Paprika

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  But then that realistic dream had started to lose its realism. Perhaps it was because Atsuko had succumbed to a deeper sleep. She had fallen into their trap. As she stood there in combat-ready position, Atsuko, now transformed into Paprika, observed the three men and wondered how she could regain the upper hand. She had to find an effective way of waking herself, and soon. Otherwise she would fall into a sleep that grew ever deeper – and the ultimate conclusion of that could only be death.

  “Ah, so now Master Hashimoto has joined us,” Paprika said, eyeing him sternly. It wasn’t easy to judge whose thoughts were behind the images. Now even Atsuko’s dream had become confused with the others. “Are you dreaming this too?”

  “I’m taking part in the DC Mini experiment, yes,” Hashimoto said casually. He raised a hand to his head, as if to check that the DC Mini was still there.

  Hashimoto’s casual reply seemed to annoy Inui. “Not another word!” he barked.

  Paprika instantly realized that Hashimoto was not yet familiar with the DC Mini. She decided to recover the next one from him.

  “Run!” shouted Osanai.

  Hashimoto also seemed to have read Paprika’s thoughts. But he couldn’t move. He was still looking dozily at Paprika, apparently unable to control his own dream.

  They were in the cosmetics section of a department store. Now, at last, Hashimoto started to run. Paprika chased him as he retreated, weaving his way through showcases and customers who stood there like statues. She could smell Osanai’s hair lotion, which brought back unpleasant memories. Judging from the department-store setting – and men’s cosmetics, to boot – this must have been Osanai’s dream.

  Paprika envisioned an elevator with its doors open, directly ahead of Hashimoto as he ran. The elevator appeared on cue. Hashimoto, now enclosed on both sides by gray prison-like walls, had no choice but to run straight into it. Got you, thought Paprika. She would pursue him into the sealed chamber of the elevator cage, close the door and rip the DC Mini from his head. She would certainly be in danger if she couldn’t find a way of waking up quickly. She had yet to hit upon a good method, but in any case, she needed to recover one more DC Mini before she awoke.

  The elevator cage was spacious inside; the back of it seemed to go on forever. Along the sides stood a number of male and female figures with ill-defined features. They looked like stuffed dolls. The door closed behind Paprika. She ran but still couldn’t catch Hashimoto, who fled farther and farther into the depths of the elevator cage. The elevator started to rise with a great rattling sound. There was suddenly another door at the far end of the cage; Hashimoto seemed intent on escaping through it. Paprika continued to chase him, knowing she would have to catch him before the elevator came to a halt.

  The elevator came to a halt. Hashimoto opened the door manually. But because Paprika willed it to be, there was a gap of more than two meters between the door of the elevator and the opening. Below the gap was nothing but a dark chasm. Hashimoto rattled the elevator cage to bring it closer to the opening. The cage started to shake. The opening came closer. Paprika leapt onto Hashimoto just as he prepared to jump across.

  As they plummeted into the void together, Paprika tried to confirm something that was troubling her. “You’d better not have killed Himuro?!”

  “If we’d let that cretin live …” Hashimoto blurted out incoherently, unable to control his consciousness with its diminished sense of morality. His mind started to re-create an image of the truth.

  “Don’t think about it!” screamed Osanai.

  But Hashimoto had lost sight of the consequences. He thought about it. They were in a broad, enclosed space reminiscent of a baseball stadium, surrounded by walls that sloped inward. It was a waste-processing site at the dead of night. Paprika and Hashimoto were grappling in the middle of it, illuminated by floodlights.

  “You’ve killed him, haven’t you!” Paprika yelled. “And this is where you brought his body! Where is this place? What’s it called? Tell me!”

  “Wake up! Wake up, you fool!” Osanai continued to scream in desperation.

  The ground parted. Himuro’s body rose to the surface with a ghastly squelching, slithering sound, his face almost decomposed and his torso covered in garbage. At last Hashimoto reacted. Himuro was probably Osanai, trying to wake Hashimoto by scaring him.

  But Hashimoto couldn’t wake up. The stimulus of his involuntary embrace with Paprika had aroused his libido. He had an erection. Suddenly he was lying naked on a bed surrounded by white walls. It looked like a hotel room, the kind of place where he’d enjoyed numerous assignations in the past. He had flipped Paprika over and now lay sprawled on top of her in a coital position. His breath smelt fishy. Something hard pressed against the crotch of Paprika’s jeans. Hashimoto had a faraway look in his eyes and started to make thrusting movements. Paprika grabbed the top of his head with a yell of triumph.

  “Ouch! What was that for?!”

  Paprika had no intention of taking this man’s seed, or anything else of that kind, back from the land of her dreams. The very thought disgusted her. All she took from the head of Hashimoto, now defenseless in the throes of erotic delight, was his DC Mini.

  “Where was it?” Paprika demanded. “Where was that rubbish dump?”

  “The *****!” Hashimoto’s thoughts were vague, impossible to read.

  Hashimoto turned into Osanai. But his nakedness and coital position remained the same.

  “Where’s Hashimoto?” asked Paprika.

  “He’s woken up,” Osanai answered with a snigger, leering at Paprika from above as he pinned her down. “But of course, you must know that. Having his libido aroused was too much for him. Poor chap had a nocturnal emission.”

  Paprika thought it was more likely due to dreason – dream reason. The act of raping her in his dream had stimulated his sense of guilt, and that was what had woken him. She preferred to think that he’d ejaculated after waking up.

  Osanai was trying to open the fingers of Paprika’s right hand, where she held the DC Mini. In a desperate attempt to stop him, Paprika reached out with her left hand and grabbed his limp member.

  “Same as ever!” She laughed.

  Osanai was livid. “What do you expect? I wouldn’t want to do it with a tart like you!”

  “I’ll crush these if you like!” Paprika had already shifted her grip to his scrotum.

  Osanai was duly scared, but then realized that she couldn’t really do him any harm. After all, it was just a dream. He laughed it off and continued to prise her fingers open one by one.

  Paprika couldn’t bring herself to squash a man’s testicles, even in a dream. It would just have been too ghastly. Instead, she put her left hand to his head. She wanted to take his DC Mini, but all she managed was to ruffle up his hair.

  The DC Mini wasn’t there.

  Atsuko heard Inui’s laughter close to her ear. He was sitting on a chair next to the bed. Like Osanai, he was naked. His pale, scrawny body, complete with limply hanging penis, was a seriously unattractive sight.

  “Have you heard of anaphylaxis? Well done. It seems you have. We don’t even have to wear the DC Minis now.” He started to ogle her with a lecherous smile on his face. “How about stripping this young lady naked?” he said to Osanai. “Also, no need to waste your time with the one in her hand. Just take the one from her head! That’ll be much quicker.”

  Osanai reached out to Paprika’s head with a cunning smile, as if to say “Why of course!” She cursed her carelessness. No one was more surprised than Paprika to find she wasn’t wearing a DC Mini either.

  “Eh?! It’s not there! She got into the dream without it!” Osanai yelled. Inui looked puzzled. He also stretched out a hand and groped around in Paprika’s hair.

  Paprika thought back. Maybe when she dreamt she was woken by Ube, she really did remove the DC Mini. It would have been the same as pressing a key on the console while accessing a patient’s dream – a semi-conscious, semi-automatic act.

&nbs
p; All right then! Inui stepped up to the bed with a defiant smile and grabbed Paprika from the opposite side. She was seized with fear. With enemies quite literally on both sides, she was unable to move. The two men busily started to remove her shirt and jeans.

  She decided to let them do as they wished for a moment, to put them off their guard. But Paprika’s special skill was in changing scenes. It was a skill she’d acquired from her need to manipulate her clients’ dreams.

  They were in a large café. Around them sat a number of young men and women, mostly in couples. Paprika was drinking coffee at a table in the middle. Inui and Osanai had moved their chairs toward hers and were fondling her from both sides, naked as the day they were born.

  Having their nakedness subjected to public scrutiny seemed to come as quite a shock to them, even in a dream. The pair moaned and instantly vanished.

  Paprika took a look around. She needed to wake up fast, as her reason was growing increasingly vague. But how? She knew many ways of withdrawing from the dreams of her patients and returning to reality, but she was too deeply immersed for such simple remedies. She needed help from the real world; how could she go about getting it? In any case, what time was it now? Outside the window of the café, she could see a busy thoroughfare in the middle of the day. But had the day already dawned in the world outside dreams?

  Paprika corrected her slumped posture and stood up. She would seek the help of Tatsuo Noda. Until just recently, she’d been using the direct line to his office to discuss the schedule for his dream treatment. She had memorized his number. But could she get through to him – in a dream? If it really was the middle of the day, he might well be in his office.

  Inui and Osanai had disappeared. But they were surely watching her, from somewhere. Oh no. The woman in that picture on the wall was Inui. Paprika was sure of it. Those incisive eyes. They were his eyes. They were laughing, mocking her, saying “So you think you’ll get through? Ha!”

  Paprika picked up the receiver of a push-button telephone next to the till. The numbers on the buttons were all jumbled up, like a table of random digits. The arrangement of the buttons was irregular, too. Some of them displayed letters of the alphabet. To make matters worse, the buttons kept moving when Paprika tried to press them. Then they began to proliferate and shrank in size. Paprika shoved the unwanted numbers and letters to the corner, leaving just the ones she needed in the center. She dialed the direct line to Noda’s office.

  “Hello? … Hello? … Who is it?”

  A connection?! She could just make out Noda’s voice at the other end. But she was inside Shinjuku Station. The noise was so deafening that she could hardly hear what he was saying.

  “Tatsuo! Tatsuo!” she called in desperation.

  “Who is it? Hello? Who is it?” Noda’s distant voice sounded from his distant office in some distant world.

  “It’s Paprika! Help me! Help me, please!”

  “Paprika?! Ah! I do love you so! Where are you?”

  “I’m in a dream. I’m calling from a dream. I can’t get out of it. Get me out of it, will you? Please help me!”

  “Ah. I do love you, Paprika. You’re suffering now, aren’t you.”

  “I’m suffering terribly.”

  “I’m on my way. I’m on my way. Where are you?”

  “Shinjuku Station, in my dream. Please come quickly!”

  “I’ll be there right away. I’ll come to help you. Ah. Paprika. I do love you so. I do love you.”

  9

  Atsuko had fallen asleep while operating her PT equipment, and no manner of shaking could wake her. There was definitely something wrong with her. Hearing this news from Inspector Ube, Konakawa hurried to Atsuko’s apartment, accompanied by Superintendent Morita. On arrival, he found Tokita already awake and sitting at the dining table, where he was enjoying some toast and coffee. Ube must have made it for him. Tokita seemed a lot better now, but still barely responded when spoken to.

  In the bedroom, Atsuko was slumped facedown on the keyboard of her console. In front of her, a monitor glowed hazily in the dimly lit room. Atsuko was moaning, murmuring as if in delirium, speaking in a quiet tearful voice, sometimes shifting in her seat. Her condition was quite clearly abnormal; Konakawa had certainly never seen anything like this.

  “If this is the dream she’s having right now,” Ube said as he pointed to the screen, “she must be having a pretty horrendous time. It’s been like this for a while now.”

  On the screen, a rope suspension bridge was swaying wildly over a deep ravine. Up ahead, some of the stepping boards were falling into the ravine, and the hand rope was beginning to fray. The river flowing below was the color of blood.

  “It’s like an image of hell,” said Konakawa, distressed to think of Atsuko’s suffering. “We must wake her quickly.”

  “I tried splashing cold water on her face, but it didn’t work.”

  “No, that’s far too mild.”

  “A good way of waking someone is to hold their nose and interrupt their breathing,” said Morita.

  “Idiot. She would just dream she was suffocating. It might not kill her, but what if it did lasting damage?” Konakawa shook his head firmly. “No. The only way she’ll wake up is by doing it herself.”

  Morita opened his eyes wide. “What? You mean there’s no other way? So what are we supposed to do, then?”

  Konakawa parted Atsuko’s hair. The DC Mini wasn’t there. “Did you take the device from her head?” he asked Ube.

  “I did, sir. It was about seven o’clock this morning. I thought it might have been why she couldn’t wake up.” Ube put his hand in his pocket and produced the DC Mini he’d removed from Atsuko’s head.

  “What made you think that?” Konakawa mused as Ube passed him the small, gray conical object.

  “Last night, Miss Chiba was telling me how dangerous it would be if she fell into a deep sleep while inside a patient’s dream. Especially when she mentioned the DC Mini, she looked very worried and went quiet. She seemed to suspect that it could make the wearer sleep more deeply. Anaphylaxis, I think she called it.”

  “That would seem the correct conclusion,” Konakawa said, impressed by the memory and sharp insight of the young inspector. “And even if that weren’t the case, as long as she’s wearing the DC Mini, the enemy can access her dreams and project offensive images into them.”

  Of course, neither Konakawa nor Ube knew the real truth – that Osanai had been prevented from taking Paprika’s DC Mini when they were fighting because Ube had already removed it.

  “By the way,” said Ube, taking another DC Mini from his pocket. “Miss Chiba was holding another device in her hand. I took it from her, as I thought she could be affected by this one as well.”

  “That’s funny.” Konakawa took the device from Ube’s palm and scrutinized it. “Was she holding another DC Mini when she started Tokita’s treatment?”

  “She had it in her drawer as a spare.” Ube opened the drawer beneath Atsuko’s console and exclaimed loudly. “It’s still there! Chief Superintendent! She didn’t have the third DC Mini before! She must have taken it from someone in her dream!”

  10

  The morning sales meeting ended, and Noda returned to his office.

  He’d been up early, and as he cast an eye over the sales plan, he started to feel drowsy. He’d had some coffee, both at home and during the meeting, but he still felt sleepy. It often happened that way. This time was different, though; the lure of sleep was strangely seductive, strangely insistent.

  Being aware of his own fatigue was nothing particularly unpleasant for someone of Noda’s age or status. It wasn’t a fatigue based on worry, and anyway, the sales plan wasn’t particularly urgent. As he sat at his desk in his comfortable office armchair, he allowed his body to sink into a creeping state of drowsiness, and for a few moments enjoyed the sensation of dozing off. It was a sensation akin to numbness, as if his hands and feet were melting away. This was not the same as sleeping late, nor
was it time for a midday nap. Noda liked to call it a catch-up snooze.

  The telephone was ringing. Somewhere between waking and sleep, Noda stretched out his hand to pick up the receiver. He may only have been doing it in a dream; the telephone may not actually have been ringing in the first place. It was no longer even clear that he was in his own office.

  Tatsuo. Tatsuo.

  Someone was calling him. A distant voice began to seep into his mind. A woman’s voice. Not his secretary’s voice, nor that of any female employee.

  Who is it? Who is it? asked Noda. Hello? Hello? Who is it?

  Had his voice reached the other person? It seemed to have drifted off emptily into space. The woman at the other end was calling him again, more urgently now. Pitifully so.

  Who is it? Who are you?

  But Noda knew who it was. Ah. Such a familiar voice. Yes, it’s her voice. That girl. What was her name again?

  It’s Paprika! Help me! Help me, please!

  That’s it. Paprika! The girl I adore. She must be in my dreams again. It sounds as if she’s suffering because she can’t wake up. I’ll have to go and help her.

  Where are you, asked Noda. Shinjuku Station, in my dream, answered Paprika.

  Shinjuku Station, in her dream. How can I get there? If only I could think of a way, I think I could go there immediately. How can I get there, he asked. How can I get there.

  Don’t wake me. Don’t force me to wake up. Come and join me inside my dream. With a DC Mini. Please. Please.

  Please. Please. Noda woke with Paprika’s words still echoing dreamily in his ears. He was sitting at his desk and had his phone pressed against his ear. All he could hear was the distant, continuous tone of a disconnected call. She must have hung up. Or perhaps there had been no phone call in the first place. It had been a dream. The whole conversation had taken place in a dream.