Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-04

by Penny Publications

  Since Billy had reported the problem (with typical Japanese management style) it became his to oversee. As he waited in the restroom for the technician to arrive, Billy became an average American for a few minutes—underpaid, working in a humiliating environment, hating his boss. He was his father's son for perhaps for the last time. He needed to comfort the zombie. It was like taking care of Dad after Mom left in his ninth year. At least there was no vomit to clean up. Billy got a few stiff brown paper towels and dried the toilet water off of his suit. He pulled the zombie from the stall and laid it out on the green and brown tiles of the restroom. He was making a little pillow for it out of copies of To Kill a Mockingbird from his class. As he waited for the technician, he kept telling the kyonshi it would be all right, and cussing his asshole boss for making him wait in an unheated restroom. He was patting the cold brow of the kyonshi, when the restroom door swung open.

  "Please stand away from the Kyonshi Mark I," said the white-coated technician.

  It was an awkward moment. The technician came from the apartment next to his. This man or his wife had pounded on Billy's wall many times when his Zazen program would loudly awaken him.

  "I tried to make him comfortable," said Billy.

  "The Kyonshi Mark IV has no software appreciating comfort. Please explain the accident to me."

  The technician showed no signs of recognition, but how many six-foot-eight, chubby, red-haired Irish Americans lived in Nagoya? From the small high windows, Billy saw that night had fallen. He had probably pulled this poor man from his apartment—once again disturbing his night.

  Watching the man work on the fallen zombie looked like that robot repair scene from a dozen cheap movies. The technician popped the controller open and was removing a small box from behind the kyonshi's right eye. He took a small unit from his belt, and connected it to the fallen zombie. He pushed buttons, the kyonshi sat up. More buttons, it stood up. The technician pushed more buttons, watched indicator lights and said, "I will have to take him home for repair. I will need you to sign him over to me."

  "Home?" said Billy, "Not to a factory or office?"

  "I am the Capeksen representative of the area. Many people do not like having the kyonshi near them. But I live in an apartment full of Koreans and other foreign devils."

  Billy looked down. He had suddenly become Japanese again—not really Japanese of course, but the fantasy Japanese he had hoped to be. Billy Parsons felt loss of face. He bowed, and said quietly, "I am sorry to have disturbed the harmony of your home."

  The technician looked like he might laugh. Twice he started to speak, trying to find the right words; finally he spoke in English. "Mr. Parsons you cannot understand you have given my wife and I someone we can yell at. It is a rare gift."

  Billy stared. The man was right. He didn't understand. He looked at the bathroom floor again.

  The technician said, "Would you like a ride to our home? I have brought my van, and I will have room for your bicycle as well as our friend."

  The technician had installed a device with longer cables by the time Billy brought his bike around He walked the kyonshi to the van and stepped him in.

  Conversation was limited on the way home. Eventually Billy managed to get the technician to talk about the mechanized puppets that Nagoya was famous for. Robotics had started here long before the West had dreamed of such toys. Billy asked if the technician's family had made the puppets. The technician grimaced and said that his family had been butchers and leather workers. Then the man had laughed as though Billy was the funniest foreign devil of all time.

  Billy learned that Capeksen did have a factory here. In fact most of the newly infected were shipped to that factory. The technician was a sort of contractor—much as Billy's grandfather had installed cable TV. Billy guessed the job didn't pay much. When the van had been finally been parked Billy asked, "Please forgive this one's ignorance of Japanese culture, but why did you say that it is rare you and your wife can yell at anyone?"

  The technician looked at him and said, "Burakumin," and shrugged. Billy had no idea what he was talking about, so he bowed. The technician laughed again.

  When he got to his apartment he asked his phone what "Burakumin" meant. It said "Village people." He asked his phone to show him village people, and it showed him a photo of an American rock group from his grandmother's time. The technician did not look like the cop, the construction worker, or the Indian chief. He nuked some yakitori, and when it was time to run his Zazen program he turned off the "Awakening" feature. His koan for the night was, "A student asked Joshu, 'If I haven't anything in my mind, what shall I do?' Joshu replied: 'Throw it out.' 'If I haven't anything, how can I throw it out?' continued the questioner. 'Well,' said Joshu, 'then carry it out.'"

  He nodded off and woke about 8:00 to call Suzi. Suzi had been his Japanese girlfriend. All nippophiles get a Japanese girlfriend. It comes with the small apartment and the visit to fertility shrines. Suzi had ended his dreams about being Japanese. They had dated for three months. One day he had mentioned his hope of marriage. "I can not marry you," she said. "My family would never speak to me. They want me to marry a Japanese man."

  "But I want to live here all of my life," said Billy. "I want to be Japanese."

  "If you want to be Japanese, die and be reborn Japanese. I date you because you are a foreigner. Last week you told me you loved me. My Japanese boyfriends never say that. You are the same thing for me that I am for you. A fantasy of not being myself."

  Billy did not speak to her for a week. When he started talking to her again, it was as a friend, which was his first women that was a friend. She found another foreigner to date.

  "Suzi, what is a Burakumin?"

  "Have you been talking to old people?"

  "No, my neighbor said it. I think it means village person."

  "It does mean village person. But that's the literal meaning. What do you call American black people? Watermelon-eaters? In the old days some trades were considered polluted— butchers, leather workers, people that wash corpses, some sexual entertainers. They are separate like a caste. Pollution beliefs are very strong in Shinto."

  "But they are Japanese aren't they? He looks Japanese."

  "Of course he looks Japanese by DNA, it's a taboo. Your neighbor will make less money, live in bad places, marry into his kind. The notion of pollution runs deep. Companies used to keep illegal lists of the Burakumin. In the beginning of this century they were almost main-streamed. Then when kyonshi technology showed up, they were the only ones who could risk the pollution. You aren't Japanese, you wouldn't understand."

  Billy remembered his dad railing against the Italians and the Poles. His mom's maiden name was Polish. Dad explained to him many drunken times, that Mom looked white but...

  He knew about the human need to hate. His body was full of memories. When he was a geeky teenager obsessed with Japanese pop culture, he was hated. He was marked. In sixth grade two junior high boys beat him yelling that he should have learned karate from his comic books. In seventh grade he was tossed headfirst into the girl's bathroom. The impact with the door actually knocked him out, so he arrived unconscious. When he came to in the nurse's office, the principal sent him home because of his behavior. He had to come the next day with his parents to be reinstated. That lead to his Dad's first burning of his manga. Later that year at Halloween he had engaged in cosplay—he was the evilest "hero" of them all, Lelouch Lamperouge. Everyone made fun of him, the dark and interesting antihero of Code Geass was called a "Fag Vampire." Some kids caught him in a park. He called his parents and his drunk dad drove up in his small tan Toyota pickup. It began all heroic-like. Dad drove into the park, across the football field toward the white bandstand. The Hulks, the Spidermen, the one Wonder Woman fled from his dad's headlights. Billy ran to Dad. Dad got of the truck and picked him up like a trash-bag and threw him in the back of the truck. Billy heard the rib crack when he landed.

  But he stood his ground, he watched
anime on his computer, and kept his manga under his bed, took Japanese in high school. He swore a samurai oath to help the downtrodden, yet by his senior year he was making fun of the childish tastes of the new members of the Patterson Ottaku Club. "You like Sinji? And you're potty-trained?" He taunted kids that liked G-force or (Bhudda help them!) Speed Racer.

  In college he passed his larva stage as a worm-like ottaku and gained the wings of a true nippophile. He learned Japanese literature, studied Zen, wrote haiku. He majored in English because English teachers can always get crummy apartments. Who cares how bad your apartment is if you can see Nagoya Castle? Of course he had first seen it in Godzilla vs. Mothra or had it been Gamera vs. Gaos?

  Tomorrow he would reach out to his neighbor. He would bridge the gap that surrounded the kyonshi workers. His own quest to be Japanese was nothing compared to the Burakumin. He surfed the web into the night learning the history of the kyonshi. No one had saved him, no human had reached out to him, so he chose reading over life, the fantasy of Japan over the reality of Paterson.

  After Capeksen designed the controllers, a major scandal shook the industry. The promise was that somehow cures would come for the wealthy dead. The controlling units enabled them to live with some measure of dignity— which they did when their family would visit. But the zombies also worked well as lawn mowers, gardeners, car washers, and for some people with a taste for geriatric porn—they became sex slaves. An unscheduled visit by a reporter ended the appeal. No one wanted their grandmother blowing programmers that couldn't get laid otherwise. It did not matter that new safeguards could eliminate this semi-sentient slavery. Stock in Capeksen fell like Lucifer from heaven.

  It took murder to change the fates ODF Capeksen again. When the Toronto cannibal, Robert "Taco Time" Leblanc's infamous Mexi-Cali Grill had been less than careful with the meat grinder, and the mangled diamond wedding ring of Mary Casutto wound up in a food critic's mouth, a new "crime of the century" dominated news feeds for months. Who can forget angry crying Robert Casutto begging the white wigged judge to sentence LeBlanc to zombie status? Owning a slave became a statement that one stood for Justice, Liberty, and the Canadian way. Humanity's age-old fascination with slavery remanifested. At first zombiehood was reserved for the worst offenders. The status symbol of owning a (formerly) human being as a slave dominated news feeds and magazines. Every star, every popsinger had a zombie in tow. The Electric Luddites had an entire zombie road crew, with their neon-orange logo tattooed on their pasty faces.

  Soon there weren't enough criminals to meet the demand. But people still died. What if you elected to be infected? What if you could pay off your huge hospital bills, end debts, put grandchildren through college? Humans have always made greet sacrifices for their families. The peace of mind that came by selling your body into thralldom was immense. Poor families dreading the cost of grandad's funeral now had a marketable resource. It was a great deal, the living would collect a huge few for their loved one trying to become infected. Ninety percent of the time, the infection didn't occur. For the ten percent that made the transition it meant no more pain (at least this was what was believed), and even more money. The sale of one walking zombie paid more than most average humans made in a year. Japan lead the world in kyonshi manufacture. Very few countries opposed the zombies. The Islamic world held out, and as did the United States, which has always been based on flesh-worship. From an American point of view zombies were as bad as abortion, euthanasia, and stem-cell research.

  Billy biked to school the next morning. There was a hint of frost in the air, but warmth in his heart. This was the day he would become a man. He would undo the bullying that had haunted his childhood. This was his day to pay Japan back.

  When the technician arrived with the kyonshi following along, Billy almost ran from his class to meet him. The technician regarded him dully. Billy offered to take him to lunch. With obvious regret the technician accepted.

  It was awful. Over the sweet chicken wings Billy ran through every cliché that American public education had given him about diversity, the brotherhood of mankind, the humanness of us all. The technician nodded absently. Billy began to get it. The man did not want Billy's approval or acceptance. If he had wanted the acceptance of foreigners he could have moved to the United States or Brazil. He wanted to be Japanese. His father's generation had seen the prejudice against the Burakumin almost vanish. The modern day kyonshi techs were just like people in the mortuary industry back home. Billy couldn't reach any more than a white child could have to his black friend in the American South in the bad old days. No one is welcomed by someone that stoops to shake his hand. Toward the end of the meal as each was eating his red bean jelly tofu ice cream, Billy tried talking about the kyonshi.

  "Do you think they remember their former lives?"

  "The upper sections of their brains are gone. I doubt they remember anything."

  "But they could remember."

  "Perhaps. That is why my family is hated. Imagine if you were trapping the soul of someone's relative for generations— kyonshi have great vitality. Once the virus is in place, the body has immunity to almost all diseases. Even if the kyonshi has a cut, it does not become infected. With care their useful work-span could be sixty or seventy years."

  "The kyonshi at my school. I assume he was American?"

  "I would have no idea. Did you guess he was American because all of you people look alike?" The technician smiled at his own joke.

  "Who sold his body?" Billy asked.

  "He may have been dieing without heirs. Sometimes a foreigner passes away, and the state steps in to administer the virus before he or she dies. If heirs show up later the kyonshi passes to them."

  Lunch ended. Billy went back to school. For some weeks he would greet the technician or his wife in the hallway. Then he learned to look away. He bought a new Zazen program that administers electric shocks when the novice nods off. He briefly dated a Japanese-American woman. Spring came. Cherry trees blossomed. Billy wandered slowly through his life in love with all he saw, a cousin of Tantalus. He saw the world he wanted but could not touch it. Some hairs turned gray. More or less.

  Then without drama he overslept a few minutes one day. He rushed to get ready, and slipped in the shower. He lay paralyzed with the warm water rushing over him. His overuse of water triggered an alarm system. The building superintendent found him, shut off the shower and medical robotos took his prunny body to the hospital. There were shocks, and massage, and stimulants shot into his bloodstream. A Catholic priest read him his last rites. Billy could hear, but not move, not blink. He heard the saws biting into his skull.

  Days, weeks, months later he came to. His eyesight was much better. He saw the toilets he cleaned, the halls he swept, the walls he repainted every seven years. He saw his neighbor, who had strangely grown old. He felt nothing when his neighbor slapped him. Felt nothing when his neighbor spit upon him.

  Thoughts slowly came back to him. He would see Nagoya Castle through the windows of the building he worked in. Nothing had changed for Billy Parsons. The world he wanted was still as remote. He still silently watched Japan. After sixty years of janitorial service, his bones wore too thin to be of use. At the behest of his programmers he walked to the crematorium. There was a flash of light and his soul passed beyond the bounds of this story.

  * * *

  The Oracle of Boca Raton

  Eric Baylis | 2065 words

  Flores had sympathy for any rooks at Delphi. After giving Drake a good twenty or so minutes of post-shift puke time he took off from Gernsback Admin to search the youngster out, take him under his wing like a Dutch uncle, and give him "The Talk."

  The South Florida air felt like hot asphalt poured over boiled wool. For his first week at Delphi, Flores would idle up and down the parking lot, searching out a spot in the shade. Shade, he decided, means fuck all nothing when the humidity was luxuriating at 99 percent. Flores started choosing the spots closest to Gernsback, so after und
ergoing his mandatory twenty-minute counseling sesh before clock-out, he could get to his car and get home with maximum efficiency. He popped the hatch on his Toyota, grabbed a plastic sack out of a cooler, and locking up his car, went in search of Drake.

  Drake was behind a train wreck of hastily deposited pre-fab office trailers discarded after the station was given its "Iron Curtain-by-wayof-Byzantium" look. Drake was slumping. He was kind of crying, in fact. The Talk was going to cut into the time Flores usually savored before heading into the parlors himself. Time used to get those jaw muscles working, get those conversation starters loose and lively. Fucking Drake.

  "Rook! Rook rook rook rook roooooookieeeee, ruuuuuk!" crowed Flores, hoping a little dude-bro jocularity would loosen things up. Flores liked to think he was a really good camp counselor to the guys. He had more convo time then almost everyone at Delphi. He got those mages talking about all sorts of shit. He wasn't sure if he was making anyone any money at it, but they hadn't fired him yet. And he really did know where Drake was coming from. Everyone had to take tea with the Mad Priest their first shift on payroll. Drake either froze up (classic mistake, fixable) or the talk had taken a bad turn and the caterpillar of wonderland had opened up something terrible (really unlikely, asylum or worse if true).

  Drake was snuffling to himself. He needed The Talk.

  "The Talk" was a code, Flores decided. The ancient one. The one men tell each other before doing something stupid and necessary. Or stupid and unnecessary, with the chance of getting laid. He had heard the talk from his P.O. Dads used to give the talk. Drill Sergeants, older brothers at the top of the sledding hill, clan chieftains: All given the gift of The Talk. Need to get a motherfucker to help kill an eight-ton mastodon with a length of sharpened Ash? Need to climb out of that trench and charge those bastards? Need a buddy to help knock over a 7-11? It's all in the cadence and timing, the vague intimation that subject x (the receiver of The Talk) is vitally needed and will not be thought of as a pussy, ever, fucking bullet-proof against it, if only he would get in line and charge those krauts or whatever. And if you need to keep a live mouth on site, someone who can and will talk to those ancient fucks, use the code and use it well.