“Well, aren’t we blunt, Doctor?” he said.
“Only because I find you extremely disrespectful.”
“Let me tell you something, Doctor. If you ever were to work for me, or anyone else for that matter, you’d be forced to deal with other people on a daily basis—some of whom you might not like very much. That’s just part of having a job. It’s called sucking it up.”
“Well, that sounds highly unappealing and frankly absurd to me, so thank you for affirming that I made the right decision.”
Narain took a breath, then sat up straight again. With a few quick finger gestures, he opened a new holofield in an empty pocket of air displaying some sort of documentation and mirrored it on the display in front of me as well. The document was written in stiff officialese that I found difficult to decipher at a glance.
“What’s this?”
“A criminal accusation report,” said Narain, tracing his fingers along the words as he spoke. “You, Dr. Naisho, stand accused of visiting the private residence of the victim, one Naoyuki Takasaki, at approximately 10:30 PM last night.”
I felt my brow reflexively furrowing. “Victim”?
“Whereupon you proceeded to rape him.”
“I beg your pardon?” I said, my eyes going wide as I scanned the document for myself. When I reached the “Victim Report” field, the words “without consent” immediately jumped out at me.
“At just after 11 PM,” Narain continued, “you propositioned the victim to engage in sexual intercourse, which he refused. You then forced penetration without his consent. You are therefore charged with forcible sexual intercourse, a crime that carries a minimum statutory penalty of five years. Though you may be a first offender, your violent and underhanded modus operandi would make a prison sentence very likely, especially given the legal precedent set by Titan’s judgments on similar cases.”
“That’s a completely groundless accusation,” I said, though I was rather shaken. “Is this some sort of farce? Literally nothing happened between us last night.”
“I’m afraid the evidence begs to differ,” said Narain, directing my attention to some new information that had just appeared on the holofield. It was some sort of diagram littered with various labels that combined letters and numbers in some bizarre citation format. The diagram was captioned GENETIC LOCI. “It seems they were able to extract your DNA from bodily fluids left at the scene of the crime.”
“What? There were no ‘bodily fluids,’ I assure you.”
I played back the sequence of events that had transpired the night before in my head. He guided me into his living room, let me browse through his book collection, brought out some coffee, and then…
I went to the bathroom.
“You didn’t…” I muttered. If looks could kill, he would have died on the spot, but he seemed completely unfazed.
“Now, mind you, what I’m about to say is purely hypothetical,” Narain said. “But let’s say you were to agree to sign on to this little project we’re putting together. I don’t think it’s altogether unreasonable to assume that in that case, perhaps a little butterfly down in Brazil might flap its wings and set off a tornado that could whisk this silly accusation away, never to be seen again.”
I connected the dots, and the full picture was looking rather grim for me. The absurdly high compatibility rating that Titan’s matchmaking service had given Takasaki. The way he’d been so curious to know how I felt about work as a concept. And now I’d shown up for what I expected to be a second date, only to be approached with a job offer by this strange man instead. A man who apparently worked for the Intelligence Base Administrative Bureau. A man whose job entailed the management of the very same network that originally connected me with Takasaki.
“You were trying to entrap me all along, weren’t you?”
The ice crackled in his rocks glass.
“This is a project that absolutely must succeed, no matter the cost. There’s no room for failure. And we need your help whether you like it or not. Even if we have to resort to unlawful means to get it,” he said, lifting his glass up off the table. “Oh, and by the way—once work actually begins, you’ll be given your own official position, answering directly to me. So allow me to begin your orientation, as your new supervisor. Do you know what we in the business world say to our colleagues when they accomplish a task with flying colors? Like, for example, me successfully bringing you on board exactly as I planned. What would you, as my subordinate, say to me in such a circumstance? Any idea, Naisho?”
He saw no need to use my academic title now that he was my superior and I his...employee. He raised his glass higher, as though preparing to make a toast, and cracked a smile for the first time since he arrived.
“We say, ‘Great work.’”
It was the most infuriating smile I’d ever seen.
11
I set down my mug of milk tea and gazed out the window at the vast green plains spread out beneath me. Unlike the isle of Honshu, which by now had been almost entirely developed, there was still plenty of untouched wilderness and sprawling flatlands up here in Hokkaido.
It had been two days now since Narain Srivastava forcibly recruited me, and I was currently on my way via air transit to the Kushiro Conurbation in the eastern part of Hokkaido. It was one of fifteen such conurbations on the island, spanning nearly 6,000 square kilometers and home to around 1.2 million people. It was also where I’d been asked to report for my first day on the job—the home of my very own “workplace.”
I could feel my stomach starting to churn all over again. Obviously, there was nothing I could do to fight back against Narain. Had I turned down his request, I would have been tried in court on false charges, found guilty, and sent to prison, just like he said. There, I would have been forced to undergo a program designed to rehabilitate felons—though I had no idea how that might work on the innocent. I was already sound in body and mind. What scared me more than anything, though, was that I simply didn’t know what life in prison was like. We’d made great strides in the modern era to ensure that prisoners’ basic human rights were never violated, but something told me that access to milk tea wasn’t one of said rights, and I wasn’t going to risk finding out. I had no choice but to submit to that unsavory man’s little scheme and accept the job, and thus become traditionally employed for the first time in my life. Well, look on the bright side—it can’t be worse than prison, I told myself as I filled out employment forms to make the flight go by quicker.
I scrutinized the document on my holofield once more. It was a Bureau Onboarding Agreement from Narain. It read less like an agreement and more like a sworn oath.
BUREAU ONBOARDING AGREEMENT
I hereby pledge my full intent to accept the position that has been offered to me by the Bureau. With this signed agreement, I acknowledge that I have accepted the Bureau’s job offer, and will abide by the following terms.