by Project Itoh
In the nine years I’d known Snake, this was the first time I’d heard him reference Star Wars. If he had been hoping for a reaction from the room he was disappointed, for as soon as he had made the remark, he began to cough painfully and reaffixed the mask.
When his coughing quieted, Mei Ling continued. “We know Haven will have to surface in order to fire the railgun. When it does, we’ll know, and Missouri will make a quick approach and deliver our strike team. Our goal is twofold: prevent that nuke from launching and wipe out GW’s programming. The enemy relies entirely on electronic means of threat detection, so they won’t be able to see the Missouri until they surface.”
Mei Ling gazed across the dark room at the faces illuminated by the projector’s light. All thought this talk preposterous at least to some degree. Liquid’s elite guard of Haven troopers were a death trap in waiting. This wasn’t a plan but a suicide mission—that much was as clear as day.
But they all knew there was no other way.
Mei Ling explained the plan. “We’ll launch the strike team from catapults at the exact moment Haven’s armored cover opens. They’ll then penetrate GW’s physical server room and infect it with Dr. Emmerich’s worm cluster.”
Johnny, watching a simulation on the display of his wrist computer, asked, “But what if Liquid turns off GW before we get in there?”
Even if the team made it inside the server room, the computer terminal needed to be powered on and functioning in order to receive the virus. Of course, Mei Ling and I had already thought of all the potential problems and contingencies, so she was ready with an answer.
“Liquid is already entrenched within the Patriots’ network. He needs to maintain his link with the SOP, or destroying JD won’t serve any purpose. They can’t afford to shut GW down.”
Meryl, sharing Johnny’s concerns, bleakly said, “Liquid will throw everything he’s got at stopping the strike team.”
She was right, of course. It was easy for us to propose the infiltration, but the strike team—Meryl, Snake, and Akiba—would be the ones facing the gunfire. Mei Ling and I hadn’t been able to think of anything we could do to help them once the mission began.
Now Mei Ling broached the biggest danger facing Meryl’s team. “Exactly,” she said. “The corridor leading to GW is defended by directed-energy weapons that emit a type of microwaves.”
Johnny leaned forward. “Did you say microwaves?”
Mei Ling’s report seemed to have unsettled the other soldiers in the room too, including Snake, who lowered his oxygen mask and sent his eyes to me.
Disregarding her audience’s unease, Mei Ling calmly continued. “The waves will immediately begin to vaporize any living person within range.”
Snake started to say something but coughed instead, and kept on coughing until he finally regained himself.
“A giant microwave oven,” he said. “You’d have to have a death wish to go in there.” His lips twitched into a ghastly smile. “Sounds like the perfect job for me.”
“Snake,” Meryl scolded, her voice tinged with sadness, “this isn’t time for your stupid jokes.”
Within three months, this man whom she had loved would have to end his own life, perhaps with a gun to his head, or with a can of gasoline and a match.
The grim reality was that some situations required the risk of life and limb for any chance of making it through.
Only natural for the task to go to the one man who had already accepted death.
But Snake’s resolve came not from some passive acquiescence to circumstance but rather an outraged rejection of forcing someone younger—Johnny or Meryl—to take on his ills and die for it.
“If somebody has to die today,” he said, “it has to be me. No one else.” Everything about this briefing grated on him. “Why bother with all this when I should be going in alone?”
Meryl and I could read his emotions all too well. I was pained to see him like this, intent on finishing everything unaided. I wondered if Mei Ling felt intimidated by his heroic determination. Not knowing how to respond, she proceeded with her briefing.
“Outside the corridor, Liquid’s soldiers will be out in full force. Inside, unmanned weapons will wait.”
A new slide revealed a detailed schematic of Haven. Under the Patriots’ control, the Arsenal-class ship was supposed to be a highly guarded state secret. Few even knew of their existence, yet this was an incredibly detailed report.
Snake’s eyes tightened. “Where are you getting this information? You really think there’s a way to destroy GW?”
Mei Ling tossed me a glance. I had shared with her all the intel so she could develop a battle plan. She knew the identity of the source, but her eyes told me Snake needed to hear the name from me.
I took a moment, then said, “Naomi had been making preparations.”
Naomi’s original reason for boarding Nomad had been none other than me. She needed someone to whom she could entrust her plans, who had the ability to fulfill her hopes.
But in the end, that person wasn’t me.
Naomi chose a little girl, not yet ten years old.
Naomi had nearly completed the program to destroy GW. But she knew that she couldn’t grant herself enough time to finish—that her life, extended artificially by nanomachines, would soon end; that death would shatter time’s icy prison, and she had to accept it; that she might pass from this world without seeing the worm cluster finished.
And she had chosen Sunny as the one who could realize her wishes. The child’s message, delivered by Raiden at Shadow Moses: I cooked them right, her words a message to Naomi. Sunny had finished the worm.
Naomi left us more than source code. She had provided accurate and precise internal data on Haven, upon which we based our plan of attack.
Snake asked, “Whose side was she on, anyway?”
He stared me straight in the eyes. Maybe he thought I would know the answer because I’d had feelings for her. I might have found the inquiry offensive coming from anyone but Snake.
Our friendship had long since crossed any such barriers, and I would have happily told him—had I known the answer myself.
But sadly, despite what I felt for Naomi, I hadn’t the slightest idea. If she wanted to defeat Liquid’s plans—by giving us the unfinished code to a program that could electronically destroy GW—then her actions in Eastern Europe were inexplicable.
“I don’t know,” I said, “what her true intentions were. But …”
If Naomi had wanted to stop Liquid, she wouldn’t have needed to escape Nomad and help him take over the SOP. In doing so, she gave him control over the world’s armies—a terrible power—and then told us to stop him. Neither Snake nor I had a cohesive explanation to resolve the clear contradiction in her behavior.
And now, neither of us could know what Naomi had truly wanted.
I made myself recall her fleeting expression of relief when she heard Sunny’s message. I cooked them right. I tried to feel what Naomi must have felt.
What purpose for living had she found after learning of her cancer, as the fear of death threatened to break her each night? What had she needed to accomplish before passing on? What would be her penitence? Her sins—among them Vamp, Snake, and Liquid—had brought irrevocable change to the world.
Naomi knew her borrowed time would be far too short to settle her debts. And so she imposed on herself the artificial life she had given to Vamp, and she made contact with me and Snake—and Sunny.
As she died, Naomi said to Snake, Your life has been prolonged so that you may fulfill your purpose. She had been tied to the same fate. Snake wanted to know whose side she was on, yet I sensed that she had long since passed any notion of allegiances.
“But,” I continued, “one thing’s for sure: she was determined to stop Liquid.”
Snake’s gaze seemed to soften, if by only a bit. I don’t know if he believed me, or if he had simply decided to take the gamble. Naomi was gone from this world; whether he belie
ved in her or in Sunny and me, who had taken up her cause, the result would be the same.
In that manner, Naomi wasn’t unique. Wolf and Emma, and all of the dead—for that matter, the living too—existed in a way, nestled inside other people. I was Wolf, I was Emma, I was Naomi, and I was Snake. I was, in part, all of those gathered at the briefing.
“There’s a saying in China,” Mei Ling said. “When a bird is upon death, its cry is heartbreaking. When a man is upon death, his words are right.”
Even Mei Ling’s formidable command of quotations had misfired here. If sorrow could be found in a bird’s death cry, a person’s dying words were worthy of attention. Perhaps Mei Ling was suggesting we should trust Naomi. But none in the room provided any reaction, not even Meryl or Johnny.
But her words did make me think.
People never truly ceased to be. Like a river flowing through those who speak for us, human existence endured within both the physical body as well as stories passed down. As long as somebody continued to tell our stories, none of us—not Snake, not Meryl, nor any of the soldiers here with us—none would truly go.
His words are right. What was spoken on the verge of death were not mere words but a facet of our lives, a seedling to sprout branches into the future.
Mei Ling asked if anyone had any other questions, but a dark mood had fallen over the room. No questions were necessary. Snake had said this mission was for a suicide squad, and he was right: some might die. Then, breaking the heavy, seemingly eternal silence, Snake casually raised his hand.
“Anybody got a smoke?”
2
AS WE ALWAYS did before a job, Snake and I walked together.
Where we went was never important, whether a park or the streets near a hideout. Before engaging in a dangerous mission, as part of our anti-Metal Gear or anti-Patriots activities, the two of us went on a walk. As long as the sky was above our heads, we didn’t care where.
This time, we strolled Missouri’s deck. I was never a believer in the so-called “good old days,” but the wooden deck was top class and top quality, well polished and pristine. A museum ship in Hawaii until recently, the vessel had been carefully preserved. In terms of pure aesthetics, the meticulously polished deck was in a class apart from the modern metal numbers, slathered with a mixture of shoddy-looking blue paint and coarse sand for better traction.
Snake asked me, “How is Raiden?”
Raiden had severed his right arm to escape the rubble, and the Arsenal had crushed his left. Obviously he wasn’t all right.
“He’ll live,” I said, “but he’s in no shape to fight. Best to let him rest.”
Raiden likely owed his life to his body’s cybernetic tissue closing capability. Losing an entire arm, let alone two, was a potentially fatal wound. But when the flow of blood and energy can be disengaged from the limbs, preventing any further losses, such injuries became vastly preferable to what Vamp had done to him in South America. With multiple stab wounds over his entire torso, closing down those tissues would have rendered Raiden immobile.
Snake seemed relieved to hear that Raiden wouldn’t be joining the fight.
“The only people I have left to rely on,” Snake said, “are Meryl and …”
He looked across the deck’s expanse to the port side of the ship, where Akiba was walking, hunched over and unsteady. Perpetually at the mercy of his bowels, Johnny was a young man in great difficulty.
I shrugged and said, “Kind of an unknown quantity, isn’t he?”
Akiba felt restless because of his ever-worsening stomach, but the other soldiers were similarly ill at ease, nervously fidgeting and glancing in all directions. Without the SOP’s control, they were no longer able to hold back their fear of and excitement for battle.
“Everybody’s losing their nerve,” I said, “without the System to protect them. I hear that a lot of soldiers are deserting because the SOP’s aftereffects are so bad.”
Then I heard a familiar voice. “I hooked Akiba up with a naked M82.”
I turned to see Drebin, sitting above us, atop the massive barrel of a sixteen-inch gun turret, his pinstripe suit appearing entirely out of place.
Drebin raised a can of NARC soda in greeting and said, “Fancy meetin’ you here.”
“What are you doing here?” Snake asked.
“I laundered these guys’ IDs, then issued ’em new, naked guns. Including that catapult you’re gonna be riding.”
Drebin gestured with the can toward a row of what at first glance looked like antiaircraft guns affixed to the wooden deck—the human catapults that would launch the strike team onto Haven.
“Business has been slow,” Drebin said, “ever since Liquid got his hands on GW. His extra orders stopped coming in. Now that all the weapons all over the world are locked, the only ones still looking to fight would be you and yours. Apparently everyone else thinks it’s not economical to replace all their useless equipment with my stuff.” He shrugged. “So I made an extra special trip out here, just for you.”
This guy must have some taste for danger, I thought.
“Drebin,” Snake said, “do you have even the slightest idea what’s going on here?”
“Of course I do.” Behind the sunglasses, Drebin’s eyes narrowed in delight. He held out the aluminum can. “See, when it comes down to it, the world’s like this soda here. Once the fizz is gone, I ain’t got no use for it. It’s got no worth.”
He paused to let his message sink in. “I’m on the side of whoever needs me the most. You dig?”
Then Drebin made his trademark gesture, pointing first at his eyes, then at Snake.
Unable to decide what, if anything, he had up his sleeve, Snake and I left the peculiar man and resumed our walk across the Missouri’s deck.
To Snake, I remarked sotto voce, “He can’t be here just for business. I shudder to think someone would be here for the fun of it.”
Snake shook his head and said, “I strongly suspect this is more than a hobby for him.”
Why was Drebin following us everywhere we went?
The man certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. But I’d have had to be crazy to think he’d gone across the world and back with us just for fun.
The horizon where Liquid would soon surface was quiet and still, without any large waves, perhaps in awareness of the gravity of the coming battle. As we cut through the peaceful waters, I turned my gaze back to the majesty of the aged battleship.
Maybe she hadn’t half the Arsenal’s stupefying size, but Missouri’s superstructure, with a unified bridge, smoke stacks, and rear rangefinder, stood stern and imposing, like a medieval castle. She was the epitome of a battleship, with a fatherly ruggedness—not at all similar to the Arsenal-class Haven’s rounded, stealth-oriented design. As befitting a sea vessel, Missouri would always be referred to as “she,” but have no doubts: Missouri was a man, and a resolute father at that.
The ship carried scars from her many battles. Walking from aft to fore along the starboard side, Snake noticed part of the hull was significantly bent.
Snake patted his pockets for a cigarette. “That’s a fairly large dent.”
I nodded. “A Zero put that there. A kamikaze in the Pacific War.”
“A Zero, huh?”
“This ship has many stories. She’s been around longer than either of us. The Japanese foreign minister signed the Instrument of Surrender on this deck, you know.”
“Where?”
Snake looked across the deck. Several of the ship’s crew were working, busily preparing for the fight to come.
“I think there’s a plaque somewhere,” I said. “Mei Ling would know.”
“A hull bent by a Zero, and a plate to show where Japan signed surrender—marks of the history she’s witnessed …”
“Right,” I said. “Everything has a tale—not just people, but ships, buildings, even simple objects. All of us.”
“And you’ve taken on Naomi’s story. You finished her worm cluste
r.”
“Actually, Sunny’s the one who finished it. Although she was only one of three to write the code.”
Snake managed to find a cigarette and put it to his mouth. His lips tightened, his skeptical expression asking, Sunny, Naomi, and who else?
Snake was right to be curious. He knew I hadn’t contributed any of the programming. I took out a lighter and, covering the flame with one hand to protect it from the sea breeze, lit Snake’s smoke.
Then I said, “Sunny went fishing through the Gaudi’s libraries to see if there was any source code she could use to complete the program. What she found was Emma’s worm cluster.”
Snake didn’t say anything but just looked into my face. My sister, a specialist in high-volume data analysis, had written the program to destroy GW. And she knew well how to destroy the AI, having designed it herself.
“Sunny took my sister’s code and worked it into Naomi’s program. I didn’t have time to look over every single line, but what I did see reminded me of Emma—like she had left traces of herself in the way she coded.”
Even programming code could hold a story. Programs were more than numbers and instructions, but records of another world. The cluster was part of Emma’s story—proof that Emma Emmerich Danziger had once lived, and she had told many stories.
Snake, engrossed in my talk, had forgotten to breathe, and began coughing on his own cigarette smoke.
I made a wry smile, patted his back, and said, “But this worm cluster that Sunny created … it’s even better than Emma’s. Sunny’s worm destroys the AI’s intellect by triggering apoptosis. Once uploaded into GW, it should do some real damage.”
I continued to comfort Snake and was again struck by how terribly weak he had become. Touching my hand to his back, I could feel that the strength that had once roused the legendary man no longer remained in this aged body.
“You’re dead set on going to Haven yourself?” I asked, but I knew there was no point in asking. When I tried to tell him to give up before we went to Shadow Moses, he wouldn’t listen. We started this, he’d said, before descending to the island and the bitter cold his old body couldn’t withstand.