Watson, Ian - SSC

by The Very Slow Time Machine (v1. 1)

  Later, as Yamaguchi slept fitfully, the Moon rose, and the robot-gardener, fully alert now, climbed out of its cement pit and rolled towards the astronaut, tracking him by his body-heat.

  When it reached him, it extruded its sharpest knife, plunged the blade through his suit and into his abdomen. Without a moment’s delay it dragged the blade across his belly from left to right, then, turning the knife in the wound, made a brief upward cut.

  As Yamaguchi thrashed about in hideous pain, fastened within the cumbersome spacesuit, the robot raked him over on to his belly and extruded a long curved sword with a shining blade. Swiftly the sword slashed through his neck, a little below the plexiglass helmet.

  The Code said: “It is considered expert not to cut the head completely off in one stroke, but to leave a portion of uncut skin at the throat...”

  Yamaguchi had failed; nonetheless he met an honorable death.

  Back at the Space Agency Center outside the Park, beyond the court designed by Henri Martinet, now locked and sealed again, the telemetry officials noted the termination of life functions, as well as the sudden surge of readings just before the end.

  PROGRAMMED LOVE STORY

  Once upon a time in the year Two Thousand there will be a hostess in the Queen Bee cabaret in Tokyo, called Kei. Her marriage to a young businessman has turned out sadly. He has quar- . relied with her. And why? Because he is convinced she has the wrong personality. She is pretty, yes. She is graceful and tactful, yes. They make love with all the proficiency and enthusiasm that Dr. Sha Kokken had prescribed. But as his business prospects grow he has grown superstitious—and the firm’s astrology computer has lately whispered in his ear that she is wrong for him. That they should have taken more heed of their horoscopes (which modem science, increasingly conscious of the existence of patterns in the universe, has validated by the year Two Thousand) and less of romantic love. That her palm print is incompatible with his—a fact that he never noticed while they were courting and holding hands. That her grace and softness will hold him back, for what the firm needs during the coming millenium is tough aggressive managers for overseas, with tough aggressive wives to goad them on. So he has grown bitter towards her, reproaching her for her tender and yielding (though amorous) nature, exhorting her day by day to reform her personality, to change herself— though into what she has to change herself he has never quite made up his mind. And this has gone on until one sad day, simply because she loves him and would not stand in his way, she has left him.

  Once upon a time in the year Two Thousand there will be a woman called Kei who works as a cabaret hostess to support herself, though even in the year Two Thousand the pay at the Queen Bee is not so good considering the nature of the services demanded . . .

  Only a stone’s throw away from Nihonbashi Bridge which travellers used to set off from in the old days in papanquins borne by high-stepping servants on their way to Kyoto, which modern man sets off from in neon-striped taxis with automatic doors on the fifty-seven stages of extravagance known as the Ginza; only a stone’s throw away from where the metal dragons of the bridge rear their heads (though only just) between the lanes of the overhead expressway—is the Queen Bee’s extensive, if shabby, facade. By the year Two Thousand the Queen Bee has done her damnedest to keep up with the times.

  Kei’s pliant yielding nature—if it did not seem to qualify her very well for life with her husband the Almost Twenty-First Century Businessman —did uniquely qualify her for work at the Queen Bee.

  Today when a customer walks into that cabaret, he is handed a computer sheet showing twenty situations—modest traditional bride, brisk nurse tending the wounded war hero, sailor-suited schoolgirl presenting an apple to the teacher, fat nude trussed up tightly so that her flesh bulges over the ropes like the Michelin tire man ... he marks the four scenes he likes best, in order of preference; the computer locates her closest to his heart among the hundred hostesses.

  By the year Two Thousand the Queen Bee has installed a far more sophisticated computer of the SWARM variety—a Suggestibility Wizard & Rapport Machine. As soon as the customer (honored guest, as they say) has chosen the face he fancies from the catalogue of a hundred pretty faces, and the personality type he yearns for from the pack of a hundred situation cards-"—take note that a hundred pretty faces multiplied by a hundred personalities will give him the choice of ten thousand women—the owner of the pretty face is summoned to the changing room. Suppose that the pretty face is Kei’s, she will need all her pliant yielding nature then, for only a genuine yielding nature can accept the Suggestibility Wizard & Rapport Machine’s imprinting of a fresh personality upon it without giving signs of a schizophrenia distressing to an honored guest.

  Once upon a time in the year Two Thousand there will be a hostess called Kei upon whose brain a Suggestibility Wizard & Rapport Machine imposes a fresh personality nightly—which is to say up until two a.m. in the morning when the Queen Bee shuts up shop and a hundred hostesses, passing through the front door onto the Ginza, pass through an eraser field too and find themselves out there among the neon lights, de- hypnotized, with memories of being other people, so many miniskirted high-heeled swamis dreaming of reincarnation . . .

  Once upon a time in the year Two Thousand a pliant gentle personality will be a prior essential for any girl who wants to be a Queen Bee hostess and adopt personalities which are not hers, personalities that need not themselves be particularly pliant or gentle . . . (For does not Situation Card 64 depict a leather-clad lady whipping her escort with a riding crop?)

  Once upon a time in the year Two Thousand there will be a rising young businessman called Kenzo whose status with the firm ensures his section chief taking him along precisely once a month to some cabaret or other to entertain clients into the wee hours of the morning, all expenses paid . . .

  Thus one evening in the year Two Thousand this Kenzo will walk into the Queen Bee along with his section chief and a client from Kyoto and be handed a catalogue of a hundred pretty faces, among which he is mildly surprised to find his wife Kei. Now whether it was Kenzo’s reluctance to watch his wife entertaining strangers, or whether he had decided to play a practical joke upon her (his bitterness not having entirely abated yet), he chose this particular face from among die hundred to be his hostess; and from the pack of cards selected number 78—Strength in High Places, the Imperial Concubine.

  The transistor hidden in her brassiere gave a beep summoning Kei to the changing room, where she submitted herself obediently to the Suggestibility Wizard & Rapport Machine, emerging a few moments later with arrogance and precision, cruel, bent on power, mind hatching devious plots, mostly centered on the swift rise to a position of eminence of her new protege, whom she would shortly meet, cajole, mold and entice. For the whiskies she pressed on her victim at 100 New Yen a shot were transactions of great significance; the colored water she drank herself (at 100 New Yen a shot) a clever way of evading the poisoner’s art.

  One upon a time in the year Two Thousand a rising businessman will summon his lost wife before him in the image of the Imperial Concubine—and she will cajole him, mold him, entice him, under the envious eyes of his Section Chief, till he sighs: “What such a woman could do for me!’’ and falls helplessly in love with her. . .

  Long after midnight, when the Section Chief had paid Queen Bee for their night’s entertainment and Kenzo is travelling home in a neon taxi with stereo chansons playing softly, he still loves her helplessly and thinks about her; for poetic justice cuts both ways.

  The next night on his own he made his way back to the Queen Bee, pointed at that pretty face in the catalogue, and asked for personality number 78.

  Sitting opposite the Imperial Concubine, watching with dismay how fast she drained the glasses of colored water, Kenzo cried out at last:

  “Do you know who I am, Kei?’’

  And she smiled the Austere Perfection Smile appropriate to the castration ceremonies of court eunuchs; and nodded.

&nbs
p; “Do you know I am your husband?”

  “Husband?” She laughed lightly, a laugh appropriate to an enemy’s execution reported earnestly by a doting prince.

  “With you by my side—this you—I could climb so high . .

  The prospect of power. . . she leaned forward.

  “Shall I inform you how to twist that Section Chief of yours round your little finger? Did you take note which girl he chose? What she represented?”

  Shamed, he shook his head.

  “You should have noticed—for that was the key to his soul.”

  “I was too busy noticing you, my darling wife.”

  “Nonsense! I am an imperial concubine—you know we can never be wed. We can only meet in safety as conspirators.”

  Once upon a time in the year Two Thousand there will be a rising young businessman who conceives an obsession for the Imperial Concubine of the Queen Bee, to whom he was once married, and woos her a second time, spending all his salary, then all his savings, on glasses of whisky-colored water, and little dishes of rice crackers . . . and still her heart—in that incarnation—is chiselled out of rice.

  And early every morning at 2 a.m. after his fruitless visits she walks out, dehypnotized, onto the Ginza, weeping at the Imperial Concubine’s inability to thaw, and yield.

  In the year Two Thousand, on the Ginza, once upon a time there will be a benighted businessman who has gone so deep into debt that he embezzles thousands of New Yen from his firm to pay the Queen Bee, till his Section Chief discovers and fires him; who goes with his last pocketful of change to spend it on colored water and rice crackers for an Imperial Concubine he is sure is at last on the very point of yielding.

  Once upon a time on the Ginza there will be a tender yielding hostess, Kei by name, who submits to a Suggestibility Wizard & Rapport Machine nightly, till one night she submits to it no more. . . who elopes from the Queen Bee with her protege, passing through an erasure field as she leaves the door, to become . . .

  “Oh Kenzo!”

  “Oh Kei!”

  . . . the tough hard wife of a ruined exbusinessman, with whom she walks along the Ginza through the neon forest—for they can’t afford a taxi fare—till at last they come to Shim- bashi Station where the shoeshine people have left their equipment out overnight—who would steal shoeshine equipment?

  In the year Two Thousand there will be a tough handsome couple shining people’s shoes in the early morning as the trains rattle overhead and the neon taxis swing past. You can still see this couple, older now and beginning to suffer from chest trouble from the exhaust fumes, shining and repairing shoes on the street by Shimbashi Station through the night. If you look for them carefully. Once upon a time in the future.

  This story is brought to you by a Suggestibility Wizard & Rapport Machine programmed to print out stories about itself suitable for junior high schools during the slack periods of the day, by courtesy of the management, Queen Bee Cabaret, Tokyo, tax-deductible for educational purposes.

  We do not sell merchandise; we sell human nature.

  THE GIRL WHO WAS ART

  Who else can recreate with her body the immortal works of Tadanori Yokoo, morning star of Japan's economic sunrise in the mid-Twentieth century, quite as myself? Gazing at his superbly ironic body on pages 18 and 19 of the priceless first edition of Posthumous Works (presented to me by my Master as a necessary part of my equipment) I can sense his petulant eyes and surly lips meeting mine across the years. T lies alone on a maroon paisley bed, posters pasted on the walls, body propped on a slim elbow . . . and if I were able to travel back in time and knock on his door I'd open my mouth wide as a lockjaw moon and hold that pose till he was amazed, compelled to pout in his bored way, “Well I guess I can use your face”— he’d never guess that neither lockjaw nor lock- anything can cramp my style after the hours of muscle-training I’ve undergone.

  Admittedly false pride can ruin a good performer who has to be quite selfless when she comes to submerge herself in her role. Yet how can I help feeling just a little proud of being the best interpreter of T in all Japan? For I know I am. No one has devoted more to her art. Is this pride? I don’t think so. My only joy is to feel what flowers must have felt in the gone days of Ikebana, had they been gifted with consciousness: the fulfillment of being part of a design. For I am an intelligent flower that has the privilege of arranging itself—according to T’s immortal graphic designs, prescient patterns of our new Japan to which the whole world turns.

  My Master is a man of taste—one of the first businessmen to turn away from the old artists of a dead world, those Manets and Rubenses and Utamaros, leaving the girls who specialized in creating them to drag their wasted talents round country fairs and department store roofs. But the etiquette of praise is very strict. We feel that open praise is a little vulgar. That is for foreigners to lavish. My Master cannot exactly praise my nightly performances—in fact he must sit with his back to them, in the place of honor. Only when he has a guest to dinner can he sit facing me across the table and take notice of me. I may also hear a word of praise from the guest. Yet it isn’t praise or fame that I think about as I hold my pose there perfectly still. Am I worthy of T and his design? That’s all I wonder.

  My Master usually phones immediately after lunch so that I can be in place when he gets home in the evening. Apart from the Posthumous Works open in front of me as I wait for his call, my room is perfectly bare. The costume cupboards closed, everything neat. My whole life being in here, I want nothing to distract me from T’s ideas. Here I eat and here I sleep and on my holiday here I often remain, meditating. Rarely do I open the paper screen windows. What need is there to? It’s all in T’s own work, foreseen so many years ago—the blazing highrise buildings, the trains with giant plastic flowers sprouting from them, the crashing helicopters, naked girls globed in fishbowl helmets, lunar city under the smoking volcano, rays of the sun diffracted into broad red beams by the smog and skyscrapers, our flag spread open in the sky at last for visitors from abroad to wonder at. . . .

  Last night I posed in the cool crazy White Smile from that vintage year 1966: stooping in front of the white china toilet with the split seat, bowing with a big toothy grin, my slip hanging off one shoulder showing both breasts, bending over to pull my red knickers down below my knees . . .

  The night before I was a New York Girl in a brown wig with curls, my left arm sticking straight up in the air waving above a smudge of brown armpit, right hand grasping a telephone speaker to a mouth red with lipstick, bright vermilion tongue sticking out cheekily over my lower lip—and my huge eyes blank white contact-lens cut-outs in my face. The telephone dial-box hanging down by my waist, ballooning red skirt pinned neatly to it, showing off my sky- blue knickers, black suspenders, a blue stocking and a red stocking, against a backdrop of mid-air Manhattan with a blond beachguard cutout appraising me . . .

  Earlier in the week, I was the girl jockey bent double over my black plastic steed with my hair streaming in the wind and a fresh mackerel clasped between my teeth.

  I’ve stood nude before Mt. Fuji with my hair done up in a towel, teeth in a foam of tingling toothpaste.

  I’ve been the bare-breasted vampire at the seaside. I’ve been the Japanese Mona Lisa squeezing a jet of milk—thin white plastic strand—from one nipple while my other hand toys with my clitoris inside my white panties, mouth wide open, eyes rolled upwards, flowing golden mane, masturbating maniac of the rocks . . .

  The telephone buzzes.

  My Master appears on the screen, I bow to him, he nods a quick acknowledgment.

  “I have a guest tonight . . . Kindly do The Gratitude of Aeschylus.” And breaks the connection, vanishing in the whirlpool of his own light, busy man.

  My heart leaps with joy, for The Gratitude of Aeschylus is one of the most complex, most demanding, most aesthetically satisfying of all T’s works. I shall need all the time there is.

  Adding cream dye to the already hot water in my bath behind the
sliding door, I submerge myself totally, closing my eyes and breathing through a straw while I run down all the details of this demanding role . . .

  Like a ballerina on tiptoes with legs wide apart I shall have to stand, pointed toes concealed in blue rubber mermaid fins that cling to my legs as far as the knees. Apart from a red Noh mask taped to my crotch, my only other article of dress is a diving helmet with an abnormally broad glass window. The air-hose from this coils round my body under my left breast, down behind my thigh, back between my legs, before doubling into the mouth of the Noh mask . . . the spectator sees the pipe as entering my vagina, is supposed to believe I’m breathing out of my own womb—the ultimate self-sufficiency. In reality the hose passes between the tightness of my buttocks and is taped to the small of my back. You can imagine how much muscle control it takes to maintain this pose— tiptoes, legs wide straddled, sucking in oxygen all the way up that long hose, without giving any sign of doing so!

  A background rich in objects and flourishes. Five red plastic butterflies, an apple tree with a half dozen chewed apple cores and a blue serpent, a vermilion devil with a flintlock rifle squeezing his wife’s nipple, a blazing nude stabbing her Hindu lover while a headless wedding guest stands by in a frock-coat, with a gravedigger in a yellow T-shirt; and in the distance those twin obsessions of the 1960s, the Moon and a nuclear mushroom—oh so many things, such richness! I have to put out flat plastic models of all these things while the dye is drying on me. Flat, because two-dimensionality is an essential part of The Gratitude of Aeschylus, unlike White Smile which called for a three-dimensional toilet bowl . . . and I too must seem flat and twodimensional, my widespread legs in the same vertical plane as my body, which isn’t easy—believe me—even for a specialist. . . .

  In place, on tiptoe, in green fins, legs straddled, eyes wide open, seeing everything bathed in green by my contact lenses . . . not heeding the dinner party, where is it? might make my eyes flicker with curiosity create some nervous excitement betray itself in a twitch or flush.