by Neil Clarke
“No.” Minami sighed. “I’ve always been terrified of them.”
“Terrified? Why?”
“To have another person’s senses take over your brain! I think that must be like being possessed by a demon.”
“Oh, it’s nothing like that.” Naoto chuckled. “You’ve got it backwards. It’s more like you’re possessing someone else. You get to see what they see, hear what they hear, experience every detail of their life. What fun!”
“I guess so. I love Yan Zhenxu and Kim Dong-jun. It would be fun to know what they’re doing at this moment.”
“I’m pretty sure Yan hasn’t opened a livecast channel. As for Kim . . . let me look up his info.” Naoto tapped away at his keyboard for a while. “Aha! He started his livecast last year. He casts for about two hours every day.”
Minami squeezed in next to Naoto and read the large font text scrolling in the window. “‘Do you want to share a body with Dong-jun? Do you want to touch his soul in the vast deep of his mind? Do you want to live with him and work with him, get to know all the secrets of Korean stars?’ Wow! This sounds amazing!”
But a fearful expression soon crept back on her face. “I heard that you have to get a surgery where they cut open your brain if you want to receive livecasts. That’s got to hurt!”
“It’s no big deal. The surgery is to implant a chip with a small transmitter, and to hook it up to all your sensory nerves in the pons. Without it, you can’t receive the sensory information in the livecast and can’t build the psycho-coordination link. Over a billion people have had the surgery, almost nine million right here in Japan.”
“Is it expensive?”
“Not at all. I’m sure you can afford it. But to subscribe to Kim Dong-jun’s livecast will cost you. Look, the price is listed—ignore the so-called deals they tout here, they’re all scams—998 yen per hour. If you want to tune in for two hours a day, you need more than sixty-thousand yen every month.”
“That’s a lot!”
“Why do you think Kim Dong-jun decided to start a livecast?” Naoto gave a contemptuous snort. “So many fans are dying to know what the life of an idol is like, to see the world through his eyes and ears, to experience his sensations. Even if he charged a hundred thousand yen an hour there would still be plenty of fans signing up—he’s basically printing money. And Kim Dong-jun is just a K-Pop star. The prices charged by Hollywood stars are straight out of this world. And you can’t even get anything real during their designated livecast sessions anyway. All those parties, trips to exotic locales, charity events, and so on are scripted and sanitized. It’s just another performance for them.”
“If that’s true, what’s the point of a livecast then?”
“Livecasts by professional entertainers are boring”—Naoto’s eyes now flashed with a rare fervor—“but there are livecasts worth the money. There’s one superstar in particular who basically livecasts twenty-four hours every day, and it’s all free! You can experience every detail of his life, and everything is reality, not reality TV. He’s not one of those empty-headed celebrities famous for being famous. He comes up with brilliant ideas, has impeccable taste, and is a talented writer. He’s also a leading aviator who’s deeply involved in philanthropy—”
“Hey, wait a minute. You’re talking about Charles, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, I’m talking about”—with an effort Naoto managed to swallow the me—“the one and only Charles Mann. Charles, the Man.” He sighed, and his face dimmed.
Charles, my true self, what is happening to you?
5.
“You are free to go now.” The slender figure of Homi appeared at the door to the detention cell, her tone chilly.
Charles got up from his chair, his expression indifferent, as though this development was entirely expected. He glanced at his watch. “It’s not even seven yet. Why don’t we have dinner together?”
“I have work to do.” Homi’s voice was still emotionless. “Come this way, please.”
“I thought you told me that bail is impossible. Why are you letting me go?”
“It’s because of your devoted fans.” Annoyance flashed across Homi’s face. “At least a hundred thousand of them are protesting in front of the headquarters building, threatening to tear this place down. They’re demanding that you immediately resume your livecast. Half of Tokyo is now paralyzed. I don’t get it: how can so many people worship someone like you?”
“You’re letting me go because of my supporters?”
“You’re apparently not a terrorist, and the brass isn’t interested in pursuing this matter further. We won’t charge you. Now, will you please get out of here?”
“No.” Charles shook his head. “If you’re not planning to charge me, why did you arrest me in the first place? I demand an explanation, otherwise I’m not leaving.”
“You—” Homi glared at him.
Just then, a tall blonde appeared behind her. “This entire incident was caused by the incompetence of the Japanese police. You must apologize to Mr. Mann.”
“Lisa!” Charles called to his manager. “I’ve been waiting for you. What took you so long?”
“MacDonald is taking care of it.” Lisa nodded at him. “Charles, since you never left Pegasus at the stadium, you were still officially in the race. The proper interpretation for what happened was that you deviated from the race course and were forced to land in Hakone . . . Anyway, the point is you didn’t violate Japanese law, and they had no right to detain you. Since the Japanese police wasted your valuable time, they must offer you a formal apology. We will publish the demand in every major media outlet and reserve the right to pursue compensation through the legal system.”
“Oh, we don’t need to make such a fuss,” Charles said generously. “As long as this beautiful woman is willing to have dinner with me, I’m willing to forgive the police and let bygones be bygones.”
Homi was about to offer some sarcastic retort when her phone buzzed. She picked up and listened, the expression on her face shifting subtly. It was a call from the chief of police.
Lisa pulled Charles to the side and whispered, “You’ve got to get out of here right away and resume the livecast. There are millions complaining on the web already.”
“What’s the hurry? It’s rare for me to get a few moments to myself.”
“No, you’ve got to resume as soon as possible.” Lisa’s tone brook no objections.
Charles looked at Lisa, whose expression remained superficially calm. That only made Charles uneasy. When he first started his career, everything had gone wrong. At that crucial juncture, Lisa Goldstone had come to his aid and pulled him through. Everything he did—racing, writing, charity work, publicity—she arranged. Her contribution to Charles’s meteoric rise could not be overstated. But even so, Charles never felt very close to Lisa; indeed, he was a bit intimidated by her, though he also acknowledged that he depended on her. In recent years, as Charles’s stock had risen higher and higher, Lisa had come to manage his affairs with more input from him. Still, whenever Lisa insisted that something had to be done a certain way, Charles felt powerless to resist.
“All right,” he said with no enthusiasm.
Lisa shifted to a more mollifying tone. “You know that at least ten million people are tuned into your livecast at any moment, and more than 1.2 million choose to spend more than five hours a day in your stream. About three hundred thousand are practically living in your body and mind twenty-four hours a day. This is mainly because your livecast is almost never off. Your fans have come to trust you and rely on you. Now that you’ve been off air for an unprecedented two hours, many are finding your absence intolerable.”
“But they can tune into other livecasts! There must be at least a hundred thousand to pick from.”
Lisa laughed. “How can they compare to you? You are the one and only Charles. But don’t let that go to your head. More celebrities are getting into the livecasting business every day, and many want
to take over your place. If you don’t get back on air soon, I imagine more than a few will turn for their fix elsewhere. Your career depends on that not happening.”
“I . . . understand.” Homi hung up her phone, and, scowling, turned back to Charles. “Mr. Charles, on behalf of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, I hereby offer you our sincerest apologies.” She bowed deeply.
Charles grinned. “I’ve already forgotten it. But I do have a craving for Japanese food. Would you take me somewhere good?”
Homi gritted her teeth. “Please, come this way.”
Lisa smiled knowingly as she leaned over to whisper in Charles’s ear, “The whole world is watching. If you can capture her heart, I’m certain you’ll double your subscribers.”
6.
“Takumi-kun, are you all right?”
“Hmm?” Naoto’s mind had been wandering. He saw that Minami was gazing at him with a look of concern. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“I asked you how it felt to tune into a livecast.”
“An interesting question.” Naoto pondered his answer. “At first, you go through a period of adjustment—that happens no matter whose livecast you tune into. The beginning is a bit frustrating: the colors and sounds all feel wrong somehow, as though you’re watching some 2-d film from the twentieth century. It’s just odd. Although all human beings share similar biological sensory organs, there are subtle differences in the neural wiring, and so you have to put in an effort to interpret the signals being projected into your brain, and all subtleties are at first lost. For several days you’ll feel as though you’re perceiving everything through a film, and nothing feels immediate or real. But then, one day, you’ll have a breakthrough and everything will feel just like your own senses.”
“Can you feel everything the livecaster feels?’
“Almost everything: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, heat and cold, the sensation of weight . . . and pain. For example, if the livecaster is pricked by a needle, you’ll feel the same sharp pang of pain. However, since the signal is filtered for safety reasons, the magnitude of the pain is diminished. Do you remember the British singer Philip Bolt? Three years ago during a livecast a deranged fan stabbed him more than ten times in the stomach, and he died almost instantaneously. Twenty thousand subscribers who were tuned into the cast suffered along with him, and close to five hundred fainted, with more than thirty dying from shock. Everybody was talking about it back then. After that, they put in safeguards for subscribers to prevent such traumatic experiences.”
“Oh . . . Then, what about joy? Can livecasts transmit the feeling of joy?”
“That’s . . . complicated.” Naoto tried to find the right words. “Usually, it’s not possible to directly transmit joy because the emotional experience involves the whole body and isn’t a distinct sensation. However, biological sensations of pleasure can be transmitted: such as the pleasure of eating a gourmet meal.”
“Then you don’t really know what the livecaster is thinking either.”
“That’s right, you don’t. Each sense is limited to a specific region of the brain, but not thought. Cognition, as we’ve learned, emerges from the coordinated actions of all regions of the brain and cannot be isolated to specific areas. Also, since our thoughts require access to uniquely encoded memories, it’s very difficult to translate each thought for transmission. Indeed, it’s precisely because thoughts cannot be tapped into that livecasters are willing to open up their senses to others. This way, they can still maintain their inner privacy.”
Minami grew even more curious. “I still don’t quite understand what it’s like to tune into a livecast. So you can see everything they see, hear everything they hear, just like if you were living in their body, and yet you don’t know what they’re thinking and can’t control what they do? It seems as though you’d feel like a puppet whose string is being pulled by someone else. That must feel really awkward.”
“You’re not wrong.” Naoto was enjoying this conversation, and he was suddenly seized by a desire to share with her everything he had learned about livecasts. “But remember, feeling like you’re really in the livecaster’s body is only the second stage. The next stage requires you to build the psycho-coordination link. That is, you have to synchronize your thoughts to theirs, and match your actions to theirs, so that it feels as though you’re moving the livecaster’s body yourself.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s not easy, but it’s a learnable skill. You have to experiment a bit. First, you need to purge yourself of all distracting thoughts, and habituate yourself to the livecaster’s lifestyle and their way of doing things. Of course you also have to really understand the way they use language. After you’ve accomplished these steps, it’s possible for you to think and act just like the livecaster in most situations. This isn’t as hard as you might imagine. Most of our thoughts and actions are triggered by sensory inputs. Once you’ve accepted the sensory input as your own, you hold the key to the thoughts and actions as well. For examples, if you see and smell a hot mug of delicious coffee in front of you, isn’t it natural to pick up the mug and take a sip?”
“But . . . but there must be some things that cannot be anticipated by the subscriber, right? For examples, any sort of high-level thinking or decision-making?”
“Well, yes . . . that’s why you have to stay focused. But there are tricks. For example, try to empty your mind and think of nothing at all; let your senses guide you. After a while, you’ll feel yourself building a kind of psychic resonance with the livecaster, as though you really are the livecaster.”
“So you can build such a deep link with only one livecaster?”
“Theoretically, there’s no such limit. But ideally, you want to build such a link with only one subject. If you switch between multiple livecasters, it’s very hard to maintain multiple psycho-coordination links.”
“But why?” asked Minami.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to be the livecaster? Isn’t that . . . a bit much? You want to understand the livecaster, but that doesn’t mean you want to give up your life to live theirs. And that’s an impossible dream anyway.”
“Why is it impossible?” Naoto felt a surge of anger. “You’ve never even tried it, so of course you know nothing about the fantastic experience of the link, that sensation of the soul melding with the flesh. You would really be living a different life, really be someone else. If you knew what that felt like you wouldn’t be asking such questions.”
“All right, I guess I don’t understand.” Minami wasn’t interested in arguing. “But Naoto-kun, I think you should get out of your apartment more. A gym just opened near us, and I go there every day to swim or play ball. Why don’t we go together?”
Naoto found the suggestion ridiculous. Earlier today he had flown thousands of miles, traversing half the globe in the process. And now this silly girl wanted him to go exercise with her? What does she know?
But it appeared as if Charles’s livecast wouldn’t be resuming any time soon. He needed some way to pass the time. Maybe going to the gym wasn’t a bad idea. It certainly was better than being cooped up at home, bored.
“All right.” Naoto nodded. “Let’s—”
Ping! The alert ring in his ear was accompanied by a flood of signals into his implant. OMG, Charles has just resumed his livecast!
“—try to figure out something in another couple of days. Thanks!” Naoto yawned exaggeratedly. “I’m sorry. I’m feeling really tired, and I’d like to take a nap.”
“But—” Minami protested, but Naoto made it clear that he wanted to be alone.
After shutting the door behind her, Naoto lay down on the tatami mat, his whole body tingling with excitement. The bare, cramped apartment now seemed lovely and comfortable.
What’s going to happen next? Will I be with Aoi Masa, Hosokawa Homi, or some other beauty? What will we be doing? How will I spend this lovely night?
No matter what, my real li
fe is about to resume.
7.
Wearing a pair of shades and nibbling on takoyaki in a roadside stall in Akihabara, Charles was thoroughly enjoying himself. Homi sat across from him, the steaming bowl of tonkotsu ramen before her untouched. Even though he was making an effort at a disguise, many of the establishment’s patrons soon recognized Charles. He waved at them in acknowledgement, and from time to time, fans approached for a wefie or an autograph—at least everyone was polite.
Homi looked around and finally relaxed a bit. “Aren’t you afraid of being mobbed by your fans, just sitting here in the open?”
“Afraid? My fans would much rather be tuning into my livecast. Even if they could come here and see me in the flesh, I doubt many of them would choose to. Oh, don’t you like your noodles?”
“I . . . I’m just uncomfortable.” Homi’s cheeks reddened. “The idea that millions are watching us is so strange.”
“They’re not watching me.” Charles grinned at her. “They’re enjoying the sight of you through my eyes.”
“I don’t like it!”
“You weren’t so nervous when we first met.”
“That was because I didn’t really understand what livecasting involved. You had to explain it to me. This technology only became popular in the last few years, right?”
“No. It’s been around for ten years. I was one of the first to start a cast.”
“That’s true. But it only spread to East Asia recently. We Japanese prize our privacy. I can’t imagine having strangers watch everything I do.”
“Not everything.” Charles chuckled. “I always pause the cast when I’m sitting on the toilet. Nobody wants to deal with the smell. Trust me.”
“But everything about your life . . . even . . . even . . . ”
“You’re talking about sex? That’s a biological need and part of our social repertoire. I don’t need to hide that.”