Takaashigani

by Justin Hunter

  “Sounds like a big plan.”

  “It could work,” Enoc said. “I just need time, a space to work and money to do it with.”

  “Money I have,” Hirito said. “How long would you need?”

  “Maybe a year. Maybe more.” Hirito sat back in his chair and thought this over. He extended a hand that knocked over several glasses. Enoc shook it. The rest of the night was spent in drunken laughter.

  Chapter - 19

  That first night Hirito and Enoc had met seemed like a dream to both of them several months later. What followed that night, were a few more drunken bashes over the course of the week and months of long nights working. Hirito’s carefree attitude while drunk was the direct opposite when sober. After the alcohol stopped coursing through his veins, he was an impatient taskmaster and skin flint with his money. He worked closely with Enoc, watching every step of the crab growth experiments, and keeping an even closer watch over how his money was being spent. Enoc wasn’t thrilled with the fact that he had to work alone. He expected that Hirito already had a bevy of scientists on his payroll, but he was wrong. Hirito wanted the least amount of people to know what he was doing. He was paranoid that others would find the answer before he did and cash in before he could. The dearth of the work fell to Enoc, but Hirito was more than a little up the task as an assistant. He made good suggestions, was quick to get Enoc what he wanted, and his high level of impatience matched the scientist. Failure, to both of them, was unacceptable.

  They found a cocktail of drugs that worked the crabs’ pituitary gland into high gear. The problem was that the crabs’ exoskeleton couldn’t keep up with the massive growth of the inside and the crabs suffocated under their own shells. This was solved by surgically slicing the crabs shell into pieces and separating them, which released some pressure and allowed the shell to grow faster as the body of the crab would heal, fusing the separated pieces together. This process had to be done over and over until the men got it right, what was left of the first of the giants that survived was a sorry sight indeed. The crab was monstrous, but sickly and could hardly move. Many of its internal organs had been damaged in the process of growth. It wasn’t long before the creature died.

  The problems with the exoskeletons continued. Enoc and Hirito lost many crabs due to lack of oxygen. Their bodies were just too big to be supported by the environment. They were also much too heavy. Many of their largest couldn’t live unless their huge bodies were supported by an inordinate amount of buoyancy under water. It was long into the night of the men’s fourth twenty hour workday, when Hirito had an idea.

  “I’ve been thinking about my grandmother lately,” he said. Enoc could hardly keep his eyes open, but he listened as best he could. He was hoping that they could lay off soon and get some sleep. He wanted to keep working, but he was getting a little loopy. He thought that Hirito talking about his grandmother meant that his boss had gone a little off the deep-end himself.

  “What about her?” Enoc asked.

  “It’s just one of the things I loved about America,” Hirito said. “In my country, we revere our elders. Generations live in the same house. The family members in their prime take care of the old just as they take care of the young. The reason is that this person took care of you when you were a baby, you owe them respect and care when they become old. In America, you hate your elders. You don’t want to be bothered with them no matter what they did for you. You don’t even care if they are your blood. You stow them away in homes where all they do is wait to die. When I came to this country, this surprised me. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get along with business and care for my grandmother at the same time. My parents were both dead. I wasn’t married and I have no children of my own. The issue rested with me. If I was in my country, my business would take a back seat to the caring of my grandmother. I wouldn’t have a choice. I would lose my honor.”

  “It wasn’t until I was drunk and complained to the bartender about my problems that he helped me to find a solution. He was laughing at me like I didn’t know anything. He said, ‘Put her in a home. They will take care of her.’ The very next day I went to one of those places and it was horrible. There were many nurses and old people, just sitting there waiting to die. They looked already dead to me. Nobody was talking to them. They just sat in their rooms or huddle around a television in the main lobby. That was it. I was shocked at first, but then I talked to the manager who said they would take care of my grandmother, and I wouldn’t have to do a thing except sign a check every month. He told me about some of the activities they did, and showed me brochures that had photos of happy, lively people who looked nothing like the reality I had before me.”

  “I didn’t take them up on it at first, but as the days turned into weeks and my grandmother was taking up more and more of my time, I decided to put here there, and I did. I visited her every day at first and then the visits became longer and longer apart. I thought about her less often too. Eventually, she died and now I don’t think about her very much at all, but in truth she had died long before that. She died as soon as I put her in that home. She might as well have been dead.”

  “Okay,” Enoc said, too tired to care. “What does that have to do with the crab?”

  “Everything,” Hirito said. “The last time I saw my grandmother alive, it had been a year since my last visit. I had no idea how terribly she had had things go for her. Her eyesight failed. She was having trouble swallowing food, so she had a tube running into her stomach. She was being fed by a machine. She had all of these tubes running out of her arms, each one feeding her a different drug. These kept her alive, if you could call what she was alive. She couldn’t see, talk, move; she couldn’t do anything on her own. I was furious with her doctor for allowing her to live in such a state. A part of my fury, truth be told, was probably out of guilt at my own disappearance from her life. The doctor told me that my grandmother’s problem was that her organs were working perfectly fine, it was everything else that was going. She was basically dying from the outside in. It was a slow and terrible way to go. It is also the answer to our little crab problem.” Hirito coughed and continued.

  “These crabs cannot support themselves once they reach a certain height, at least not the ones we genetically alter. It is my hope that in the future the crab giants will be born and not made, but that is an idea long into the future. I digress. What I am proposing is that we take away anything and everything that might stunt the growth process or put stress on the altered body of the crab.”

  “Like what?” Enoc asked. He was beginning to get where his benefactor was going. His own mind began thinking of ways to bigger the crabs without them dying.

  “We start by removing the legs and claws of the crabs. We can suspend them by wires or something in a huge tank. They won’t need to search for food while under our care and have no need for their defense weapons. We remove their limbs and they are less heavy. The growth of the crab will all go to the inner shell and not the extremities. We will also administer out drug cocktails, food, and vitamins right into the crab through I.V. tubes, although they will have to be much larger tubes than those used in my grandmother. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “It’s brilliant! The crab will have nothing to do but grow,” Enoc said.

  “Grow, call to the others and make babies,” Hirito said. “Once we capitalize on the crabs’ growth, we must find a way to heighten her pheromones’ call to her brethren. We want to draw the crabs to us.”

  “Then we go fishing?” Enoc said, smiling.

  “Hell no,” Hirito said. “Let other people do the fishing. I just want to sit back and let the money roll in.”

  Three years later, the money was indeed, rolling in.

  Chapter - 20

  Hirito sat slumped against the back of his deep brown leather office chair. He pushed his feet softly on the bottom edge of his desk, making the chair slide gently from side to side. He had always hated wheels on the bottom of his de
sk chair. He felt that a chair, no matter how expensive or opulent, was ruined by setting on wheels instead of handsome strong legs. For a while, he tried a regular chair at his desk and felt like an idiot as when he scooted the chair into place after sitting down. Hirito stopped sliding his chair and plucked a black-stained, tobacco pipe off his desk. He lit a match to the already-filled pipe and leaned back in his chair while the air filled with fragrant aromatic tobacco. He smoked for a while and began sliding his chair from side to side again. He slid his hand forward and looked at the few papers on his desk that he had already looked at several times over the last hour. He leaned back in his chair and sighed.

  Hirito heard a slight knocking sound at the door.

  “Enter,” he said.

  Enoc opened the door, stepped inside, and carefully closed it before moving across the room and settling in a chair across the desk from Hirito. He coughed and waved his hand in the air. Hirito took a long pull from his pipe and blew a large cloud of grey smoke, which danced across the ceiling.

  “I’ve been thinking about getting you a present,” Hirito said. “I think I might need to get you a pipe.”

  “I smoke enough from sitting in this room. I don’t need one for myself,” Enoc said. “Get yourself a girlfriend and give her a present. There are more than enough willing ladies in town that would love to meet you.”

  “Are you trying to set me up on a date?”

  “Maybe,” Enoc said. “A long time ago you talked about how this would set up the good life for us. Now that we have it, you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself any. You work too much and I’m not sure that there’s really that much for us to do.”

  “Well you know what they say,” Hirito said, “it’s the journey that matters, not the destination. Whenever I finish something, I always feel a little let down. I need to have something that takes up my time and that something cannot be frivolity. Wine, women, and sex are easy. Growing a huge ass Japanese spider crab is hard.” Hirito smiled again. “What did you actually come here for, Enoc?”

  “You’ve become very distant of late,” Enoc said. “It’s made me a little worried. For the last several years we’ve worked together, we both have been a part of this, equal shares of information. I feel like you are pushing me out.”

  “I’ve felt that way myself,” Hirito said. “When we first started this, I needed you. I let you into my confidence, something I rarely do. I like to work by myself. I’ve found that people cannot be relied upon. Now, you have been the exception, but now that the project is complete, I don’t find myself needing your services anymore.” Enoc slammed his hand down hard on the desk. Hirito jumped a bit, but his face remained passive.

  “I’ve given you the last several years of my life! I’ve done nothing else, but this,” Enoc leaned forward until he was just inches from Hirito’s face. “I left school. I could have been well into a career by now. I could have a family by now. I basically vanished off the face of the Earth and followed you? I have nothing left to go back to and a hell of a lot of questions to answer to my loved ones and friends who I basically just told to ‘fuck off.’”

  “You were never compelled to be here,” Hirito said. He rolled his chair back a bit and wiped Enoc’s spittle off his glasses. “I don’t know what to tell you. I just really don’t have a use for you anymore.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do? Wait, why do you think you can just do this to me? I have a half interest in this whole enterprise.”

  “The hell you do,” Hirito said. “I picked you up like a bottom feeder. You came to me. There are a whole lot of others who could have done the job you did. You were just convenient at the time. I…paid…for…fucking…everything. Including your living expenses. You were nothing before you met me and are pretty much a fucking nothing now. I don’t know what the hell you want me to do with you. The project is over. I will pay you a good amount of money, and then I expect you to fuck off.”

  “What if you have complications with the crab? Who is going to take care of it?”

  “We have trained people to take care of that,” Hirito said. “Some of them are scientists themselves. The hard part of this whole thing is over.”

  “I’m staying on,” Enoc said.

  “I’m telling you to fuck off,” Hirito said.

  “Or you’re going to do what?” Enoc said, “Are you threatening me?”

  “No,” Hirito said. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have done so a long time ago. We’ve been done for a long time. Having you around is kind of like having a pet, but I’m done with you. I just want you to go away. I will go on to the next project, whatever I want to do. I’m not sure what that is yet. You just go away. You’ve probably guessed by now that I have an exorbitant amount of money. I don’t really need to do any of this. I’m just bored is all. Just bored.” Enoc sighed heavily and sat down in one of the plush chairs across the desk from Hirito.

  “I have nothing left to go home to,” Enoc said. “What am I going to do?” Hirito put his right hand over his mouth and considered Enoc for a moment. He let out his own long sigh.

  “Tell you what I will do,” Hirito said. “I did not mean to sound so ungrateful. The comment about scientists who could have obtained what we did being found easily was wrong. You have been an excellent worker and colleague, and I guess, a friend. But I cannot have you around me any longer. I will pay you and your lineage a fee once a quarter. The amount will seem like a lot to you, but it is nothing to me. The only thing I ask in return is that you stay out of my sight and way. If I need you, you will be called upon, but with the exception of that, I do not want to see you. You may not leave this area, or you will forfeit the money I’ve promised to give you.”

  “You want me to live in town?”

  “No,” Hirito said, “I do not want you mingling with the people. I need everything here to stay as it is now. You can set up a camp in the woods, away from the general population.”

  “Live like a hermit,” Enoc said, “or a vagrant? You have to be fucking kidding me. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “I don’t know what else to tell you,” Hirito said. “You don’t really have a choice in the matter. You try to leave here, and I will have you killed. Secrets don’t make for friends, and you know everything. Head off into the woods. I will pay you enough to keep you alive.”

  “You’re fucking joking or crazy or both,” Enoc said. “That’s insane. I won’t do it.”

  “Then I guess you’re going to have to die,” Hirito said. He took a gun out of his desk drawer and laid it on the desktop. “You have one minute to decide.”

  “You’re talking about taking my life away,” Enoc said. “I can’t just go live out in the middle of the woods on my own.”

  “You won’t be alone,” Hirito said. “There are others that need to be sorted with you. You will have your own little tribe out there.”

  “Why don’t you just kill us and be done with it?”

  “I’ve never been much for that kind of killing. As you’ve said, I might have use for you in the future. It will be good to have you handy.”

  “You can’t expect that I will stay there,” Enoc said. “There’s no way.”

  “You have no idea the type of men that work for me,” Hirito said. “With enough money, you can buy the loyalty of the worst kinds of people. I have some very unfriendly ones at my disposal. They will be watching you. If you try and leave the woods, you will be killed in a most unfortunate and painful way. Your time is up by the way.” Hirito lifted the gun from the desk. Enoc held out his hands in front of him.

  “Don’t shoot,” Enoc said. “I will go.” Hirito put the gun down. He waved Enoc toward the door.

  “My men are waiting to take you to your new home.” Hirito began rifling through the paperwork on his desk. He began reading as he relit his pipe. Enoc thought for one second that he would try and go for the gun, but instead turned and walked out the door. Men were waiting for him. Five large, black-clad m
en, with stone expressions and automatic firearms at their hips.

  “Well?” Enoc said. “Where are we going?” The men gestured and turned to leave. Enoc followed. They led him to a line of black Econo vans. There were other people inside the vans. He could see outlines of men, women, and even some children. He was put in the van at the front of the line and driven away from Hirito’s offices. They drove for almost an hour down dirt roads that wound around the forest. Sometimes the roads would disappear completely and the vans would bump over branches and rocks. Finally, they came to an open clearing, smattered with rusted piles of metal and small hills of discarded building materials. Here the people were rounded out of the vans and into a group. Enoc counted twenty of them in all. They all looked at him like they knew who he was, and Enoc supposed that they did, he had been Hirito’s right-hand-man for years. The black-clad men took out coolers of supplies and a few tents and tossed them in front of Enoc and the others.

  “If you leave here,” one of the stone-faced men said, “you die.”

  They got back into their vans and drove off into the night. The people milled around the clearing. They talked amongst themselves, seeming to be in as much shock as Enoc felt. After several minutes, Enoc began putting one of the tents together. Soon a man knelt and began to help. Then everyone began pitching in and setting camp, counting supplies, and searching the heaps of refuse for useful items. They spent the first night cold and scared in the middle of the forest; their new prison. This was the birth of the vagrants. An imprisoned line that lasted for over a hundred years, and was called upon for one thing – war with the crabs.