king of the castle and followed him in.
The entrance was narrow, but the lab stretched on some distance and had another door at the back. The room they were in now was stacked with all kinds of books and documents, so the one at the back was probably where the actual experiments were conducted. Miyoshi put both arms across the top of a desk and slowly pushed off the contents, like a human windshield wiper. Everything fell to the floor in a heap.
“I’ve found this is the best way to clean up.”
It was a pretty rough way to treat research materials. Before he could comment, Toshihiko realized that Miyoshi’s “cleaning up” had revealed a computer on the desk. Miyoshi picked up a remote control from the floor, and at the push of a button, a large monitor rose up at the front end of the lab.
“You’re really cutting-edge here, huh?”
Miyoshi gave a modest shrug.
“Are you familiar with face morphing?”
Toshihiko nodded. If memory served, it was some app from overseas that allowed you to combine the characteristics of two different people’s photos to create a hypothetical fusion. It even worked with cats and dogs. For a while, posting merged photos had been all the rage on social media.
“We started with that as a base and expanded on it to create full-on 3D models.”
At some point, Miyoshi had brought up a photo of Toshihiko in his college days, along with another of himself. He clicked a button labeled START, and in a flash, a 3D model of a brand-new man appeared.
“Whoa!”
Upon closer inspection, the model looked mostly like Toshihiko, except maybe with Miyoshi’s cowlick and messy hairstyle. The man on the screen smiled brightly. Toshihiko let out a yelp. It was uncanny—like seeing his own reflection come to life.
“I guess when it’s dealing with someone as attractive as you, the program doesn’t bother incorporating elements from the other person. That’s new. Might be a little taller, though. People tend to perceive things as ‘beautiful’ the closer they get to the average. Normally, it’s more of a fifty-fifty mix.”
Toshihiko knew that if he let him, Miyoshi would ramble on forever without getting to the point. He’d have to butt in to keep the man on track.
“It’s really well-done.”
“In this case, we’re just converting photos into 3D and moving them around a little. That’s not the real goal. There’s plenty of artsy types who could achieve the same thing with enough effort. But I’m a biologist, and I’m hoping to use this as the basis for something completely new.”
He made some changes on the screen.
“Do you know about SNP, single-nucleotide polymorphism?”
“Not in the same way you experts do.”
Toshihiko knew only a little about the concept. He might not even have that much right, but it was something to do with the genetic information that decided individual characteristics. The nucleotide sequence that carried genetic information was about 99 percent the same in all humans. What remained accounted for the many ways people differed in terms of appearance, ability, and so on.
Some organization had identified this quality and, in reference to that key 1 percent, had dubbed it the single-nucleotide. Apparently, irregularities in that 1 percent of the sequence were also what caused various genetic disorders.
Miyoshi began to give a more detailed explanation, but Toshihiko’s attention soon drifted. Top players and top coaches were not created equal. Miyoshi seemed to notice his change in expression and cut the lecture short.
“Basically, if we can analyze the DNA from even a single hair, we can reconstruct the sequence to figure out what that person looks like.”
“I’ve heard about that kind of technology. I thought it hadn’t been perfected yet?”
SNP analysis could turn up characteristics like “having a lot of body hair,” “being susceptible to heart disease,” or “having blue eyes,” but in the end, it was only provided probabilities, not absolute answers. World experts on genetics said that several factors contributed to a person’s characteristics, so it wasn’t yet possible to assemble an accurate picture of an individual from just a strand of hair.
In China, there had been attempts to use discarded cigarette butts or chewed gum to re-create surprisingly accurate images of criminals to put up as wanted posters. But those “surprisingly accurate” images hadn’t actually led to any arrests. When Toshihiko mentioned this to Miyoshi, the other man stroked his chin proudly. He proceeded to type in some commands, displaying a new 3D model on the screen.
Toshihiko couldn’t conceal his surprise. It was Zimbalist, a man who had been arrested in Montana two weeks ago for a series of slasher incidents. He’d caused outrage by exclusively targeting old people and was estimated to have over a hundred victims. His rampage had gotten a lot of media attention even in Japan.
Zimbalist’s MO of repeated stabbings with a sharp, awl-like weapon was nothing new. It was the fact that he’d been able to get away with attacking so many people in the space of just three months that was remarkable. American websites had started calling him “The Invisible Killer.” It turned out the real reason he’d escaped capture so long was because he’d previously worked for the state traffic commission. He knew the locations of surveillance cameras around the state and how best to avoid them. Why was Miyoshi showing Toshihiko this?