by Ryu Mitsuse
But why would Tokyo be in ruins? And what year is it now?
Hoping to find an answer in the rubble, he moved on, following an enormous corridor between massive structures.
Suddenly he spotted a shadow flitting at the edge of his field of vision. An instant after he saw it, it disappeared behind a dark wall. His metabolizer was running at full speed now, ready for the lethal attack that was sure to come. His tri-D sensor cells extended an umbrella antenna, seeking to detect the metabolic energy of his enemy, its strength and direction. Nothing . . .
Fear chilled him to the bone. He dropped to the floor, listening for sounds in the levels below while his antenna extended upward toward the high ceiling to listen for the movement of enemies above.
Still nothing.
What could be here, if not my enemy?
Though the movement he’d detected in the desert outside the city gates had surely been hostile, he had as yet found no sign of any enemy within the city’s bounds.
Perhaps they have not invaded this far . . . yet?
He considered the possibility that he had fallen into yet another of his enemy’s traps.
On a world like this, where energy use was at an absolute minimum, it would be impossible to camouflage any large amount of radiation. Even the hydrogen fusion reaction within the sun that lit the sky had dwindled to only a third of its former strength. The natural world had atrophied, its moisture gone, leaving the surface of Earth a cold and barren desert. Animal life had long since vanished, and even the withered remains of forests had disappeared without a trace. Only the wind moved now, occasionally trailing sand in gray clouds. The cycle of energy had been broken, and the planet lacked the strength to nurture anything new.
He was certain that the lurking enemy had by now detected his body’s energy profile. An energy detector could be used to determine a quarry’s whereabouts with greater accuracy than even a wireless directional finder. He would be defenseless if his hidden foe had managed to conceal its own energy emissions and approached undetected.
Moving quickly, he ran to the corner of the wall behind which the dark figure had disappeared. He found a tiny footprint where sand had been kicked up.
This is not my enemy!
Keeping his breath level, he tiptoed toward a crack between two structures behind the wall. It led into a hole of some sort; there the footprints disappeared.
A trap?
He returned again to the corridor, searching for any signs of approach. He sensed that his enemy was already inside the city, moving steadily through the corridors on the bottommost level, heading toward a broken lift. Whoever or whatever it was probably intended to climb up the shaft.
Which meant that at least he still had the advantage of higher ground.
Quietly, he slipped through a hole in the wall. Beyond it he found a spiral passageway that sloped gently upward.
An old beltway.
The small footprints continued up the passage. He followed, coming to a place where a giant shutter—long ago ruined—had been lowered to block the corridor. Electrical conduits and communications lines were tangled along the ceiling, and air-conditioning pipes hung down like strands of hair. He brushed them aside with one hand, leaning to duck beneath them; the pipes clanged into one another with a dry metallic sound. A moment later, they crumbled as though made of nothing more than clay. The sound of their falling made a quiet echo down the corridor.
Ahead of him, the footprints disappeared into a power plant. Other footprints joined them near the entrance, also going in. He entered the plant.
The only illumination within came from clouded orange panels that looked like indicators of some kind. Beneath the dim circle of light they cast huddled several human figures.
He stood still as stone. “Who are you?” he called out after a long hesitation.
One of those in the group gave a quick, sharp cry he could not understand.
The person shouted again, the sound of it hitting him like a physical blow.
Then he felt something switch inside himself—an automatic voice translation system turning on.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?” the person was asking him.
He peered further into the plant but saw no other figures lurking.
“Who are you?” he responded. “Why are you hiding here?”
Even as he spoke, he marveled at his own ability to converse. He had no memory of any time in which he’d exchanged words with another person. Yet his current situation provided no time to consider this mystery.
“We are residents. We live here,” the people said.
“Here? This is your home?” He looked around again at the ruined plant. It seemed highly unlikely that anyone could live here amongst this wreckage and death.
“You live here?” he asked again, worried that they might think him slow for repeating himself.
“Yes. We are residents of this place. Where did you come from?”
He thought it best not to tell the truth in this instance. Nor did he want to waste time explaining anything.
“This is Tokyo, right?” he asked.
“Yes. This is Tokyo. Capital of the Inner Planetary Alliance.”
Something about those words bore the echo of a former glory, long since faded.
“I see,” he said. “So tell me, what is the solar year now?”
As soon as he asked, he feared that it might not have been a wise question.
“The solar year? I believe, yes, it is 3905.”
Inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief—it seemed that his question hadn’t raised any suspicions.
“Which would mean,” he said half to himself, “that over a thousand years has passed since that engraving was made on the tower.”
“Of what do you speak?” the person asked.
“What caused the city to fall into ruin?” he quickly replied. “Please understand that I mean you no harm. Come here.”
In response, the group huddled even more tightly together.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. I am—” he was about to tell them that he came from another place, another celestial body, but then he thought better of it. People living in these conditions would only fear him more if they learned he came from another star. “I came from another city to establish communications.”
Eventually, one of the people stepped out from the huddle, wariness burning in his eyes.
“Another city? There is still another city on Earth?” Hope mingled with a deep sadness in his voice.
“There is,” he said, then stopped, fumbling for his next words until he remembered the lead-colored sea. “It lies across the sea.”
“Across the sea!”
With those words, the group split into fourteen individuals. In the dim orange light, they looked dangerously thin and frail. Their height was, on average, roughly a meter and a half. Their arms and legs were thin and long, their shoulders rounded and slumping, their foreheads protruding. They held their hair with thin metal circlets, just above the ears, and they wore light brown skinlike cloth that covered their entire bodies.
Their expressions were unreadable as they gathered to get a closer look at their visitor.
“What is your name?” one asked.
He would have to answer this one. “S-S-Siddhārtha,” he said, dredging the word up from some back corner of his mind.
“See-darth-a?”
“Siddhārtha.”
“Siddhārtha!”
“You know this name?” he asked, worried that he had made a mistake.
“No, not well. Though perhaps I have heard it once . . . somewhere.”
“Are you the leader of these people?”
The man standing closest to him nodded. “I am. We are all that remain of the city. I am Orionae the Elder, formerly of Atlantis,” he added, lifting his tanned, weathered, and wrinkled face to meet Siddhārtha’s eyes. “Siddhārtha, you are.”
“And you are Orionae.”
The two repe
ated the names, each certain they had heard the other’s before, that they were joined by some painful memory that neither was able to recall.
Perhaps, he thought, this man had simply done as I had—reaching into the back corners of his mind and picking the first word he found. Not that it mattered.
“Tell me, Orionae. How did this great city become ruins?”
Orionae came solemnly to stand before Siddhārtha.
“I will tell you,” he said. “Strangely enough, the very reason I am here in this abandoned city of Tokyo is because it is my duty to explain to another person the reason and the manner of the city’s fall into decline. You may very well be that other person.”
“You were . . . placed here to do this?”
“Tragedy visited this place in the year 2900. The dimming of the sun in the sky above was the first sign of our impending doom. The average temperature of this city, and across the surface of the earth, fell to minus sixty-eight degrees Celsius.”
“Minus sixty-eight degrees!”
“Indeed. After this, the earth began to dry. All the lands were transformed into deserts; shallow straits and inlets evaporated, leaving nothing but sand and salt flats behind.”
This explained the condition of the world outside—though it was still surprising that all of this could have happened in a mere one thousand years.
“This was planned, clearly,” Siddhārtha said, raising his head. “Orionae. Have you lived here then for these past one thousand years?”
Orionae nodded. “I have. For 1,180 years. I am a cyborg. As I said, I was placed here for the very purpose of recording this information and transmitting it to another.”
“Yes, your story. Might I hear it?”
Orionae’s companions, flitting like ghosts, had formed a circle around Siddhārtha and their leader while they talked. Siddhārtha wondered whether they were listening. Whenever they moved, their thin clothing gave off a faded luster that seemed to fit their ruined surroundings.
“Listen,” Orionae said. “The Inner Planetary Alliance—”
Suddenly, an alert system embedded in the artificial ear shells at either side of Siddhārtha’s head began to sound. Automatically, his metabolizer went into overdrive, preparing to pump oxygen and enzymes through his body. The supplementary processors embedded in each of his shoulders began scanning his surroundings. Finally, his tri-D sensor cell antenna indicated the presence of a dangerous enemy beyond the shattered wall directly behind him.
For a second, he regretted letting his guard down. It had been a mistake to divert his attention from his persistent follower, if only for a moment.
Orionae was a decoy!
In one bound, Siddhārtha leapt to the corner of the huge room to await the enemy’s arrival, taking cover beneath a giant metallic cylinder, red with rust, that resembled some sort of electrical rectifier. A moment later, silent beams of deep crimson light struck the wall on either side of him. Where they hit, the shattered wall was reduced to incandescent steam, leaving nothing but scorched holes behind. Siddhārtha narrowly dodged the attack, leaping up to hide himself in a large crevice between the wall and the ceiling. The room was filled with swirling flames and rising dust, reducing visibility to less than a meter. Out of the dust and confusion came fragments of the screams of Orionae’s people.
Siddhārtha gingerly extended his tri-D antenna from the crack in the wall, searching for his foe. He found him standing near a protrusion in the wall on the opposite side of the room. Orionae and the others were rapidly moving away, running down the corridor in a group. Though it would be a loss to let Orionae escape now, he could not risk exposing himself to his enemy in order to follow.
After what seemed like an interminable amount of time, the standoff ended when his enemy became tired of waiting and began to move.
Siddhārtha connected his tri-D antenna to his visual cortex.
A man was standing by the protrusion in the far wall. He wore dirty white cloth loosely wrapped around a thin, suntanned frame, and in his right hand he carried a short, strangely shaped weapon. It seemed odd to Siddhārtha that this man should be his enemy, in possession of such fearful technology. And yet he sensed a burning hatred directed toward himself.
His enemy moved suddenly, and another beam of crimson light erupted from the weapon in his hand, illuminating the corridor down which Orionae and his people were escaping. Siddhārtha sensed the group divide, separating into its individual members. Some of them vanished entirely.
Before the beam of light had ceased its cutting blast, Siddhārtha launched into motion. Energizing the micro-reactor embedded in his waist, he activated the discharge panel on his left wrist, propelling a large ball of yellow flame toward his enemy’s position. The fireball struck the wall behind the man, exploding into hundreds of thousands of sparks that scattered in all directions.
As his enemy ran silently beneath the spreading blaze, Siddhārtha let fly a second fireball. The room was suffused with pale light and the air trembled as though electrified. Even as the flames surrounded the stranger, he ducked into a side corridor through an opening in the wall. A smile appeared on the man’s chiseled brown face the moment before he disappeared, his eyes darting in Siddhārtha’s direction.
Twice crimson beams blasted holes in the corridor ceiling. Then there was silence.
Siddhārtha extended his antenna to find that his enemy had retreated to the lower levels of the city. He had not abandoned his attack entirely . . . but it would be some time before he found his next opportunity to strike.
Siddhārtha went down into the corridor to look for Orionae. He found three bodies beneath fallen sections of ceiling, as well as several large holes with singed edges, which he took to indicate people who had been evaporated along with the floor and walls around them.
Orionae was lying on the floor some thirty meters down the corridor.
Siddhārtha hurried to him, picking him up in his arms. “Orionae! Awaken!”
The cyborg’s eyelids fluttered open. Siddhārtha saw his own round head reflected in Orionae’s brown eyes.
“Ah yes, Siddhārtha. I had not finished my story. In the year 2902, the Solar Alliance determined that the energy loss within our solar region was part of a greater energy loss affecting the entire Milky Way galaxy.”
“You mean the entire galaxy was deteriorating?”
“Yes. Then, in 2905, at a summit of astrophysicists called by the Solar Alliance, an emergency committee formed to investigate the matter announced that a reduction in potential energy, its cause unknown, was affecting the entire known universe.”
“Orionae, stay with me,” Siddhārtha said, lifting the slumping cyborg off the ground. “You must tell me what happened next.”
“I’m all right . . . They soon discovered that every spiral galaxy in the visible universe was showing a rapid red shift.”
“Which would either mean the Doppler effect or a rapid reduction in potential energy.”
“It is as you say. However, we knew it was not the Doppler effect, for indeed all the energy in the universe was beginning to fade measurably.” A ragged cough sent spasms through Orionae’s body.
“But couldn’t it have been a diffusion of energy caused by rapid expansion?”
Orionae shook his head. “No. If that were the case then the Doppler effect would be sufficient to explain the red shift. But observe these drastically cold temperatures. Water and air are both rarefied, and nothing but a cyborg can even hope to survive on the planet’s surface. I wonder how they fare on other planets . . . whether any humans remain.”
The strength left Orionae’s body. Panicking, Siddhārtha shook him. “Don’t let go! You have not yet fulfilled your duty!”
Orionae barely managed to open his lightless eyes. “Siddhārtha. I have seen this with my own eyes: strange life-forms came from beyond our universe to develop this world—this was seven thousand years ago already.”
“From beyond our universe, you say?”
“They said this: ‘By the reckoning of the Twin Suns, from Blue 93 to the summer of Yellow 17 in the New Galactic Age . . . ’ ”
“ ‘ . . . the Planetary Development Committee on Astarta 50 received a directive from Shi to attempt a helio-ses-beta development on the third planet in the Ai System,’ ” Siddhārtha said, continuing the words that Orionae had started. “Orionae. Did you see these life-forms yourself?”
Orionae nodded slightly. It would have been dangerous to force him to speak any further, so Siddhārtha used his supplementary processors to extract the memories from him. The platinum electrodes implanted in Orionae’s skull activated his cerebrum with a shower of ultrashort waves. Then the extraction stimulation circuit from Siddhārtha’s supplementary processor fused with the remaining gray matter in the cyborg, converting his distant memories into faint electrical patterns, which it then transmitted into Siddhārtha’s neural web. Siddhārtha continued to walk quietly down the corridor, holding Orionae’s body in his arms.
His enemy was on the move again. Siddhārtha knew that if he were attacked now, both he and Orionae would be killed. He had to stall for time. With Orionae in his arms, he moved as quietly as possible along the corridor, following its sand-strewn slope downward. Fortunately, it seemed that his enemy had not reacquired their position.
“Yellow 17 in the New Galactic Age, the Planetary Development Committee on Astarta 50 received a directive from Shi to attempt a helio-ses-beta development on the third planet in the Ai System . . .”
The words left a strange echo in Siddhārtha’s ears.
“What does ‘Shi’ mean, I wonder?” he asked out loud.
In his arms, Orionae suddenly whispered, “Shi is the absolute being. Shi exists outside this universe, causing this universe to be. All things and people in this universe, and the way and direction of all things, are according to Shi’s will.”
Siddhārtha listened with part of his mind while another part thought furiously.
“Siddhārtha. If it is Shi’s will that the energy in our universe fade, what will you do?”
“Orionae. Might I assume that this absolute being of which you speak is what the ancients called ‘God’?”