by Stark, Logan
-5-
Artificial sunlight poured from artificial windows, which he had two of on either side of the door. Without them, the room would have been nothing more than a tin cage with a mattress, a cooler, and a toilet. The artificial windows, which looked like paintings, were made of synthetic silk and were powered by cables running through the wall, making them shine a bright morning color and come alive with animal sounds. Artificial birds flew over the window and chirped. The window zoomed onto a mountain and glided over it. The sun appeared, and it casted a bright yellow wave over Peter, who was lying flat on the ground, face down on his sketchpad.
Somewhere between consciousness and deep sleep, he heard the birds in his room, their chirps dancing from corner to corner, wings flapping. Behind closed eyelids, darkness turned into light. It was morning and a part of him registered, but a part of him had no motivation to switch on the gears of his body. All he wanted to do was keep his cheek warm on the ground, think of nothing, listen to the birds flying around him, and … how is it already morning? he thought. How did night turn into light? He wetted his lips, a plucking sound, and turned away from the windows. At first he thought it was his neighbor, Hakari, the man who enjoyed nothing more than fried vegetables and bad TV, that was knocking – no, banging – on the wall next to his mattress. The illusion of sound tricked Peter for a few seconds more until it moved behind.
‘What the …’ He tried opening his eyes and failed. He was trying to think who would be knocking on his door so early in the morning. Maybe it was already afternoon, a thought reminded. His eyelids felt like castle gates, broken, the ropes unable to pull. He convinced himself that the knocking must’ve been coming from somewhere else. He lived at the back entrance of Lower City Tokyo, where the streets were like veins running through smaller veins, houses tightly packed against each other. Everyone’s business, everyone’s business.
Please let it be someone else’s door, he thought, the ringing in his ears turning into a throb. When the banging didn’t disappear, he opened his eyes wide, frustrated, not the way he wanted to wake up. Birds flew across his artificial windows, greeting him with a chirp! chirp! chirp! A wonderful morning sunshine, yellow and bright, washed over his face and gave him a headache.
‘Deactivate morning,’ Peter said. The windows went offline. Sunrise turned into a beach with waving palm trees, washing everything a relaxing blue in the room. Not that this was helping his headache in any way. He pushed himself from the ground, leaving a trail of saliva over his night’s work, and stumbled toward the door.
‘I’m coming!’ He tried figuring out who it could be. He had been living on his own since the age of ten, and during all that time only once had someone knocked, and it had been Hakari suffering from some kind of epilepsy.
The rattling key stopped the person from banging. For some reason this made Peter angrier. He looked at his artificial window and saw waves washing onto the shore. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for an outburst, and swung the door wide. Air whistled through his lips; confusion made him forget about his anger.
Ohko was standing outside his door, his arm stretched against the side, as if posing for a picture. He already had his hair slicked in a black shine. He had the same leather jacket on from yesterday, and the only thing different about him was his collar, which was down.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Peter asked, wondering if he’d travelled all the way from his side of shithole city.
With a monstrous grin, he pulled a lone cigarette from the inside of his jacket, his hand shaking a little. ‘Why you look so supiiized, friend?’ His shaky hand found his mouth and dived back into his jacket, and a toy the shape of a shark, his favorite lighter, appeared.
A lack of people on the street told Peter it had to be early morning. The rain had stopped, but water still dripped from roofs as if it hadn’t. Peter stuck his head out and looked around. A gray fog lingered above. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever been here in the morning.’
He inhaled the cigarette and kept the smoke trapped in his cheeks. He kissed at Peter, waited a few seconds, and blew the smoke past his face. ‘That because we work all year, work like rabbits on hamsta wheel. You viting your friend Ohko inside?’
Peter made way. ‘I don’t see why not. Come in.’
Ohko sucked his cigarette before walking in. The door clicked shut and Peter folded his arms. Before he could say anything, his friend jumped around, extending his arms to the sides, smiling a clownish grin.
‘Did you miss me?’ Ohko asked.
Peter bit the side of his mouth and walked past, bumping into his friend’s shoulder. ‘Not really. I still don’t get why you—’
‘Oh, don’t be so wrangry. You not morning person. I get it. Ohko gets it.’ He glided his hand over his slicked hair and made his way to the cooler. He snapped the lid open and pulled a bottle of milk. While screwing the cap, he pointed one finger at the windows. ‘Me like very much. I have a few of those back home, but mine is of naked women dancing on a pole, not a beach. You gay?’ He cocked his head back and downed the bottle. He wiped his lips, leaving a line of white on his cheek. ‘I hate milk.’
Peter remembered what his friend had said last night, something about wanting to go somewhere. There he was thinking it was all a joke, that his friend couldn’t have been serious. ‘Ohko, don’t tell me you were serious last night.’
He rested the milk bottle against his side and gazed at Peter. ‘Of course I’m serious. You think I was joking when I said—’
‘I already told you I’m seeing my mother today. And why’s your hand shaking like that?’
‘Need a cut down on my bad habits.’ He rummaged his leather jacket and pulled out a cell, spilling two packets of white powder by accident. ‘Speak of devil’s momma.’ He quickly snatched the packets and stored it away.
‘You need to cool it on the drugs,’ Peter said. There was no point in saying that, really. When it came to his friend, it was like telling a bird to stop flying. But a part of him felt obligated, as a friend, to let him know of the dangers.
‘Drugs are Lower City’s milk, Peter. You must know this by now. Anyway. Where I was.’ He played piano on his cell. ‘Get dressed. We leaving soon.’
He was not leaving this room with his friend, and that was a fact. Anger made him bite his lips. ‘Okay, you’re starting to annoy me. First of all, I don’t even know where you want to go. Second, I don’t really care because I’ve got other plans for the day.’ Peter turned around and adjusted the mattress covers as if that was the place where he had slept for the night. With his back to his friend, he waited for a response, and the response came flying onto the mattress – Ohko’s cell upside down.
‘Take look, friend. Got nice little pic for you.’
Peter stopped adjusting the covers and stared at the cell. Curiosity reached for it. At first he didn’t know what he was looking at, a dark room with something inside. There was light streaming from closed shutters. A lot of dust. More shadow than light. And then his eyes registered the silhouette of … of … no, he thought. This couldn’t be right. This wasn’t possible. A part of his brain could feel his facial expression expanding: eyebrows up, mouth down. His chest felt hot. His eyebrows began to twitch. He turned his neck and—
‘Now, look at that pretty face,’ Ohko said. ‘You still wanna go see momma for the day? Or you wanna come see your first Dream Chasing machine?’
-6-
Too many questions ran through his mind, some of them wanting – needing – to know how such a thing was possible. Lower City was eerily quiet today. Maybe it was the early morning that made it so, but Peter knew this wasn’t the case. Life in Tokyo would usually start at three in the morning and end at two in the morning, giving the streets an hour’s rest. The only reason it was this quiet was because of the day off. People in Lower City were either sleeping their depression away or wide-eyed awake, staring at the roof, fueling their depression.
Last night’s downpour had left the st
reets a watery mess. Gutters were overflowing, spurting at some spots, pushing the sewage from below out, making some areas smell of wet, soggy food.
They were walking through a market that was abandoned for the day, and the rain hadn’t been able to wash the stench away. Yellow banners with red lettering hung from stalls, saying that they were closed for the day, and some of them spray painted with vulgar words.
‘That one says, “Fuck the government,”’ Ohko said, pointing at a banner hanging on for dear life. ‘I need to meet that person.’ He laughed and slapped Peter on the back. ‘Why you so quiet?’
Peter looked at him and wanted to say something, but looked away at all the rubbish on the floor. Trash bags leaning against an electronics shop shook violently, and a cat jumped out and chased something with a long wiry tail. ‘Where are we going? How far is it?’
Ohko rubbed his hand along the brick wall. ‘If I tell you, I kill you. Is that right?’
‘Yeah, something like that. But I’m serious. Is that …’ Peter swallowed. ‘This isn’t legal, right?’
A homeless man crawled out from under torn blankets. His forehead was painted in soot and his eyes tired. His arm stretched while he coughed. ‘Please,’ he said, and stared at the two approaching young men.
‘How you doing this morning?’ Ohko asked, stopping. ‘You had a good time last night?’
Homeless man coughed a reddish liquid from his lips. He smeared it on his blanket, a filthy brown sheet with black dots all over. ‘Please? I’m hungry.’
Ohko doesn’t do charity, Peter thought. ‘Just leave the man, and let’s go.’
‘I need to readjust my karma levels,’ Ohko said. He gave the homeless man a pat on the head and asked him if he was hungry, to which the man quickly responded with a nod. ‘You ever try this?’ He pulled out a packet of white powder. ‘Won’t get any better quality, my friend.’
The man looked at them both, trying to understand, his quivering eyebrows full of dirt. ‘Anything to … help me survive, is good.’ His hand wriggled from under the blankets, revealing a wooly glove with five holes, one for each poking finger. He begged for the white.
Ohko threw the packet on the man’s lap, his karma done for the day. ‘Merry New Year’s.’ Ohko patted Peter on the back. ‘Let’s roll.’
A part of Peter’s boyish side had found that funny, but a deeper feeling, a sinking in the stomach, made him question if that was actually funny.
An hour later, they were in the eastern part of the city, the old Langh Hai quarters or Time’s Graveyard, as some of the locals called it. Derelict buildings were everywhere. Some abandoned shopping centers homes to the homeless, doors made of no-entry tape. When Tokyo started selling Dream Energy to third-world countries, not only did its economy shoot up, but the riches of the wealthy. The nice areas in the city turned into extravagant abodes while the poor areas turned into rat holes. After a while, the gap between rich and poor had been so wide, the government had begun treating Lower City like some kind of sick thing, as if Lower City was a person in need of charitable services.
A bicycle creaked, the chains that made the wheels turn in need of oil. The man riding, a tired teenager with a heavy backpack, couldn’t care less about his transport or the state of it. He raised his chest into the air, gave the pedal a lethargic push down, and seemed contempt with the new found speed.
‘See that building over there?’ Ohko asked, pointing at broken windows. ‘That’s where we going.’
The puddles were like mines, and Peter stepped over them. ‘Isn’t that the old basketball court?’
His grin revealed a few white teeth and a few yellow ones. ‘Not a anymore. Now we the playas.’ They stepped into the parking lot, where cars had once come to drop off their children for basketball lessons. There were no cars today, except one abandoned SUV, a white scratch the only color remaining on the wet steel. While walking past the SUV, Peter peeked inside its open door. Inside, a big cat with emerald-green eyes glanced at them.
Glass crunched under their feet, welcoming them inside SJBC (Shai Jang Basketball Court). A cabinet with no trophies was the first thing Peter saw. Its glass lay shattered on the ground below, and the only thing remaining in the cabinet were crumpled papers.
‘What are we doing here?’ Peter asked. He knew why they were there but was playing it stupid. The thought of a Dream Infiltrator in this building made him feel dizzy and excited at the same time.
‘We gonna shoot them hoops for a bit, you know,’ Ohko made a hoop-throwing gesture, ‘like the old Magic Johnson. Do it good.’ They came to a closed door. There was sign on it that said Court Entry A-1. Ohko slapped his hand on it, and before pushing the door open, he glanced over his shoulder and grinned; this was the door to Narnia, that grin said. ‘You ready to see?’
Peter shrugged, not knowing what to expect. The door swung wide, clapping against a steel frame. This was no Narnia, just a filthy court that had been abandoned when the rich got richer and the poor poorer. But farther in, people in black jackets stood around what looked like a hospital bed. Machinery with a lot of wires were dotted around the bed. It took Peter less than three seconds to realize one of them, a Neo Infiltrator, a headset strapped around the head that is used to balance energy frequencies in the brain. Peter’s mouth fell to his knees. A part of him didn’t believe Ohko, a part of him laughed at the idea of something like this being real, but there was no denying what was in front of him, and all the equipment seemed to be there as well: the Neo Infiltrator, the cables, the heart monitors (both the wristbands and ankle ones), the dream cage, which was the bed itself, a carefully designed bunk able to lock all necessary body parts: the head, ribs, wrists, and ankles.
He found himself walking faster than his friend. He needed to feel the bed with his own two hands, to make sure it weren’t a dream or some kind of foolish prank. It was neither a dream nor a foolish prank, it was—
‘Real,’ Peter said, minding his way through the heavy coated men, who were looking at Ohko, pleased. ‘How is such a thing possible, Ohko?’ Only in his wildest imagination had he seen such a machine, which appeared to be somewhat intact, only a few loose ends hanging here and there. He caressed the light-blue steel with a few fingers, feeling his heart grow warmer. He remembered the first time he saw a Dream Infiltrator, he was a young boy, around the age of five, and his mother had bought a TV for the first time. One of the first commercials was of scientists in orange coats presenting the power of Dream Chasing, how a Dream Chaser could go into a dream and see what they saw.
Peter picked up the headset and played with the dials scattered around the steel. The headset was smaller than what he’d expected. Two red stripes, which looked like equal signs, were on either side of the eye sockets; they emit just enough light underneath to induce active sleep, to make the mind wander between awareness and deep sleep. Two round steel plates were the ear pieces. Peter tilted the headset and peeked inside the hallow space, amazed at the black emptiness of it.
‘You like what you see?’ the man asked, his face appearing from behind Peter. He had a white vest on, a tight fit on his slim body. The lack of sleeves revealed both arms painted in tattoos. A green and orange dragon swirled around his right arm, its mouth open and about to breathe fire, which it did on the man’s left arm, where fire and smoke covered pale skin.
Peter had the urge to ask the man where he’d gotten the machine from. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Ohko talking to a group of others. He returned his focus to the man in the white vest, who was smiling at him. ‘It’s remarkable.’ He ran his hand around the steel inside, wondering if it would hurt.
‘My name is Midori Kuro.’ He extended his dragon painted arm for a handshake, and Peter saw a gun strapped against the man’s hip. Peter believed it to be a machine gun. They shook hands, and Midori Kuro continued talking, reaching for the headset in Peter’s hands. ‘You look very intrigued.’
‘Sure,’ Peter said, still thinking about that gun. What
did he get himself into? These people were obviously not kindergarten teachers. ‘I’ve always wanted to see a Dream Machine.’
Midori Kuro continued smiling, lips more parted to the right. He was a good looking male with hair like Ohko’s, shiny black and slicked. ‘Try it on,’ he said, his smile like a poster for a movie.
A voice in him screamed: do what the man says, you’ve always wanted to try. Another voice countered: all of this is a bit too good to be true. ‘Oh, I don’t think—’
‘I insist.’ Midori pushed the headset into Peter’s stomach. Air left his lungs and whispered through his lips. His eyes widened. And they widened even more when gunfire sprayed, a constant thundering clap that lasted for nearly five seconds. Horror struck Peter in the chest. He didn’t want to look behind because he knew what’d happened. He looked anyway. He had to. And he was right. The world was a carpet under his feet, and the carpet had been ripped away, making his kneecaps wobble and his legs shake. His friend lay in a puddle of his own blood. Ohko’s face had holes leaking – spouting – wine-red liquid. The men in coats were cleaning their guns with napkins. Peter heard a voice in his head and thought it was his own, but it was the man next to him, the man in the white vest, his voice a peaceful ring.
So much blood on the basketball floor. So many bullets for one person.
‘Are you listening?’ Midori Kuro asked.
Peter felt a hot mouth chewing on his shoulder. He swung his neck sleepily and saw the hand on his shoulder. Midori wanted to know if he was okay. He wanted to let Peter know that he was sorry for his loss, but it was the way of the world. You lose some, you win some. Welcome to the real world. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Peter asked.
‘What happened to your friend,’ Midori looked at the pool of red, ‘was a tragic loss for us all. But you have to understand,’ Peter felt his shoulder being squeezed ‘when you do bad business with the Yaramati, when you lie to us, there are consequences.’