by Jude Fawley
“And do you know how long he’s been working on that program? And how obscure he made his code? He doesn’t program like anyone else, it’s all completely unintelligible to anyone but him. Whether you attempt to start from scratch, or to interpret his code, it will take you a very, very long time without him. You’re fine with that? You just don’t really know what’s going on around here, you come trampling in and expect everything to be fine when you’re through.”
“I feel like you must be exaggerating, in one respect or another, Mr. Watanabe. I’ll have Mr. Perry find me a couple of programmers, and we’ll see just how long it takes. Your position as a leader here is very tenuous, Mr. Watanabe. You’re only here because you know the entire scope of the project. I don’t want to, but I could do this without you. So please, be professional.”
Toru left the room as well, without responding to Mr. Laurel. When Reiko saw that it was slowly becoming just her and the engineers remaining, she ran out after him. She followed him to his office, where he was shoving things into a briefcase. “Where are you going?” she asked. “You can’t really be quitting, can you?”
“I don’t see what else I can do.”
“At the very least, come to lunch with me. As a favor. Across the street. And if I can’t persuade you to stay, that can be the end of it.”
Reiko and Toru sat together in the cafe, Reiko facing the street. Thousands of people went by, in cars, on bikes, by foot. Only a few of them turned and opened the doors to the cafe. She had a coffee and a small sandwich, and Toru had a bowl of ramen.
She had never really talked to the man sitting across from her, but, if she couldn’t persuade him to stay, she knew that Kaishin would become unbearable for her. They’d either replace him with a total stranger, or not replace him at all. Then it would just be her, Noboru, and the engineers. She had only eaten half of her sandwich before she dived into the conversation she intended to have.
“Please don’t quit,” she said, simply.
“Is that your entire argument for me to stay? There’s nothing left for me at Kaishin. And there’s nowhere else for me to go in Kenko.”
“What is Kenko?” she asked.
“Are you serious?”
She felt stupid, but she had to nod.
“It’s the company you’ve been working for, for the past two weeks. They own the building. And I’ve worked there for the past two years. When I started, Mr. Okada picked me out on my first day, to be in his group. So Kaishin is all I’ve really known. If I don’t work there, and for Mr. Okada, I might as well get another job entirely. I don’t even want to look at the building anymore.” Every time he said the name of his former employer, it brought visible pain to his face.
She responded, “You know how much the project meant to him, don’t you? I know I didn’t know him as well as you did, and now I never will, but I do know that he was very passionate about what we were doing. He would want to see it through to the very end, I know he would. Even if that meant we would have to put up with the stupid Americans.”
“He didn’t see it through to the end.”
“Toru, don’t say things like that.”
The young man quickly became emotional—he clutched his hands into fists as he spoke. “I’ve never respected a man, more than I did Mr. Okada. I’ve never looked up to someone so much, not even my own father. I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s true. And now he’s gone. I feel abandoned. I don’t know how it happened, or why it happened, and that just makes it worse. Totally abandoned. To the point where, if I don’t pick myself up and walk away, I’m just not going to make it. Having Haru around would have helped, but there’s no way that he’s coming back.
“Tell me—you were the last person to talk to Mr. Okada when he was alive, that I’m aware of. He left the office with you, that day. Did he say anything to you? Anything of note? I’ve been meaning to ask you that for a while now, but I keep losing track of my thoughts. I’m still very disoriented.”
Reiko thought for a moment. “He told me that Mr. Perry seemed very interested in him, and what he did. Perhaps in Kaishin. And that something was terribly wrong. And it turned out he was right. Suicide hardly makes sense, they had to have killed him. Of course I don’t know for sure, but as terrible as it is, it makes more sense.”
“And knowing that, you came back to Kaishin? When you’re not even an employee? That’s another thing I don’t understand at all, what it is you’re doing. You have no reason to stay. It was a temporary job that he offered you, that he was paying for out of his own pocket, as I understand it. Why do you care so much, to bring me here, to persuade me to stay?”
“I’ve just never seen anything so amazing as what we’re doing,” she said. “Maybe I’m naïve, but that doesn’t change the fact. I want to be a part of it. And even though I only knew him for a short time, Mr. Okada inspired me to carry this through to the end.”
“Well, you’re crazy then.”
“Tell me you’ll come back,” she said. “I know that it will be horrible back there, without you. We’ll endure it together. I know you don’t know me very well, because I’ve shut myself in that room with the rats for the past two weeks, but I’ll come out. I’ll be more present. If you’re there.”
“I meant what I said about Haru being important to the project. It will be very difficult to continue without him, no matter how many people they replace him with.”
“I know that he shouldn’t come back, with the way he behaved with Mr. Laurel, but perhaps he would agree to help us in an unofficial capacity. You know him well, don’t you? He’s put a lot of work into this too, by the sound of it. Surely he feels like I do, that it should be carried through no matter what.”
“Maybe part of him feels that way. But something you might not fully understand is that Haru is crazy. You did see his strange incident with Mr. Laurel back there. He’ll be harder to convince than me, and harder to find.”
“Are you saying I’ve convinced you?” Reiko asked, excited.
“I’ll go back. But only on the condition that we talk more often. If I have to sit around in that place in silence, just thinking to myself, I’ll go as crazy as Haru. Promise me that.”
“Promise.”
“And we’ll have to figure out exactly what it is Mr. Perry is after. And what happened to Mr. Okada. I will pay him back for what he did, no matter what. A large part of why I agreed so quickly is that I need the opportunity to do it.”
“Just don’t do anything too rash,” she said.
The next week was difficult for Reiko to make it through. She spent the mornings with her rats, who were adjusting to being eight-minded organisms, and in the afternoons she would participate in group meetings, where she found out what the rest of the group was doing.
The engineers were working on scaling the project to the size of the human brain. The engineer girls spent a lot of time dissecting real human brains, which they kept next door to the conference room. Where those brains came from, Reiko didn’t know, but they had a lot of them. Some were cut in hemispheres, others were sliced into unimaginably thin pieces and laid out in rows, using a machine that looked like it came from a butcher’s shop.
Hideo and Ichiro, the electrical engineers, were resizing the wires and connections, and were building a substantially larger chip than the one that was inserted into the rats. Reiko didn’t know many of the details, but from what she understood there was just a lot more connections to be made in the human brain, and the main problem in scaling up was trying to fit all of those extra connections into a reasonable amount of space.
She once asked Hideo, while trying to make inroads with the engineers, “If it turns out this isn’t safe for the rats, won’t you be wasting a lot of time, making it for humans?”
She realized too late that it was a bad question to ask. He said in response, “Not as much time as you’ve wasted, becoming a psychologist. What did they teach you in school, how to teach tricks to rats? I hear one of them can jum
p. I’m very impressed.”
“You’re also very rude,” she said, reacting. “I hope one of your little circuits doesn’t fry someone’s brain to a crisp, because you’ve made it wrong. They’d sue you for everything you’ve got, I imagine. And no one would trust you around them with electricity, ever again. Think of what a waste that would be, everything you learned. It would be like all you knew was psychology, in a world that didn’t care about the mind. That would be so very unfortunate.”
The new programmers were all struggling to make sense of Haru’s large, unwieldy program. They were old Kenko employees that were reassigned from wherever they had been before, but of course Reiko had never seen them. Apparently the program that ran the rat’s chips would need to be modified for the new hardware, but none of the programmers were sure where the changes needed to be made. Since she knew nothing on the subject, she avoided them as well.
She spent a considerable amount of time talking to Noboru, before he was fired. She was sitting next to him when he was told. The Americans had a bad habit of divulging private matters when everyone was around watching.
Mr. Perry delivered the news himself. Reiko, Noboru, and Toru were sitting in the conference room talking, and he walked in without asking permission, taking the seat at the head of the table.
“I’m glad you’re all here together. I have something to ask, something to tell. I have to ask if any of you know where Haru is. He hasn’t been answering our phone calls, and wasn’t at his house when I sent some people there.”
Although they had decided as a group to always use discretion around Mr. Perry, Toru couldn’t help being critical. He said, “You sent people to his house? Are we supposed to tell you where he is, so you can find him and punish him for the small incident with Mr. Laurel? You understand he is our friend, correct? And that we would refrain from sharing such knowledge, if sharing it would jeopardize him?”
“You’ve got it all wrong, dear Toru,” Mr. Perry said. “I know we can seem harsh, but a person with as much skill as your friend Haru is given a lot more leeway. The savants are always socially inept, so it’s pointless to punish them when they’re exactly what you need.
“I’ve been told that his programming, while unorthodox, is exceptional. And unintelligible, unintelligible in the way that we are all sheep and he is the shepherd, and we are oblivious to his higher causes. No, I won’t punish him, not for just a small incident, as you so rightly call it. I want him back here, doing his job. You’ve seen how set back we are, trying to fill the void he left.”
“Well none of us have seen him since he disappeared,” Toru said, belligerently.
“If you do see him, convey the message please. That we have nothing but good will for him here, and will be more than accommodating to whatever requests he might have about the work environment.
“The second matter, the something I have to tell you. Noboru, we are letting you go. Not just you—this isn’t a reflection of your work. I’m not acquainted with your work, but I’ll just assume that you do an alright job. It’s just that Kenko, not just Kaishin, no longer has the need of a marketing branch. So there will be many more people besides you leaving, but I wanted to tell you first, and personally. Your secretary had to be let go as well, for similar reasons.
“Kenko will be moving in the direction of a non-profit organization. That’s a generalization, but it describes the situation well enough. There will be a lot of restructuring. I’ll have the details of your severance sent to you later today.”
Noboru was speechless. He was in his mid-thirties, and had been with Kenko for his entire adult life. Reiko had only recently learned the nature of what he did—Kaishin designed a product, and he made sure that a market existed for that product by making calls, organizing meetings, and setting up an extensive network of interested people. He spent a large portion of his day on the phone, and every now and then would take a train or a plane out of the city, to talk in person to some other company representatives. Because his job was so social, he had developed a very affable character, which is what attracted Hideo’s resentment for him. He always wore well-tailored suits, and was very polite at all times. And he was being fired.
“I’m sure there are good reasons,” Noboru said. He stood up, bowed, and left the room without saying another word.
Mr. Perry had also stood up, and was staring down at Reiko and Toru, who were both watching Noboru leave from where they sat at the conference table. Mr. Perry said, “I haven’t yet expressed my sympathies to you, Ms. Okada, about the passing of your father. My deepest sympathies go out to you.”
Reiko smiled painfully, and didn’t say a word. Eventually Mr. Perry left as well.
Ronin 5
The Fun Life of Mr. Perry
INSTEAD OF GOING through the trouble of finding an apartment in the city, which he had heard could be an unpleasant experience, Mr. Perry fired everyone on the sixty-seventh floor of the Kenko building. He chose the sixty-seventh floor because, in his mind’s eye, he could see the perfect layout for a makeshift archetypal American home, the kind he’d never had.
The remodeling required was somewhat extravagant, but in just four days it was one of the most jarring experiences he’d ever created for himself, to have a large business elevator open up to the entryway of a very credible-looking ranch-style house. He turned a conference room into a master bedroom, he had the walls of a few offices knocked out to make a sprawling living room. He had a fireplace installed in the living room, even though he was told it would be unwise of him to light a fire in it. It didn’t dissuade him.
He specifically wanted a fireplace so that he could have a real mantle, which he adorned with many typical American knickknacks that had to be imported from across the world, topped off with a genuine elk’s head. He had a bear rug and deep leather couches.
The ‘men’ and ‘women’ signs were taken off of the bathrooms, and showers and marble floors installed. He had a kitchen, and had not one but two fully furnished guest rooms, which he had yet to think of a good use for.
With all his extravagance, he made sure that the expenses for remodeling were strictly less than what was gained from firing everyone on the floor, so that in the end he broke even and had nothing to worry about. The former people of the floor had been working on a new vaccine for malaria, which didn’t interest him enough to keep around. Their project was also not listed as a high priority on the list that Karma had made, and that sealed the deal for him.
If Mr. Perry and another employee had a disagreement, he would invite them over to his house. His house was, after all, only an elevator ride away. He would sit in one of his leather chairs facing the metallic sliding doors, the only residue of the corporate world left in the house, and wait for them to open, so that he could see their face as they took it all in. When he realized how much he enjoyed it, he had a camera set up with the same viewpoint, programmed to automatically take a picture every time the door opened, so that he could savor such moments in his old age.
He would beckon them in with a wave of his hand, and fix them a drink after he had them seated by the bear rug, facing the fireplace. After he had a drink in their hands, he would stoke a fire, with fragmented two-by-fours as tinder, topped with the latest newspaper. He would get a fire roaring, and hand them a cigar, lighting one for himself as well. He would do all of those things without a sound, until everything seemed settled and perfect. Invariably, his guest would be very unsettled, and only then would he finally speak.
He would say, “I bet you’ve never seen a house like this, not with where you’re from. That’s why I wanted to have you over, I think everyone should know how aesthetically pleasing it is. It was my father’s house, and my grandfather’s house before him. Those are their portraits over the fireplace there. Not the elk, that’s an elk, a trophy from my young days as a hunter. I’m sure you didn’t know this, Mr. Guest, but I was quite the accomplished hunter. It makes me wonder if I still am, reminiscing about it.
“Anyway, I know it’s difficult to bring up business in such a domestic environment, but I’m afraid it can’t be avoided. Perhaps when we’re done, I can show you the backyard. I have acres and acres, beautiful, wide-open land. You can’t really see it from the front, where you came in, but I assure you it’s impressive. I’ve taken to raising horses. They’re not really good for anything, but why not, right? You know what I mean. I’ve become distracted just thinking about it, my apologies. Business.
“Mr. Guest, I know we’ve had our disagreements, but I must insist you see things my way.” By that point in the conversation, black smoke billowed all across the ceiling. Technically his floor did not meet fire code standards, because he had all the smoke alarms taken out to avoid the unpleasant sound that would have ruined the moment for him.
He would point to a gun mounted on the wall, just under the level of the smoke. Their eyes would be wandering all over, but he would wait until they settled on what he was pointing at. “This isn’t a threat or anything, but that gun is loaded. It’s an 1873 Winchester, the ‘gun that won the West’. Incidentally, they make those guns here in Japan now, but that’s beside the point.
“Have you ever shot a gun, Mr. Guest? Do you know how to use one? That’s very unfortunate, they’re very fun. We’ve become off topic again. Have you decided, Mr. Guest, to see things my way?”
If they didn’t agree with him, he would call his guard over from the elevator, and the guard would take the guest by the arm as Mr. Perry took his gun from the wall. They would go to a small room in the corner of the house that had absolutely nothing in it, besides a window and a cage full of rats. All the walls were painted white, and the lighting was fluorescent, making it much brighter than the rest of the house. The guard would force the guest into the room, and Mr. Perry would follow with his gun.
“You might think,” he would say, “that a gun is pretty dangerous. And it is, it is.” He would load a round into the chamber, by operating the rifle’s lever. The guard would take two rats out of the cage, and set them on the ground. With the door closed, there was nowhere for them to escape to—he made sure that the seal of the door was extremely tight, when it was installed.