The Complete Karma Trilogy

by Jude Fawley

  “You can ask him yourself, but I doubt it. Without Mr. Okada, Haru will not go back to Kenko. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I don’t know any of them. I just know that’s what he says. He’s a very paranoid person, Reiko. With everything that’s going on around Kenko these past few weeks, I don’t blame him.”

  “Well give me the number. I’m calling him right now.”

  “Right now?” he handed her a slip of paper that had a number written on it in a tiny, wild hand.

  “Is that a problem?” Reiko asked, already dialing in the number.

  “It’s not a problem, it’s just... you’re really impulsive, aren’t you.”

  “No, don’t think so,” she said, as the ringback tone was sounding into her ear.

  “I think that’s the one thing I know about you so far, actually. That, and where you eat your lunch.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to take this call,” she responded. “So I’ll be outside.” She stood up, gathering her things. To the phone she said, “Hello, is this my dear friend Haru?” She left half of a salad uneaten, and since Toru didn’t think she was coming back he ate the rest of his sandwich in one bite and followed her outside.

  “You probably don’t remember me, but we worked together,” she said, walking through the door to the busy street outside, where it seemed to Toru like it would be much harder to talk on the phone. “I’m Reiko... yes, Reiko. And I had a lot of questions for you, so I was hoping I could meet you somewhere... yes, that’s very difficult, I understand, meeting people is an extremely difficult process, two people being in the same place, but...”

  Toru felt very awkward walking alongside of her, as she completely ignored him. They were walking away from Kenko, in a direction that had to have been random, since it was unlikely Reiko knew any of the places in their vicinity. A part of him thought he should just return to work, since his time allotment for lunch was coming to an end and he was actually an employee, unlike the heedless person that he was following.

  She said, “I assure you I’m not going to tell anyone. Maybe Toru, but only if he deserves it... that seems like a very extreme condition, but I’ll take it... I didn’t think anyone went to libraries these days, that’s very strange of you. But yes, of course.” Then she hung up.

  “Want to go on an adventure with me?” she asked, finally speaking to Toru.

  “You mean later, right? We work until five.”

  “We’ll be working, just not in a building. It’s very stubbornly traditional of you, to insist on being in a building to work, Toru.”

  “Listen, I’m being serious. I have to work. You can do whatever you want, but I have to go back. You know as well as I do that I can’t tell them I went to see Haru on business, or they will ask me where he is. Let’s just go back, and meet with Haru later, when we can both go. Okay?”

  “I like your reasoning, Toru, but I agreed to go see him now, and not some other time. So make a decision. I’ll go with or without you.”

  Toru was very frustrated. “I shouldn’t have given you that number. I’m regretting it already. I’m going back to work, I’ll talk to you about all of this later.”

  “Bye!” Reiko yelled back at him, as he walked away.

  Reiko found Haru in Chou Library, where he was sitting at a row of computers, making nervous glances at the people around him. She took a seat next to him, as if she didn’t recognize him, and tried to log on to the computer she sat in. When the computer asked her for her credentials, she had to give up pretending, since she didn’t have an account. She waited for him to acknowledge her.

  Haru looked over at her failed log-in attempt, and said to her, “Excuse me, miss, but I couldn’t help but notice you are having troubles logging in to the computer.”

  She gave a coy smile, and said, “I’m afraid it just won’t let me.”

  “What do you need a computer for, if I might ask you? Perhaps I can be of service.”

  Reiko looked one by one at all of the perfectly normal people around her, none of whom seemed to care what the two of them said, and told Haru, “I like how secretive we’re being right now. It’s like we’re spies, or something.”

  “I assure you, miss, I have no idea what it is you might be talking about.”

  “That’s because you’re stupid,” Reiko said. “And a complete stranger. Anyway, I was hoping to finish this project I started. Maybe move up to a group of sixteen. Also, and I know this means absolutely nothing to you, but this thing I’m working on is only good for rats, and I was hoping to expand to, say... humans? Seems farfetched, but I’ve got optimism. But I imagine I’ll need a computer, and I can’t even log in.”

  “Let me show you something,” he said, and scooted his chair over to her computer, while she moved away to give him space. He typed in a few things, and the screen changed to the desktop.

  “This is all so sudden,” Reiko said.

  “If you can’t take this seriously, I can’t help you,” Haru said. “Computers are for the serious.”

  “I’d better leave.”

  “Just watch.” He opened windows and typed things faster than she could follow. Watching did her no service, she had no idea what was happening behind all of the flashing pixels and rapid keystrokes. “There, I think I’ve resolved your group of sixteen, at the very least.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Wonderful! Very wonderful.”

  “As for the other thing you mentioned, it will be a much larger project. It’ll probably be more convenient for us if we found a private room here, and see what we can do there.”

  “Well why didn’t we just start there?” she said, somewhat annoyed.

  He didn’t answer. He simply stood up and started walking towards an elevator that was housed between two rows of computers, and she followed. She let him press all the buttons and pick the floor without saying a word.

  When they were finally in a room that he selected, he acknowledged her directly for the first time. He said, “How has it been there without me, these past few days?”

  “If I had known how important you were, I would have treated you better,” Reiko said. “That’s always the hard part, knowing how to treat a person you’ve only just met. I usually err on the side of treating them like peasants, because I’m usually right and it’s just more efficient. But sometimes I’m wrong.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Haru said, impatiently.

  “Oh I’m sorry. Well no one knows what they’re doing, as far as the programming is concerned, and apparently that’s the centerpiece of the project, for reasons I still don’t understand. Of course, I lack the technical background to appreciate any of your jobs, but yours especially eludes me. We’re completely behind schedule.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear.”

  “They want you to come back, Haru. Mr. Perry himself said so. Frankly, I don’t understand why you left. You got a little rough with Mr. Laurel, but I think everyone’s moved on, and we really need you.”

  “I can’t go back. The situation is more extreme than you realize, I’m afraid. We should just abandon Kaishin, if we’re being honest with ourselves.”

  “We can’t abandon it!” she pleaded. “In the name of science, we have to move forward.”

  “You’re a psychologist.”

  “You’re offensive.”

  “Listen,” Haru said. “I’ve been spying for the past few days on these Americans, the ones that took over Kenko. And I’ve learned a lot of things that I really didn’t want to know, because it’s all just made me really angry. The next time I see any of them, I’ll strangle them. Or whatever. I’ll use violence. They did kill Mr. Okada, I know it. Mr. Perry had to send an official statement back to America. And do you know who he had to send it back to?”

  “No idea,” Reiko said softly, shaking her head. The mentioning of Mr. Okada’s death saddened her.

  “To the American computer program, to Karma. The one that’s leading that nation of lunatics.”


  Since she didn’t know what else to say, she said, “That’s unfortunate.”

  “I dug deeper. It’s this computer that we’re really at war with, as absurd as that sounds. It’s the one that’s making all of the decisions, the decisions that are destroying Japan now. And it’s the one that wants Kaishin, for itself. If we finish developing Kaishin, it will be for the benefit of that American dictator, and no one else. So we should stop. Stop developing Kaishin, at least. I’ll fight against Karma until the day I die, I’ve already begun.”

  “Already begun? What are you doing?”

  “Lots of things. For example, sending the Americans false orders from Karma, draining their resources by hacking in to their finances, changing the time on their phones so that they show up late to work. Cyber guerilla warfare.

  “They really killed Mr. Okada,” Haru repeated. “All because a program told them to, because it was expedient for them. He was in their way. I have to avenge him.” He stumbled on a few of the words, becoming choked up.

  She said, “I cared about him too. And I want to make his memory proud. But to me, it’s not vengeance that will do that, because I know nothing about vengeance. It’s completing Kaishin, like he wanted.”

  Haru took a while to think about it. “Does Toru feel the same? Toru wants to continue? He didn’t come with you, I see.”

  “He didn’t come with, because he values his job, which can only take place within the exact physical confines of Kaishin, and it’s working hours right now for us conventional folk. I’m sure he’d like to talk to you about it himself, but I’m going to assume that his answer will be yes. He’ll do it.”

  “I’m not going back to Kaishin,” Haru said.

  “And you don’t have to. There seems to be computers everywhere.”

  “My condition,” he said, “is that Karma never gets a hold of our final product, whatever and whenever that might be. If that means that we have to destroy what we’ve built at any point, for the safety of everyone, then that’s what we’ll do. Can you live with those terms?”

  “If they’re the best you have,” she said.

  “I want to speak with Toru, as well. I’ll give you a call, later today, about where the two of you should meet me. Tonight.”

  “Good.”

  Mars 1

  Applicant Must

  HARDIN WAITED AS number after number was called, and people were sequestered one by one into a brightly lit room that was adjacent to the lobby. He had wanted to sit somewhere that he could see into the room, believing it would give him a distinct advantage to know its contents, but the room was cleverly situated so that it could only be seen into from its doorway. So instead, he observed the people around him. They were all waiting to be interviewed. When he had arrived, there were thirty-seven people in front of him. Now there were two.

  The company conducting the interviews was using a terribly antiquated system to maintain order—they told the applicants a number, made them wait for hours, then flashed a red LED representation of the number at them when it was their turn. It reminded Hardin, with its primitive simplicity, of the way things were done centuries before. Except that centuries before there had been tickets, small pieces of paper with the number printed on them to serve as a memory-aid. But since the downfall of paper, it was incumbent on the waiting party to remember their number unaided. Several times he watched as a number flashed unanswered, and everyone else stared dumbly around at each other, looking for the culprit.

  Hardin very clearly remembered his number, as well as the numbers of every other individual in the room, since he had been paying attention to each prospective employee as they entered and spoke to the receptionist. Sitting across from him was Number 397, who was subtly dealing with some sort of respiratory problem, and to his left was Number 391, who had dark circles under his eyes and a paranoid tic that involved him looking at the number screen every five seconds. On average the number took seven minutes to progress, which meant that he looked at the screen eighty-four times before it finally changed for him.

  Time elapsed, and Hardin was next in line. He wasn’t impressed with any of his competition. By all rights he shouldn’t have even had to interview for the job. It was small hints that led him to that conclusion—Number 396 wrote his number on his hand, implying a weakness in memory retention, Number 394 wouldn’t stop trying to start conversations with the Numbers around her, implying some sort of psychological insecurity that required her to constantly be seeking attention. Number 399 wore a wedding ring, which implied a familial obligation that could easily become at odds with his job—Hardin himself had no such human shortcomings, but he didn’t know how far it would get him, didn’t know if he had to make that point directly to his interviewers and if its value would be appreciated as it should.

  His number was called, and simultaneously represented by red light in the lobby’s corner. He stood up, and made his way to the bright room. It exponentially opened up in front of him, the closer he approached the doorway. The first thing he noticed was the lemon tree that dominated an entire quadrant of the room. It was supposed to express the company’s compliance with the civic responsibility to grow food, he assumed, but they couldn’t have chosen a more useless fruit. It was a joke, a thinly veiled insult towards the starving, lesser people of the world. Then he saw two armed guards standing to its side, an even more direct statement of affluence. And finally he made out a small panel of interviewers, who had in their possession a stack of small pieces of paper.

  Hardin knew that only one of those pieces of paper represented himself—eight centimeters by twelve, he estimated. Half-centimeter margins on each side. To fit his life into that size, the information was printed extraordinarily small. A well-qualified applicant’s paper would have been illegible, a thought that Hardin mechanically filed away as ironic. Since paper was such a valuable commodity, the three people conducting the interview were forced to share the one piece. Before they asked any questions at all, he had to wait until the paper was passed around and all three knew enough about him to proceed.

  They whispered amongst themselves, a small conference that was supposed to be inaudible to Hardin, but he heard them anyway. They were making sure they all agreed he was unqualified, so that they were on the same page. Finally, one of them spoke at a level which was meant to include Hardin—a competently bald man in his sixties, his face given to liver spots. He said, “It seems, Mr. Hardin, that you’ve not been to university, which is a prerequisite to the positions we are trying to fill. We were wondering what made you think that this prerequisite could be bypassed, especially considering that you have no experience in the field.”

  The field that Hardin had ‘no experience in’, if it had to be given a descriptive name, was something like mechanical engineering. The company was a former German industry, which of course had been incorporated into the World Government over a century before. It still retained a fair aspect of its German nature, though—its concern for quality, its obsession with hierarchy, its superiority complex. For those merits, it was one of the companies contracted to make the final additions to the terraformation of Mars.

  Hardin said, “I was hoping you would find, after this interview, that such experience is entirely unnecessary.”

  While the other interviewers cringed, the bald man laughed. As he laughed, a large vein appeared on his forehead, a vasodilation that suggested anger. Hardin remembered a fair amount about him, at least enough to know that the man had, by the industry’s standards, contributed nothing of worth to the field. Erich Kästner. He had graduated without distinction from the Technical University of Munich, worked for several decades as a contractor at a number of Europe’s larger companies, and finally settled into human resources when he had nothing else to offer. Hardin only knew his name because he had known for five years that he would have to go through him—other than that, the man was entirely forgettable. He said, “We believe, and I’m sure I speak for my companions, that you are suprem
ely underestimating the worth of experience, as well as of university. In what other way could you be acquainted with the rigorous mathematics the job requires, and the complex physics?”

  The comments would have intimidated a weaker psyche, but Hardin was always confident. He said, “Rigorous math? You mean the calculations that the computers do for you?”

  “A basic knowledge of the processes involved is still of utmost importance,” the bald man countered with a renewed anger.

  “And this basic knowledge is only accessible from... the university,” Hardin offered.

  “Yes, of course.”

  It was a ridiculous assertion to agree to, but that didn’t seem to perturb the bald man’s sense of reason. Hardin had to proceed around it. “Give me a problem, then,” Hardin said. It was his planned approach all along—he had known for quite a while that he would face such adversity, and that a demonstration of his skills would be the only way around it.

  “A problem?” The bald man was confused.

  “Something pertinent to the job I’m applying for. Something only an experienced individual would know, as you seem to believe. And allow me to prove you wrong.”

  “We don’t have any of those kinds of problems prepared, Mr. Hardin, so that would be quite impossible.”

  “An interview for an engineering job, and you have no prepared exercises by means of which the applicant can display their qualification? Who is not prepared, in this room—me or you?”

  The verbal attack was too reckless, Hardin realized too late. It was inappropriate for a man in his position. Social situations were hard for him to judge, although he had spent quite a long time trying to learn them. For instance, he only knew that he made a mistake not by further reflection of what he had said, but by the sudden fury that erupted in all three members of the panel.

  After they had eventually calmed themselves, one of the other interviewers, a featureless middle-aged woman, said, “You can now consider yourself as ineligible for the position, Mr. Hardin. You can now leave.” He knew a fair amount about her as well, he knew that she was a depressive, that she had spent several years in a Rehabilitation Clinic when she was younger, and that she was a hypocrite—she had never graduated from a university, either. Her father had pulled some strings to get her a position in the company that she was entirely unqualified for. Any of the other applicants would have looked at her and seen a respectable woman of numerous accomplishments—she wore her business suit with a rigid, professional demeanor that bespoke success—but Hardin knew better.