329 Years Awake

by Ellie Maloney

  As time went by, Ennuturat grew to like the humans he spent his time with. To keep the appearance before his colleagues, he was extra grumpy about the away assignment, but in reality this was the most fun he had had since the Oscillation Project had begun. Just being around other living things, interacting with them, was so much more entertaining. He felt that humans were his pets, and even perhaps slightly more than that. Friends? No, that would be going too far. Since no word was particularly appropriate, Ennuturat thought of his Japanese humans as his favorite pets. Humans had pets too. Ennuturat found it endearing that humans got so attached to their little living companions. That was something he could definitely relate to.

  “Jose, walk with me to the market! Let’s have a meal together,” suggested Tatami. “I know you are not fond of our cuisine, but you are a big proponent of a good drink! Maybe we can have a drink together!”

  Ennuturat couldn’t get out of the invitation easily. Tatami was determined. Ennuturat knew that Tatami had come to ask for his protection before the Tokugawa administration. That would be so easy for Ennuturat to arrange, as Tokugawa basically was Ennuturat’s lap dog. But Ennuturat would have to care about Tatami’s little life and his little problems. What was he to Ennuturat? A fruit fly, a little bug, so insignificant in his big universe.

  And yet somehow this insignificant human had some sort of power over Ennuturat. Or maybe it was rather Ennuturat allowing the human to think this way. One way or another, the two were walking downtown Edo, through the fish market, to the famous sake house both of them enjoyed. The two unlikely companions passed by the fish tables where the crafty cooks slew fish and prepared it right before the customers. Tatami was particularly fond of the ‘dancing squid’. The two got in line to order sashimi for Tatami before they went into the sake house.

  For Ennuturat, watching the preparation of live sashimi was always a horrifying experience, but he did it with an impenetrable expression. The squid was stored in big tubs of water, from which it was cleverly extracted with long pliers and allowed to squirt water, the final line of defence from a vastly superior, powerful enemy - the butcher. Then the creature was placed on the cutting board, gutted and skinned alive, chopped into pieces that danced on the cutting board in final agony. Such cruelty choked Ennuturat, but he made himself watch as a reminder that the humans and the Unkari were not so different after all; and given the opportunity, humans would gut and skin the Unkari alive just as easily.

  And also that the humans possessed the kind of weapon that could do that to the Unkari. Perhaps not right now, but in the future, something in the human consciousness would give them almost divine potential - to turn water into wine, to walk on water, to part seas, to cure the sick and to create the worlds and everything living in them. That was a truly horrifying thought to every Unkari, and was the one thing that both tribes for the most part agreed on.

  “Maybe you’d like to try some today, Jose?” suggested Tatami.

  “My friend, you know that where I come from, we don’t eat such things.” Of course if Tatami knew other Portuguese merchants personally, he would have known that they embraced eating fish, perhaps not in such graphic form as live sashimi. “What is so amazing for you in… eating live things?”

  “I never thought of it. Live means fresh. This is how we receive our nutrition, from the ocean. This is what we have here. No great philosophy behind it, I’m afraid.”

  “Tatami, do you realize that some of these creatures have senses that can experience things you cannot even imagine! Mantis shrimp, it can see colors you cannot see. Mammals can smell and taste things so sharply that it would blow your mind if you could experience only a fraction of it! And be assured, that they can feel every instance of being pried open and dissected for your consumption.”

  Tatami looked closely at Ennuturat, thinking that his vision was tricking him into seeing weird things. For a second it appeared to him that Brito had tentacles, just like the squid on his plate! “My friend Jose, your talks make me see crazy things! And I am very hungry now, so I suggest let’s eat first and then talk about it over good sake. Then you can tell me all about it!”

  Sake! Ennuturat loved that stuff. Alcohol was common in the Unkari biochemistry and they consumed it for hydration, but humans invented recipes of it so intricate and so different all over the planet that he never stopped marvelling at their craftiness.

  Year 2045.

  Tokyo, Japan.

  Back at the Old city in Tsukiji district, Nakamura, Fah, and Veronica Starr continued chatting about alien conspiracies and sipping hot sake.

  Year 1604.

  Edo, Japan

  Tatami poured a cup of sake for Ennuturat and himself, and both indulged in their drink. Tatami, with his stomach full of dancing squid that needed to be settled, and Ennuturat, whose stomach was unsettled from the mere sight of Tatami’s food.

  Year 2045.

  Tokyo, Japan.

  Jaden barged into the entrance of the sake house, throwing the doors open in front of him and hastily looking for the group he was supposed to meet an hour ago.

  “Ah! There you are!” he exclaimed, seeing the group of three seated in the middle of the restaurant. All three visibly cringed at Jaden’s brash entrance, who, with numerous shopping bags in his hands, approached the table and seated himself next to Fah.

  “Jaden, where have you been? Don’t tell me - shopping!”

  “Ok, I won’t!”

  “I can see the bags! You went crazy on your first day in this country!”

  “Oh shut up, girl. If I wasn’t thinking about shopping for both of us, you would be wearing your old rags now. And now look at you! Such class!”

  “You know that this is a typical shopaholic’s excuse, right?”

  “I. Don’t. Have. This. Problem. Okay? I’m just being… strategic. We need clothes!”

  “Jaden, this poncho costs a fortune!”

  “The appropriate response would be to thank me! And by the way you can afford it now.”

  “Your friend is right,” chimed in Veronica Starr. “You can afford it now. And by the way, you look fantastic.” Veronica flashed one of her smiles that made Fah weak at the knees.

  “Alright, girl!” Jaden tried to awkwardly hi-five with Veronica but she didn’t go for it, and Jaden’s hand remained hanging in the air for a very long and just as embarrassing second. “What’s wrong with your team spirit, girl?” Jaden pouted and directed his hand at the sake jug. “What did I miss?”

  “Oh I don’t know,” Fah answered, “just a world order conspiracy of epic proportions, that’s about it.”

  Nakamura smiled.

  “So what is it you want me to do, Mr Nakamura?” Fah inquired, trying not to stare at the steely eyes of Veronica Starr, the eyes that pulled her in like quick sand.

  “I believe you’ve accomplished most of your preliminary research. We’ve been tracing your progress as you continued to request archival materials from Japan linking the Tokugawa Shōgunate and the alien presence. So I believe you’ve put that much together.”

  “Well, I saw the evidence. I just couldn’t quite trust my conclusions.”

  “I know you were trying to trace the descendants of the Tokugawa samurai. What do you know about it?”

  “I believe that the samurai received a particular treatment to enhance their abilities.”

  “That just sums it up nicely. I want to give you the resources to finish this part of the investigation. We need DNA samples of these samurai ancestors. We believe that they have a gene capable of improving metabolism and self-healing abilities. In particular, we believe that the samurai had the ability to consciously direct the cells in their body to kill cancer cells, and some other tricks, like disassociating from pain, improved reaction etc. This research has tremendous potential for the field of gene therapy. Aliens planted this DNA in humans, and we need to
identify it and learn how to use it for the good of humanity, just like DARPA once did with inventing the Internet.”

  Fah bit her lip and thought about it for a moment.

  “How do you sleep at night, knowing all of this?”

  “Pretty good. That is what I suggest you do as well. Life is short. They have been here probably for centuries and we are still around. It will be ok in our lifetime, if we don’t kick the hornet’s nest.”

  “Aren’t you a bit curious to meet an alien life form?”

  “I thought about it. But what would be the benefit in it? I prefer the status quo. And also I prefer to find the DNA that cures cancer.”

  Year 2045.

  Osaka

  People rarely chose to live in the Dotonbori district. People worked there, hung out there, but then they went home to their suburbs. Nyoko preferred Dotonbori. In fact, the only other place she could probably bear living would be Tokyo, even more crowded that Osaka’s Dotonbori, but Tokyo was out of the question. Too many tourists and diplomats made the authorities more vigilant, and homeless Nyoko would have been constantly on the run from them. In Dotonbori she felt at home. Each shop blasted a different tune, creating constant discordant noise. To Nyoko it was her personal cosmic background radiation, permeating every pore of her body and probably even filling her lungs and making her breathe. People were constantly on the move.

  Everyone was an individual, yet no one really stood out. Nyoko often thought that Dotonbori compensated for her lack of personality, filling her to the core with sensory input from every corner, making her feel alive. She didn’t have to feel or think, she didn’t have to hear her own thoughts, when she was surrounded with Dotonbori’s presence. She was never alone, and always alone. A perfect - or the only - way of being for her.

  Actually Nyoko wasn’t exactly homeless, but her living situation was not a conventional one. She lived in an internet cafe, where she paid a tiny amount for a booth with paper-thin walls, which housed a single chair, a desk and a screen. Of the luxuries of her ‘housing complex’, there was a shower stall in the general bathroom, which the owner decided to install after a few years when the place started stinking so much that people passed out.

  Most people have no idea how a person could live out of a shoe box of possessions. Nyoko perfected this style. She ate, she slept, she played online games, she fucked. Life was simple, and any minimal complication of that scenario immediately triggered her anxiety.

  When Fah knocked on the door of her booth, that was the kind of a complication Nyoko could not easily cope with.

  “Yes? Who’s there?” asked Nyoko, her voice uncertain.

  “My name is Fah. I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Are you from church?”

  “No.”

  “Social services?”

  “No.”

  “Police?”

  “No, nothing like that. I am a researcher, a journalist. I want to talk to you about your life.”

  Nyoko burst out laughing.

  “Right. My life?”

  Fah opened the door and walked in. The cubicle was so tiny that Fah barely squeezed in and stood to the side of the desk, pressed to the wall. In the door opening Nyoko saw another person.

  “Hi, I’m Jaden. I’m a writer.” Jaden smiled. His large frame blocked a good portion of light from the hallway. “I’ll just stay over here for the time being, if you don’t mind.”

  “Who are you people and what do you want from me?”

  “My name is Fah Napasiri. This is Jaden, he’s my friend. He helps me with the research. I came from Thailand at the invitation of a distinguished Japanese scientist. We are looking for the descendants of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s samurai. And we believe you are one of them.”

  Year 2045.

  Atlantic Ocean. Unkari Research Facility

  Argon Katu held another emergency meeting. This guy Michio Nakamura was proving to be a real problem, and the team was assembled to figure out how to disrupt his activity on researching the samurai DNA.

  A task force of five Unkari bureaucrats were sitting around the table. Each had a liquid silver screen before them and they dipped their tentacles in that silvery puddle to access various data.

  “Who’s first?” inquired Argon.

  “Let’s just remove him. It’s simple,” suggested one of the team members.

  “Have you even done any probability analysis?” vehemently disagreed another. “The last time we removed someone of Nakamura’s level we created additional problems.”

  “The last time was Kennedy,” inserted one of the team.

  “Kennedy was not last! There were many after him.”

  “Name one! I thought so.”

  “Kennedy was different. We didn’t remove him personally, remember? Some CIA elements cracked his doctor and he told them everything, about the gene, about us, about the fact that without our treatment Kennedy wouldn’t have lasted that long… They removed him. They didn’t want a president propped by the aliens.”

  “Oh come on!” disagreed another alien. “Do you believe these Enkri conspiracy theories? Argon, you were on the case. Am I right?”

  “Kennedy is classified,” Argon informed him. “What do we have on the Nakamura subject? I don’t have all day to waste here.”

  “Right. I think most of us would agree that removing Nakamura would be… shall I say, unsophisticated. Also he is so well protected, we would have to do some collateral damage and risk being exposed once again.”

  Argon grew impatient. He hated when his staff schooled him on the obvious.

  “What are you suggesting then?”

  “The more subtle way would be to remove his current research team. We’ve done some high-level probability analysis.” With those words, the speaker scooped some of the liquid silver from his screen puddle and tossed it across the desk towards Argon. Argon scooped the substance and connected it to his liquid screen. Quickly scanning the data analysis, he nodded his head in mild approval. “Fah Napasiri is my suggestion. Removing her would buy us plenty of time, and hopefully Nakamura will pass away by that time. This guy she is working with, the writer, he presents no problem. We believe he will be so scared by Fah’s death that it will clearly deter him from further digging.”

  “What about this other woman involved?” asked Argon. “Veronica Starr.”

  “She is a mercenary. She follows the money. We can buy her off if we have to but we believe she will just move to another high-paying client.”

  “I want to talk to her first,” insisted Argon.

  “This is really unnecessary. And highly irregular,” protested one of the bureaucrats while the others sprayed a few puffs of colored powder in the air, communicating their disagreement.

  “Contain your emotions, please. It’s not a street market. I said I want to talk to her first. Get my shield ready and track her location.”

  Year 2045.

  Tokyo, Japan

  It had been three months since Nyoko first met Fah and moved with her to Tokyo. Although Fah paid her well as a research subject, the selling point for Nyoko was Tokyo itself. Until the high school, she had lived with her parents in Tokyo, but then she had dropped out of school and escaped home. Nyoko hitchhiked her way to Osaka where she wished to start living her own life the way she wanted it. The only thing she missed in Tokyo was her high school crush. That was such a ridiculous and hopeless crush, because Daichi didn’t even remember her in school. He always played it cool, kept to himself, and focused on his books. Daichi was going to go places, or so it had appeared at first. But then something in that boy broke, and he dropped out of cram school, and out of real life as well.

  There was a key difference between Daichi and Nyoko. In the gaming community Daichi was a rock star. Nobody cared where he was or what he did with his real life, because on the web Dai
chi was a celebrity. Although he never visited conferences and never communicated with his fans, Daichi could win any tournament if he so desired.

  Daichi had made it, thought Nyoko. She, on the other hand, had absolutely nothing to show in her life. She didn’t even have those aspirations to begin with. The only reason she involved herself in those gaming tournaments was to keep in touch with Daichi, albeit only on the score board, where he always was on top. But even that felt intimate to Nyoko.

  ***

  Fah walked into the spacious warehouse that served her as a laboratory. She was sipping hot black coffee as she approached the section with the computers and the wall, all littered with various scraps of paper and colored threads connecting them. The monster made its way back to the new place as well.

  Nyoko was at one of the computers with a top-of-the-line gaming console, slaying some alien monsters on the screen.

  “Morning, Nyoko. Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes, Fah, thank you. Where’s Jaden this morning?”

  “I think he is chasing a new fling. He hasn’t been sleeping in his room for some time now.”

  “Nice.”

  “What about you, Nyoko? Do you have someone special?”

  “Kinda… It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sure it is!” Fah chuckled. “Nothing is simple when it comes to love.”

  Fah meant every word of it. If there was a world competition on developing unrealistic crushes, she would be a champion. Her recent crush was so out of her league, that it took the cake in the list of romantic attachments that go nowhere.

  Veronica Starr… She just loved to roll that name on the tip of her tongue. She was so high in the clouds, so unattainable. Every time Fah and her met for business, it felt as if Veronica had an invisible taser on her heart and kept jolting it with every time she spoke Fah’s name.

  “What are we going to do today, Fah?” Nyoko asked her, snatching Fah from her marshmallow clouds. Fah blushed and cleared her throat as subtly as she could.

  “I made a list of some Zen meditation techniques. You need to try achieving Mushin. Your eventual goal would be to heal a small pin prick or a paper cut with your mind. I hope you are ok with all this pricking we do here.”