“So it’s concept contamination, then,” he murmured. “This is what it means, Uba. When you’re trying to create a replica of a building that already exists, you don’t even need to see the original structure or acquire the same materials. All you need are the blueprints. The concept of the station doesn’t rely on physical material. It can be transmitted through information alone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s fascinating that it can infect the human body this way, though. I want to write a paper on it now. Maybe I’ll be able to leapfrog that annoying medical director,” Kawasaki stated, delighted.
I didn’t care about his personal advancement; I just wanted him to fix me.
“Well, as you know, structgenes cannot exist for very long in the body, so if you get plenty of rest for a week or so, they should naturally dissipate. However…”
“It messes up your bones.”
“Right. I’m guessing that for the next few days, you’re going to be generating some localized station structure in your skeleton. That means most of your joints are going to lock up. Your muscles and organs are going to be compacted.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Yeah. In extremely rare cases, you might even turn out to be nationally famous. It’ll be on Wikipedia. ‘Uba Isukari was the first person in the world to be Yokohama Stationized,’ ” Dr. Kawasaki explained with great enthusiasm.
I would have preferred to get my Wikipedia article because of my research or my books. “Is there anything you can do for me?” I pleaded. He got up from his seat, looking annoyed that I’d want to mess up a good thing, and placed a few rather loud calls.
“All right, I’ve got something set up. Go to this place right away. They’ll let you in if you tell them Kawasaki sent you,” he instructed. Then he handed me a map. It was the structural mechanics building on the opposite side of the campus. It was difficult just to walk at this point, so I flagged down a taxi to take me there.
Professor Jefferson, the man who met me at the structural mechanics building, looked a lot like Jason Statham. I told him that my name was Yuba, and Dr. Kawasaki had said to expect me, and he gave me a piercing stare like I was some test subject. “Ahh, so you’re the guy,” he said. “He begged us to use our structural genetic field canceler on you. You’re sure you have the situation right?”
“Yes, I think so,” I responded timidly. I was less afraid of the canceler than I was of the man’s face.
“I mean, it doesn’t have any ill effect on the human body. In fact, my students like to play around with it for fun. But just in case, you should probably sign this.” He handed me a sheet of paper.
There was a bunch of complicated English on it, which boiled down to something like, If anything bad happens, I won’t press charges. I signed it immediately.
“Okay, Laura, take it away,” Professor Jefferson said to a woman in the next office over.
The nearly six-foot-tall graduate student led me to the basement floor. In the elevator, she stared right at me, likely wondering why a canceler would be used on a human. It made me uncomfortable.
“Oh, so this is what a structural genetic field canceler is like. It’s much bigger than I imagined.”
The object installed in the basement resembled a commercial refrigerator for a restaurant kitchen. Behind the thick glass door was a cubed space about two meters to a side. Five people could stand in there with room to spare.
“Um, are they not able to shrink these down somewhat? Say, to the size of a flashlight…?” I asked. The cancelers I wrote into Yokohama Station SF were battery-powered.
“Nope. Do you know how the canceler works? This part (the ceiling of the refrigerator) accelerates electrons, generating a structural genetic field with the antiphase of what it’s shining on. Physically speaking, it must be larger than the target. And it’s obviously not going to work on battery strength,” Laura explained. Her account was actually much longer than that, but this was about the extent of her English that I could comprehend. I found this unfortunate, but I figured that most of my readers weren’t going to worry about technical quibbles like that anyway. If the sci-fi police came after me, I could tell them, “JR North Japan used their incredible tech expertise to shrink it down.” After all, the people who invented the first computers couldn’t have imagined a world in which everyone carries a palm-sized processor all day.
“Well, go ahead and get inside. It’ll be done in about fifteen minutes. The light is pretty bright, so try to keep your eyes closed. If anything happens, press the button,” she advised, pointing at a large button on the interior of the refrigerator that looked like an emergency stop switch at a train station. I didn’t think I would be able to find it with my eyes closed.
The illumination process went fine. I stopped at a nearby discount store and bought a bundle of hay on the way home.
Benjamin the donkey was waiting for me. By helping him out with some chores, he cut me a great deal on the rent. In American cities where living costs were high, it wasn’t uncommon for strangers to live together as roommates. Being shy by nature and less confident in the language here, I figured a donkey would be a better roommate than a person.
Working out my joints, which were still stiff, I piled up a day’s worth of hay in front of him.
“It sounds like you’ve had quite a day, Yuba,” Benjamin remarked after I’d regaled him with the story of my experience. “Writing about a subject with sincerity carries the risk of becoming one with that subject. Nietzsche has a quote about that, doesn’t he? He said, ‘Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.’ ”
Benjamin had a habit of making comments like this, things that sounded deep but also not all that profound. I once asked him how he was able to talk, and he answered, “I spent my youth in England. I fled here to America to escape the fires of war. That is why I speak the Queen’s English.”
“Which war?”
“Buggered if I know. Humans are always at war. I couldn’t be bothered to keep all their little names straight.”
“How old are you, Benjamin?” I questioned. He gave me one of the nihilistic stares unique to odd-toed ungulates and replied, “Donkeys live a very long time, Yuba. How many dead donkeys have you seen in your life?”
“None. They don’t have donkeys in Japan,” I told him.
The United States is a land of variety. The people who make up that country are far more diverse than those found in Japan. There are people of all races and ethnicities—even donkeys. Even with a xenophobic president, America didn’t stand to be lectured by the prime minister of Japan about its policies in that regard.
I thought there was no future for a Japan tied down by its own rules and unable to escape its long recession, which was why I had crossed the Pacific to come here. But I was getting nowhere with my actual research, and I developed a complex about my English ability. The only thing I was doing well was turning hyper-local features of Japan into science fiction novels. No matter how far I traveled, there was a sense of locale that had seeped into my being that could not be washed away.
A while later, Dr. Kawasaki sent me a bill for his services. Unsurprisingly, the use of the structural genetic field canceler was not covered by my health insurance.
“Mmmm,” I grumbled, tilting my head to the right as I pondered this quandary. Fortunately, my full range of motion had returned. Then I looked at the royalty check that Kadokawa sent me for my book.
“Mmmm,” I grumbled, tilting my head to the left.
(This afterword is a work of fiction.)