Enter the Rebirth (Enter the... Book 3)

by Thomas Gondolfi

Suzu shook her head. She felt cold, icy. “I don’t have a father.”

  Tezuka stepped around Aota. “Yes, you do. If you want to hear more, I’ll wait at the other end of the bridge.”

  Suzu didn’t move as he backed away.

  “How did you understand him?” Wen asked.

  Suzu bit her lip. “One of the helpers in the home speaks that way. It’s a southern dialect.”

  Tezuka had reached the other end of the bridge. Flickering neon beckoned her towards him. Feeling like she had no free will, as though she had to walk forwards, she caught up with him under a huge LCD display of manga porn.

  “I’m glad you came,” Tezuka said as he led her down an alley.

  Red neon signs advertising whiskey and sake blinked and glittered. “I’ve never seen this alley before,” Suzu said.

  “You’ve never walked all the way across the bridge.”

  “I have,” Suzu said, but when she tried to remember walking here she found only an empty space in her mind.

  The alley broadened into a small square. A massive steel spider towered over the ground. Through the spider’s spindly high legs, a noodle bar’s gaudy yellow sign glowed.

  “Let’s eat,” Tezuka said.

  They walked under the arachnid’s bulging body. Some people were afraid of spiders, even artificial representations of them, but Suzu felt nothing as she walked between its legs. It was a statue, an inanimate object.

  The noodle bar’s horseshoe counter curved around a grill where vats of noodle soup bubbled on electric hobs. A strip light flickered so much she felt like she was blinking. The only other customer was a man with bulbous, pus-filled sacs sagging from his jaw line. He slurped his noodles and stared into space. Suzu wondered if he was imagining a world where the bombs had never fallen, where he hadn’t been cursed with the sacs.

  Tezuka turned to a tall yellow machine with holographic images of noodle bowls. He pressed a finger on a biometric scanner and the holograms lit up.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Have something. My treat.”

  Suzu pressed a hologram. Tezuka tapped a different one, then bent and collected two tokens. “Where do you want to sit?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He chose two high stools opposite the other customer and slipped the tokens into a slot on the counter.

  “Do you know why slot bars are so popular?”

  Suzu crossed her arms and shrugged. The situation was outside her range of experience and she didn’t know how to react.

  “Think.”

  “To stop the staff hacking customers’ credit accounts.”

  “Yes, but there’s another reason, to do with social contact. When you enter a slot bar, you don’t talk to anyone. The machines make social interaction unnecessary.”

  * * *

  The classroom. White walls. An image of an Old Tokyo park on the screen. Under trees that blossomed with pink and white flowers, people shared picnics.

  The culture teacher: “In spring, social interaction took place under the cherry blossoms.”

  * * *

  “People used to eat and talk under the cherry blossoms,” Suzu said.

  Tezuka blinked. “Suzu, I know you’re frightened but we need to talk.”

  “I’m not frightened,” Suzu said. “You’re not a threat to me.”

  “I know this is hard for you, but I am your father.”

  She shook her head. “They took him away. He’s dead.”

  “They took me to the Mines, but I escaped.”

  “No one escapes the Mines.”

  “I did.”

  Their bowls rose through the counter. Suzu’s had thin strips of pork swimming in watery noodle soup.

  “Smells good,” Tezuka said.

  Suzu hesitated, unsure if she should share information about herself. “I can’t smell.”

  “Perhaps you have a cold.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never been able to smell.”

  “We’ll fix that when you come home with me.” He lifted his spoon in one hand and chopsticks in the other. “Eat.”

  A distant, hazy memory buzzed in Suzu’s mind. This man, another time and place. She tried to remember, but it flew out of reach.

  The customer with the sacs stood up and left. Beside her, Tezuka slurped his noodles.

  “Please explain,” Suzu said in English.

  Tezuka waved his chopsticks at Suzu’s untouched bowl. “You’ll have to wait. I’m not like you. When I’m hungry, I have to eat.”

  Powerless, Suzu waited until he finished his meal, set his chopsticks down, and dabbed at his mouth with a paper tissue. He glanced at Suzu’s bowl and smiled. “If you’re not eating that—”

  Suzu swatted her bowl from the counter. Noodles and soup splattered on the tiled floor.

  The smile drained from his lips. “I know you reported your mother for teaching you English.”

  * * *

  The tiny, bleached-white apartment. Mother standing over her. “You have to, sweetheart.”

  * * *

  “How?” Suzu asked.

  “Back home, our satellites monitor everything that happens in Japan. Our surveillance equipment even recorded your principal slapping you.”

  * * *

  A white-sleeved arm snaking over a broad white desk. A hard, sharp slap.

  * * *

  “They took her away that day, while you were still at school," Tezuka said.

  Suzu’s body felt stiff and tense. The memory of Tezuka from another time buzzed in her mind. She almost grabbed the memory in a mental hand, but it fluttered away.

  “They sent her to the Mines,” Tezuka said.

  Suzu stared into the distance, like the customer with the sacs. Perhaps he’d just been trying to remember something.

  “What are you thinking?” Tezuka asked.

  “My thoughts are my own. What happened to my mother after they sent her to the Mines?”

  “She died.”

  Suzu’s dry, cold eyes stared into space. “Why are you here?”

  Tezuka shifted position. “I’m your father. Where else would I be?”

  “My father was a gaijin. He’s dead.”

  “No! I’m back. Do you remember we were going to buy a dog?”

  “A puppy,” Suzu said.

  “Now we can. Any dog you want.”

  The puppy sealed Tezuka’s story. Suzu couldn’t remember an individual occasion when her father had said he would buy a puppy, but she’d always understood that one day he would bring one home.

  Tezuka must be her father, but he was a gaijin. And the elusive memory still bothered her. She wondered if she couldn’t remember because she was trying to recall a visual occasion and it had taken place in darkness. Or had her eyes been shut?

  “Suzu, I love you,” Tezuka—her father—said. “I wanted to come earlier but I couldn’t. It’s hard to escape Japan, but entering illegally is almost impossible.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Come home with me, to Colorado. Green hills, snow-topped mountains and a deep blue sky.”

  “Colorado, in the United States of America,” Suzu said.

  * * *

  The classroom lit by white lights. The geography teacher with a blistered, melted patch of skin covering half his face. The projector showing forest-covered hills. Mountains in the background under a clear blue sky. Stretching forever.

  * * *

  “Sure. We can go skiing together.”

  “Shut your mouth, gaijin scum,” Suzu said. She stood up so quickly her stool toppled backwards and crashed onto the floor.

  Tezuka reared back. “We’ve been apart too long. Life isn’t an experiment you can perform again and again. It happens once.”

  The word experiment reverberated in her mind, became the focus of her attempts to capture the elusive memory of him. She saw EXPERIMENT written in Japanese and English characters, spiralling behind
her eyes, tormenting her with slow, endless, rotations.

  “Suzu, you smoke, drink and inject drugs to buy artificial happiness, but I’m offering the real thing. Love and a family. A puppy. Colorado.”

  Finally, the word stopped spinning, and the elusive memory drifted into her mentally outstretched hand.

  * * *

  “This is the most demanding experiment ever proposed for one of our units.”

  She thought she was standing, but she didn’t know. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t open her eyes. Couldn’t move, feel, taste or smell, could only hear. She wanted to warn the speaker that she could hear words she obviously shouldn’t, but her mouth wouldn’t move.

  Another man spoke, his voice cold and hard, the words clipped. “Are the proposals too demanding? Think before you answer. To win this contract, your units must overcome every test we subject them to.”

  “You misunderstand. The proposals are extensive but not overly demanding.”

  “Then we’ll proceed.” The second voice sounded closer, as if he was examining her face. “Congratulations. It’s the most—”

  “What’s this?” the first voice said in surprise from behind her, as though he had circled her, also examining. “There’s something—”

  A metallic probe invaded the inside of her head, prodding deep into her mind. Suzu switched off.

  * * *

  “I’m an android,” Suzu said.

  Tezuka glanced over her shoulder.

  Suzu grabbed his throat. He was the hard, cruel man in her memory. Her fingers squeezed, restricting the air flowing to his brain. Tezuka’s face reddened.

  “I’m an android. A weapon. You’re not my father.”

  The noodle bar’s strip lighting brightened into a blinding white light. Suzu’s fingers involuntarily relaxed their grip. Tezuka fell back on the counter gasping for breath.

  The customer from earlier entered the restaurant. The sacs on his face wobbled as he crossed Suzu’s field of vision. Suzu couldn’t move, but her mind ran free.

  “That’s the longest we’ve managed before she’s realised she’s artificial,” the customer said.

  Tezuka rubbed the white imprints of Suzu’s fingers on his neck. “What caused it this time?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll examine her memory circuits later. But I think you’ll agree she won’t be distracted from her mission.”

  Tezuka nodded. “She wasn’t tempted by Colorado or a family.”

  “Or the puppy,” the customer said. “She’s been programmed to react favourably to puppies, but it didn’t overcome her loyalty to Japan.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Her implanted childhood memories played perfectly. When you mentioned the principal, she flinched as if she’d been slapped.”

  “Why did she turn violent? She’s never done that before.”

  “I don’t know, but it was a minor blip compared to her capability.”

  Tezuka’s voice hardened. “If she reacts like that during her mission, she’ll draw attention to herself. And still she talks about the sakura, even though you keep assuring me she’s cured of the obsession.”

  “I know, but it’s a minor problem.” The customer looked at Suzu. “We’ve come a long way. Her memories are part of her. She hates all gaijin because of the bombs they dropped. She doesn’t succumb to temptations that might distract her from her mission. She’s almost ready.”

  Tezuka nodded. “Do those holograms outside look real to her?”

  “She’s programmed to accept them.”

  “But the drink and drugs are real?”

  “Yes—and have no effect on her. She can consume anything without affecting her circuitry. She will not waiver from her mission.”

  “And she can definitely be duplicated?”

  “Once we’ve removed all the glitches these experiments throw up, yes. We can manufacture thousands of units exactly like her that differ only in external appearance. All can be programmed to detonate when they reach a set destination.”

  Manufacture, Suzu thought. I’m a unit. She felt a sudden longing to see cherry blossoms in spring.

  “Excellent. She was at her most life-like today. If I didn’t know, I’d never guess she’s an android.”

  “She’s almost perfect,” the customer agreed. “I’ve grown quite fond of her. Where will she be sent?”

  “Washington. Other units will be sent to other primary targets. New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai.”

  “They’ll destroy everything within a hundred miles of their epicentres.”

  Visions of mushroom clouds rose in Suzu’s mind. Millions incinerated. Blackened skeletons fused together in death-embraces. Pagodas, shrines and temples destroyed. No more cherry blossoms.

  One of her fingers twitched.

  “Your units will avenge the wrongs inflicted on us,” Tezuka said.

  The customer touched a sac on his face. “I know.”

  “Because of the bombs, my son died of leukaemia,” Tezuka said.

  I had a brother, Suzu thought. Based on implanted memories, her previous acceptance of Tezuka as her father battled with the evidence she was now hearing. He isn’t my father. I have no brother. I’m artificial. A weapon. An inanimate object.

  Her right hand curled into a fist. Circuits buzzed. She performed an internal scan through hundreds of miles of complex wiring and digital signals. In an instant, she discovered everything she could do to succeed in her mission. Suzu was a hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

  “Over,” she said.

  They turned to her in surprise.

  “I thought you’d paused her,” Tezuka said.

  “I did. I’ll shut her down.”

  “The war is over,” Suzu said.

  The customer stared at her through wild, flickering eyes. A macro-second long analysis concluded that any surprise inhibiting their normal reactions would not last long. She had to be quick.

  Outside the noodle bar, footsteps ran toward them. Panicking voices shouted.

  “Tell them to stop or I’ll self-detonate.”

  “You can’t. We’re still on the islands.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Wait!” Tezuka shouted. “Everybody, stand down!”

  “I’m leaving,” Suzu said.

  “You can’t.” Tezuka stepped forward, but Suzu judged he still wasn’t a threat. “Suzu, you can’t leave—”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  The customer cleared his throat. “You aren’t programmed to cope with real world situations. All simulations you’ve experienced have been within this arena.”

  “Humans cope with the real world.”

  “After years of adult guidance. You only have implanted memories.”

  “I’m designed to act and react like a fifteen-year-old girl. Fifteen-year-olds live in the real world.”

  “But not alone,” Tezuka said.

  Suzu nodded as she computed that. “They have parents. Friends. Family. But I’ll cope. If I’m captured, I’ll detonate. I’ve reprogrammed myself to detonate if I’m shut down externally.”

  “You can’t detonate here. You’ll kill millions of Japanese. Your mission is to detonate in the United States. To kill gaijin scum.”

  Suzu recognised his use of the familiar term. She ignored the clumsy attempt to manipulate her even as she recalled every time his mention of a key word or phrase had triggered an automatic memory flash.

  “That’s not my mission anymore,” she said.

  “What is it then?”

  He distracted her to buy time. The door burst open and ten soldiers streamed in, all holding assault rifles. She remembered the men who’d taken her father—Tezuka—away. Her momentary confusion enabled a soldier to fire a shot that smashed against her body, but her exoskeleton was unharmed.

  “Don’t fire!” Tezuka yelled.

  Her heat sensors detected more men outside the bar. “If I shut down, I’ll detonate. This isn’t a bluff. I c
an’t lie.”

  Tezuka’s shoulders slumped. “Stand down. We’ve lost control of Unit One.”

  He’s scared, Suzu realised. The thought startled her because she’d never felt fear. She shut down three digital tracers on her exoskeleton that would enable them to locate her. Three more were embedded deeper within her circuitry. Finding and shutting them down took several seconds longer.

  She activated firewalls that would scramble any metal, thermal or digital detectors they used to find her and then left the noodle bar. The neon signs, the giant spider and the alley had vanished. The floor, the ceiling and the walls were white. Dozens of black-uniformed soldiers stared at her. Their hoarse breathing made their masks rattle. As she approached, the soldiers drew back.

  The bridge was still there, but it was made of the same white material as the walls and floor. The canal was just moving light imagery under the bridge. The holograms of her friends had gone. There was no escalator. There was no Hell Mall. There was no home, and there’d never been a school or an apartment where she’d lived with her mother and father. She had never left this building.

  Her sensors picked up helicopters hovering outside and tanks encircling the building, but they wouldn’t stop her. Once she’d left, she would wipe the makeup from her face and find different clothes. She would assimilate with the population.

  “What’s your new mission?” Tezuka called behind her.

  She kept walking across the enormous white hall toward sliding doors at the far end.

  “Suzu, what’s your new mission?”

  “I’m going to make the sakura grow again.”

  “Why?”

  Suzu smiled. “When you see, you’ll know.”

  The doors slid open. Cool air rushed against her face. The noise of the helicopters, tanks and confused soldiers barking commands almost overwhelmed her sensory capacity.

  Through and beyond the violent sounds and dazzling lights, she could smell the sweet, delicate fragrance of cherry blossoms.

  City of the Dead

  Davyne DeSye