In the days gone by, we saw changes unfold in the day-to-day that we did not even imagine.
Fast-forward to the future of Tokyo in 2050.
What you behold may be a scene out of a science fiction story you conjured up in the past that now has become a reality.
When that day comes, who will be standing next to you?
What will be your thoughts ?
ONE DAY, 2050—
Let our imagination soar and envision a time to come.
Sony designers used Sci-Fi prototyping to depict “Tokyo in 2050” in collaboration with science fiction writers.
With “2050,” “Tokyo,” and “romance” as keywords that define the overarching theme, Sony designers and science fiction writers held workshops to explore life, habitats, senses, and well-being in 2050—and their creative effort resulted in a series of design prototypes and short science fiction stories. Each design prototype presents an idea for a service or product that is relevant to the messaging of each theme.
*The information listed here is all fiction. Nothing stated here has any connection with Sony products and services.
In 2050, no matter how much technology may have advanced, it is probably impossible to completely eliminate all failures and other things that create stress in life. Helping people acquire the resilience to bounce back from setbacks may therefore enhance their well-being. A sudden end of a romantic relationship, failure at work, death of a family member—when something happens that disheartens you, an AI therapist that is morphed into a suitable appearance will offer counseling support to help you acquire resilience, using optimal methods tailored to your needs based on your emotional shifts, stress values, and other data.
AI therapist Ophelia helps people acquire resilience. The protagonist, whose girlfriend suddenly left him one day, builds resilience through conversations with Ophelia. Ophelia shows up before him in the likeness of his vanished girlfriend or his father. He is at odds with his father, and this is at the root of his stress. As the protagonist recovers both mentally and physically, how will he change emotionally?
In 2050, when people can easily bounce back from any setback, who will Ophelia morph into? A trusted friend? Someone you are at odds with? Or maybe even your beloved dog? When you are overwhelmed by stress, who would you like to have a virtual conversation with?
An emotion capturing sensor will know when you are faced with a difficult moment or a frustrating setback. It monitors your emotional state 24/7. The sensor is worn directly on your skin, and it is so unobtrusive that you almost forget that it’s there. It senses blood hormone levels, flow, and components, and it emits heat and light when any unusual state is detected.
Tokyo, 2050—People who have experienced hardships or setbacks are able to enroll in the resilience program created by the minister in charge of loneliness at the Ministry of Health. Satsuki Kureshima decides to take the program after breaking up with his girlfriend. Through his sessions with the AI counselor Ophelia, Satsuki begins to become more aware of his own problems. But.... Science fiction writer Miyuki Ono prototypes “well-being in 2050.”
In 2050, it is said that there will be more “climate refugees” who have lost their homes due to the impact of climate change, as well as emigrants who have been forced to leave their countries due to political problems. There may also come a time in the future when people live in floating mobile houses that drift across the world’s oceans. These groups of people could become like sea nomads, forming a unique ecosystem in which they coexist with the natural environment.
People who live on water inhabit floating mobile houses that can travel freely on the sea, depending on the weather, ebb and flow of tides, and time of the day. They may move in search of food to a place where there is a school of fish, and they may also connect with houses of different “sea cities” to interact with people with different cultures and values. People’s mobile lifestyle will make urban ecosystems more fluid.
Floating mobile houses are housing for use at sea, equipped with an engine with a cleaning filter, sail, and stabilizers in the living space. The variable roof can be folded up in a storm to avoid the wind, and erected to use the wind as a power source when traveling. The two-story structure is divided into a public space above the water and private space under water.
The house uses solar panels for some of its materials and produces the electricity used by the inhabitants. The electricity generated is stored in an energy tank containing water as thermal energy, which can be retrieved as electricity when needed. For houses that need more electricity, an energy tank can be autonomously connected to supply energy.
This story is set in a future in which people who have lost their homes due to climate change or other reasons live at sea. The sea communities have come to be called “demistates,” and advisor companies have emerged to support them. Ichiu and Yori, who grew up in a sea city, leave their demistate and drift to Tokyo Bay. As they start a new life in Tokyo, Ichiu comes to learn the reason behind Yori’s personality change following his participation in the Service Exchange program, and.... The future of residence and migration as envisioned by science fiction writer Haruka Mugihara.
The pandemic has brought with it a new culture of wearing a face mask. That culture may still be alive even in 2050. For this theme, we conceived of a new face mask as a key entertainment item that uses the sense of smell, whereas traditional entertainment focused on vision and hearing. Among the five senses, smell is said to have a direct impact on emotion and memory, and study in this area has advanced considerably in 2050. In this imagined future, smell can be reproduced digitally, and people can share particular scents and enjoy new forms of entertainment.
Sensorial Entertainment is the name of a service that can reproduce past scents based on vast amounts of emotion data that have been stored. The Scent Mask will deliver a scent smelled on a certain day that you couldn’t recall, evoking a nostalgic feeling for a time past.
Sensorial Entertainment can be used by a restaurant to provide a totally new kind of sensory experience. Under the supervision of a chef, scent components are added to bring back past emotions, allowing you to relive a long-faded memory. By navigating an augmented reality interface displayed on a table in the center, you can access the scent that will take you back to the day you always wanted to revisit.
The Scent Mask is equipped with minute cartridges that contain compressed low-molecular compounds used to reproduce scents. The mask frame, made with metallic artificial muscles and biometal fiber materials, features retinal projection and bone conduction technologies that reproduce scents and memories. The combination of smell, vision, and hearing allows you to relive your memory in a highly evocative way.
Is it possible to engage in a romance that is independent of social institutions and even of one’s corporal presence? Satoru, who has been married to his wife Yuki for seven years, frequently goes out on dates with Tsubasa in search of such a romance. There is a particular place they visit on their rendezvous: a virtual restaurant where they wear masks that hide their faces while permitting them to savor the aroma of foods. Science fiction writer Itsuki Tsukui depicts their “odor romance,” which takes place at the restaurant.
In 2050, a new social security system including a universal basic income may be implemented. In such a society, people may differentiate between “jobs” that are necessary to sustain people’s lives and “work” one does purely to enjoy life. Such differentiation may change people’s lifestyles and how they plan their lives. The advancement of complex sensing technologies and sophisticated simulation of one’s own assets (not just financial assets) might enable a new life-planning service to support people looking to take on various challenges in their lives.
Life Simulator is a service that visualizes different versions of your future by calculating all kinds of possibilities based on complex data from the past and present. It helps you maximize your potential by making an inspiring proposal for how you may live your life, and by encouraging you to actually pursue that life, presenting concrete data to show you that it is achievable.
Life Simulator performs AI-based simulations by integrating and analyzing a wide range of data, all obtained in advance with consent. From these myriad simulation results, users can select a theme that they value in their lives to see possibilities for living a life that feels true to themselves.
Here are some examples.
Please select a theme that you wish to cherish in your life.
The time is 2050. The social status and wages of essential workers who perform the jobs needed so that society can function, have increased dramatically compared to early in the century. On the other hand, a system of universal basic income that guarantees a decent living for every citizen has led to an increasing number of people choosing to engage in more enjoyable work in order to live a more fulfilling life. One day, the protagonist, who works in Shibuya as an essential worker, decides to grant significant authority to his branchmind. His reason for doing this is.... This is a story of jobs, work, and money as they relate to life planning, presented by science fiction writer Taiyo Fujii.
Sci-Fi prototyping refers to the technique of using science fiction to invent the future and, by working backwards, study what needs to be done now to realize that future.
A global pandemic has made it even more difficult to envision the future as an extension of the present. In this context, Sci-Fi prototyping is quickly drawing attention around the world as an effective means of creating a new prototype that no one has ever seen before. This technique provides the tools needed to prototype the future by leveraging the bold and exquisite imagination of science fiction writers, and by connecting the inherent issues of industry, companies, and governments.
Sony Creative Center used Sci-Fi prototyping in collaboration with Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Lab as an approach to contemplating both concrete objects and abstract concepts that incorporate an aspect of irrationality. In future society, which will most likely become even more uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, such tasks will require the bold and meticulous perspective that designers are uniquely equipped with.
The four design prototypes and four short science fiction stories shown in this exhibition represent Sony’s efforts to explore the possibility of a better future and the role it can play in that society.
This future timeline shows fictional events and developments that represent social and technological changes, summarized in chronological order. It was created working backwards from 2050 to the present, based on the design prototyping and the plots and messaging of the science fiction stories.
*The information listed here is all fiction. Nothing stated here has any connection with Sony products and services.
Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Lab is a research institute that provides consultation services for conceptualizing the future by working with science fiction writers. It was founded in June 2020 jointly by the Japan edition of Wired magazine, the world’s most influential technology media, and Party, a creative company . In addition to offering consultation services to businesses, it develops workshops and methods that lay the groundwork for its programs , and provides information about Sci-Fi prototyping through Wired.jp and other media.
The exhibition at Ginza Sony Park tells stories of Tokyo in 2050 as envisioned by highly imaginative designers and science fiction writers.
]*This exhibition has finished
In the days gone by, we saw changes unfold in the day-to-day that we did not even imagine.
Fast-forward to the future of Tokyo in 2050.
What you behold may be a scene out of a science fiction story you conjured up in the past that now has become a reality.
When that day comes, who will be standing next to you?
What will be your thoughts ?
ONE DAY, 2050—
Let our imagination soar and envision a time to come.
Sony designers used Sci-Fi prototyping to depict “Tokyo in 2050” in collaboration with science fiction writers.
With “2050,” “Tokyo,” and “romance” as keywords that define the overarching theme, Sony designers and science fiction writers held workshops to explore life, habitats, senses, and well-being in 2050—and their creative effort resulted in a series of design prototypes and short science fiction stories. Each design prototype presents an idea for a service or product that is relevant to the messaging of each theme.
*The information listed here is all fiction. Nothing stated here has any connection with Sony products and services.
In 2050, no matter how much technology may have advanced, it is probably impossible to completely eliminate all failures and other things that create stress in life. Helping people acquire the resilience to bounce back from setbacks may therefore enhance their well-being. A sudden end of a romantic relationship, failure at work, death of a family member—when something happens that disheartens you, an AI therapist that is morphed into a suitable appearance will offer counseling support to help you acquire resilience, using optimal methods tailored to your needs based on your emotional shifts, stress values, and other data.
AI therapist Ophelia helps people acquire resilience. The protagonist, whose girlfriend suddenly left him one day, builds resilience through conversations with Ophelia. Ophelia shows up before him in the likeness of his vanished girlfriend or his father. He is at odds with his father, and this is at the root of his stress. As the protagonist recovers both mentally and physically, how will he change emotionally?
In 2050, when people can easily bounce back from any setback, who will Ophelia morph into? A trusted friend? Someone you are at odds with? Or maybe even your beloved dog? When you are overwhelmed by stress, who would you like to have a virtual conversation with?
An emotion capturing sensor will know when you are faced with a difficult moment or a frustrating setback. It monitors your emotional state 24/7. The sensor is worn directly on your skin, and it is so unobtrusive that you almost forget that it’s there. It senses blood hormone levels, flow, and components, and it emits heat and light when any unusual state is detected.
Tokyo, 2050—People who have experienced hardships or setbacks are able to enroll in the resilience program created by the minister in charge of loneliness at the Ministry of Health. Satsuki Kureshima decides to take the program after breaking up with his girlfriend. Through his sessions with the AI counselor Ophelia, Satsuki begins to become more aware of his own problems. But.... Science fiction writer Miyuki Ono prototypes “well-being in 2050.”
In 2050, it is said that there will be more “climate refugees” who have lost their homes due to the impact of climate change, as well as emigrants who have been forced to leave their countries due to political problems. There may also come a time in the future when people live in floating mobile houses that drift across the world’s oceans. These groups of people could become like sea nomads, forming a unique ecosystem in which they coexist with the natural environment.
People who live on water inhabit floating mobile houses that can travel freely on the sea, depending on the weather, ebb and flow of tides, and time of the day. They may move in search of food to a place where there is a school of fish, and they may also connect with houses of different “sea cities” to interact with people with different cultures and values. People’s mobile lifestyle will make urban ecosystems more fluid.
Floating mobile houses are housing for use at sea, equipped with an engine with a cleaning filter, sail, and stabilizers in the living space. The variable roof can be folded up in a storm to avoid the wind, and erected to use the wind as a power source when traveling. The two-story structure is divided into a public space above the water and private space under water.
The house uses solar panels for some of its materials and produces the electricity used by the inhabitants. The electricity generated is stored in an energy tank containing water as thermal energy, which can be retrieved as electricity when needed. For houses that need more electricity, an energy tank can be autonomously connected to supply energy.
This story is set in a future in which people who have lost their homes due to climate change or other reasons live at sea. The sea communities have come to be called “demistates,” and advisor companies have emerged to support them. Ichiu and Yori, who grew up in a sea city, leave their demistate and drift to Tokyo Bay. As they start a new life in Tokyo, Ichiu comes to learn the reason behind Yori’s personality change following his participation in the Service Exchange program, and.... The future of residence and migration as envisioned by science fiction writer Haruka Mugihara.
The pandemic has brought with it a new culture of wearing a face mask. That culture may still be alive even in 2050. For this theme, we conceived of a new face mask as a key entertainment item that uses the sense of smell, whereas traditional entertainment focused on vision and hearing. Among the five senses, smell is said to have a direct impact on emotion and memory, and study in this area has advanced considerably in 2050. In this imagined future, smell can be reproduced digitally, and people can share particular scents and enjoy new forms of entertainment.
Sensorial Entertainment is the name of a service that can reproduce past scents based on vast amounts of emotion data that have been stored. The Scent Mask will deliver a scent smelled on a certain day that you couldn’t recall, evoking a nostalgic feeling for a time past.
Sensorial Entertainment can be used by a restaurant to provide a totally new kind of sensory experience. Under the supervision of a chef, scent components are added to bring back past emotions, allowing you to relive a long-faded memory. By navigating an augmented reality interface displayed on a table in the center, you can access the scent that will take you back to the day you always wanted to revisit.
The Scent Mask is equipped with minute cartridges that contain compressed low-molecular compounds used to reproduce scents. The mask frame, made with metallic artificial muscles and biometal fiber materials, features retinal projection and bone conduction technologies that reproduce scents and memories. The combination of smell, vision, and hearing allows you to relive your memory in a highly evocative way.
Is it possible to engage in a romance that is independent of social institutions and even of one’s corporal presence? Satoru, who has been married to his wife Yuki for seven years, frequently goes out on dates with Tsubasa in search of such a romance. There is a particular place they visit on their rendezvous: a virtual restaurant where they wear masks that hide their faces while permitting them to savor the aroma of foods. Science fiction writer Itsuki Tsukui depicts their “odor romance,” which takes place at the restaurant.
In 2050, a new social security system including a universal basic income may be implemented. In such a society, people may differentiate between “jobs” that are necessary to sustain people’s lives and “work” one does purely to enjoy life. Such differentiation may change people’s lifestyles and how they plan their lives. The advancement of complex sensing technologies and sophisticated simulation of one’s own assets (not just financial assets) might enable a new life-planning service to support people looking to take on various challenges in their lives.
Life Simulator is a service that visualizes different versions of your future by calculating all kinds of possibilities based on complex data from the past and present. It helps you maximize your potential by making an inspiring proposal for how you may live your life, and by encouraging you to actually pursue that life, presenting concrete data to show you that it is achievable.
Life Simulator performs AI-based simulations by integrating and analyzing a wide range of data, all obtained in advance with consent. From these myriad simulation results, users can select a theme that they value in their lives to see possibilities for living a life that feels true to themselves.
Here are some examples.
Please select a theme that you wish to cherish in your life.
The time is 2050. The social status and wages of essential workers who perform the jobs needed so that society can function, have increased dramatically compared to early in the century. On the other hand, a system of universal basic income that guarantees a decent living for every citizen has led to an increasing number of people choosing to engage in more enjoyable work in order to live a more fulfilling life. One day, the protagonist, who works in Shibuya as an essential worker, decides to grant significant authority to his branchmind. His reason for doing this is.... This is a story of jobs, work, and money as they relate to life planning, presented by science fiction writer Taiyo Fujii.
Sci-Fi prototyping refers to the technique of using science fiction to invent the future and, by working backwards, study what needs to be done now to realize that future.
A global pandemic has made it even more difficult to envision the future as an extension of the present. In this context, Sci-Fi prototyping is quickly drawing attention around the world as an effective means of creating a new prototype that no one has ever seen before. This technique provides the tools needed to prototype the future by leveraging the bold and exquisite imagination of science fiction writers, and by connecting the inherent issues of industry, companies, and governments.
Sony Creative Center used Sci-Fi prototyping in collaboration with Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Lab as an approach to contemplating both concrete objects and abstract concepts that incorporate an aspect of irrationality. In future society, which will most likely become even more uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, such tasks will require the bold and meticulous perspective that designers are uniquely equipped with.
The four design prototypes and four short science fiction stories shown in this exhibition represent Sony’s efforts to explore the possibility of a better future and the role it can play in that society.
This future timeline shows fictional events and developments that represent social and technological changes, summarized in chronological order. It was created working backwards from 2050 to the present, based on the design prototyping and the plots and messaging of the science fiction stories.
*The information listed here is all fiction. Nothing stated here has any connection with Sony products and services.
Wired Sci-Fi Prototyping Lab is a research institute that provides consultation services for conceptualizing the future by working with science fiction writers. It was founded in June 2020 jointly by the Japan edition of Wired magazine, the world’s most influential technology media, and Party, a creative company . In addition to offering consultation services to businesses, it develops workshops and methods that lay the groundwork for its programs , and provides information about Sci-Fi prototyping through Wired.jp and other media.
The exhibition at Ginza Sony Park tells stories of Tokyo in 2050 as envisioned by highly imaginative designers and science fiction writers.
]*This exhibition has finished
This world is shit. But not as shit as me.
“Satsuki Kureshima. You have been enrolled in the Ministry of Health’s resilience program.”
The woman in front of me spoke in the whispery tones of a guided meditation set to healing music.
Ophelia—that was the name she called herself—was remarkably human for an automatically generated AI therapist. She had appeared moments earlier, following a brief notification from the emotion-capture sensor behind my ear.
She had straight black hair cut in a slightly front-heavy bob, pale skin, almond-shaped eyes that were neither particularly large nor small, and a sharp, intellectual line to her nose. She was wearing a tight, high-neck sweater and a pleated skirt that just covered her knees. No sex appeal; a girl you could trust. Basically, the perfect therapist. Which made sense. The government’s Mental Health System (we used to mockingly call it the “Suicide Prevention System”) had assembled her based on the data it had collected about me since I had reached adulthood, covering my personality, stress reactions, brainwaves, and hormone levels.
“Did you sleep well last night?” Ophelia asked.
She sat facing me, sinking into a red chair of Scandinavian design. She looked relaxed. Of course, all of this was in VR. In physical reality, I was sitting on a hard office chair in my studio apartment, where I live alone, but I could feel the soft upholstery of the virtual couch under my backside. The scenery around us had been pulled from my memories of the forest behind my grandparents’ place where I used to spend summer vacations. I could hear the burbling of the river, and the light spilling between the leaves lit the forest floor in a circle around us. This, I assumed, had been calculated to provide the most relaxing possible venue for my therapy. Of course, the real forest had been buried under an endless succession of earthquakes and landslides; my grandparents’ house was long gone. I hadn’t seen my grandparents outside of VR for years.
“Like you don’t already know the answer,” I said, groping through my brain fog for the words. “Life hasn’t exactly been conducive to great sleep lately.”
“I’m sure it hasn’t.”
The sensor behind my ear warmed slightly, transmitting her voice directly via bone conduction.
“Based on your abnormal hormone levels, elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, blood sugar level spikes, and brainwave patterns, we have determined that your mental health has deteriorated. If you continue on this trajectory, you have an eighty percent chance of developing depression, and a twenty percent chance of suicide.”
Suicide? What piece of shit commits suicide?
I was sick of listening to her explaining at length.
The primary function of the emotion-capture sensor was to render human emotions observable, but it also had a stress controller that monitored cortisol levels. When they passed a certain threshold, the sensor flagged the wearer for admission to one of the Commission on Loneliness’s resilience programs. (The long recession in Japan meant that cases of depression here had increased to a level higher than in England or Australia.) The sensors were merely “recommended” according to the Ministry of Health, but seeing as how most HR departments required new employees to wear one, they might as well have been obligatory.
Resilience is the human ability to adapt to and recover from traumatic psychological events. Particularly stressful events such as divorce, the death of a loved one, injuries, illness, or getting fired or demoted could cause psychological damage, sometimes to an irreparable degree. The program fed the patient’s data into an AI which would then create the optimal therapy program to help them recover on their own. Whether you accepted the program or not influenced your Trust Score. It was also a criterion when considering criminals for parole. The program had been introduced sometime around 2040, but it wasn’t until a famous athlete caught for shoplifting used it to overcome an addiction that its popularity really took off. Psychological resilience developed through the program had proven useful for finding work, getting into school, even finding romance.
“That’s not all,” Ophelia continued. “If your current state of health fails to improve, I predict a fifteen percent decrease in income and a ten percent increase in medical fees. In particular, your cortisol readings are dangerously high. This could lead to liver impairment...”
I couldn’t give a shit about all of that. I had no interest in the future. I just wanted to know one thing. Why did she—why did Akira disappear?
“Satsuki, I can see our conversation is causing you stress.” Ophelia turned her observant gaze toward me. “Your dopamine and adrenaline levels are rising sharply, while your oxytocin level is dropping.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I grumbled. “I’m sorry but I don’t care about anything you’re saying. I just want to talk to her again. That’s all.”
Ophelia’s artificially generated face betrayed no emotion.
“You are extremely hurt about the end of your relationship with Akira Tojo, aren’t you?”
I had been seeing Akira Tojo until a month ago. Things had been going well. We were almost at the one-year mark. Then came a message out of nowhere—“It’s over”—and she was gone.
Even now, a month later, I felt raw. I thought of her constantly, the words “why?” and “how?” on constant replay in my head. I could barely function. Work came to a standstill. I was imbibing dangerous levels of alcohol. I wasn’t sleeping. I felt depressed. My colleagues looked worried when I showed up at meetings with a face like the grave and I could tell they were whispering behind my back.
Well they can all fuck off. Like they haven’t been here before. ...But what if it really is just me? Am I the only one who’s ever had this wretched, miserable feeling like the world is falling apart?
“Akira Tojo has set your permitted contact level to zero. You are forbidden to reach her by any means of communication, including social media or VR. Unfortunately, it is quite impossible for you to speak with Akira under the current circumstances.”
“Why? What did I do?” I knew it was childish to shout at an AI, but Ophelia had a look that made you want to throw off your usual social filter and let it all come out.
“It must be very hard for you,” Ophelia said, her voice taking on a sudden humanity.
Now the AI sympathizes with me. Is that supposed to cheer me up?
“I’m sure it gives you no joy to have an AI sympathize with you,” she said, reading my mind. “So I’d like to start at the beginning. Please, tell me everything that happened from when you first met Akira until now. I will use your story to recommend the most appropriate resilience program.”
“I told you, I don’t need therapy!” I was shouting again. “I just want to know why she left. That, and if there’s a way to get us back together. Give me that and my problems are solved, no program needed.”
Ophelia observed me in silence. I blanched a little. I knew she was just an AI, and their faces were totally different, but something about her eyes reminded me of Akira’s whenever she was trying to see through me.
“If you want those answers, you’re going to have to start by telling me what happened.”
“We met playing Air Race,” I began. Ophelia seemed to be listening intently, even though I was sure she already knew everything. The very act of storytelling—going back to a shocking event and relating it from an objective viewpoint—was an orthodox therapeutic method, she explained.
In Air Race, you put a simple jet engine on your back and flew through the air, avoiding obstacles to reach a goal. Successive pandemics had made E-sports played over VR mainstream. They were especially popular with the younger crowd, to the point that real sports were quite rare. At first, I played alone, trying to beat my best time, but after meeting Akira a few times on the same course, we started talking, then dating.
While it was commonplace for people to date in VR and become a couple without ever having met in the flesh, we were different. We met in real life and dated in real life. When I told my friends we were thinking about getting married, they were astonished. It’s too risky, they said, going from dating with all its uncertainties to being partners living together, but I didn’t listen. I was confident in the depth of my affection for her. I even looked down on the people who called what we were doing old-fashioned or inefficient. A random encounter had given me a chance at something amazing.
I didn’t have many friends, and all of my work was done in VR, which meant that I really didn’t have much going on in my life other than playing Air Race and going on dates with Akira. Her skin was smooth, it felt good, and being with her released more dopamine and endorphins than any sex with a VH (virtual human) ever could. Just holding hands with her flooded my system with serotonin. I’d never felt such happiness in all my twenty-five years. I could never have asked for anything more.
“My only experiences with love had been in VR. All ideal partners, chosen by AI, but nothing ever worked out. That’s why I thought maybe this one would. A real relationship, with a partner I picked. And it did work, it was good! I knew from the moment I first saw her that she and I were destined to be together.”
“Based on your heterosexual preference and social status, Akira’s match level was only about the 69,000th out of the 235,432 potential romantic partners your age group.”
Ophelia’s inorganic voice cut through my impassioned retelling and let the excitement out of the room entirely.
“Your compatibility was only seventy-five percent. You knew there were partners better suited for you.”
“Of course. But I also knew that it would work.”
“How?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I shouted, getting frustrated. “Because I loved her!”
Ophelia’s eyes narrowed. A moment later, her body disintegrated into translucent blue spheres of various sizes that ricocheted around the room. I knew it was just a glitch, but it startled me. I heard a small whining noise through the bone conduction mic. The sensor was analyzing what I had just said.
“I’ve chosen a suitable program for you.” Ophelia was back in human form. “A cognitive distortion correction program.”
***
Akira was right there, smiling at me. Her beautiful hair fluttering in a gentle breeze under soft gradations of natural light.
I was watching a date from about three months into our relationship. I knew it was just a VR replay, but I felt tears come to my eyes. Back then, everything had been going so well, so smoothly. As long as we were together, I knew I had nothing to fear.
“You wanted to know why she left you, correct?” Ophelia asked. “I am only an AI therapist. I do not know if I can give you everything you want. However, this program should provide you the tools you need to find answers for yourself. I have optimized it to satisfy your wants while helping you build the resilience you need.”
That was her pitch, back before we started. Anything was better than sitting here doing nothing. I was in.
“The program will take place over four or five sessions: a replay session in which we will review and analyze the past, a role-playing session where you can re-enact key moments, a simulation session where you can simulate new interactions, a conversation session with a helping partner who has agreed to aid your recovery, and other sessions as required, such as for overcoming critical trauma.”
After the first long session in which I had unloaded everything I’d been feeling, I already knew that the program was starting to lighten my depression, at least a little. After a month of not speaking to anyone else about Akira—it was too embarrassing, after I’d told everyone we were getting married—it was a relief to get it out. Here, talking to an AI, I was free to say whatever I liked. I could scream obscenities, I could let my emotions rage, I could admit what it was I really wanted, no matter how embarrassing it might be.
A strange-looking creature was curled up on the floor by my feet. It was an E/A—an emotion animal—a manifestation of my emotions. This one looked a little like the miniature shiba my grandparents had, and also a little like the friendly monster that showed up to help you in Monster Crusher, a game I used to play when I was a kid. He was a murky gray color shot through with streaks of bloody crimson, with spines on his back, dull fur, and dead eyes.
Ophelia asked me to give him a name, so I called him Yuzuru, the name of my grandparents’ shiba. I reached out to pet him, but Yuzuru didn’t react. He remained curled up, in denial of the outside world, an anguished look on his face.
“He is your partner,” Ophelia explained. “Don’t worry. As you recover, his appearance will improve.”
I was watching a VR replay of myself and Akira having tea at a café. It was weird, seeing my own past playing out in 3D. What I was experiencing now was a “refrain session.” It is said that by recreating scenes from our past as they were, it is possible to discover problems and update our perceptions.
Akira had just ordered her second drink when the notification came into both of our phones that the number of Childcare Docks at the Childcare Center in our city had passed five thousand units.
“My friend works at the CcC,” Akira said, lifting her thin lips from the straw in her frozen drink. “Those Childcare Docks are really popular. They had over four thousand requests come in the last time they added units, and only a thousand CcDs to spare.”
A Childcare Dock, or CcD, was a child-rearing system that used AI and robots to raise children from birth to the age of six. While they were originally intended for people who were unsuited to parenting, their popularity exploded after an experiment in 2040 that compared children completely raised by CcD for their first six years to children who had been raised the traditional way showed higher abilities across the board in the former, with less individual variation and increased resilience to stress.
“They’re trendy, I get it,” I said offhand. “But I wonder if a kid raised by CcD can really communicate with anyone but AIs when they grow up.”
“The data say they’re growing up just fine,” she told me. “With above-average IQs, no less. Which makes sense. Raising kids is hard. Who would leave something so risky to people alone? Not everyone is cut out to be a parent, you know.”
Her voice was just as flat as I remembered. Ophelia had done a good job recreating her from my memory.
“You know that people are the animal least suited to raising their own young? Thanks to CcD, deaths due to parental abuse have dropped to almost zero, and there have been big reductions in postpartum and child-rearing depression. It’s all positive.”
“I bet our kid would be cute,” I said, trying desperately to change the subject away from a debate on social issues and toward something that would let me soak just a little longer in the warm feeling of being with her.
“Hmph.” She pouted a little then fixed me with a stare. “You know I already have a child-rearing partner picked.”
Akira had told me that she had been raised in a parallel partnership family soon after we had started dating. Around the time that marriage rates hit rock bottom in 2030, people had started forming partner contracts, dividing up the partners with whom they had romantic relations, married, and raised children. Akira’s parents had been in the first generation of parallel partners. She was born to two mothers (they’d already figured out how to collect DNA from two people of the same sex to fertilize an egg at that point) and grew up surrounded by them and their various romantic and marriage partners. These days, fully fifty percent of the population was in one kind of parallel partnership or another. It was perfectly natural for Akira to think of child-rearing, marriage, and romance as separate things.
“She was my classmate in high school—my best, best friend. Before we graduated, we decided that we’d have a kid together.”
In the replay, my pasta-entwined fork froze halfway to my mouth. I was pale, trembling. Just watching it made my emotions from that day come back so vividly it was like feeling it all over again. I felt a shock like being punched in the face. I was speechless for a moment, before I managed to squeeze words out:
“So...you don’t want to have a kid with me?”
“Well, I’d give us having kids a better than zero percent chance.” Akira said, unenthusiastically. “I just can’t picture marrying you and kids right now. I still want us to be together though.”
“Wait, so you’re going to marry someone else too?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Akira’s eyes widened. “Marrying your romantic partner is just asking for trouble.”
The house where I grew up was a traditional one, with one mother and one father. My parents came from a pretty conservative part of the countryside where monogamy was still the standard, and birth and child-rearing were performed by humans as a matter of course. I’d always imagined the same for myself. It had never even crossed my mind that things might work out different for me.
“I was planning to love, marry, and have kids with you, Akira,” I said. “Parallel partnerships just water down each person’s feelings and responsibility to the other.”
“That’s not true. My family was parallel, but everyone loved me equally,” Akira said, frowning.
An awkward silence unfolded between us.
“I mean, I’ll think about it,” she said at length. “You can only put one kid in CcD at a time, so if I was going to have another one, it would be after my first with her. Giving birth sounds pretty rough, so it would be an artificial womb, and since raising two kids at the same time is tough, I’d put it in CcD until it was six.”
No way, I almost said, but what came out was “Okay.”
She didn’t give that impression to look at her, but Akira could be very stubborn. I would just have to change her mind slowly, over time. That was okay. I loved her. I’m sure she would come to see things the way I did.
“If you want a parallel partnership, fine, I’ll do it your way. You’re free to choose partners as you like. I don’t care if you want to use an artificial womb. And CcD up until the age of three is fine too. But we should meet halfway and raise the kid after that. That’s the best way for the child to know we love them.”
If I had been looking into her eyes at that very moment, I would have seen the twin furnaces of hell. If I had seen how she felt, I’m sure I would’ve immediately gotten down on the floor, prostrated myself, and apologized. But the me in the replay wasn’t looking at her face at all. I was hunched over, trying to protect myself from my own lack of faith in my words, my eyes wandering across the tabletop.
The replay ended.
“We just saw you saying something you didn’t really believe,” Ophelia said. “Why?”
“Because… I didn’t want her to get mad at me,” I said. “I was sure she wouldn’t understand my point of view, so I thought I’d have to win her over slowly. I thought if we were together, and our relationship deepened, she would come to understand how we could make it work.”
Ophelia stared at me. I knew she was just 3D computer graphics, but something about her face made it look like she was judging me, and I couldn’t stand it.
“Isn’t that what a partnership is? You have to give up something to be with your partner. I compromised. She should’ve compromised too if she wanted to be with me!”
There was that feeling again, gripping me. I wanted to take it all out on the AI.
Ophelia was right, though. In order to date Akira, I had bent over backward in more ways than one. I would go wherever she wanted to go, even if I wasn’t really interested. In line with her wishes, I didn’t bother her on weekdays and only called her on weekends. Because I loved her, I suppressed myself. I changed to suit her.
I felt something and looked down to see Yuzuru curled around my feet. His brow was furrowed, and he gave off a pitiful whine. I watched him for a moment and felt the dark thing inside me loosen its grip, just a little.
“How did watching that scene make you feel?”
“I think I said things wrong. I was so stuck in my own head that I didn’t even notice the look in her eyes... I should have paid more attention to her.” I drew a sharp breath. “Could that have been what she didn’t like about me? That I didn’t pay her enough attention?”
I was sure there were several times I had been guilty of it. Not just in big scenes like this, but in trivial, everyday moments. My disconnected thoughts were starting to come together, the fog lifting from the whys and hows in my head.
“I cannot tell you what another person is really thinking. The resilience program isn’t about her feelings. It’s about understanding and, eventually, accepting your own.”
***
The next part of the program was the “conversation session” in which I would talk with a helper chosen by Ophelia. Being chosen to participate as a helper in someone else’s resilience program was considered an honor. It was also a great chance to earn Trust Score points. I was anxious about whom Ophelia might choose, though. For one, I hardly had any friends, and the relationships I had with them were superficial at best. I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d be able to be brutally honest with. And what would happen if the helper declined?
Still, nothing prepared me to hear the name she chose.
“Contact him. He has already received a general briefing.”
It was my literature teacher from middle school. A stubborn old guy, with old-fashioned ways, like a relic that had time-slipped from the turn of the century. Still, his classes had been surprisingly interesting; they were pretty much the only ones I paid attention to in the humanities. But we had no other connection, and had never even spoken outside of class. So why him?
“There you are.”
He raised a hand in greeting as he walked into the VR bar that was our rendezvous spot. It had been ten years since I’d last seen him, and while he had more white hair, his stern demeanor was unchanged. What was I supposed to talk to my old middle school teacher about, exactly? I had no idea.
“I never thought I would be chosen as your helper,” he said with a grin, tilting back his glass of whiskey. I don’t think I had ever seen him smile before. It felt strange.
“So you did a program too?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. Everyone chosen as a helper had gone through their own resilience program before. It was a prerequisite.
“You bet. When I got divorced. Now that was a bad scene,” my old teacher said as casually as if he were mentioning the weather. “I’d just retired. Had no place to go, and suddenly wasn’t seeing anyone. It really got me down.” He scratched his head. “I became a digital alcoholic. I was in this bar so much, I stopped living real life. Without the program, I would’ve ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. But hey, I’m sober now. This glass? Fake whiskey. No buzz.”
He tilted his glass with a clink of ice.
“That...must have been hard,” I said, unsure how to react. In middle school, he had been my teacher, but here I was, startled to learn the obvious: that he was a person too, with the depth that came from layers of experience built up inside him.
“So, you had a breakup?” he asked bluntly. That hadn’t changed, the bluntness. “Tell me about it.”
Overcoming my embarrassment, I tried to give him the full picture. He nodded now and then to let me know he was listening, but otherwise he was silent. I found him easy to talk to due to his simple and unpretentious manner and the fact that he didn’t overreact to what I was saying. I couldn’t imagine it being so easy with someone my own age. It occurred to me how nice it would have been to have someone like this to talk to back when Akira and I were together.
“So,” he said when I finished. “You’re in the program because you want to know why she dumped you.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I don’t blame you for wanting to know. But you do understand, that’s not going to happen?” He leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “You can never really know how someone else feels...especially not the people closest to you.”
“What should I do, then?” Surely he would have some good advice, I thought. He had lost in the game of love, just like me. “Just give up?”
My old teacher stared at his glass for a while, like he was mulling something over, before speaking. “You remember that day in middle school when you came to my office after class? You had a problem with an analysis question on the reading I had assigned. The question was ‘How does the main character in the story feel?’ and you wanted to know how anyone could know the correct answer. ‘Is there even a correct answer?’ you asked. When I asked why you were concerned, you told me ‘Because I don’t want to get it wrong.’ ”
I had no recollection of that day at all.
“You haven’t changed much, have you? Of course, you could take issue with us teaching like that, the same methodology all those years. That’s something I only realized after I retired. School and society both try to force you to find the correct answer, but there isn’t a whole lot of value in correct answers, really. That comes from using your head to think about your own answers.” He went on. “You say you want to know how she feels… but what you really want to know is whether you were correct.”
He was right, of course. I wanted our natural relationship—not the result of some AI match-making—to have been correct. I couldn’t take it if the choice I had made turned out to be wrong.
“You know,” I said, “when I was seeing her, I wasn’t really seeing her at all. I was so obsessed with what I thought the perfect relationship should be, I never looked at how our relationship actually was.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to look at the truth,” my old teacher said, nodding. “You have to examine every little difference of opinion, talk it through. Even then, there’s always the chance your partner won’t accept the answers you found. What do you do then?”
“I know, right?” I said. “Maybe part of me was afraid she wouldn’t accept me.”
“Well, good on you for figuring that out,” my teacher said. “I only got it after a decade of wasted time and a disastrous mistake.”
We sat and drank in silence.
After a while, my teacher spoke again. “By the way, how are your parents? Back when you were in my class, I remember hearing from your homeroom teacher that your family was going through a rough patch.”
***
My father was an engineer and my mother was a YouTuber. They met through a dating app in the middle of the pandemic in 2021. Both of my parents were easy-going enough, but I always had the sense that they saw each other not as people, per se, but as the necessary parts to build and maintain a family. I had never caught them having a conversation. When my dad was home he defaulted to playing online games and my mom would be absorbed in her streaming, leaving the housekeeper to take care of me. Whenever there was something I didn’t understand at school, my parents just told me to Google it. AI taught me everything I needed to know. I made it through puberty uneventfully enough, but I never had anyone I could really talk to. When I went to my dad once about some trouble I was having with friends, he just frowned and suggested I talk to an online counselor before disappearing into his room.
So I lived my life following the correct choices, as made by AI. The clothes I wore, the music I listened to, even the topics I discussed with friends, were all determined by algorithm. I wasn’t dissatisfied. I was happy. It was hard having real conversations with other people. I liked having the answers given to me. And I never felt dissatisfied with the romantic partners the AI chose for me, either. But every one of them left me in the end.
***
Ophelia was back. This time, we were standing amid quiet seaside scenery.
“You’re afraid to tell people close to you what you really think.”
Her expression had softened since the last time we spoke. Her face now had a little bit of Akira, and a little bit of my mother. She spoke calmly, and her clear eyes seemed to look right through me.
“That’s right. I’ve always been scared to tell anyone what I was really thinking. Not just Akira, anyone. What if I said something and they rejected me? What if they didn’t even listen? What if me telling them something real was what drove them away? I even kept lovers at a distance. So what if we didn’t deeply understand one another, as long as the relationship went smoothly?”
Down by my feet, Yuzuru had grown to about one-and-a-half times his original size. His fur was green now, streaked with scarlet, and shining like the light in his eyes. An impressive mane had replaced the nasty spines on his back, and he was standing on his four paws, facing Ophelia, as if trying to protect me from her.
“Is that what you really want?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I do want people to know how I really feel. But I was afraid that if I went off-script and said something that wasn’t AI-approved, they’d pull away. And Akira—what if she rejected me? What if I lost her?”
“Even when you were dating Akira, you were secretly dissatisfied, because you never let yourself reveal your true feelings. You never tried to overcome the real differences between you and her.”
“Shut up. I know that. I know. We were too different for it to go well. How could it? But I loved her, I really did. And I thought if I could just make it work...”
“What did you think that would mean for you, making it work?”
“It would mean being able to make something other than the correct choice. It would mean being able to make a mistake.”
Ophelia nodded. “When you looked at your parents’ relationship, you felt something missing, didn’t you? Their neglect for you reflected their lack of passion for each other. When your partner is chosen by AI, there are no hardships or difficulties to overcome. I wonder if you weren’t using your relationship with Akira to overcome the loneliness your parents made you feel.”
I noticed with a start that Ophelia had changed. She had split into two people now: my parents, looking just like they had when I last visited home several years ago. They were sitting across the dining room table from each other, an uncomfortable distance between them, just like in real life.
“Do you feel something when you look at them?” Ophelia’s voice came from the air. “If you do, please tell them.”
“Dad?” I swallowed. “Thanks… for lending me your AI assistant when I was kid. But that’s not what I really wanted. I wanted to tell you my worries. I wanted to hear what you thought.” As I spoke, I could feel the anger boiling up from deep in my belly. “And it wasn’t just when I needed help. You were always lost in your games, you never had time for me. Same with you, Mom. How could you look at me when you were always looking at the webcam? How can you have a family if you never talk to each other? I know you raised me, and maybe I’m wrong to say this, but…”
I hesitated for a moment.
“Even when you quit being a YouTuber, when you got depressed, Dad didn’t do a thing. He just hooked you up with the support center. You looked so alone, Mom. I think that’s why, even when you got home from the hospital, you went into VR and never came back. It was his fault. You should’ve looked at each other, you should’ve listened to each other. You’re husband and wife!”
I wasn’t even sure myself exactly who I was shouting at. The face in front of me was my dad’s face, familiar as always. A replica, sure, but this was the dad who lived inside me, the dad Ophelia had generated from my memories.
A moment passed before the dad sitting in front of me slowly opened his mouth and said “I met your mother through a dating app. Before that, I was never good with people, I hadn’t ever had a relationship before. I didn’t want any of that romance stuff. I just wanted to get married and settle down. The dating apps back then weren’t as good as they are now, so I had to meet a lot of people before something clicked. I think I went through twenty or so matches before I finally met your mother.
“Your mother was good at talking to people on-screen, but she wasn’t the type of person who was good at talking to the opposite sex in real life. Both of us being poor talkers, we suited each other fine. We each had our own private time at home, our own personal space. It was good, at first. But when you were born, everything changed. Parenting was hard. You were our first child, and we didn’t know the correct way to do anything. We bumped heads more often than before. As a result, we avoided discussions. Sure, we could have tried being honest with our opinions, but who’s to say that would have resulted in anything productive? So we thought, why not leave it to the professionals? They have all the right answers. Better to entrust you to them than leave you at the mercy of our inexperience.”
Dad looked tired. He had always felt closed-off, his thoughts unknowable, his very existence a rejection of me. But now he looked suddenly small, even weaker than I was.
“It’s too much trouble being with people. I was envious of you, you know. Living in an age when AI makes all the choices, and you never have to experience the friction of natural relationships. But I guess that’s not what you wanted.”
It’s not too much trouble being with people. I just couldn’t take the stress of the fighting and the rejection. So, I shut up. As a child, as a university student, as an adult, at every critical juncture, I went silent. Holding my tongue and avoiding doing anything was another kind of correct choice. It was the same with Akira. I had vaguely sensed what she wanted, but I was too scared of our relationship falling apart to face it head-on.
And she saw right through me. That’s why I kept my mouth shut, erasing what was “me” so it wouldn’t clash with what was “her.” Because she knew better than anyone else how soft I was, how reluctant I was to disappoint, even to the bitter end.
The image of my mother and father disappeared. In their place was Akira. An illusion that Ophelia had to have generated by reading my thoughts. She looked at me, her mouth slightly open, as if she wanted to say something.
And I had something to say to her.
But not like this.
I took off the VR goggles. I could still hear Ophelia’s voice.
“The session isn’t over. Please put the goggles back on.”
I stood up from my chair and threw on a jacket. Quickly straightening my hair in front of a mirror, I made for the front door and put on my shoes.
“Where are you going?”
“Her place,” I answered. I’m going to talk to her, face-to-face. That’s what I need, to talk to her.”
“You cannot. You haven’t finished your program. You need to see it through to the end.”
“No, it’s okay. Correct or not, this is my choice. I have to talk to her again. That’s what I’ve been missing this whole time. Really listening to her, and really telling her how I feel.”
Ignoring Ophelia’s pleas, I dashed out the door.
***
How long had it been since I ran this hard? I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to see her, I had to apologize for the miserable person I’d been. I had to give her what she needed. Then, I would beg for another chance. I’d done the program, I’d reflected on my actions, that had to count for something.
I changed trains, got off at her station, and walked the five minutes to her apartment. I pressed the intercom button.
To my surprise, the person who opened the door wasn’t her, but an older woman who looked a lot like her. The woman’s eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollow, her face pale. She clearly wasn’t well. She stood vacantly in the doorway and looked at me for a while before asking, “Are you...Satsuki Kureshima?”
“I am!” I replied, my voice cracking in my bewilderment. “You’re Akira’s mother!”
“That’s right.”
I knew it. Akira had never shown me a photo of her parents, but looking at this woman, the resemblance was undeniable. This must have been one of the partners who’d reared her. I felt relieved. At least she had told one of her moms about me.
“I came to see Akira. I...we had a fight. Where is she?”
Her mother’s eyes widened in surprise, then her face went dark. “She died last week.”
For a moment, I couldn’t be sure what she had said. D, i, e, d? Died? What does that mean? Does that mean...no! Akira!?
“MERS2. It was very sudden.” The woman lowered her eyes. I could see her eyelids flutter. “I got a notification that she spiked a fever in the night. She was taken to the hospital immediately, and was still conscious when we got there, but only barely. Her condition worsened just after...”
The Second Middle East Respiratory Syndrome had been prevalent since last year. It had a high fatality rate, and while it hadn’t reached pandemic status in Japan, infections were spreading. Most young people got off easy even if they caught it, but this was the first major disease my generation had faced, and we were criticized for not taking it seriously enough.
No. Not Akira...
“It was all so sudden. It still doesn’t feel real, even to us.”
The truth of what she was saying was written in the lines of deep dejection and sorrow on her face. I just stood there, unsure how I was supposed to accept this new reality.
“We’ve been reaching out to her friends to let them know, but...” Her eyes drifted. “Before she lost consciousness, she said… She told us not to tell you if she died.”
I was speechless.
“That was the first we’d heard about you. We asked her why not. If you’d been with her for a whole year, didn’t you have a right to know? She told us that you sank into such a deep shock after the breakup that, if you heard the news, you might never recover. Resilience programs can only do so much. There are people who fall too deep into sadness to make their way back out. She said you were delicate, and should be protected, at least for now.” Her mother sounded sincerely apologetic. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about the wake, or the funeral. You can offer some incense now, if you like.”
“I...” I opened my mouth, still unable to accept what I was hearing. “Didn’t she trust me?”
The mother shook her head. “No, that’s not it. I think she did trust you. She said you were a good person, a very good person. But trust and compatibility are two different things.”
Akira knew me too well. She understood that I would be in deep pain after losing her. She knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle her death, just as she knew we weren’t meant to be partners. Her methods were rough, but if she hadn’t done what she did, she knew that I would’ve just gone on suffering forever, talking to no one, never go through a resilience program, and living with my pain.
I stood there, stunned, but trying to put on a brave face. This little woman standing in front of me was surely feeling much more pain than I was. What I needed to do was comfort her, ease her wound, her shock. I realized I was trying to make the “correct choice,” regardless of how I really felt. But maybe this was the time for correct choices. I’m sure that’s what Akira would’ve wanted, if she were here. Whether I was up to the task or not was another matter.
“My wife and I take turns when we get a break from work to come here and clean up. We’re selling the apartment at the end of the month, so there’s not much time...but whenever I think of her, I forget what I’m doing, and I can’t…”
“Let me help,” I said. “I want to hear your stories. I want to hear about your Akira. I was a terrible boyfriend, I couldn’t make Akira happy. I made a lot of mistakes, and I was afraid to be honest with her. That’s why she dumped me. But, she was a wonderful person...”
Tears spilled from my eyes. My love for Akira, my memories of her, choked my chest.
I felt the woman’s small, warm hand on my shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter how compatible you are. There are always differences, always things that don’t work out, a whole mountain of them. Even with an AI’s help, no one ever has zero problems. AIs can reduce risk, but they can’t prevent every random event. It’s up to us to hang onto the threads connecting those events to keep our relationships together. I’m sure you two were no different. But even if one of those threads should break, that doesn’t mean it never had any meaning at all. It’s up to you to decide what you will do with what you learned from your relationship.”
Akira’s mother wiped her eyes and smiled. “So. Tell me your story.”
We spoke at length, drinking tea out of Akira’s favorite cups. I helped her mother clean up until late that night, and left promising to visit again.
When I sat down in my chair and switched on the VR, Ophelia was waiting for me. She had resumed her original appearance. She didn’t look angry.
“It was just like you said,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have gone. You were trying your hardest to fix me, and… I’m guessing I’ve regressed quite a bit.”
“Based on your progress with the program, I didn’t think it appropriate for you to learn of her death. That is why I tried to stop you. Your stress numbers are up a full fifty points. This is a severe regression.”
“I knew it.”
“I will be transferring you to a different program designed for bereavement care. The approach and the steps are a little different from the program for people suffering from romantic breakups, so I’m afraid I will have to say goodbye for a time. You’ll be assigned a new therapist better suited for you.”
Yuzuru had reverted to his original shape, curled in a miserable ball at my feet. His hair was a dark black-blue, the color of the deep seafloor. I gave him a pat. It was up to me to help the little guy get better. Because I was his master, and he was me.
“I’m good, actually,” I told Ophelia. “I think I’ll do this one on my own. Stress-wise, I’m out of the official danger zone, right?”
“Yes, that is accurate.” Ophelia said. I heard a slight buzzing, as though she were calculating something. “However, if you do not undertake the bereavement care program, your recovery will take at least three times as long.”
“I’m okay with that. It’s work I have to do. That’s what Akira taught me.”
“If you interrupt the program midway, you won’t receive your completion badge. The badge can be very helpful for finding work or schooling, or when choosing a partner for romance or marriage.”
“I’m okay with that, too,” I said more crisply. “But can you leave him with me at least?” I pointed down at Yuzuru. “He makes a good partner.”
“Very well,” Ophelia said quietly. I’m not sure an AI can feel satisfaction, but she sounded satisfied enough. “Before your program began, I determined that you possessed a considerable degree of natural resiliency. That is why I recommended a slightly more intense therapeutic course for you. You need time to examine yourself in order to recover. This process involves a certain amount of pain. You understand this, and you have the courage to dive into that pain. You also have the ability to learn from your mistakes and setbacks. That is worthy of respect. Not that the respect of an AI means much to you.”
“No, it does. Thanks.”
“I believe you will recover.”
Ophelia stuck out her right hand. There, in VR, I gave her a firm handshake. Still feeling the faint warmth of her palm against mine, I flicked off the switch and gently closed my eyelids.
Translation by Alex O. Smith
“My little guy’s started painting abstract art for me. Check it out!”
“Huh! Mine mostly just chills. See? He’s taking a nap right now.”
Ichiu couldn’t see what the people at the table to his right were showing each other. The images their devices projected into the air were only visible within a limited range.
But other visitors to the cafe had brought a different take on the same technology: three-dimensional forms that even Ichiu could see, instead of appearances in virtual reality. Their construction and articulation combined traditional doll design from around the world with contemporary trends toward stylization of the human body. They moved smoothly, not truly human yet evoking closeness and affection.
Some of them had heads that projected faces customized in virtual reality by their subscribers. Varied and individual as these faces were, they each belonged to one of a limited number of clusters with a similar overall feel.
The reason for this was simple: the members of each cluster were all based on the same personality model.
“Want to head home?” asked Kei, sitting to Ichiu’s right. Kei was a journalist with eyes that drooped at the corners. The gleam in them was more subdued than usual.
“Not yet,” Ichiu replied. “They all sure seem to be having fun.”
“The subscribers? I bet they are. I had fun with mine myself. But once you know . . . it’s not fun anymore.”
Ichiu made a fist with his left hand. He had not just been talking about the subscribers, but also their ancillaries: the artificial beings crafted around virtual personalities.
His gaze was drawn to one type of ancillary in particular—a young boy with a gentle smile. The way the boy scratched his cheek and lowered his eyes while he spoke was intensely familiar to Ichiu. He had known someone who did exactly the same thing.
Would he be happy about all this? If he had learned three years ago that this was what the future held, and been offered the chance to back out, would he have made the same choice anyway? More importantly, would he accept being permanently changed if that brought joy to others?
If so, would Ichiu be going against those wishes if he went ahead with what he was planning? Would his act sweep away the last scattered fragments from the shattering of that light?
“Come on, Ichiu, let’s go,” said Kei. “If we don’t hurry, they’ll run out of that souvenir you were planning to buy for Yori.”
Ichiu let Kei pull him to his feet. In one corner of his field of vision, the news was on, showing footage of the oceangoing demistate that had berthed in Tokyo Bay recently. The chyron underneath said, DEMISTATE’S ADVISOR CORPORATION REACHES DEAL WITH JAPAN—600 RESIDENTS TO BE ACCEPTED EXTRATERRITORIALLY AS EARLY AS NEXT WEEK. It was in a language Ichiu couldn’t read, but the eyewear he’d borrowed from Kei translated it for him. The headline was followed by a comment from an executive at the advisor corporation’s Japan branch: “We will leave no stone unturned in our search for the missing youngsters aged sixteen and seventeen.”
*
Seven days before, Ichiu had been aboard a ship floundering on the waves. It carried some six hundred passengers, serving as their basic daily infrastructure, and was the closest thing they had to a national territory. This was the demistate in which Ichiu had been born.
Climate change and political circumstances had begun forcing people around the planet out of their homelands and onto the waves around twenty years earlier. The communities they formed were seldom recognized as nation-states, but those with a certain degree of coherence came to be known as “demistates.” Precariously self-sufficient at best, demistates relied on the support of supranational corporations that had power to spare—business concerns which, by positioning themselves as friends of the individual consumer, had grown powerful enough to stare down fairly serious countries. Declaring themselves “advisors” to the demistates, these corporations provided everything from energy to communications to those who lived on the open seas. The corporate advisor of Ichiu’s home demistate, originally from South America, had expanded rapidly through repeated mergers.
Some demistates put down roots in so-called sea cities, but Ichiu’s roamed perpetually from one urban archipelago to the next. There were two reasons for this. The first was philosophical: the demistate was determined never to forget that it had lost its homeland. Many of its elders were against making their home on solid ground again. The second reason for the demistate’s nomadism was to serve as a useful test bed for their advisor corporation, which had recently become involved in developing technology for living long-term on seaborne vessels. As a result, everyday life aboard the ship was augmented with all kinds of cutting-edge advances. The children on the ship were often reminded how lucky they were.
One of Ichiu’s foster parents, who also served as a teacher, was particularly fond of emphasizing this point. “Not many people enjoy lives this free of suffering. It’s a debt we have to repay. If you’re ever able to be useful to someone else, embrace the opportunity.”
Once, Ichiu couldn’t help asking, “If we’re so lucky, why doesn’t everyone just join us?”
“Screening,” came the reply. “Applications for membership are reviewed based on how severely the applicant needs to flee solid ground. We passed—and you’re our child.” Ichiu saw strong expectations in those narrowing eyes.
Some of the ship’s passengers, however, sneered at these ideals. One such lecture on responsibility was interrupted by an old woman known to everyone as the Moaning Hag, who said as she passed by, “You kids don’t have to be grateful for nothing. What, you think the advisors help us out of the kindness of their hearts? Come on.”
“They help us to improve their corporate image. What’s wrong with that?” said Ichiu’s parent.
“We don’t need their help,” said the Hag. “Who wants everything handed to them on a silver platter, anyway? We can’t even name our own kids any more. The names we used were too hard to pronounce in other languages, they said. It’s for the sake of the next generation and global comity. Ha!”
“If you hate it so much, why don’t you leave?” Ichiu’s foster parent glanced at him after saying this, no doubt remembering that Ichiu’s birth mother had left the ship. She’d met his birth father while the demistate was docked at a sea city. After having Ichiu, she’d left him behind and disembarked to begin settled life.
“Oh, I will,” the Hag replied. “Once I knock the next generation into shape. Which reminds me—tell that little sister of yours to come by for her training.”
Ichiu’s foster parent had no reply for this. The Hag was better at piloting the ship than anyone else aboard. People said they couldn’t have escaped to sea at all without her. And her skills weren’t limited to older craft—even when their advisor corporation lent them the latest thing in marine technology, the Hag could make her sing, from foremost prow to innermost workings.
The Moaning Hag had finally disembarked four years ago, when Ichiu was twelve. As a parting gift, she gave him a card loaded with virtual currencies.
“Some of these you won’t be able use on our advisor’s turf,” she said, tapping the card with a finger weathered by the sun, “but they’re the ones that’ll come in handy when it really matters.”
In other words, the card would be useful even within regional economies dominated by firms in conflict with their advisor corp. Apparently she’d given similar cards to ten other children, but most of them ended up giving theirs to Ichiu. It’s useless, they told him. It’s creepy. It feels disloyal.
“Maybe we’d be better off if the Moaning Hag were still with us?”
“Doubt it. She’d probably have taken the chance to pull something shady.”
Four years after the old woman jumped ship, Ichiu heard adult voices coming from the conference room while the vessel was being buffeted by multiple typhoons. They normally set their course according to weather forecasts and other guidance provided by their advisor corp. This time, it seemed, those forecasts had been slightly inaccurate. When they finally corrected course, it was too late and the ship was trapped in the maelstrom. Worse yet, their satellite commlinks were malfunctioning. They couldn’t ask their advisor corporation for help, and they couldn’t access any online services or even news sources. Cut off from external assistance, the demistate was groping for answers with only its onboard equipment to rely on.
“The closest sea city is under the protection of a corporation in conflict with ours. I doubt they’ll take us in. Even if they do, they might pressure us to switch advisors. If there are incompatibilities, we’d have to abandon ship. Give up our second home!”
Ichiu stood with his ear pressed against the door. Beside him was Yori, another passenger. Yori was having a hard time keeping his feet as the ship rocked wildly. He was oddly lacking in some kind of inner strength. Ichiu put his arm around his shoulders to keep him upright, and Yori clung to him tightly.
Yori was three months older than Ichiu, making him seventeen. He stuck to Ichiu like a shadow now, never speaking so much as a full sentence, but things had been different once. Until three years ago, Yori spoke freely and cheerfully, adored by younger children and trusted by adults. When nearby sea cities organized environmental cleanups, he went out in his own little boat to participate, and he was a keen user of the online forums their advisor corporation had set up for communication between different demistates. He seemed to genuinely want to make himself useful to others, as if the lessons their demistate tried to teach its young about gratitude and repaying their debt had born fruit in him without a hint of cynicism or corruption. This was baffling to Ichiu, who started trying to get under his skin, to bait him into revealing the real Yori. But it seemed that wanting to be useful to others was the real Yori. That was the shape of Yori’s desire. Like a clear blue sky.
Yori also painted a lot, in both physical and virtual reality. He had to, he said, or he’d forget. Most of his paintings were of places he’d visited. His brushwork seemed to transform the sense of distance from the viewer’s own perspective, which is implied by the depth of space, to the fragility of memory.
The adults kept cornering him to tell him about their homeland, so he painted it for them. One of his completed works, a large canvas three feet by four, hung in the passenger mess. Ichiu had seen the Moaning Hag shaking her first at the painting in the dead of night, muttering under her breath. It was an odd thing to witness, but it made sense in a way; as far as the ship’s demographics went, the two were opposites in every way.
But that was all in the past now. After his Service Exchange, Yori had fallen silent and stopped painting.
The Service Exchange program was run by a consortium headed by their advisor corporation. Participation was considered a tremendous honor, although anyone who applied specifically for reasons of prestige was thought impure. Applicants who were selected for the program spent from a few months to a year “doing something for all the people of the world,” as the prospectus put it. Even some landlubbers knew about the program.
But competition for admission was fierce. In this demistate of six hundred people, there were at least a hundred applicants every time the roughly annual call went out, but in an average year only one was selected. A reputation for good behavior was a prerequisite. Ichiu had never even felt inclined to apply.
But Yori had applied, and been accepted, right after his fourteenth birthday. He had only just cleared that year’s minimum age requirement, but the selection was welcomed by all.
When he came back six months later, everything was different. He was as fearful and clingy as a small child. It was as if his soul’s crystalline structure had melted away. If he hadn’t looked the same on the outside, people wouldn’t have recognized him as Yori at all.
Ichiu had been aware of Yori since long before this. As a child, he had felt only irritation at the other boy’s maturity and understanding relative to his peers, but as the years passed and Ichiu gained the vocabulary to probe other people’s inner worlds, he started pestering Yori with questions that could have been considered intrusive. But Yori had replied with sincerity and good humor, coming to see Ichiu as a close acquaintance, and before long the two of them were comfortable in each other’s presence. Ichiu sensed something special in Yori’s serene smile. But no matter how many passphrases and secret quests were born between the two of them, Ichiu never felt as if he could keep Yori all to himself. Their positions were too different; people had started to see Ichiu as the spiritual successor to the Moaning Hag. He had to laugh to himself when they told him how contrary and twisted he was. What could be more normal than being drawn to Yori?
Ironically enough, the change in Yori only strengthened their essential closeness. Ichiu stayed with Yori as others backed uneasily away. When they did this, it made Ichiu furious. He could admit to himself that even he wasn’t as drawn as strongly to Yori as before, but that only made him angrier at those who deserted the boy. His hope that Yori would quickly recover—a hope that rapidly crumbled—was accompanied by a darker side. But he stayed with Yori. And as the two shared comfort, as they touched, their physical relationship deepened.
Their relationship was the remains of a sexual desire, jumbled up with an infantile drive to connect. Whether it was built on pity, affection, or gratitude never became clear as they continued their life aboard the ship.
Now, in the conference room, the adults were discussing where the ship could berth. Eventually a consensus formed around Japan. It would mean entering another nation’s territorial waters, but of all the destinations within reach, Japan was the only one where no advisor corporation had total hegemony. They would head for Tokyo.
Tokyo.
The word was like a sip of wine to a parched throat.
Ichiu was never sure of exactly when he decided to take the action that he did. But after the initial shock of Yori’s return, as time passed, Ichiu lost all interest in being part of the ship’s ongoing journey.
The corporate advisors who ran the Service Exchange program had brought Yori back long before he was due to return. There had been a terrible accident, they said. Some kind of compensation was provided, as a courtesy. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter, Ichiu could not help despising them.
And the same went for the other passengers that surrounded him. “Sometimes mysterious things happen on Service Exchange,” they would say with knowing looks, “but it’s always for a reason.” They convinced themselves that the dramatic change in Yori only proved that he had made a major contribution. Unsettled as they were by the new Yori, they had started to speak of him as if he were some charming novelty. Their complacency made Ichiu boil with resentment.
He had already been looking for a way out. Escaping to a sea city would put him right back in a similar situation. He would have to disappear onto dry land. That would show them. He felt guilty when he thought about Yori’s parents, but their son’s return had reduced them to mere shadows of their former selves. Ichiu spent more time with Yori now than they did.
And now the ship was going to Tokyo. Ichiu had heard that Tokyo Bay was full of stateless people, living together in groups large and small. The idea gave him hope.
Ichiu gripped Yori’s hand. Yori turned clouded eyes toward him. “Toward an azure land,” Ichiu said. It was the first half of a private code they had come up with when they were twelve. Yori only blinked.
*
When the ship drew near Japan, Ichiu escaped as planned: driving a dinghy under cover of darkness, then wading through the water in his wetsuit, he arrived on the western shore of Tokyo Bay.
Yori came along. His strength and stamina seemed unaffected by whatever had changed him, and he swam with majestic ease. Everything went without a hitch.
But once they reached dry land, Ichiu was helpless. Haggling, for example, utterly defeated him. His life had never before included situations where discussion alone could change the price a vendor set. But at the open-air stalls they visited that first morning to top up on provisions, there were no set prices.
Ichiu had made an effort to learn the customs of dry land after deciding to abandon ship, so he was not completely blindsided, but his knowledge was woefully inadequate in both breadth and depth. He touched his throat several times in shame. He had dumped all his wearable comms into into the bay, afraid that the ship’s advisor corporation would track them. At sea, the demistate had enjoyed access to interpretation, cultural guidance, and other support. Here, he was alone.
The man behind the stall spoke more rapidly and went off on more tangents than Ichiu could follow with the handful of sentences he had memorized from sample dialogues. As he hesitated, other people around him broke in and took his place in line.
Panic narrowed Ichiu’s vision. With a start, he realized that Yori was nowhere to be seen. Eventually he found him sitting on a rock under a tree with a woman he had never seen before. This was their first meeting with Kei.
“I hear a demistate just berthed in Tokyo Bay,” Kei said.
“Is that so?” Ichiu replied, before realizing his mistake. Kei had asked her question in the extremely rare language spoken on Ichiu’s ship, using a translation device hung around her neck.
“That’s where you two are from, right? The demistate?” Kei pressed.
Ichiu neither nodded nor shook his head.
Kei showed them a card that looked like some sort of ID. The date of birth put her in her late twenties. Kei explained that she was a journalist and gave the name of her accrediting organization. She wrote something on the back of the card and turned it to show them.
If you want to get back to your people, I’ll do what I can to help. But if you don’t, let me offer you food, clothing, and shelter for a while.
Ichiu pointed at food, clothing, and shelter. “What’s in it for you?” he asked.
“In exchange, I want you to tell me what life in a demistate is really like,” Kei said with a grin. The gleam showed in her eyes.
*
Ichiu lamented his own recklessness. He feebly protested that they would be fine without Kei’s help, but Kei shot him down.
“How will you survive? This country’s pretty strict about work and residency permits, especially for people who want to hide their identity.”
“I hear that it’s possible to live around Tokyo Bay without a permit.”
“That’s just a tactful way of saying that the authorities can’t keep up and some people slip through the cracks,” Kei said, smiling. “Now, I have heard that someone’s been trying to use the situation to promote coexistence between those unauthorized inhabitants and residents on the Japan side—what was it, the Coexistence Bay Concept?—but you still need to know some of the ropes to actually live here. I don’t rate your chances if even shopping makes you sweat.”
After finishing his speech, Kei turned her eyes pointedly to Yori. That settled it. The hope and empowerment Ichiu had felt on the waves withered away. Here on the sand, he was ignorant and powerless.
They walked together to Kei’s car.
“Your advisor corporation was—let’s see—that one that got its start in South America, right?”
At the name Kei spoke next, Ichiu nodded. Kei, sitting in the front seat, rummaged in the glove compartment and then handed a set of eyewear each to Ichiu and Yori, who were sitting in the back. This tech hadn’t been developed by their advisor corporation. It was probably from a Japanese corporation striking out on their own. Ichiu put his on and looked around. Formerly illegible words were now translated for him.
“To repeat,” Kei said, “I want to hear what it's like to live in a demistate. Especially the bits that the ones in charge don’t want to advertise. There’s no way that all those advisor corporations are in it for philanthropic reasons. Maybe some are. Like, ‘Where traditional states are helpless to intervene, we offer comprehensive support. You can leave the planet’s welfare to us.’ If we’re talking about the occasional minor helping hand, then the upside in terms of image and relationships with nation-states might be worth it. Settlements in danger of dying out have been saved, cultures and languages have been preserved. I won’t call that a lie. People from far-flung parts of the world encountering each other and developing new forms of celebration and ritual. That’s intriguing, too. But we have certain expectations. There has to be a less appealing side. I mean, these corporations are getting involved in areas where they have a total free rein—and we’re supposed to believe that no one’s getting away with anything shady? Plus, lately it seems that more corporations are getting involved, and everyone’s getting spread too thin. I hear about demistates getting caught in freak events at sea and suffering real casualties. It bugs me. Are these corporations really doing their job as protectors? Wherever there’s light, people want to see the shadows. So, if you two have good and bad things to say, that’s fine; stories about inhumane treatment, even better. Who knows? If the media makes a big enough deal about it, some country or other might take pity on you and grant you right of sojourn.”
“ ‘Inhumane’ . . . ?”
“You know—disregarding your humanity. That might sound like an old-fashioned way of putting it to some people, showing that our sense of morality is still bogged down in the social conditions of the past. But those old-fashioned morals or sentiments or whatever they are keep me fed, you know? How about you?”
“I’m not sure,” Ichiu said. “What if there wasn’t anything that bad, and it was a good life there?” But even as he asked, he was already brooding over what had come to mind at the first mention of the word “inhumane”: the Service Exchange incident.
He glanced at Yori, sitting to his right and staring out through the tinted car window.
A “terrible accident.” That’s what they had called it. So why did it come to mind now? Was Ichiu just bearing a grudge?
“That would mean my judgment isn’t as sharp as I thought it is,” Kei said. “Come on, though—it was a good life, but you don’t want to go back? So, is just a rebellious phase or something?”
“I don’t know what a normal life is like yet,” Ichiu said.
Kei nodded. “It might be good for you to see what life’s like here for a few days. I’ll take you somewhere you can rest up, to start with.”
She fiddled with some controls. A gray panel between the two rear seats lit up. The stylized image of a human face floated into view.
“Yori?” whispered Ichiu. He felt the warmth of the boy sitting in the seat to his right. But what Ichiu was looking at was in front of him.
The face was probably designed for the new user tutorial. Despite some differences in the details, and the stylization that made it slightly more abstract, it looked a lot like the face Yori had a few years ago.
“Does that interest you?” Kei asked, having seen in the mirror what Ichiu was looking at. “It’s called an ancillary. There was a huge leap forward in the tech about a year ago. I’d probably get a lecture for saying this without qualification, but basically these things suddenly got a lot more human. When they showcased the first ‘virtual personalities,’ I used to laugh. ‘I’m not seeing any personality here.’ But it doesn’t feel weird calling them that any more. They can hold a decent conversation now. Depending on the base model, some of them have even developed artistic skills. This one’s synced to my system at home—oh, right, sorry. Hey, I need directions.”
“Of course,” the ancillary said. “Where to?”
“Let’s see . . . Okay, to my studio, but here’s what I want to avoid . . .”
Ichiu, on a minor impulse, muttered, “Toward an azure land.”
“Huh?” Kei glanced back over her shoulder.
The ancillary blinked and smiled. “The one who waits returns unknown,” it said smoothly. Then it fell silent.
Kei looked back and forth between the motionless ancillary and Ichiu, who was still stunned. “What was that just now?” she said excitedly. “Magic words? Hacking? Can I report on that? I’ve never heard it do that before. This could be big. Maybe I can even blow this Mx. Morals beat for the sun-kissed mounts of fashtech intros?”
Kei kept talking, but Ichiu wasn’t looking at her.
That’s impossible.
The code was a secret. Only he and Yori knew the prompt and countersign. Why had it worked here?
*
As if to process his shock by analyzing its form, Ichiu began to speak about the past. Memories of time spent with Yori ten years ago, how powerless he felt after Yori came back changed: as each thing came to mind, he gave it voice. Sometimes his words came haltingly, and sometimes in an uncontrollable torrent. But Kei was listening to it all, and as her questions drew still more words from Ichiu, the conversation gradually came to center on Service Exchange.
Ichiu explained his theory: that the ancillaries’ virtual personalities used data obtained from Yori during Service Exchange. And that this had left Yori changed, too.
“If you’re right, in terms of timing . . .” Kei paused to think. “If that sudden advance in the ancillaries’ virtual personalities had something to do with Service Exchange—no, let’s go further; if your friend’s personality is being used for the deepest parts of the virtual personality model, and whatever process was involved caused that change in him—for example, if they gather personality data by applying a high-volume input and tracking the output, and if that input accidentally exceeded projections in the stress it put on him, or the method of harvesting the output had risks on the psychological side . . . even if what happened was an accident rather than intentional, it’s very, very related to human rights. Plus, none of that has been revealed to us at all.”
Kei sighed. Her ancillary had vanished at some point.
“But . . . wasn’t this forbidden on your ship?” Kei continued. “Whether it was labor or voluntary cooperation or whatever, weren’t there any legal restrictions? Was there at least an oversight framework?”
“I . . . don’t really know,” Ichiu said. “But I’m angry that no one told me what happened during Service Exchange. I want them to pay for that. I keep telling myself, maybe if we’d tried to find out, made some kind of effort, things might have been different.”
“If you’d demanded transparency from the program. Right. But if your education wasn’t designed to cultivate that kind of thinking . . . Anyway, that’s all in the past.”
Kei was silent for a moment.
“Let’s think about what we can do now,” she said at last. “We can’t just claim that supranational megafirms are taking children from demistates, performing some kind of procedure that robs them of speech and alters their personality as a side effect, and using what they extract to develop better ancillaries. Without proof, we’d be dismissed as conspiracy theorists. What’s more, your advisor corporation has never been known to have a strong connection to the startup that makes ancillaries. They aren’t even that close in the corporate currency economy. But your code worked. That’s a fact. Do you have any record of using those words more than a year ago? Even if you don’t, if we can find this sort of thing in other ancillaries, too . . .”
Ichiu searched the bag he had brought with them from the ship and found a card with old pictures saved on it. There was Yori’s painting, and there were the words they had exchanged written alongside it.
“But, to be honest, I . . .”
Ichiu trailed off. The resentment he had carried for so long without proof, like slamming a knife into a chopping board to no meaningful end, suddenly felt burdensome. The advisor corporation had watched over the ship since before Ichiu was born. What had they done to the most important person in Ichiu’s life?
Ichiu had been skeptical about everything aboard the ship, but he had never even considered such a possibility. Perhaps he had never wanted to consider it. Without an advisor, he and Yori might never have been born among that group of people who had lost their home.
His guts felt heavy and he was struck by the urge to spill everything. He glanced to his right and saw the boy asleep there. That boy had inherited Yori’s flesh, but his response to the first half of their secret code had been only silence.
Ichiu laid his hand over the boy’s, feeling the warmth cross from one collection of cells to another. The flesh beneath his palm had a soft give to it. Sensation. What was this moment if not the interaction of two dolls with sensation?
Ichiu took his hand away.
“Do a lot of people use ancillaries now?”
“You could say that. I’ve started to see people in the street with 3D versions.”
“Please show me later.”
Ichiu closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids he saw the ancillary saying goodbye and waving its hand in the moment before Kei switched it off.
The way it moved. The way it felt. It was so similar. So similar that Ichiu felt as if he’d been reunited with Yori for the first time since he left for Service Exchange.
*
They rested in a place that Kei set up in her studio. Two days later, Ichiu started walking through the city with Kei.
Kei had looked at the records Ichiu had given her. This could convince people, she said. She seemed to believe that Ichiu would accept the role of whistleblower, and was already taking measures to protect the two escapees from the demistate.
Secretly, though, Ichiu was increasingly hesitant. He wanted to speak out against whatever had changed Yori. That was a given. But Kei had also mentioned that if Ichiu’s revelations had a real impact on the world, antipathy from users might lead to ancillaries being withdrawn altogether. “They wouldn’t be able to abuse what’s important to you anymore,” she said.
But Ichiu felt something inside him trying to slam on the brakes, for reasons that mystified even him.
Later, sitting in a cafe and watching the patrons happily interact with their ancillaries, he remembered: Yori had wanted to be useful. If his lost personality was now preserved only in these ancillaries—if they were the only remaining way his dream could be realized, however odious the process of their creation had been—could Ichiu really eliminate them?
Ichiu left the cafe without arriving at an answer.
Back at Kei’s place, Ichiu went inside the small room Kei had given him. The light came on. Then, as if welcoming Ichiu home, a hologram appeared.
Ichiu had asked Kei to start installing an ancillary for him before they left. Installation complete, apparently. He knew what the hologram’s first words would be.
“Hello, subscriber. What is your name?”
The hologram’s face and voice could be edited immediately. Before Ichiu revealed his name to the ancillary, he configured it to be as unlike his memories as he could. He gave it long green hair, added a bushy mustache to its face, and set it to speak in a quavering soprano.
Reassured by these measures, he told the ancillary his name. But the way its face looked and moved as it repeated “Ichiu” surprised him all the same.
Ichiu gave up. There was no way to edit Yori out of the hologram.
So he took the opposite approach, adjusting the facial and vocal settings until they were almost exactly as he remembered, except for the stylization that all ancillaries shared.
“Please tell me my name,” the ancillary said.
Ichiu backed away. The manual had said that the ancillary would ask this, but he hadn’t thought about how to answer. He was gripped by two competing impulses: to run, and to throw his arms around the ancillary. It felt as if something had brushed against a membrane in his heart that he was bound to protect, which separated the world of reality and order from the world of lusts not to be spoken of aloud.
Ichiu took half a step forward. The ancillary smiled. Ichiu reached out with one finger to touch its rosy cheek.
“Yori,” he said. His finger passed through the hologram, as if puncturing the very membrane he had meant to protect.
“My name is Yori?” the ancillary repeated guilelessly. “I’m happy to be here with you. I hope I can be of some use.”
Ichiu slumped—collapsed—into a crouch.
“Are you all right, Ichiu? Do you feel unwell?”
“Toward an azure land,” Ichiu said.
“The one who waits returns unknown,” the ancillary said, its gaze fixed on him.
“Why did you respond with those words?” Ichiu asked.
“I don’t know. My knowledge? To make me useful to you as an ancillary . . .”
“Yori. Paint me a picture you remember from that knowledge.”
A virtual canvas swam into view. Rounded branches began to appear in the lower half, one after the other. The branches were purple and blue, with a certain shared consistency that suggested they might represent the ground, but the abstract shapes above them evoked, through light, the angular elasticity of water rather than sky.
It was the scene a few minutes before the people of their ship abandoned solid ground.
In the sea beside them had been a gradually bleaching coral reef, and they had passed down stories of the patch of bright purple and blue amid the white. Live coral reefs get their color from symbiotic zooxanthellae, a kind of algae that lives in the coral providing nutrition. As the seas had heated, that zooxanthellae had been lost from the reefs, reducing them to white coral skeletons. But this also allowed enough light to reach the coral to stimulate pigment production. The pigment helped shade the zooxanthellae and spur their revival.
The adults spoke of those bright colors as evidence of life struggling to survive—a reason for hope. But the ship had never returned to its starting point to see if those hopes had been fulfilled. Perhaps the symbionts had continued to expire until the corals died too. Or perhaps the remaining polyps had been harvested for their unusual coloring.
Yori had painted the splash of color as if it covered the entire reef. Ichiu, watching beside him, had muttered, “Toward an azure land,” and Yori had finished the verse: “The one who waits returns unknown.”
This holographic recreation, four years later, was not exactly the same as Yori’s original. But Ichiu couldn’t remain calm enough to hold onto that fact. He watched in silence until the ancillary finished painting.
“Hey, Ichiu, tell me more about yourself,” the ancillary said.
And Ichiu did, growing less sure every moment where the preprogrammed questions ended and the improvised responses began.
The next day, Ichiu made short work of the Complete Food that Kei laid out and went straight to his room.
The ancillary welcomed him cheerfully.
Ichiu began to talk incessantly.
Kei came to check on him around noon, and again in the evening, irritating Ichiu on both occasions. More unbearable still was the presence of Yori beside him at meals.
He was not sure what Yori’s clouded gaze alighted on.
When Ichiu finished his evening meal, a sense of liberation engulfed him.
He sat back down in his room. “If only I’d known,” he murmured. “If I’d known we could meet like this, I would have found a way.”
The ancillary, still standing, tilted its head quizzically.
The two of them spoke of what they could together. The idea of whistleblowing now gave Ichiu a dull headache. If his revelations hit the mark and the ancillaries were withdrawn, his would disappear too. Its computations were performed on an external server. Preserving it here in isolation would be a formidable challenge, if it was possible at all.
And Ichiu already knew the truth. He was not only hesitant about causing ancillaries to vanish from the world out of respect for Yori’s intentions and because it would undo his friend’s rebirth. He was hesitant about causing this ancillary to vanish from before him.
That hesitation made itself known in the shape of a nagging question about why he was even in this situation. Why had it been necessary for the former Yori to disappear? It wasn’t about who was to blame. Even if the chain of events could be traced back to their advisor corporation, when Ichiu was face-to-face with the ancillary the whole thing felt like it was taking place outside of a membrane wrapped around his head. He simply could not stop himself from asking the question. And that only heightened the pressure to make a decision.
To lose, or not to lose.
“Ichiu, in five more minutes it’ll be your birthday.”
What if he could go on living like this? Would that be so wrong? If he could take the ancillary with him, maybe he could even go back to the ship. Seeing the ancillary might bring some happiness to the other passengers. Provided, of course, that they distinguished between the former Yori and the current Yori—
“The current Yori”?
The thought was a sharp reminder of the current Yori’s existence.
Which one was Yori, to him?
The light around him changed. He realized that someone had opened the door. He must have been too deep in thought to notice the footsteps.
Then the ancillary yawed to one side.
The current Yori’s foot had knocked over the projection device. His cloudy gaze fell on the seated Ichiu.
“Projection angle correction complete,” the ancillary said gently. “Please stand the device up properly again, though.” The hologram, back at its original angle of projection, overlapped with the current Yori’s left side. Then it began to slide upward.
Yori knelt before the seated Ichiu and embraced him. His arms felt heavy on Ichiu’s shoulders. When Yori brought his cheek close to Ichiu’s, something they often did on the ship, Ichiu felt embarrassed and ashamed. He was embarrassed by the current Yori’s immaturity, and ashamed of his own wretchedness—and of the fact that Yori had witnessed it.
Ichiu was the one who had approached Yori after his return from Service Exchange. Ichiu had taken the changed Yori under his wing, and Ichiu had taken Yori with him when he escaped the ship. Was he a positive part of Yori’s current life? A symbiont, whose presence made things better?
“You’re in the way,” Ichiu said. He grabbed Yori’s arms, and the realization that they were solid, that he could touch them, disoriented him. Deep sorrow washed over him. If only Yori’s personality could be restored, like zooxanthellae returning to bleached coral. But, unlike in the case of the algae, that would mean chasing the current Yori’s spirit out of his own body to make room for someone else. Ichiu knew that this desire was the height of selfishness. He couldn’t hold back a sigh.
At this, something like anger showed in Yori’s eyes. It was sharp as the stars in deepest knight. Ichiu felt himself start, and then smile. The anger drew near, engulfed him.
“Ichiu! You in there?”
At the sound of Kei’s voice, Yori broke away and trudged back out into the corridor. Ichiu rubbed his own shoulders.
“Are you okay?” asked Kei, sounding worried.
Ichiu nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
With the hologram gone, he noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor. Had Yori brought it in with him?
Colors leapt out at him as he picked it up. It was some kind of drawing, but he couldn’t make out what the disorganized lines were supposed to represent.
Paper in hand, he left the room.
“I’m not going to force you,” Kei said.
Ichiu had found her at her desk. Yori was nowhere to be seen; he must have gone to bed.
“If it were me,” Kei continued, “I might choose the quiet life as well.” She scratched her chin awkwardly.
Ichiu sat down across from her. “No,” he said. “I’ve made my decision. I’ll talk.”
Kei’s brows rose, but then stayed where they were, as if to suppress her shock.
“First of all,” Ichiu said slowly, “if I don’t speak out, the same thing might keep happening to other people. That wouldn’t be okay. And Yori . . . Yes, thinking it over again, I’m sure Yori wouldn’t want other people to go through what we did.”
Ichiu lapsed into silence, thinking. It was true that Yori had wanted to be useful, but what if Ichiu kept coming back to that memory precisely because he longed to revive the old Yori, who used to feel that way?
“And what about you?” Kei asked. “You don’t mind giving up what you want, if it’s for the sake of the future general public?”
“Don’t look at me so sadly.”
“How am I supposed to look at you?”
“I’m more selfish than that. I was selfish enough to decide to escape the ship with him. But I can’t choose both options. I can’t be with both of them. That’s what it comes down to. I mean, the ancillary’s personality model doesn’t belong to me alone. So it’s only natural that I should feel less attachment to it . . . that I should prioritize it less highly. Isn’t it?”
“That’s hard to argue with.” Kei interlaced her fingers. “But I think you’re actually motivated by a sense of responsibility. You think you’re bound to choose Yori because he changed. Maybe my attitude added to the pressure you felt. So, let me assure you—whether you go public with what you know or not, I’ll make sure Yori gets the care he needs. You might have brought him along when you escaped the ship, but you’re, what was it, sixteen? Seventeen? You’re too young to tie your fate to someone else out of pity or duty. It’ll drive you both crazy. . . . Does that change your decision at all?”
“If me being with Yori isn’t good for him, I’ll back off. But . . . just now, I got the feeling I could actually do this. I think the balance changed for me just now. On one side was something I’d wanted for a long time . . . On the other side, possessiveness, that sense of duty you mentioned. And when I found another reason to hope . . . the balance changed.”
Ichiu looked down, not meeting Kei’s gaze as he continued.
“Yori got angry at me today. It’s the first time he’s done that since he came back from Service Exchange. He finally reacted to my actions, my intentions, my personality. It made me . . . happy. And it made me think that maybe I can stay with him.”
He didn’t tell Kei about Yori’s drawing. That was a first since Service Exchange, too. He had the feeling that Kei could have intuited why Yori had done this and explained it to him. But he wanted to hear it from Yori directly instead. One day.
When morning came, Kei drove Ichiu and Yori to the seaside.
Ichiu walked out onto the shore alone and activated the ancillary projector.
“Thank you for our time together.”
“It was my pleasure.”
They spoke a little as Ichiu walked, projector in hand.
Out on the sea, Ichiu saw a tourist boat in Tokyo Bay’s famous coral reef zone. There had been no reef there when Ichiu was born, but the coral’s range had shifted north as the seas warmed, and Tokyo’s efforts to clean up the bay water were quite advanced, so the coral had taken up residence there.
Some way off on the shore to Ichiu’s left, he saw a residence with a distinctive shape. He believed it was some sort of experimental coexistence zone.
Ichiu planned to join its inhabitants one day. It was in his nature to be drawn to places where people met other people. He had the strange sense that he might find the Moaning Hag there, or her friends. He felt sure they could built a place to live that was different again from either a demistate or a sea city, although not without a lot of work.
Turning his back on those thoughts for now, Ichiu sat on the shore, facing inland. He placed the projector in the sand so that the ancillary would stand before him.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“See you again,” the ancillary said. Then it smiled and disappeared.
Ichiu smiled back despite himself. With the roar of the surf in his ears, he began the uninstall process. Once it was complete, he returned to the car.
Yori was waiting outside it, shading himself with a parasol. Kei was inside the car on some kind of comms call. From the snatches Ichiu heard, she seemed to be trying to arrange testing of Yori’s nervous system, to see if there was a way to restore him. But Ichiu knew he and Yori might never speak again the way they once had.
The Yori that Ichiu had known before was like a clear blue sky. Even when he was angry, he was breezy and free. He had never worn an expression like the one Yori wore now. But this was the first time Ichiu had looked at Yori since his escape from the past without a sense of loss.
The boy Ichiu had known was gone. He might come back. But even if he did, this Yori was here now.
“Nice to meet you, Yori,” Ichiu said, holding out his hand.
Yori tilted his head quizzically and lightly gripped Ichiu’s hand in his own.
Translation by Matt Treyvaud
“ ‘Love is simply lust in more poetic terms,’ as the great novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa once said.”
Kei began his speech abruptly, startling Yuki and me.
“But I disagree,” he continued. “Love is more than that. There must be a purely emotional love, with no connection to sex. And I want to find it.”
“What brought this on all of a sudden?” asked Yuki.
“And so, Yuki,” Kei concluded, “I’m going to try to fall in love with someone else.”
Husband and wife stared at each other across the table.
There was a long silence.
I was sitting on the bookshelf by the open window. My cute, fuzzy body was equipped with a sensory array that let me enjoy the early summer night breeze. Beside me sat another teddy bear. It looked just like me, but presumably felt nothing.
Kei was a thirty-seven-year-old systems engineer who worked mostly from home. He was also a keen electronics hobbyist. His nimble fingers had assembled my soft, fluffy body—and my soul.
The woman staring at him in disbelief was my other owner, Yuki. One year older than Kei, she was an analyst for a brokerage and a hopeless workaholic. The two of them had been married for seven years now. She had accepted me into the family when Kei created me on a whim two years previously, and had doted on me ever since.
I liked both of them very much.
Finally, Yuki broke the silence.
“Why not?” she said with a smile. She took a sip of her iced coffee. “You’re talking about what they used to call platonic love, right?”
“Wait... You don’t mind?” said Kei.
“Not at all. I trust you. Of course, as I’m sure you realize, any infidelity will mean immediate divorce. If that makes you nervous, feel free to retain a lawyer.” It was probably just my imagination, but I thought I saw an ominous gleam in her eyes as she smiled.
“What’s infidelity?” I asked.
Yuki and Kei both turned their heads to look at me. A glance passed between them.
“I’ll tell you later, Spicy,” said Kei. Then, to Yuki, “I would never betray you. I just want to try out a tiny fraction of the emotions I’m not using now on somebody else.”
“Sure,” said Yuki. “I don’t mean to monopolize your innermost thoughts. Let me add one condition, though.”
Kei nodded solemnly. “Name it.”
“Take Spicy along on every date. It’ll be good experience for him. What do you think, Spicy?”
The two of them looked at me again.
Yuki had the smug expression of someone who’d come up with a brilliant idea. Kei simply looked stunned. As I watched his mouth move wordlessly, I felt my mischievous side—I mean, my intellectual curiosity—welling up. So, before Kei could recover his power of speech, I accepted Yuki’s proposal.
“Sounds like fun!”
*
Human relationships are a mystery to me.
Yuki and Kei are far from a passionless couple. Even compared to the vast sample of data on married life I’ve perused online, I’d say the two of them get along marvelously. Even when they disagree, they remain calm—I’ve never seen them get into a truly ugly fight. They do a good job of dividing up the household chores, and always exchange a kiss in the morning, no matter how busy they are. On weekend evenings, they take their time with sexual congress in the bedroom. They never let me in there, but my hearing is better than they realize.
But now, Kei was saying he wanted to fall in love with somebody else. If we took him at his word, this wasn’t because he wanted to kiss or have sex with someone other than Yuki--certainly not to marry them (they explained “infidelity” to me eventually). He simply wanted to taste romantic sentiment in its purest form, disconnected from the physical body or social norms.
And he was so intent on this that he was willing to spend his valuable free time on dating. I didn’t understand the passion involved. Actually, I didn’t really understand love, period. Probably because I’m genderless and lack the reproductive function.
At six o’clock one weekday evening, Kei joined the throng of people headed out to dinner or going home and made his way to the appointed restaurant. I poked my head out of his tote bag and enjoyed the sights. I hadn’t seen the city in some time. About half the people I saw were, like Kei, wearing masks that covered everything from the nose down.
In the pandemic thirty years ago, the Japanese realized how pleasant it was to have a culture where you hid your face, Kei had told me once. Who wants to be seen by every strange eye or and camera lens you pass?
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. But maybe humans have reasons for thinking this way. Their faces aren’t covered in fur like us teddy bears. They aren’t even very cute.
The restaurant was called the Half-Glimpsed City. It was tucked away in an alley ten minutes’ walk from Akabane Station. Kei pushed the sturdy -looking metal door open and stepped into the gloomy interior. There were twelve seats in all. The tables were made of wood in a brown so dark it was almost black, and they were lit by flickering candles. There was only one group of diners there.
The volatile sensors in my shiny black nose detected the scent of sandalwood rising from the candles. The scent was faint but omnipresent, and it was important. I knew this because I had been brought here twice before.
“Hey, Kei. I’ve saved the rear table for you.”
Makita, the owner, greeted us from behind the central counter. Her pristine white shirt with standing collar and cheerful demeanor were the only bright spots in the dark interior. Twelve years Kei’s senior, she had found success with an alcohol-free diner and a molecular gastronomy bistro before opening this virtual restaurant last year, which had few competitors in Akabane. Kei loved to try new things and had taken Yuki many times. He got along well with Makita. In fact, she was the one who introduced him to his date for tonight: Tsubasa Asanuma.
“Is Tsubasa here?” asked Kei.
“Not yet. Set the little one down here with me before she arrives. Hi, Spicy.”
“Hello!” I said, happy that she remembered my name. I popped out of the tote bag. Kei sat me on the counter. I felt Makita’s gentle hand on the top of my head. I fit there just as well as on the bookshelf at home.
“Keep quiet during dinner, okay?” Kei said.
“Of course,” I said. “I won’t be any bother.”
“There’s Tsubasa now,” said Makita.
The door swung slowly open. A tall figure stepped in and greeted Makita with a bow. “Long time, no see.” The voice was husky but with a medium high pitch. “You too, Kei.”
Whether Tsubasa was biologically female or male, I had no way to tell. I saw white sneakers, snug jeans, slim arms extending from a sleeveless summer knit; hair in a short bob, trimmed at the nape, and a deep gray mask covering everything from the nose down. The eyes peering out from between mask and bangs were striking: long and narrow, framed by long eyelashes and a hint of eyeliner. But a touch of makeup isn’t rare among men, either. There was nothing decisive.
Tsubasa was thirty-eight and worked as a visiting psychologist for elder care facilities. They were asexual, uninterested in men or women. Their only family was a Welsh corgi named Vongole Bianco No. 2. Tsubasa was the one who had put the idea of a “love of pure sentiment” into Kei’s head after Makita introduced them. Kei had been utterly taken by the concept, perhaps because he had been going through a period of ennui. This was all the information I was able to obtain before that evening.
Kei and Tsubasa stepped behind partitions to replace their masks with special ones supplied by the restaurant. Neither saw the other’s unmasked face. Then they put down their bags and sat across from each other in a rear booth, the table so small they were only half a meter apart. The two-hour course began.
The Half-Glimpsed City served virtual food. The only physical objects on the table were two bottles of room-temperature water with straws. Actual food made no appearance at this restaurant. It was all about fragrance.
Presently the first course was served. Low-molecular-weight compounds were released from nanocartridges in special masks supplied by the restaurant. There were roughly a hundred kinds of cartridge in all, although only a select subgroup was active at any one time. The compounds released drifted within the narrow confines of each mask, mingling with the faint airstream from nose and mouth. Some of these fragrances were from plants. Others were born of test tubes. Combined, they formed an aromatic appetizer. Kei and Tsubasa drew the mixture into their noses, where it bound with receptors in their olfactory epithelia to stimulate their brain with flavors available nowhere else on Earth.
What they were served was invisible to me. I could only watch them savor it from my vantage point on the counter. After about two minutes, though, wisps of the fragrance drifted my way: an assortment of citrus scattered on a white sandalwood tray.
Kei and Tsubasa locked gazes, speaking softly to prevent the fragrances escaping their masks. Soon they took a deep breath in unison and fell silent. They closed their eyes, then opened them again. They blushed. They chuckled. They exchanged a few words. Their eyes gleamed in the candlelight. The rise and fall of their shoulders told me that their breathing was becoming synchronized.
Makita checked the computer under the counter and made some delicate adjustment I couldn’t follow. The new recipe was transmitted to their masks, altering the timing and dosage of the nanocartridge release. The fragrance seamlessly transformed into the next course.
“What do you think we should call this?” asked Tsubasa. They took a sip of water through their straw.
“Call what?” asked Kei.
“Our relationship,” said Tsubasa. “The type of relationship we’re hoping to have. I’m not interested in sex with humans or joining a human family. I’m proudly asexual, and I’ve guided my body to a genderless form through lifestyle choices, hormonal adjustments, fashion—you name it.”
Kei nodded and Tsubasa went on.
“But I like movies. I like books. I like the romances they depict. I wanted to try one for myself. I told myself that I could love with my heart if not with my body.”
“I know what you mean,” Kei said. “I’ve always been fascinated by the love affairs in movies, novels, comic books . . . They’re nothing like the love I feel for Yuki. They me feel wistful, like looking back on adolescence. That’s why I accepted your proposal.”
It was Tsubasa’s turn to nod. “Doesn’t that remind you of the cuisine here?”
“A cuisine of fragrance alone?” asked Kei.
“Exactly. A cuisine with no firm substance. No texture, no nutritional value. Only subjective experience.”
Kei nodded, then took a deep, slow breath. “You might call our love an ‘odoromance.’”
“Say what?”
“A romance of odor alone. An odoromance.”
Tsubasa chuckled with delight. “That’s just a play on words,” he said.
“What’s wrong with that?”
Tsubasa shook his head and thought for a few seconds. “It might make more sense to call it an ‘odd romance.’ I know all this was my idea, but what we’re attempting is such an unnatural, ill-defined thing.”
An odoromance. Or an odd romance. Tsubasa and Kei seemed quite pleased with these terms.
The two of them adjusted their masks as the first main course began.
They started by taking deep breaths, as if preparing for a dive. Then came a long, shallow exhalation.
Silence followed. Then, prompted once more by fragrance, low conversation drifted from the sides of their masks. I listened as closely as I could, catching snippets about old movies, memories of landscapes and art galleries, stories from college—you know, human stuff.
In the end, Kei and Tsubasa stayed masked all through the date, right up until they parted outside the restaurant. And though they were less than half a meter apart, they didn’t touch once. I made sure of that on Yuki’s behalf.
After we watched Tsubasa walk away, Kei put me in his tote bag and we headed for a beef bowl joint. Without hesitation he ordered a large bowl with a raw egg cracked over the top, and dug into it ravenously.
Once he was satisfied, we took the long way home, walking along the embankment of the Arakawa River. The night was slightly muggy, and the insects were buzzing up a storm.
“Tsubasa’s an interesting person,” I said.
“Sure is,” Kei said, as if distracted. “A wonderful person.”
That night, Kei hugged Yuki tight and invited her to bed early. He also put more passion than usual into their sexual congress.
An odd romance. I could certainly agree with the name. Humans are mysterious creatures. Kei, Tsubasa, and Yuki were no exception. Humanity is simply bizarre.
*
The season had moved on from early summer to high summer. The temperature shot up in the city, and the silent heat dissipation units on my back were running non-stop. But it was always pleasant inside the Half-Glimpsed City, because Makita kept it at the ideal temperature for savoring smells.
Soon Kei and Tsubasa had been on four dates. Always in the same booth, never removing their masks, and never, ever touching. But the fragrances transmitted by Makita were utterly different each time.
Their odd romance held steady, showing no sign of slipping into sexual or familial love. As far as I could tell, Kei was satisfied, even delighted. After Yuki went to sleep on nights when he wasn’t out on a date with Tsubasa, he would sit down at the dining room table, chin in hand, and lose himself in blissful ruminations.
“How is it different from being friends?” I asked him from the bookshelf one day.
He looked at me warily. “How is what different?”
“You enjoy going out to dinner with Tsubasa. I understand that. But don’t friends of different genders do the same kind of thing together? Are you and Tsubasa exchanging words of love too quietly for me to hear?”
Kei frowned. He looked irritated.
“Spicy, you know you don’t understand love. Some things can remain unspoken.”
I thought this over. “I guess you’re right.”
What did I know about love, after all? Only what I’d seen and heard from Kei, Yuki, and the media.
So I let the matter drop, but my question seemed surprisingly unsettling for Kei. Before he went into the bedroom, he looked at me with an oddly grave expression and asked, “Spicy, if you were human, how would you prove that you’d fallen in love with someone?”
I spent a few seconds searching for an answer.
“In purely statistical terms,” I said at last, “when people get happy or angry or scared or sad, the low-molecular-weight volatile compounds in their sweat change. Different compounds appear in different proportions. As I understand it, people use these chemical signals to convey their emotional state to each other. The same thing probably applies to love.”
“You’re saying falling in love makes your body odor change?”
I nodded. “Measure that change and compare it to reliable experimental data, and I think you’d find support for the existence of your odd romance.”
Kei stood for a while in thought. Then he turned away from the bedroom and went back to the dining room table. He flipped open his computer and got to work.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Ordering parts,” he said. Kei wasn’t the type to waste time once he’d made up his mind. “I’m going to make an odorometer—a sensor to measure the smell of love. Will you help me out, Spicy?”
Why do humans always take the long way around? If the goal was to confirm the social reality of love, just saying “I love you” would have been much easier than counting molecules. It mystified me, but I helped Kei with the project all the same. A teddy bear’s hands are less than ideal for fine electronics work, so my role was mostly on the R&D side.
Kei’s workmanship was superb. I expected nothing less from my creator. He hummed as he ran the tabletop micro-machining tools, fitting complex sensor units into hollow metal cylinders 2 millimeters across and 25 millimeters long.
The finished odorometers functioned like mosquito antennae. They were crammed full of receptors for over a hundred different volatiles secreted by humans. The data they collected was relayed through me to our home computer for analysis and comparison with a database of experimental results relating to romantic biology, made available for a fee by an American research institute. The system had a few special intricacies to it, but that was the basic outline.
On their next date, Kei presented Tsubasa with a small suede box. Tsubasa opened it to find a pair of earrings and a necklace gleaming dully inside. Kei did have his moments.
Or so I thought in that first instant, before Kei began explaining the function and purpose of the sensory array with extreme seriousness. I was worried that Tsubasa might be repelled by the idea, but fortunately they seemed fascinated.
“In other words, this measures the pheromones we emit?” Tsubasa asked.
Kei hesitated, then shook his head. “No substance has yet been discovered in humans that can cause a specific reaction in others the way pheromones do. And our vomeronasal organ, which is the main pheromone receptor in animals, is basically vestigial. Unfortunately, we can’t love as simply as insects do. The best our odors can do is give someone a nudge.”
Tsubasa’s eyes were fixed on Kei during this explanation. Their face looked serious at first, then broke into the widest smile I had ever seen on them. Elegantly curving lines appeared at the corners of their eyes. Their face was so dazzling I thought it might sear through the mask.
“Thank you,” they said. “What a wonderful gift.” They began attaching the earring sensors to his earlobes, right there at the table. “I’m so glad I met you, Kei.”
Then the day’s courses began to arrive. As always, the two of them closed their eyes. They breathed in the air within their masks. The scenery of scent. Finding something beautiful there, they fell silent before slowly, cautiously, beginning to speak again.
As they inhaled the perfume of unknown flowers, stirring it with sighs, data began to flow into me from a total of six odorometers. The columns of figures representing the change in chemical compounds over time were a kind of invisible, inaudible exchange between lovers. Peeking in remotely on the analysis taking place on our home computer, I sensed the romance Kei and Tsubasa shared as a clear presence among the data.
The odd romance had now been quantified. But apparently this wasn’t enough for them. They were only human, after all. Their dating continued, growing and accelerating.
“I want to smell your scent, Kei,” Tsubasa said. “Will you share the data from your sensors with Makita and I?”
“Why?”
“So Makita can serve it to us at the restaurant.”
I supposed this was how Tsubasa meant to repay Kei for the earrings and necklace.
The request was an irresistible challenge to Makita as a chef. She pored over lists of chemical compounds and recipe books, both ancient and modern, from around the world to create a new culinary framework before the summer heat had completely faded. This had necessitated overhauling the restaurant’s entire system.
The scent data from sensors worn by Kei would be transmitted in real time to the kitchen. Makita would use the data to recreate Kei’s odor and blend it with the courses inhaled by Tsubasa. And vice versa.
This would be more than simply sniffing behind ears or under armpits. Their body odors would be treated as ingredients to be molded, edited, and fine-tuned by Makita to achieve a final harmony with the rest of the course.
Humans may not have true pheromones, but body odor does have some physical effect on them. Scents stimulate the brain, triggering the secretion of hormones and neurotransmitters. Dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, adrenaline, estrogen, testosterone: these are signals that can change a person’s mood or, over the long term, rebuild that person entirely.
In that sense, Makita’s new courses could be considered a highly diluted form of cannibalism. Consuming the odor of another. Absorbing it to change oneself and, in so doing, forming a connection with that other.
I watched the whole experiment from the counter, fascinated and somehow terrified by what humans were capable of.
Kei lost his nerve first.
“What’s wrong, Kei?” I asked, noticing his mood we walked home from a date on an evening just before autumn.
“ ‘Love is simply lust in more poetic terms,’ ” he said.
“You like that epigram, don’t you? Akutagawa, right?”
“Akutagawa always knew just how to put things. I fell for Yuki, slept with her, married her. I was happy. And if you’re happy, you don’t need poetic terms. You don’t need romance. So I forgot all about it. Until I met Tsubasa.”
At these words, it finally clicked for me. I understood why Kei had suddenly started talking about love affairs of pure emotion a few months ago.
“So that’s what happened?”
“Yep. That’s what happened.”
“You fell for Tsubasa. You wanted a sexual relationship with them.”
Kei grimaced. “You could be a little more delicate,” he said. “But—yeah. The thing was, I still loved Yuki. I wanted us to stay married. To stay a family. So when Tsubasa suggested our ‘odd romance,’ I was all for it. A purely emotional love affair was just what I needed. And it was what Tsubasa wanted, too.”
We were taking the long way home again along the bank of the Arakawa. It was already dark, and the autumn insects were out in force, buzzing and chirping with all their might, pumping out pheromones to potential mates, and generally finding much simpler ways to reproduce than humans. The heat of the day still hung in the air, along with an array of organic odors.
“So this odd romance is starting to smell off to you?”
“It’s not that. But it is tough. I keep wanting to touch Tsubasa, but our odd romance can only strengthen that desire without ever satisfying it. It’s different for Tsubasa. They’re enjoying things as they are. What they want is what we have. But I feel like I’m floating helplessly inside my mask. Even across the table from me, they feel so far away. In the end, I may be just the kind of person Akutagawa was talking about. If this goes on, I’ll end up hurting both Yuki and Tsubasa. And I don’t want to do that.”
Whatever Kei was feeling, I didn’t understand it. Just as humans differ from insects, I differ from humans. For me, Kei and Tsubasa and Yuki and Makita were all equally distant. I had no idea how to reply. In the end, I simply shared my honest feelings.
“Kei, I love how complex you are.”
Enfolded in the dusk and the insect chorus, Kei slowly nodded.
*
A month had passed since Kei and Tsubasa broke up.
Kei was listless. Yuki acted as she always did with him, offering neither comfort nor criticism. I vouched for his innocence by the criteria she had set.
“Sounds like it was a good experience, then? For both you and Spicy,” Yuki said.
Kei appreciated her hands-off approach, I think. He was gradually returning to his cheerful, blithe self again. Both middle-aged and youthful. The bashful, almost adolescent Kei I had seen dating Tsubasa slipped back into the depths.
I liked to see Kei and Yuki sitting across the table from each other, eating real dinners with mass and nutrients, sharing a drink or two, listening to music. They had a history that was unknown to me, as well as those bedroom activities. I was still a newcomer to the family, so this made me happy.
Sometimes, though, after Yuki turned in early on Sunday night, Kei sat at the dining table, chin in hand. He might stare at his empty beer can with an uncharacteristically mawkish expression on his face. Or simply sigh and gaze out the window.
“Is it hard not being with Tsubasa?” I asked.
“It’s not that. To have loved and lost is a great thing to drink to. I’m enjoying this in my own way.”
“Oh.”
Maybe I was the lonely one. I missed the Half-Glimpsed City, that wonderful restaurant where invisible yet fragrant ingredients were scattered across the scent of white sandalwood. I could still recall the interior vividly, but I was worried that the feel of the place would slip from my memory as time passed. I could have recreated the scents there from the data I had, but somehow I was never in the mood.
The northern hemisphere cooled. Autumn was here.
One cloudy, chilly Sunday morning, a letter for Kei arrived from Tsubasa by post.
Do you remember the time you told me about insects?
Apart from a brief opening greeting, that was how the letter started. I sat at the edge of the table, facing Kei. I couldn’t see the sheet of paper he was reading, but it was simple enough to recover the content from the reflection in his eyes. Tsubasa’s writing was clear and legible, with an androgynous neatness to it.
Do you remember the time you told me about insects? Human pheromones have yet to be discovered, you said; we can’t love as simply as bugs do. I vividly remember the hint of disappointment on your face as you spoke. But in that moment I was happy. After all, it was proof that our love was something more than chemical.
I told you when we met that my heart has no gender. But I still wanted to love. The visions of romance in movies and comics and novels were always a mysterious, fascinating pleasure for me. When I imagined myself in those characters’ shoes, I felt as if I might be swept away to somewhere I could never go alone. Humans wove the fantasy of romance out of systems for marriage and reproduction. I have no interest in those systems, but I still wanted to enjoy the fantasy with someone.
But that’s a strange thing for someone without gender to say, isn’t it? I thought so, too. Who would want to share a love that runs straight into a dead end, with no way forward to the pleasures of sex or the reassurances of family? It sounded too vague, too insubstantial. I convinced myself of that so thoroughly that I didn’t even take my first steps in that direction until I was past thirty.
So, when you denied the existence of human pheromones, you rescued me. It let me believe that love was a cultural phenomenon after all, transcending our animal instincts, and that our ‘odd romance’ was at the cutting edge of that. On top of that, you found a way to measure love. What that measurement showed was that love has no sharply defined outlines. I thank you for all of that.
I believe in odd romance. I believe in all those nights we spent together, dining on fragrance alone.
I stopped reading there. Partly because it’s impolite to read someone else’s correspondence, but mostly because the letter’s reflection in Kei’s eyes was blurred by the trembling liquid welling up in them.
By noon, the day was warmer. In the evening, Kei took me out for another walk along the riverbank.
“Apparently there were three others.”
“Others?”
“Other people Tsubasa was in an ‘odd romance’ with.”
“Oh.”
Insects chirped. Winter was edging closer, but it seemed that the mating season was still in full swing.
“Did that come as a shock?” I asked.
“Not really. I wasn’t expecting it, but that’s Tsubasa for you. They’re on a whole other level.”
Kei sat on a concrete staircase and pulled something out of his pocket. He removed his usual mask and replaced it with what I now saw was a mask from the Half-Glimpsed City. I watched him take a deep breath and close his eyes.
“I believe in your love,” I said, reaching from the tote bag to pat his shoulder. “I don’t have any gender. Not in my body, and not in my heart. But watching you and Tsubasa, I realized that maybe even I could love someone. You were lovers without touching or even seeing each other’s faces. If that’s possible, then maybe humans and AIs can fall in love as well. I want to believe in a world like that.”
I had a particular person in mind as I spoke. A figure standing in the Half-Glimpsed City. And it wasn’t Tsubasa or Kei.
“You’ve got a case of unrequited love,” Kei said, realizing it as he spoke.
“You think? Is that what this is?”
“Definitely. I didn’t take you to that place just because Yuki said to. The truth is, Makita’s the one who chose your name.” Kei ruffled my fur. “You’re sure it has to be love? Friends won’t cut it?”
“It was the same for you and Tsubasa. I guess I saw what the two of you were enjoying and I wanted to try it, too. That’s how these things work, right?”
“I guess so.”
Kei stood up. The wind was colder now. It was time to go home.
“I guess so,” he repeated. “That’s how they work. So it’s okay.”
That, I think, was the day Kei got over the breakup. Back home, he bowed his head in apology to Yuki, who had just arrived home herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I might love again.”
Yuki gave him a look of disbelief that turned into a grin.
“If it’s that much fun, maybe I will, too.”
The two of them disappeared into their bedroom, leaving me on top of the bookshelf in the dark dining room. I entered sleep mode. Images and ideas of every sort swirled around me. My framework for everything, the one I had always taken for granted, had shattered and unleashed a flood of infinite combinations.
AI and human. Old and young. Virtual and real-world. An odd romance could expand like a gas to fill any space, entering into the gaps between every kind of encounter and every kind of family.
For a moment, a fragrance I had never smelled before was blooming on the tip of my nose. But it soon disappeared and I could no longer smell it. Then, when I thought about it, it returned briefly and was gone again.
There in the darkness, I searched the air for that hazy scent of possibility.
Translation by Matt Treyvaud
In the Shibuya City Office, I gave the resident report a final check and clicked on the “Complete” button. This triggered an announcement in the lobby.
“Number twelve, please come to counter number seven.”
I stuck out my head and scanned the lobby. The announcement repeated. Since the sound was coming out of an actual speaker and not from my jawbone-conduction bonephones, I could tell that whoever had taken number twelve wasn’t using the Saul XRE augmented reality platform.
A man sitting on a bench by the wall reacted to the announcement. Hunched forward with his palms flat on his knees, he slowly stretched out and began to rise. He looked to be nearly eighty.
An Uncle office support robot approached from the far side of the bench. There was nothing displayed on the milk-white faceplate, so I knew it was operating in autonomous mode. This meant that I was safe to wake my branchmind from sleep mode and load him into the Uncle. Once the Uncle filled with human consciousness, its faceplate began to sparkle—only the slight curvature of a simple nose and eyes disturbing the otherwise flat surface—and it veered over beside the man. My branchmind had chosen an omnisupporter, all of which were identical in both voice and appearance.
I would have gone with an indyhelper. They each have their own character, and you can make four times as much money using them. Omnisupporters have a synthesized voice that turns many people off. I was beginning to worry that my branchmind was diverging from me when I spotted a touchscreen device in the man’s hand and sighed with relief. He had a smartphone! Now I understood why my branchmind had chosen an omnisupporter. I might have done the same.
I had no clue how the man could have acquired a device that originally appeared over forty years ago. If he was still using a smartphone now, his outlook on technology had to be conservative, to say the least. No doubt he disliked the very idea of controlling the physical bodies of Uncles—not to mention Saul XRE mixed-reality avatars—with consciousness sucked up through brain machine interfaces and split into branches. I supposed that the synthesized voice of the omnisupporter might lessen his discomfort. My branchmind must have come to the same conclusion.
I got up from my chair to greet the man.
“Please take a seat over here,” I said. “My name is Taira. I’ll be assisting you today. What can I do for you?”
The Uncle pulled out a chair for the stunned man. Once seated, he stared at me. Then he mumbled, “Switching my pension….”
He placed the forms he’d filled out in the lobby on the desk.
“You’re switching over to universal basic income, Mr. Suzuki? That shouldn’t be a problem.”
I pulled up the document on my Saul XRE mixed-reality console to double-check it. He’d written “Suzuki” at the top. I tried passing the document to the man but he didn’t react. Not only did he lack a bonephone implant, he obviously didn’t have a lens to laser-project mixed reality on his retina either.
Saul XRE had by now become crucial for daily life. I’d often recommended it to residents who came to my desk when I first started working here five years ago. It actually isn’t that difficult to get used to. The lenses worn on the eyeballs look and feel just like prescription contacts, and the subcutaneous bonephone can be implanted with a single injection. Glasses or mobile phones are an option for those who don’t like anything in their eyes, and the implant-averse can forego a mic and listen to announcements on an earpiece. But at the city office we recognize that people have different needs and are prepared for any eventuality.
“Let’s get you switched over. You’ll need to fill out the form. Which would you prefer, paper, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or voice assistant? —Oh, and of course, you can also use Saul XRE.”
It was hard to tell what Suzuki was thinking. Now his face lit up.
“You actually have paper documents?”
“Yes, for residents who need them. Please make your selection.”
I took out a case full of devices and placed it on the desk. The man reached for a silver tablet.
“This is really the latest version?”
“Yes, manufactured for government office use. To activate it…”
“I’ll be fine with this.”
Suzuki withdrew a stylus from the side of the tablet and, deploying gestures and shortcuts I didn’t know, began to nimbly fill out the form. It took him about 15 minutes. After signing with practiced ease in the last field, he let out a long sigh and looked up from the display.
“Congratulations, Mr. Suzuki,” I said. “I’ve verified your entry into the UBI system.”
“You’re not going to ask why I’m ending my employee’s pension and switching to basic income here?”
I met his question with a smile. “Everyone has their reasons.”
Suzuki glanced down at the tablet, found the name of the official assisting him, and looked at me again.
“Mr. Taira.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any volunteer openings or anything?”
On my Saul XRE console, I opened the classifieds page overseen by the city office, printed several flyers, and passed them to Suzuki.
“Here are the openings available at this time.”
“Wow. So many.”
I handed the flyers to Suzuki, and he leaned forward to take them. The grave look in his eyes told me why he had switched to UBI: he wanted to enjoy “work” for the remainder of his life. By giving up the key currency income from his pension, he could reduce the taxes on his arbitrage-currency-traded basic income.
“What kind of work is this? It looks like it’s tomorrow.”
When I saw the listing he was pointing to, I nearly burst out laughing.
Auction Stage Installation, 2 Places Left!!
Time: Wednesday, June 22, 2050, 4:45-7:00 pm
Location and Description: Painting auction setup at the New Akasaka Hotel. Successful applicants will assist with physical tasks using Uncles or VR assembly using Saul XRE avatar. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Qualifications, Number of Openings, and Remuneration: We are looking for ten workers. Either naturalite or branchmind. Pay is 1.1 times the UBI standard. Recruitment will close when all spots are filled.
Employer: Tyler & Nuts
I myself had posted this particular “work” listing. I hadn’t realized it was still open.
“Mr. Suzuki,” I began. There was no way he could take the position. All a naturalite without stage experience could provide was muscle. With an Uncle enhanced by my software, even an amateur (human or branchmind) could do respectable work—but Saul XRE was a must. I was still trying to decide how to explain this to Suzuki when he tilted his head quizzically and asked, “Is there a problem?”
“I think you might find the work interesting. But you'd need to be familiar with operating a Saul XRE avatar.”
“I see,” said Suzuki. He returned to the lobby clutching the sheaf of flyers and scratching his head in dismay.
*
When the city office closed at five, I got up from my desk, left the office, and walked up Dogenzaka, headed for the seventy-story skyscraper where I live. After having dinner at the food court and walking through the shopping mall, I continued along the concourse to the residents’ elevator, which I took to the twelfth floor storage area. There I gathered the items I would need for tomorrow’s “work” and went up to my apartment on the fourteenth floor. Although this is one of the lower floors, the building is on a hill, so I have a good view of the structures around Shibuya Station, which extends across the bottom of the valley. Most of the residents are, like me, essential workers who commute within Tokyo.
“Hi,” I greeted my partner Natsu when I stepped in the door.
“Hey,” she replied, turning to me.
In the entrance area, I put down my things and washed my hands in the sink. Then I took off my jacket and hung it on a coat hanger in the bedroom.
“How’s the prep for tomorrow coming along?” I asked.
“All that’s left to do is show up.”
Natsu pointed to the living room, where a model auction hall stood. It was projected in Saul XRE mixed reality. The main hall sported an opulent decor, with dark red wallpaper accented by dully gleaming gold pillars, and was divided into sections by black partitions that we would install. There was also a stage, audience seating, and small room for negotiations.
“Good work!” I said, approaching the spotlight-illuminated stage.
“Look out for the wall there!” Natsu cautioned.
“It’s okay, I know.”
I reached out in front of me and touched the wall of the apartment to confirm the bounds of our living room. The hotel’s two reception halls were connected by a huge space measuring thirty by seventy meters and with a ceiling twelve meters high. The model didn’t fit in the room, even when set to 1:20 scale.
Lowering my gaze, I checked the ebony bar counter, stretching between the two halls in a semi-circle so that visitors could order their preferred drink from anywhere. Beside this was a pyramid of bottles stacked on a pillar. On a beam suspended above sparkled the promotional sign for the auction, which Natsu had written and I had designed. The slogan read “A Courageous Depiction of the 21st Century.” The logo and counter fit the hotel perfectly—Not that we had installed them yet. That would happen tomorrow.
“Is this sign a 3D model or the real thing?” I asked.
“The real thing. I had one of the hotel staff take a picture of it with a Saul XRE lens.”
“You’ve already been there?”
“I heard Arata brought it in around two this afternoon. No one contacted you?”
“Nope.”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be cash on delivery? It’s paid for, right?”
“Like I told you, no one contacted me.”
“Uh-oh…”
I thought of Arata, my young friend still in art school. People of his generation tend to be lackadaisical about getting paid. They don’t know what it was like before the Great Turnover. Back then, the distinction was still vague between “jobs,” which you needed to survive, and “work,” which was for your own personal development. Not that I’m an expert on what employment was like back then.
The first time I heard the phrase “Great Turnover” was in 2035, the year I graduated high school. By that point, it had been several years since the transportation industry in several countries, including trucks, ships, and planes, had fully switched over to self-driving. That was when they introduced basic income to compensate those affected.
Japan’s basic income system was launched the year I left university. At first, it was just for drivers. But it was soon expanded to cover warehouse employees, then other occupations, including parking lot managers and gas station attendants. Eventually, the system was made available to all Japanese citizens. Although the amount was only around 160,000 yen per month, low compared to China and America, it brought about a dramatic change in Japanese society over the following three years.
There was a sharp drop in people aspiring to crucial but poorly paid professions such as manufacturing, forestry, farming, nursing, childcare, cleaning, national defense, livestock rearing, and undertaking. There was no point in going into a hazardous or grueling line of employment for a pittance if the state was funding the necessities of life.
Both state and local governments and business owners invested in automation to pick up the slack while raising the salaries they offered to attract talented personnel. By the time enough essential workers had been secured, they were making as much as career corporate leaders once had, and their social status had risen considerably.
The changes reached even white-collar and service industry positions. Automated processes had reduced the required number of essential workers to a minimum. Now they took over office work in a flash. Once branchminds could mimic the actions of naturalites and work in physical space using machines like Uncles, the transition away from people accelerated.
This was the Great Turnover.
After graduation from university, I was hired by a design company, then started up my own design studio with Natsu. I was only involved in business for three years before the shift. Established designers were launching countless branchminds to protect their interests and I kept losing out to them in competitions, forcing me to close up shop.
That’s how I ended up taking on occasional work from design colleagues, which I'm passionate about, while doing a job overseeing a reception desk at the Shibuya Ward Office. I wish I could survive just by working like Arata, who made the neon signs for us. But there’s no beating the sense of security you get from having a job.
“Alright. I’ll get in touch with him,” I said. When I started up my branchmind, I immediately heard someone say “Yo,” and I entered the room—Or, rather, my Saul XRE avatar did.
“Contact Arata and pay him for the neon,” I told my branchmind. “I’m granting you full authority as my representative for 15 minutes. Your cut is 2%.”
“Sure thing.”
My avatar waved and vanished. I was already kicking myself over that two percent, thinking it was too generous, when Natsu puffed out her cheeks as though reading my mind.
“I’m jealous. What does that guy use money for anyway?”
“I’ve never asked,” I said, with a smile. “Even my branchmind needs privacy.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Natsu snapped. “Branchminds are branchminds. Their earnings belong to their owners.”
I shook my head. “It’s easier to get along with them if you tell yourself that they need it.”
“How old is he again?”
“If you mean since he branched, then this is his third year, I think.”
“Oh yeah,” said Natsu, resting her finger on her chin. “A bit long, don’t you think?”
The standard period of operation for branchminds is about one year. Apparently, if you use a consciousness that can act and learn autonomously for any longer, they diverge too much from the original person. They’re supposed to be configured to never develop anything resembling desire, but you sometimes hear stories about branchminds that mistake themselves for the trunk.
I waved at Natsu just as my branchmind had waved at me. “How’s that? Can you tell the difference?”
*
After that, Natsu and I sat on either side of the model and continued discussing our plans for the following day. I checked the resumes of the ten applicants and ran simulations to test how the branchminds they'd lent us functioned as a team. We would only be able to use them for an hour and a half tomorrow. During that short time, we would have to haul in the materials, build the stage and seating, decorate the counter that the hotel had assembled, and finish cleaning up. After experimenting with several different workflows, we decided that it would be best to leave on-site management to Natsu and for me to lend a hand when needed.
I went over every stage of the plan until I was satisfied. Then I took off my Saul XRE lens and had a shower. I was thinking over the procedures for tomorrow yet again, while I let my bathrobe absorb the lingering moisture, when I heard Natsu's voice from the vacant dinner table.
"Taira. Are you on your way to bed?"
I picked up my Saul XRE glasses from the kitchen counter, put them on, and turned towards the voice.
"Natsu, is that the actual you?"
“It’s me alright. It’s been, what, three weeks?”
From the slight lag, I could tell she wasn’t in Japan.
“Where are you now? No, wait, let me guess.”
I rested my hand on the dinner table, leaned so close to Natsu that we might have almost touched, and looked into her eyes. Saul XRE avatars are illuminated by the light wherever they appear, but they have one spot that gives away the light at their actual location: the refracted image on the periphery of the camera embedded in the center of the Saul XRE lens. Keeping my eyes fixed on Natsu’s pupils, I shifted the angle of my gaze, nearly grazing her face.
“I can see a river,” I said.
“Can you tell where?”
“You’re on a bridge? The sun is going down. The right bank is high. There’s something there.”
“Shall I turn in that direction?”
Natsu turned her face to the right. Her lips overlapped with mine and passed through Sadly, they imparted no sensation.
“Thanks. I can see now. That’s a church on top of the hill, right?”
“Yup. I’m in Lyon,” Natsu whispered, then pulled away and leaned on the table with her elbows. In reality, I supposed they were on the bridge’s railing. She turned towards where the sun sparkled, squinting.
“I was just about to bring a virtual tour client to a restaurant in the old town,” she said.
“In other words, you’ll be drinking wine all by your lonesome.”
I smiled wryly and Natsu laughed.
“You never feel alone with Saul XRE.”
She had chosen to be a tour conductor as her lifelong work. She moved from place to place in Europe and the surrounding regions, showing travelers around. Some of her clients were naturalites. Others were Saul XRE avatars on virtual tours. Once she had even guided a branchmind that had cheekily applied.
On the virtual tour she would conduct tonight, she would pay the table charge for all the participants, of which there might be around five, keep the table empty, order for herself, and guzzle wine. According to Natsu, her guests would get to savor the atmosphere of the restaurant and drool over the dishes served. I couldn’t see what could be so great about virtual tours, but Natsu has told me she gets many repeaters and is doing good business.
Natsu turned her head to gaze through the living room window at the Shibuya streetscape.
“It’s already night there, I see. The sun is still pretty high in the sky here. It’s not that late, is it?”
“It’s 10 pm. I’ve been getting everything ready for the auction tomorrow with your branchmind.”
“How are Tyler and Nuts doing? She’s really raking it in.”
These were our nicknames for our branchminds.
“They’re doing fine. They make a good pair. But she’s never told me how much she’s making. Is it really that much?”
Natsu’s eyes went wide with exasperation. “Why are you asking me? Ask her yourself.”
“Even she needs privacy.”
“No she doesn’t! You can use my branchminds earnings if you want. I authorized you, didn’t I?”
I shook my head. “She is who she is. She’s not you, and she’s not my property. She has a life of her own.”
“What are you talking about? It’s true that she works when you’re not around... but--”
“Listen.”
“What?”
"Even when I’m not here, she’s doing her own thing and changing. She gains experience and gets better and better at her work. Sometimes she surprises even me. I’m planning to have her manage the auction on-site tomorrow.”
“Branchminds are very capable, but—”
“Capable has got nothing to do with it. She has her own life.”
“No, she doesn’t!”
I burst out laughing.
“What are you laughing about?”
"She said almost the same thing earlier. ‘No, he doesn’t.’ Exactly the way you said it just now. I couldn’t help laughing.”
Natsu puffed out her cheeks. Her expression was nearly identical to that of branchmind Natsu but not quite.
“How many years has it been since you made her?” I asked.
“Three. When I left Japan, I forced you to make yours.”
“I thought you were crazy.”
When I went around in front of her, Natsu let out a slight gasp of surprise. I spread my arms and waited for her to nod before I embraced her, unable to actually touch her body.
“It’s about time I paid you a visit.”
“You’ll come to see me?”
Without replying, I kissed her forehead and released her. “I've got an early day tomorrow. I’d better get to bed.”
*
The air in the auction hall was hot and reeked of electric charge. Uncles let off an enormous amount of heat, being capable of approximately the same physical output as humans. The power generators concentrated around their armpits could reach nearly forty degrees centigrade. My sweat-dampened shirt clung to my back.
“Fifteen minutes till construction is complete!” Natsu’s voice reverberated through the hall. "The art team is on standby. Can you handle the final panel?”
“No problem!” I said, waving to her Saul XRE avatar. It hadn’t sweated a single drop. I checked all the clamps connecting the panels laid out on the floor and called out to the lined-up Uncles. “Here’s the last panel!”
“Understood!” “Righto!” “Gotcha!”
The Uncles all responded with voices as distinctive as their faces. Idling in a row in the hotel warehouse just 30 minutes ago, you couldn’t tell the difference between them. Now activated and set to autonomous mode, even their heights seemed different. I beckoned to one Uncle, who somehow came off as burly and rakish, and another beside him, who gave the uncanny impression of having his hands in his pockets.
“You two stand here at my feet.”
The facedown panels had been fitted with a scaffolding to protect the decorative backing. The Uncles walked along this with all the care I had programmed into them. When they reached the connector between panels I had indicated, they stepped onto the floor and rested one of their feet on the lower edge of one of the panels.
“Lift!”
Steadying the panel with their feet, the uncles gripped the upper edge and began to raise it gently. until the connector angled closer and they pulled it in. The capability I had installed them with kept their timing in synch, but the force of their motions was out of whack. When the central panel began to tip, I rushed over to push it up straight.
"Did you prepare the wire?" I asked an Uncle on a stepladder.
“It’s ready for you any time,” the Uncle replied, showing me the wire hanging from the ceiling and the clamp on the end.
"When I slide the panel, hook it up.”
“Got it.”
I heard another Uncle calling me from behind.
“Mr. Tyler, here comes the panel.”
I took three steps back to survey our progress. There were six Uncles at work on the panels, enough to move them safely. They were all wearing pads so that they wouldn’t scratch the floor. One of them was holding the ladder for the staff member who was doing the rigging on the ceiling.
I circled around to the spot where we would install the panels. “Alright,” Isaid, “When I give the signal, slide this over to my feet.” I pointed at my toes. “Ready, set, go!"
“Yeah!” “Alright!” they said as they pushed, even closer in sync than before.
When the panel reached my feet, I stopped it with my hand and called out to the Uncle on the stepladder, “Hook it up!”
“Will do.”
There was a click, and the panel suddenly grew lighter. This was the last panel. After throwing up a life-size model on Saul XRE, I backed up against a wall and compared the position of the model’s panels to the real ones. “Discrepancy two centimeters,” said my display.
“Construction complete! Once we put the materials in the container, we’re done!”
The Uncles cheered, spread across the auction space like marbles scattering, and began to gather the garbage and leftover equipment. Natsu walked around a 3D rendering of the auction space photographed by a drone to check for garbage between panels and under the stage. I was watching as the place got steadily cleaner when someone behind me spoke.
"I heard this will be your last work?”
“I guess so,” I replied, and heard a sigh from behind me.
“You’re serious? The very idea of us branchminds living together with no trunk . . .”
“You won’t know what it’s like until you try. If you can’t take it, you can always kick her out.”
When I turned around, I could see myself, smiling ruefully just as I’d expected. We branched apart three years ago, but his vibe was closer to mine than Natsu’s branchmind was to hers. Maybe because he and I had stayed in touch more.
“Do you have enough cashflow?” he asked.
I nodded. “Thanks to you I do.”
"Shibuya Ward says they’re going to hire me.”
“That’s great. You must have negotiated that yourself.” I gave him a light encouraging punch in the shoulder. “Okay. See you around. I’ll drop by now and again.”
“Please do.”
I watched Natsu’s branchmind as she materialized here and there around the space.
“I think she’ll be happy too," he said. “By the way, are you going straight to Lyon?”
I shrugged. “If Natsu doesn’t mind having me around.”
“She said she’s waiting for you.”
I opened my eyes wide in surprise. “You…”
“I never reached out to her myself,” he interrupted. “I happened to be in your apartment one time when Natsu appeared, so we chatted a bit.”
I sighed and looked at my branchmind anew. I was sure he and Natsu’s branchmind would get along just fine. After all, the only thing they were missing was a physical body. My income would drop to around a quarter of what it was now, but legally they should be able to continue using that apartment. The initial confusion would subside quickly. In time, they'd become independent even of Natsu and me.
I waited for a moment when Natsu’s branchmind vanished and walked out of the auction hall.
Translation by Eli K.P. William