by Kōji Suzuki
There was something else, too. Just why had Mai ended up watching the killer video anyway? If it hadn’t been for the coincidence of her watching it on the very day she was ovulating, Sadako would never have been reborn. Where had Mai gotten the tape?
At Ryuji’s place.
Why had she gone there?
Ryuji’s article was missing a page.
But was it really missing a page?
Only Ryuji knows.
Everything came back to Ryuji.
Ryuji, Ryuji, Ryuji.
He and Mai had been intimate. It wasn’t strange if he knew her menstrual cycle. She’d been guided by him on that very day.
Oh Lord …
Ando looked at Miyashita’s face, at his eyes narrowed with concern, and whispered, “It’s Ryuji.”
Miyashita’s eyes narrowed even further: he didn’t understand.
“Don’t you see? It’s Ryuji. He’s been the one pulling the strings all along. He’s behind Sadako.”
As Ando repeated the name, he felt his suspicions harden into certainty. Ryuji had been playing all of them. He’d written the script.
Outside the window the sounds of the city at night eddied and swirled. A car passed by on the Metropolitan Expressway with a grating noise as if it were dragging something heavy behind it. Like fingernails on glass it sounded at first, then turned into loud male laughter, an eerie shriek coming from someplace far away. Ando thought it was Ryuji’s voice.
He called out to empty space. “Ryuji, are you there?”
Naturally there was no reply. But Ando could sense him. Ryuji was present. The man who had joined forces with Sadako to hunt humanity for sport was in his room, watching how things went, laughing derisively at Ando for noticing too late to do anything about it.
A light came on in Ando’s head as he surmised what Ryuji wanted. Something he was unable to obtain without Ando’s cooperation. Ryuji’s occult motives were finally clear, but it didn’t do Ando any good. It was too late, the course of events was beyond his influence. The only thing left for Ando to do was to join his voice with Ryuji’s, with the chuckling in the dark.
EPILOGUE
On a day so clear it was hard to believe it was still the rainy season, Ando went to the beach. Two years ago to the day, at this very place, his son had died. It wasn’t that Ando made a point of coming here on the anniversary. He hadn’t come the year before. But today he had a reason to be here.
Unlike two years ago, the waves today were gentle as they approached the shore. White sand stretched away on either side, and here and there anglers stood casting their lines. It was still early summer, and there were no bathers, only two or three families picnicking on plastic sheets.
Ando felt as if he’d been transported back to that fateful day. The waves were different, and there was a seawall stretching out from the shore that hadn’t been there before; even the contours of the dunes had changed. To Ando, however, everything was just as it had been. The last two years now seemed to him nothing but one long nightmare.
He sat on an embankment from which he could look down over the beach. Sunlight as bright as midsummer’s hit him full in the face. Shading his eyes with his hand, he squinted at a small figure playing at the water’s edge. The figure didn’t approach the water, but squatted in place, barefoot on dry sand, digging holes and making sand piles. Ando couldn’t take his eyes off the figure.
He thought he heard someone calling his name. Wondering if he’d imagined it, he looked around. He saw a stocky man who was walking along the top of the embankment, headed straight for Ando.
The man wore a striped long-sleeve shirt buttoned right up to the top. The shirt looked about to burst; the man’s chest and upper arms were amazingly well-muscled. His short neck was wrinkled above his painfully tight-looking collar. The man’s blocky, angular face was sweaty, and he was out of breath as he approached, swinging a plastic bag from a convenience store.
Ando recognized him. The last time he’d seen the man, it was at the medical examiner’s office, back in October.
The man sat down beside Ando, shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Hey, long time no see.”
Ando didn’t reply. He didn’t even meet the man’s eyes, but kept his gaze on the small figure playing near the waves.
“Man, you just disappeared without telling me where you were going. What kind of way is that to treat a friend?” The man took a can of cold oolong tea from the bag, cleared his throat, and drank it dry in a few gulps. When he’d finished, he took out another can and offered it to Ando. “Thirsty?”
Ando accepted the can silently and popped the ring pull.
“How did you know I was here?” Ando asked calmly.
“Miyashita told me that today was the anniversary of your kid’s death. The rest was guesswork. You’re not that hard to figure out,” the man laughed.
Ando had to restrain himself. “What do you want?”
“Look, I had to take a train and a bus to get here. I think I deserve a warmer welcome than this.”
“Bullshit,” Ando spat.
“Ooh, don’t be mean,” the man said, a smirk playing over his lips.
“Mean? Where do you get off calling me that? Who do you think is responsible for your being here?”
“Listen, I’m grateful to you, I really am. You worked out just as I expected.”
Ando was reminded of just how far this man had manipulated him. In medical school, in their days playing at cryptography, this guy could toss out a code that Ando couldn’t possibly break, and then turn around and immediately crack one Ando had wrung his brain to come up with. Ando had felt annoyed and frustrated, but also somehow inspired by the guy’s cleverness. Not anymore. Now, he just felt used, and insulted. He found nothing to praise in the man.
Ando looked over at Ryuji Takayama, whom he had helped bring back to the world. Ryuji was facing forward, and Ando looked at his profile, wishing he could see inside Ryuji’s head. He wished he knew what this man was thinking. Then he remembered that last October he actually had laid his hands on the man’s brain. Not that it helped him understand any of Ryuji’s thoughts. And because he hadn’t, he’d let Ryuji’s codes lead him into a mess. If he hadn’t performed Ryuji’s autopsy, he would never have become involved.
“Isn’t this better for you, too?” Ryuji said in a patronizing tone.
“I don’t know about that.” That was the truth.
Down by the water’s edge, the little figure stood up and waved at Ando. When he saw Ando make a beckoning motion with his head, the boy came closer, kicking sand as he came.
“Daddy, I’m thirsty!”
Ando offered his son the oolong tea Ryuji had given him. The boy took it and brought it quickly to his lips.
Ando watched his son’s pale throat. He could almost see the cool liquid coursing down the little throat. Living, moving flesh and blood.
Compared to the sweat oiling Ryuji’s face, the droplets of perspiration rolling down the three-and-a-half-year-old boy’s neck were like crystal. Ando could hardly believe they were basically the same fluid.
“Hi there, kid. Want another one? We’re two of a kind, you know,” Ryuji said, fishing around in his bag.
Two of a kind. The phrase stuck in Ando’s craw. It was true, though: the boy and Ryuji had been born of the same womb. Ando found it utterly horrifying.
His son looked at Ryuji and shook his head, then raised his half-finished can of tea and said, “Can I have the rest?”
“Sure, drink up,” said Ando, and the boy went back to the water’s edge, swilling the can. Ando figured the boy wanted to play with the can after it was empty, maybe fill it with sand. Ando yelled after him, “Takanori!”
The boy stopped and turned around. “What, Daddy?”
“Don’t go in the water yet, okay?”
The boy grinned, and turned his back to him again.
Ando didn’t have to stress the point. The child was still afraid of the water, as i
f he remembered drowning. He probably wouldn’t go into the water of his own accord. Even though he knew that, Ando couldn’t help but be a little overprotective.
“Cute kid.”
Ando didn’t need Ryuji to tell him. Of course Takanori was cute. He was a jewel, an irreplaceable treasure that he’d lost once. A treasure that he’d betrayed the human race to recover. Ando still wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing.
The reward Sadako had offered him in exchange for his help was to resurrect his son.
Half a year ago, when he and Miyashita had read those words in the letter Sadako had left in his apartment, Ando had found the idea too ludicrous to accept. But that feeling had passed in an instant, and he’d become a firm believer in resurrection. After all, he had Sadako herself as living proof. And he had carefully preserved a sample of his son’s DNA in the form of a lock of hair that he kept on the bookshelf. Without some cells from his son, the resurrection would have been impossible. If it weren’t for the fact that Ando’s hand had brushed against the boy’s head in the sea, catching those few strands of hair in his ring, Takanori’s genetic information would have been lost forever.
Scientifically speaking, it wasn’t difficult. As long as they had a maternal body with the special capabilities—as long as they had Sadako, in other words—modern science could easily take care of the rest.
The first thing to do was for Sadako to inseminate one of her own eggs. With both female and male functions, Sadako was the only one capable of implanting a fertilized egg in her uterine wall with no outside assistance. The next step was to remove this egg and replace its DNA with the DNA of the individual they wanted to bring back to life. True, it took delicate skill to extract the nucleus from one of the cells in Takanori’s hair and switch it with the nucleus of Sadako’s inseminated egg. But for a specialist, it wasn’t all that difficult. Theoretically, it was possible even to resurrect long-extinct dinosaurs, as long as their DNA survived.
The egg with its newly-implanted nucleus was then returned to Sadako’s womb. All they had to do now was wait for it to be born. The fetus crawled out of her womb in about a week, and a week after that, it had grown to the age at which the DNA sample had been separated from the rest of the original body. In Takanori’s case, it was the moment when the drowning boy’s head had touched his father’s hand, leaving a lock of hair behind. He even recovered all of his memories up to the point of his death. It appeared that memories were stored in the intron, the “junk” part of the DNA that doesn’t contain genetic code.
The Takanori that Ando was seeing now was in all respects identical to the son he’d lost. From his habits to the way he spoke, he was just like he used to be. He had all of his memories of his time with his parents, too, and speaking with him felt perfectly natural.
As soon as she’d presented Ando with his son, Sadako had demanded that he earn his reward. Her request was just what Ando had expected. She wanted him to use the same techniques to resurrect Ryuji. Bringing back Takanori was as much practice as payment. From the beginning, it had been Ryuji’s will to be reborn that had allowed him to expel the numerical code from his belly sutures, and then to insert a coded message into the ring virus’s DNA. And he’d gotten his wish. He’d gotten a body, and now he was sitting next to Ando in the flesh. It was he who’d been Sadako’s partner all along, and a formidable one at that.
This was the first time Ando had seen the resurrected Ryuji. As soon as he’d made sure that Ryuji’s DNA had been successfully switched with the inseminated egg’s, Ando had taken his son and disappeared. He told no one where they were going, leaving the rest of the operation in the hands of Miyashita and others. He figured that, with Ryuji’s conception, his role was over. With Ryuji around, there was no further need for him. Sadako’s greatest desire had been to have Ryuji around as a reliable ally.
At exactly what point had she and Ryuji decided to collude? Probably they’d communicated somehow at the DNA level, recognized in each other a valuable co-conspirator, and realized that a partnership would be for their mutual benefit.
But the question didn’t really interest Ando. His concern was monopolized now by the problem of how he was going to raise his son. To give himself time to think about it, he’d resigned from the university two months ago, and spent the time since traveling around and seeing the Japanese countryside. He had no particular aim. He just wanted to live at as far a remove from Ryuji and Sadako as possible.
Ryuji reached into a pocket and pulled out an ampoule.
“Here,” he said, offering it to Ando.
“What’s this?”
“A vaccine made from the ring virus.”
“A vaccine …” Ando accepted the tiny glass vial and examined it carefully.
Ando’s and Miyashita’s blood tests had come back positive. Just as they’d suspected, reading the Ring report had made them carriers of the virus. Ever since, they’d both been living in apprehension, wondering when the virus within them would start to act up.
“Take that and it’ll take care of the virus. Your worrying days are over.”
“Did you come all the way here just to give me this?”
“What, can’t a guy go to the beach once in a while?” Ryuji gave an embarrassed laugh. Ando let down his guard a little. No matter where he’d moved, he’d never have been able to relax as long as he carried the ring virus.
“So tell me. What’s going to happen to the world now?” Ando asked, putting the vial in his breast pocket and buttoning it shut.
“I don’t know.” Ryuji’s reply was blunt.
“Don’t give me that. Together you and Sadako are going to redesign the world and everything that lives in it—aren’t you?”
“I can tell you what’s going to happen in the immediate future. But after that … Even I don’t know.”
“Then at least tell me about the immediate future.”
“Ring’s sold over a million copies.”
“A million-seller, huh?” Ando already knew this. He’d seen it in newspapers. The book had already been through several reprints, a fact that was trumpeted in its marketing. But every time Ando saw the word “reprint” it made him think “replication”. Ring had been able to effect a near-instantaneous mass reproduction of itself. There were now more than a million people carrying the virus.
“They’re even making it into a movie.”
“A movie? Ring?”
“Mm-hmm. They cast the part of Sadako through an open casting call.”
“An open casting call?” Ando found himself reduced to repeating after Ryuji.
The resurrected man broke into laughter. “That’s right, an open casting call. And who do you think nailed the part of Sadako?”
Ando didn’t keep up on show-business news. “Tell me,” he said. How was he to know who’d passed the audition?
Ryuji was almost doubled over with laughter. “Don’t be such a dullard. You know her quite well.”
“Sadako … herself?”
It was only as he said the name that he realized the import of this development. Sadako had always wanted to be an actress. She’d joined a professional theater troupe right out of high school. She was no amateur, she had the training. It wasn’t surprising that she’d auditioned, and with her powers, she must have easily captured the casting director’s heart. Besides, it was an irresistible role. Sadako would be playing herself. Ando thought he could guess why. She wanted to project her thoughts into the film, so that when the movie showed the killer videotape, it carried her genetic information again. The extinct tape itself was now to be resurrected, and on a grand scale.
And what would be the result? Ando had no idea how big a hit it would be, but it was certain that a fair number of women would go to the theater to see it; those who happened to be ovulating would be visited by the same tragedy that had destroyed Mai. A week later, they would all give birth to Sadako, their own bodies cast aside as used cocoons, abandoned to decay.
And then the
movie would hit the video rental shops, and then it’d be broadcast on TV. The images would spread far more quickly than they ever could have through one-copy-at-a-time dubbing. This would be reproduction at an explosive rate. And these new Sadakos would all be able to have children of their own, by themselves. Sadako had managed to work out a method by which she’d have the whole world wrapped instantly around her finger.
“Sadako’s going to breed with the media,” Ryuji said, finally done laughing and looking up.
“They’ll figure it out soon enough, and the movie will be suppressed.” Not just the movie, but the book, too. All circulating copies would be rounded up and burned. Ando wanted to believe that humanity would rally.
“Nope. Just think how huge the media industry is, and how many people in it have already been in contact with the virus. Even if Ring itself is destroyed, the media is going to be transformed by people who have contracted the ring virus. Just as that videotape mutated into a book, it’s going to get into every stream: music, video games, computer networks. New media will crossbreed with Sadako and produce more new media, and every ovulating woman who comes in contact with them will give birth to Sadako.”
Ando touched his breast pocket and felt the vial of vaccine. It would be effective only against the ring virus. It would be powerless against mutated media. Without knowing what type of media the virus would mutate into, it was impossible to concoct a vaccine that would be effective against them. Humanity would forever lag behind. Sadako, the new species, would gradually crowd out the human race until finally she’d driven it to the edge of extinction.
“And you’re okay with all that?”
Ando himself couldn’t peacefully sit back and watch as people died and Sadako took their places. But never mind him. Ryuji was taking an active role in the whole thing, helping it along. Ando simply couldn’t understand that.