by Taiyo Fujii
“You’ve done that before.”
“Huh?”
“The cigarette. You don’t smoke, right? The way you passed it over was pretty slick.”
“That’s because I was working for an organization with connections to China until last year. Members of the Communist Party still smoke like chimneys in their seats at conferences.”
When Kurosaki lit the cigarette and took a puff, the heavy smoke clung to his freshly lubricated throat and he broke out coughing.
“… This stuff is kind of harsh. I’m going to smoke the cigarettes I brought. So you were in China?”
Sekiguchi shrugged and thrust the pack of cigarettes he’d been playing around with into his coat pocket. “Yes, another country with no free access to the Internet.”
“Were there demonstrations like this over there?”
“Sporadically, yes. But, boy, am I jealous.” Sekiguchi put his lips to his bottle.
“Of what?”
“Of Kadiba and those students. They’re incredibly unruly, but see how they’re willing to risk their lives? Printing posters, searching the student body for people who believe in their cause, giving speeches. I doubt they expect things to change immediately, but I envy the fact that they’re dedicating themselves to something. All I do is complain all the time.”
Sekiguchi wiped the window with the sleeve of his coat.
At some point, the disturbance around the rotary had faded behind them, and office buildings came into view. Electric bikes began to fill the spaces between rows of cars as traffic thickened. The signs written only in Persian had disappeared, and Kurosaki could now see the logos of international corporations everywhere.
“The situation is the same in China,” said Sekiguchi, “except here foreign companies that come hunting for oil have special permission to access the Internet without restrictions. So when people see this, of course they would—Kurosaki-san, are you okay?”
Listening to Sekiguchi, Kurosaki had suddenly been overcome with sleepiness. “Sorry,” he said.
“Hang in there. Looks like a traffic jam is on its way. The hotel—is thirty minutes—away.”
Sekiguchi’s voice began to break up. Kurosaki struggled to keep his eyes open. Something rubbing against the back of his coat. Feeling tipsy. He closed his eyes slowly.
“Please take a nice, long rest. But before that—”
Kurosaki felt a cool hand on his cheek and then a thumb on the nape of his neck. When he opened his eyes, he realized that he was lying on his side across the backseat. Sekiguchi’s face warped as it peered down from over him.
“Have you heard the phrase ‘Great Leap’?”
“… What the? No— Wait, the commander of the moon landing … but that was ‘giant leap.’ ”
“I see you’ve never heard of it. Then can I ask you the next question?”
Kurosaki found himself nodding.
“How about the Hashimoto-san who works at the Satellite Intelligence Center?”
“Good guy. I think he—smoked Larks …”
Hashimoto had applied to JAXA, after being impressed by their CubeSat miniaturized satellites. But they were forcing him to babysit the Information Gathering Satellites—
Sekiguchi was nodding. Vaguely gazing at him, Kurosaki continued to talk about Hashimoto. Before Kurosaki realized it, Sekiguchi was asking him about something else: his colleague who had abandoned Japan, Shiraishi. As he tried to pull together the memories of his friend, Shiraishi’s face, which he hadn’t recalled in years, flashed in his mind’s eye.
“Kurosaki-san, please take a nice, long rest.”
The hand came away from his cheek, and Sekiguchi’s face receded. Kurosaki heard the sound of a car door opening, and air began to blow in from outside. Looking in the direction of the sound, he saw Sekiguchi get out with an Iridium case.
Wed, 16 Dec 2020, 18:52 +0900 (2020-12-16T09:52 GMT)
Diet Members’ Office Building, Tokyo
Takanori Hashimoto stared at the threadbare carpet in the Diet Members’ Office Building and tried to think how he could get the reprimand he had been undergoing for a full thirty minutes now to stop. The minister of space policy standing over him and berating him had already exhausted his repertoire of abusive language and was beginning to repeat himself.
“Hashimoto-kun, you do realize the gravity of the situation! If we can’t get in touch with JAXA at a time like this, we’re screwed!”
If anyone was screwed, it was Hashimoto. While commuting to the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center in Shinjuku, he had received a report that communications with the Optical 7 Information Gathering Satellite had been cut off, and had been called to the Diet Members’ Office Building, where they had shut him up in this room. Almost immediately after, a report had come in that IGS-Radar 5 and 6 had gone silent. Then he’d watched as his laptop suddenly shut down. Following a notification of a forced logout, his computer had restarted and now would only display a pitch-black screen. He had tried toggling the power button, but this had been useless. His computer was now effectively a paperweight, doing nothing but occasionally spinning its fan.
Hashimoto later realized that his JAXA-issued smartphone and tablet had stopped working at the same moment as well. Their power had still been on, but the screens had remained black, and they had continued to give off heat as though processing something until their batteries had died about an hour ago.
Borrowing a phone from one of the secretaries, Hashimoto had contacted the JAXA help desk but was transferred to a busy reception number. He tried calling all the phone numbers that he could remember, but the result was the same in each case. JAXA’s IT system had completely blacked out.
“Hashimoto-kun! Forty billion yen. You know what that is?”
This was the third time the minister had asked him this in the last thirty minutes.
“JAXA’s budget for the entire IGS project.”
Given the present circumstances, Hashimoto was wise enough to refrain from adding “five years ago.” This year’s budget actually exceeded ¥60 billion, an amount so large it was set to reach one-third of JAXA’s annually shrinking total budget.
“So you do know, huh? That’s exactly right. The problem is your failure to grasp how you’ve betrayed the Japanese people by causing a system crash in spite of their generosity.”
That funding was used exclusively for IGS launches. JAXA was able to use it to improve the HIIA that conducted orbital insertion, but the rest of their budget, the money they could use for their original organizational goals of space development and operations, was shrinking every year.
“Your salary comes out of that too, dammit!”
“Yes, sir. I understand that, sir.” Hashimoto had raised his head slowly so the minster wouldn’t notice, but now he lowered it several centimeters. He couldn’t go on groveling like this forever.
“If you have enough time to make a PowerPoint that says nothing but ‘don’t know,’ ‘cause unclear,’ ‘we’ll investigate,’ then how about you go run over to JAXA yourself and come back and tell us what’s going on?! What do you expect us to do if North Korea launches a Taepodong?”
In preparation for that risk, Japan has one of the world’s best missile-defense systems. You didn’t know that? Hashimoto wanted to say, but held his tongue. The system was operated by the Ministry of Defense and worked independently of the IGS program. Hashimoto had already advised the minister that in a situation where every minute and second counted, satellites like the IGS units that only passed over the Korean Peninsula four or five times a day were completely useless. But Hashimoto had given up on his efforts to provide accurate information to this minister, who couldn’t even visualize a sun-synchronous orbit no matter how many times he explained it.
“In your report, you claim that you lost communication with three groups consisting of five satellites—but ac
cording to the information we’ve received here, four groups consisting of eight satellites, which makes up the entire IGS fleet. And they’ve all fallen into the same condition. How the hell do you explain this?!”
The last time Hashimoto had managed to contact the Satellite Intelligence Center in Shinjuku was at five in the evening, and he was now cut off from all sources of information. Since then, the situation had worsened, and, pathetically, the minister was now in possession of fresher news than he was.
“Eight satellites went down at the same damn time, so this must be JAXA’s fault, no?!”
Hashimoto wasn’t sure how that conclusion followed but found himself bowing his head automatically.
“I’ve been studying up on this too, you know. The hardware of the satellites may be outsourced to private manufacturers, but JAXA is surely involved with the software, operation, and control.”
Wrong. That’s what had been written in the original proposal ten years ago. In actuality, operation of the IGS was conducted exclusively by the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center. JAXA was only in charge of launches and operational observation, nothing more than what Hashimoto was doing right then. His position had been created in the first place because of how terrible communications were between the center, commanded by a man straight out of the Self-Defense Forces, and the manufacturers, who constantly waved about their technical jargon.
From what Hashimoto had heard, the man named Shiraishi who’d originally had his job had been demoted for an explosive rant directed at the previous minister of space policy. Later, he’d abandoned Japan after being headhunted by a Chinese space-development company—and he wasn’t the only one. All the technicians who had been taken off astronautics for whatever reason—whether due to budget cuts, project cancellation, or transfer to an ailing project—had chosen a similar path.
Hashimoto was in his fourth year since being appointed as liaison for the IGS, and attractive offers had been coming his way too. A space-development venture with its head office in the Cayman Islands wanted him to serve as manager for a small-scale satellite project revolving around something called the “Great Leap.” Recently, he’d heard about a headhunter inside JAXA as well, and there was talk of a space-development venture in Hong Kong gathering personnel. While such overseas contracts might offer poor job security, many of Hashimoto’s colleagues had chosen them anyway, rather than serve as specialists who had to bow down to laymen all the time.
“What’s that look on your face about?”
Hashimoto forced down both his head and the discontent that rose all the way up to his throat as he stared at the carpet again. “My actions are inexcusable, sir,” he said. “I’ll look into the connection with JAXA as well. I’m going to visit headquarters in Ochanomizu and the Satellite Intelligence Center in Shinjuku. By first thing in the morning, I expect there should be some devel—”
“Yes! Tomorrow morning! Here at eight o’clock sharp! Washio, keep my schedule open!”
“Certainly, sir,” said the minister’s secretary, interrupting her typing of the meeting minutes long enough to move her mouse and click audibly several times.
Suddenly, Hashimoto felt the attraction of his two offers, Hong Kong and the Great Leap in the Caymans, surge in his chest.
Wed, 16 Dec 2020, 02:12 -0800 (2020-12-16T10:12 GMT)
Western Days Hotel
“Kazumi, wake up.”
Along with someone calling out to him in English, Kazumi felt the slap of a soft palm on his cheek. Raising his sleep-glued eyelids, he saw dragon-patterned embroidery leap front and center into his field of vision. In gold thread that bulged from red linen, it was lit up from the base and appeared to stand before him in three dimensions.
Turning his head to look around, he saw a broad ceiling and then a man with thick eyebrows—NORAD serviceman Daryl Freeman. At last he remembered where he was and what was happening. He was in the bedroom of a hotel in Seattle, Western Days. Light came pouring from the adjacent lounge they were using as an operations center. Kazumi had been consigned to the bedroom, where he’d hurriedly changed and crawled into bed.
“It’s 2 a.m.,” said Daryl. “I’m sorry to disturb you when you’ve just gone to bed, but there’s a call for you.”
He pointed toward the open door, through which Kazumi could see walls covered haphazardly in silver sheets. Since Chris had wrapped up the meeting just before midnight, Kazumi calculated, he had been asleep for about two hours.
“Okay. I’ll be right there.” Kazumi sat up and put on the jeans and sweater he’d rolled up on the bedside table. Sitting on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes, he was reminded again that he wasn’t in Japan, where wearing shoes indoors like this was unimaginable. He stepped into the gleaming silver operations center and looked back at the wall where the adjacent bedrooms were.
“Time to wake up, Kazumi,” said Bruce. “I know it’s a bit early, but we have a videoconference and we can’t start without you.”
“Akari is already in her seat,” said Chris from somewhere behind him.
Looking back, Kazumi saw Daryl and Akari sitting at the table, an empty seat between them. Bruce sat off to one side, pointing at the whiteboard he was using in place of his display. There, Kazumi saw a face he hadn’t seen in what felt like a long while: Jamshed. In a room filled with filaments of sunlight, the Iranian scientist reached out his hand and adjusted the angle of the camera. The sunbeams behind him wavered, blocked here and there by countless strips of yellow paper hanging from the ceiling.
Jamshed retracted his hand from the camera, raised it, and said in somewhat stiff English, “Hey, Kazumi. I introduced myself to be Jay. I am Jamshed Jahanshah.” Jamshed scratched his cheek, flashed a white smile from beneath his mustache, and added, “Technically, I have my doctorate now. I am happy we can speak again immediately.”
“It has been—” Kazumi recalled the day Jamshed had contacted him for the videoconference with the poor connection. They had spoken while Kazumi was watching the launch for Loki 9, which had been on Sunday. “Three days. I am in Seattle now.”
Kazumi was grateful that his limited English ability had prevented him from coming up with the phrase “three whole days.” For Jamshed, it had been only three days. But Kazumi felt as though he had been in Seattle for a week even though they had just arrived the evening before last.
“Bruce told me already. Seattle is a city at America. And seems the NORAD and even CIA were waiting for me.” Jamshed put a hand to his breast and laughed. “Is like I am the important person. Make me nervous.”
Chris raised her hand, and she became enlarged in the preview window for the video they were sending to Jamshed. “Dr. Jahanshah, you are without a doubt an important person. I am honored to be able to invite you, a genius scientist who conceived an incredibly unique spacecraft all by yourself, on to our team.” Chris spoke even more slowly, with longer pauses between words, than when she was talking to Kazumi and Akari. “The CIA would like to hire you as a consultant on the space tethers. Please provide us with an estimate of the compensation you would like to receive.”
“Compensation … I had not thought of that. Is not much I could use it for at Tehran.” Jamshed touched his mustache and relaxed his cheeks.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be money. If your wish is to come to America, then please just let us know.”
Hearing Chris’s words, Kazumi’s breath stopped. America. The country that had given birth to Ronnie Smark. Where passionate and talented individuals like Daryl went so far as to join the army there just for a chance to build up their careers. This remarkable place was where Chris was inviting Jamshed. When Kazumi saw the wide-eyed expression on the doctor’s face, he asked himself for the first time: If I were to leave Japan, would I have what it takes to succeed?
“Wonderful … That is attractive proposal. Please let me think about it.”
“Jus
t let us know,” said Chris and wrote question in big block letters on the whiteboard. “I’m sorry to have to write this for you by hand. Can you read it?”
“It is fine,” said Jamshed. “English of these level is no problem. Screen is easy to see too.”
A separate camera dedicated to displaying the whiteboard was sending its feed to Jamshed using a different account. Akari had set this up for them before Kazumi had even noticed.
“I wasn’t expecting to be able to speak with you so quickly, Dr. Jahanshah, so we haven’t prepared our questions yet,” said Chris. “Over there right now … I guess it’s shortly after noon. I’m very sorry to say this after you went through all the trouble of connecting us, but it’s two in the morning here. Do you mind if we finish this up within about an hour? I’ll arrange for us to have another meeting right away.”
“Excuse me. I am thinking Kazumi is in Tokyo. How about we is have our next meeting at seven hours? Time difference is eleven and the half hours. When is night here is morning there.”
“Well, you space people sure are good with time zones. Even CIA agents like us who are active around the world can’t hold a candle,” said Chris, and without any hesitation wrote Scheduled Conference: 09:00 (Tehran 20:30) on the whiteboard.
“How shall we begin?” Chris looked around at the members in their seats, and Akari immediately raised her hand.
“I’d like to know the communication format,” she said. “If you were to design the space tethers yourself, Doctor, how would you design the application transfer interface? Also, what would be a good choice for the physical layer?” Akari began to enumerate the redundancies that would eliminate bit loss so as to secure a robust signal in a poor environment. “Once we have this information in hand, the CIA can root out the nodes transmitting and receiving the data.”
Jamshed’s eyes swam. “… Sorry, but I do not understand meaning. Application’s layer?”
“That was just computer jargon,” said Daryl, waving his hand with a laugh. “What she wants to ask you about is the communications protocol and so on for the space tethers. In particular, the method for transmitting telemetric data to base stations on Earth, the radio frequency and the data that signal carries. How would you standardize this?”