by Fujii, Taiyo
I reached into my leg pouch and drew out a clear acrylic tube. “Ready when you are,” I called to Thep.
The tube held a single large grasshopper curled quietly like some museum specimen. Born ten days earlier from an embryo printer, it was an omega-class INAGO—in sleep mode, thanks to 500 ppm trans-2-hexenal.
As I studied the inert INAGO, Thep stood up.
“All right, I’m good to go.”
I put a fingertip on the latch at the end of the tube and took a closer look at the omega. With wings folded it looked pretty much like a natural grasshopper, except for the rhythm of its respiration and the calm pulsing of its bioluminescent wings.
I designed this life-form.
Now our world was its world. Artificial life was about to take its place in the scheme of things.
Thep’s giggle drifted down the slope.
“Getting cold feet?” She spread her arms joyously and spun around to survey the terraces of green that dropped away below us. “There are two billion alphas out there already, just waiting for a mission.”
“That’s true.” I popped the lid of the tube. The scent of trans-2-hexenal reached me, a smell of ripe apples.
The omega detected the GPS signal and twitched its antennae sharply, twice. The light from its wings pulsed brighter.
Power up.
Thep peered into the workspace in her palm. “I’m used to working with alphas. The omega signal is much stronger.”
“It needs to reach as many alphas as possible. That’s why its life span is so much shorter.”
Thep nodded gravely. “Until tomorrow morning.”
“Right. The alphas have eighteen hours to find the solution. If they don’t, I go back to the drawing board.”
“Come on. They get better every time.”
As if wanting to prove Thep right, the omega poked its head out of the tube and moved tentatively into the sunlight. Its tiny spurs pricked my palm lightly, leaving a slight tingling as it moved toward my fingers.
I raised my hand toward the sea of green, and the omega quickly clambered up my fingers. With typical insect behavior, it was aiming for the highest point to launch. Now its luminescent wings were bright enough to light up my fingers, even in daylight.
Ready, steady…
The grasshopper reached the tip of my index finger and spread its wings, flexing them. Their network of veins was filled with dense clusters of bioluminescent cells emitting a rainbow of colors—a signaling organ unique to the omegas, designed by me, implemented by Yagodo, and capable of transmitting up to several hundred megabytes of information to two billion alphas.
I felt the little kick as the omega launched with a low drone. It flew arrow-straight out over the field, a dazzling point of strobing color. The rice plants left and right of its path seemed to stir with life, and the soft glow from millions of points of light rose and spread outward like blue-white foam. The bio-nanomachines in the alphas’ thoraxes were already working to crack the code.
“Find it.” Thep’s voice was taut with anticipation. “Just once. Find the answer, and you’ll find your place in our world.”
I had no words, but my heart was sending the same message.
Find it.
You’ll have to find a way to coexist with us on a planet with limited resources. You’ll have to discover the rules of survival for designed animals. Not even your designers know what they are, or if they even exist.
The rules for survival of Life.
That was the institute’s mission. It was my mission too. I unleashed DARPA’s grasshopper on the world.
The omega was a point of light now, a rainbow flame in the sun-drenched sky.
“Do you think they’ll find it?” Thep murmured. She leaned close to me. The back of her hand brushed mine. A lean hand, toughened by the work to convert Mother Mekong into a petri dish for designed life.
“I don’t know.” I laced her fingers into mine. “We’re a foolish species, Shue. We have the power to destroy our environment many times over. Yet here we are, still surviving. We don’t need to be perfect. We just have to find a way to do the best we can.”
She squeezed my hand. This time, her warmth was real.
About the Author
Taiyo Fujii was born on Amami Oshima Island—that is, between Kyushu and Okinawa. He worked in stage design, desktop publishing, exhibition graphic design, and software development.
In 2012, Fujii self-published Gene Mapper serially in a digital format of his own design and was Amazon.co.jp’s number one Kindle best seller of the year. The novel was revised and republished in both print and digital as Gene Mapper–full build– by Hayakawa Publishing in 2013 and was nominated for the Nihon SF Taisho Award and Seiun Award. His second novel, Orbital Cloud, won the 2014 Nihon SF Taisho Award and took first prize in the “Best SF of 2014” in SF Magazine. His recent works include Underground Market and Bigdata Connect.
HAIKASORU
The Future Is Japanese
Asura Girl— Otaro Maijo
Seventeen-year-old Aiko lives a life of casual sex and casual violence, though at heart she remains a schoolgirl with an unrequited crush on her old classmate Yoji Kaneda. Life is about to get harder for Aiko, as a recent fling, Sano, has been kidnapped, and the serial killer Round-and-Round Devil has begun slaughtering children. The youth are rioting in the streets, egged on by the underground Internet bulletin board known as the Voice from Heaven. Expecting that Yoji will come and save her from the madness, Aiko posts a demand for her own murder on the V of H, but will she be left waiting … or worse?
Dendera—Yuya Sato
When Kayu Saitoh wakes up, she is in an unfamiliar place. Taken to a snowy mountainside, she was left there by her family and her village according to the tradition of sacrificing the lives of the elderly for the benefit of the young. Kayu was supposed to have passed quickly into the afterlife. Instead, she finds herself in Dendera, a utopian community built over decades by old women who, like her, were abandoned. Together, they must now face a new threat: a hungry mother bear.
Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas—kazuki sakuraba
When the outlanders abandoned a baby girl on the outskirts of a village, few imagined that she would grow up to marry into the illustrious Akakuchiba family, much less that she would develop clairvoyant abilities and become matriarch of the illustrious ironworking clan. Her daughter shocks the village further by joining a motorcycle gang and becoming a famous manga artist. The outlanders’ granddaughter Toko—well, she’s nobody at all. A nobody worth entrusting with the secret that her grandmother was a murderer.
This is Toko’s story.