Slum Online

by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

  SLUM

  ONLINE

  HIROSHI SAKURAZAKA

  Slum Online

  © 2005 Hiroshi Sakurazaka

  Originally published in Japan by Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.

  Bonus Round

  © 2010 Hiroshi Sakurazaka, originally written for Slum Online Haikasoru edition.

  English translation by Joseph Reeder

  Cover illustration by toi8

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.

  HAIKASORU

  Published by

  VIZ Media, LLC

  295 Bay Street

  San Francisco, CA 94133

  www.haikasoru.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4215-3956-0

  Haikasoru eBook edition, August 2010

  > CONTENTS

  SLUM ONLINE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  BONUS ROUND

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  I PRESSED THE BUTTON and was no longer Etsuro Sakagami.

  I had become Tetsuo.

  Music spilled from the speakers. I sat before a twenty-fiveinch tube television, three cables snaking from inputs on the front of the set to a game console lying on the floor, a joystick held lightly in my fingers. Two more cords ran between the console and the wall, one to an electrical outlet and the other to a LAN jack.

  My room was typical, nothing fancy. Shelves and racks lined the walls, filled to bursting with paperback novels, DVDs, and video games. Wires threaded their way between the piles of junk that littered the floor. I had a dresser, but most of my clothes were on hangers suspended from the curtain rail. Outside my room, an ordinary hallway led to a flight of steep stairs, and beyond that an ordinary living room. All part of an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood. This particular ordinary house belonged to my parents, and I called it home.

  A motorbike putt-putt-putted down the road that ran past our house. A police car trailed close behind, orders to pull over crackling loudly over the bullhorn mounted on its roof. Beneath the road, a fat fiber optic cable had been laid through gas company-owned pipe space in the ground. The signal created when I pressed the A button was traveling through that cable right now, a compressed packet of data moving at the speed of light—300,000 kilometers per second in a vacuum, fast enough to circle the earth seven and a half times in the span of a second. The packet raced south beneath the asphalt, flying past the motorbike as it plodded along at a leisurely 36 kph.

  A busy ramen shop stood on the street corner. Illegally parked cars lined the shoulder of the road near the shop, much as they did every night. A middle-aged man squatted beneath a light pole at the side of the road, vomiting up a partially digested broth of beer and noodles. A woman standing in line outside the shop, her brow knitted in disgust, shielded herself behind her boyfriend. Across the intersection a foreigner was robbing the clerk of a twenty-four-hour convenience store at knifepoint. Oblivious to the crime unfolding a stone’s throw away, the police continued barking orders for the motorbike to pull over, the staticky pop of their voices echoing through the humid night air. Rows of red taillights trailed off into the distance.

  The packet left all that behind as it hurtled toward the hub that would guide it on its way. No sooner had the A button signal passed through a series of computers and reached the server than it turned back into a packet racing down the same fiber optic network it had just traversed. Past Gimme all your money! Past Stop the bike now! Past Ew, gross! Then into the house, across the living room, up the stairs, down the hall, into my room and through the LAN cable stretched across the floor.

  Tetsuo sprang to life.

  The television screen displayed an aerial view that looked down on Tetsuo at a 45-degree angle. He wore a short school uniform with pants that looked like an old pair of bellbottoms. A white headband held back his spiky manga hair. On his feet were a pair of high wooden clogs. No socks.

  The fingers of my right hand rested on the controller’s three buttons while my left held the stick with a light yet steady grip, the way a cook might hold an egg. Pressing the stick to the right would move Tetsuo forward toward the middle of the screen, left would move him backwards. The A button made him block, the B button punch, and the C button kick. Combinations of stick movements and button presses could make Tetsuo perform a variety of complex maneuvers.

  I tapped the stick twice to the right and Tetsuo broke into a run. A wall of cel-shaded polygonal blocks scrolled by in perfect sync with Tetsuo’s stride. A polygonal road glided beneath his feet. Polygonal furniture set in polygonal houses peeked out from behind digital glass. A pair of too-perfect clouds like butter rolls drifted in the unreal turquoise blue sky. Light poles cast unchanging shadows on the ground, the sharp angles of their underlying wireframe almost, but not quite, concealed. Just another sunny day in Versus Town.

  Tetsuo ran down the broad Main Street that cut through the center of town. In front of him a landscape of grainy pixels winked into life only to snuff out just as quickly in his wake.

  It may have been eleven o’clock at night, but Versus Town was just waking up. There were other people on the street with Tetsuo, all of them running along the right side of the road. Not a one was standing or walking at a regular pace.

  Tetsuo rounded a corner. He hopped a wall and then turned another corner. A man was coming straight toward Tetsuo along the left side of the road.

  I pressed the A button to stop. My fingers tilted the stick, commanding Tetsuo forward and to the left. A fraction of a second later, Tetsuo responded by planting a foot and veering leftward. Tetsuo and the man brushed against each other, each spinning around the point of impact. If I hadn’t stepped to the side when I did, they would have collided head-on.

  I pulled out my keyboard and started hammering, my words appearing in a bubble over Tetsuo’s head as I typed.

  > Watch where you’re going!

  Judging by his fighting stance, the man standing before Tetsuo was a capoeirista, and a heavyweight at that. He stood a full head taller than the middleweight Tetsuo, and the capoeirista had the bulk to match the height. The capoeirista remained silent. Unsatisfied, I continued my tirade of text.

  > Ever hear of walking on the right side of the road?

  He wore a camouflage-textured tank top and a red wristband wrapped tightly around his right arm. Tetsuo put his hands on his hips in a gesture of frustration.

  > Helloooo? Anybody home?

  The capoeirista answered with a kick.

  There was no way to see it coming. Like a frog staring at an unsuspecting fly before flicking out its tongue, the capoeirista’s expression never changed. No feelings manifested on that polygonal face to betray his thoughts.

  Defenseless, Tetsuo took the full brunt of the capoeirista’s sweeping kick. The force of the blow sent him flying. Spinning as he sailed through the air, Tetsuo slammed into a nearby wall and fell crashing to the ground. A meaty, exaggerated thud burst from the speakers. Crack details marred the concrete blocks at the point of impact. Tetsuo’s health gauge fell by 10 percent.

  Text bubbled over the capoeirista’s head.

  > Shut up, karateka.

  I adjusted my grip on the stick. My hands blurred over the controls. Tetsuo vaulted off the ground with a kip-up
, putting some distance between himself and the capoeirista. The capoeirista charged, unleashing a forward kick as Tetsuo got to his feet. I didn’t bother with the A button. Using only the stick, I maneuvered Tetsuo back and to the left, sidestepping the attack. The capoeirista was already well into his next move.

  Capoeira is a traditional martial art from Brazil that makes extensive use of foot techniques. Their kicks and sweeps trace graceful arcs that make the fighter look half a dancer in battle. But behind those kicks lurks deadly strength, especially when delivered with the force of a heavyweight.

  A low sweep. A torso kick. An axe kick. A step-in roundhouse. The capoeirista left no gap between his attacks, putting Tetsuo solidly on the defensive. When the barrage finally ended there was a brief, but significant, recovery time before the capoeirista could move again. Heavyweights packed a lot of power in each attack, but they took longer to recover too, leaving them vulnerable. That was the price they paid for their raw power.

  I timed a flying knee to land after his next lunge. Tetsuo’s knee made contact with a satisfying thunk that signaled a successful counterhit, and the capoeirista soared. I kneed his body once more in the air and then crouched to meet him with a punch as he landed. Before the punch animation had even finished, I was already inputting my next command: two quick taps on the stick. The instant the cooldown from his last attack ended, Tetsuo dashed forward. Pressing the A button to cancel out of the run, I followed up with a low foot sweep. Tetsuo dashed again and brought a punch crashing down squarely onto the fallen capoeirista’s back. As his opponent rose to his feet, Tetsuo jabbed with his fastest punch. Now the capoeirista was playing defense.

  I canceled out of a punch-kick combo and tapped the command to speed-dash. Tetsuo retracted his right leg midswing and darted forward. Time for a throw. Tetsuo grabbed the capoeirista by the scruff of the neck and hammered him with a head butt that sent him sprawling on his back. Tetsuo moved after him so quickly he might have been the heavyweight’s shadow.

  The capoeirista rolled to one side, sweeping out with his leg as he regained his feet. It was the textbook response, and I’d seen it coming a mile away. Tetsuo dodged the attack with ease before firing another knee strike. It connected with a mighty crunch. Tetsuo snuck in another knee as the capoeirista hung suspended in the air, and the heavyweight went flying into the wall.

  I punched the capoeirista as his body rebounded. Cancel, punch. Punch, kick, cancel, heel drop. Crouching punch. Speed dash. Cancel. Low foot sweep. When it was over, the crumpled ruin of Tetsuo’s opponent lay on the ground, motionless. A moment later, he vanished from the screen. My hands moved to the keyboard.

  > Out of your league, scrub.

  Versus Town existed online, its only access a game console hooked up to the Internet. To move, you had the stick and buttons on the controller. To talk you had a keyboard, and to see, you had a TV screen. That was it.

  There was no electricity in Versus Town. No gas lines or water mains. People who lived in a digital world never grew thirsty. They never felt cold, they never cooked. No one had to turn on the lights in a world made of light. There wasn’t a single convenience store, movie theater, or ballpark. At night, sometime between ten o’clock and five the next morning, I log in and Tetsuo comes to Versus Town. A make-believe man in a make-believe city. He was new there, and he had come for one thing: to fight.

  Versus Town was an online fighting game that used the Internet to bring together players from around the world. They fought each other using their controllers to manipulate the characters on the screen. No two characters were alike. Their polygonal bodies moved with supernatural precision motioncaptured by state-of-the-art technology from real martial artists. Polygonal warriors for a polygonal world.

  The digital shops and houses, light poles and trash cans, glimmering cel-shaded and textured signs—all this meant nothing to the people who lived in Versus Town. They ran the streets in search of their next battle. Their arms were made to punch, their legs to kick. Even their heads were weapons; no thoughts flitted behind their lifeless eyes.

  The capoeirista a fading memory, Tetsuo ran down Main Street toward the arena—a route he could have navigated blindfolded. That was where everyone would be.

  Tetsuo pushed open a door of frosted glass and stepped into the arena. A poster advertising the upcoming second season tournament hung on the marble-textured wall. The tournament was scheduled to open the last week of June, less than a month away. Tetsuo would be entering, and he meant to win.

  Tetsuo headed for a private training room at the edge of the arena where he proceeded to practice his combo moves on a wooden sparring dummy. His usual pre-fight warm-up. Countless characters were engaged in matches in the fighting rings at his back. There were fighters from every school imaginable: snake boxing, wrestling, drunken fist, and sumo, to name a few.

  Two characters stood at the far right edge of my screen, not fighting, but chatting. Whoever they were, they knew their way around a keyboard; the text in the bubbles over their heads scrolled by in a blur. They were standing a good distance away, so the words appeared somewhat squished, but I could still make them out.

  > Probably a snake boxer.

  A gaudy T-shirt was textured across the man’s chest. His stance labeled him a karateka like Tetsuo. The other character was a lightweight fighter, probably a jujutsuka. He wore a white sparring suit with a brown, pleated hakama skirt that hung from his waist. On his feet were a pair of straw sandals the color of fresh-cut grass.

  > Probably?

  The karateka’s answer bubbled onto the screen.

  > Nobody knows for sure.

  > He really that good?

  > They say he beat one of the top four.

  > Who?

  > 963.

  The “top four” wasn’t an official distinction in Versus Town, but it carried such weight that it may as well have been. As far as the players were concerned, the four best characters in the game were Pak, a snake boxer; Keith, a capoeirista; Tanaka, an eagle claw stylist; and 963, a jujutsuka. But it was Pak who outshone all the rest. He had won the first season tournament with barely a scratch. Beating Pak was the dream of every player in Versus Town.

  I gave my hands a rest and turned my attention to their conversation.

  > Can’t you just ask him who it was?

  > I did.

  > And?

  > He was alone over in Sanchōme when he got ganked. Never saw who it was.

  The mysterious character stalking Sanchōme was a common topic these days.

  > PK?

  > Everyone’s a PK in VT. It was just another street fight.

  > Why doesn’t he try for a rematch?

  > This guy’s way too good.

  > He can’t be all that.

  > We’re talking Lord British tough. No one’s ever beat him.

  > Maybe it was some kind of script?

  People paid a monthly fee to play Versus Town, so the players were more than players, they were customers. Scripted events were one trick the game developers used to keep customers entertained and online. But the karateka was clearly unconvinced.

  > Nah, I’m telling you, it wasn’t a script.

  > I’d like to see him for myself.

  > He only fights the best. If you’re not in the top ten, he won’t give you the time of day.

  > I don’t buy it. They’re losing players, so they wrote some script to stir up some talk is all.

  > /shrug Maybe.

  > One of the top four’s a snake boxer, right?

  > Yeah.

  > Then it must be him.

  > It’s a different character.

  > So maybe he’s playing an alt. He’s the same school.

  > 963 said he played different.

  > You can’t tell from one fight. A fight he lost, by the way.

  > True that.

  > So why’s he ganking people?

  > Maybe he likes taking the piss out of players who think they’re masters of the
universe.

  > Why all the secret ninja shit?

  > That way if he loses, nobody knows it’s him. He’s not embarrassed on his main.

  > Makes sense.

  > Good enough for me.

  > You’re probably right.

  I found myself staring blankly at the screen. A chime sounded, warning me I’d been inactive, and I realized their conversation had ended.

  Light spilled from the TV into my dimly lit room. The digital clock on my DVR read 11:45. The air had grown damp, and my hand was uncomfortably warm where my palm met the stick. The karateka and his jujutsuka friend had long since logged out.

  I heard a tap tap tap on the roof, rhythmic and faint. Rain. Outside the street was quiet, the wail of the police siren a distant memory.

  For some reason, I couldn’t get the snake boxer from Sanchōme out of my head. Tonight’s score: 42 wins, 0 losses, 3 ties.

  CHAPTER 2

  IT WAS RAINING. There was more wet in the air than air, making it difficult to breathe. The water that had soaked through my shoes leeched warmth from the tips of my toes. There was a growing puddle, a shiny disc of reflected fluorescent light, beneath my umbrella where it leaned against the desk.

  I sat in a small classroom, two seats from the dingy wall at the back of the room, staring up at the flickering fluorescent light overhead. The patter of raindrops against the windows. The squeak of chalk on the blackboard. Whispers that died before you could guess where they’d come from. It all formed a pastiche of sound FX over the music playing in my headphones.

  My logic instructor, Professor Uemura, loved tracking attendance. It was a real fetish of his. He would hand out cards at the start of each class and collect them after the bell rang to dismiss us. If you brought the card with you, you could show up right before class ended to turn it in for full credit. The trick was having the right card; he used about twenty different kinds. So despite the fact it was the first period on a Monday morning, the classroom was full.