Mecha Samurai Empire

by Peter Tieryas

  “Long story, but there are lobotomized prisoners everywhere,” Kujira answers. “I don’t really count them as company. I’d talk to them, but they wouldn’t say anything back. So I’m not used to being around people who can talk. My ‘guardian’ tells me all the time that my manner is gruff, which is saying a lot since she’s worse than I am. I wouldn’t know how to be cool even if I tried.”

  There’s a momentary silence, which Chieko breaks by asking Nori, “Why you gotta go and make him sad?”

  “I’m not sad,” Kujira states. “It is what it is.”

  Nori, undeterred, says, “All I want to know is what you really think of the musical.”

  “It was . . . nice.”

  “I guess that’s better than ‘fine.’”

  We all laugh again.

  Kazu asks, “How’d you spar off Catalina without getting caught?”

  “We fought on the west side and had sensor jammers so they couldn’t catch us. But even if they did see us, I don’t think they would have cared. Everyone hated being on Catalina.”

  Our waitress brings us two large plates full of sashimi.

  “This is on the house from our owner,” she says, pointing to a man in a kimono, who bows to us. “He wants to thank the legendary Tigers for your service to the USJ.”

  “Thank you,” Kazu says with a bow. The owner nods gratefully.

  I don’t know how the others do it, but they’re able to eat more. I’m still stuffed from earlier. I can’t even eat a single edamame bean. Instead, I look over at the sumo wrestlers. People are respecting their privacy for the most part, but several of the adults with kids have gone over to ask for autographs.

  “Cards after this?” Kujira suggests.

  “Whatever you want. I got us a suite in the New Cancún, and they have a casino downstairs,” Kazu explains. “They also have the biggest indoor swimming pool in the world. They used to have dolphins, but animal-rights activists protested, so the dolphins were all moved to a preserve. Before that, I brought my daughters out, and both of them got to swim with them. They wanted to be marine biologists for a whole six months.”

  “Until you told them about what Nazis do to marine life, right?” Nori asks.

  “Just the reality,” Kazu replies.

  “That’s cruel,” Chieko says.

  “World’s cruel,” Kazu says, eating his kanpachi. “Sooner they know that, the better prepared they’ll be.”

  We get ready to exit, but a waitress comes over and asks us if we wouldn’t mind coming over to the sumo-wrestling table. We do.

  “I just saw all of you in the tournament!” the Mongolian Yokozuna exclaims. “You’re BEMA’s Five Tigers, right?”

  I’m astonished that he knows us, but Nori and Kazu act unfazed, like they’re used to the attention.

  “Can I get a photo with you five?” the Yokozuna asks.

  Obviously, there’s a lot I need to learn.

  * * *

  • • •

  After some bantering and an invitation to go watch their next match (front-row seats!), we go barhopping, visit some dance clubs, and trek through a sim booth arcade. I’m still on a high that the wrestlers recognized us. Two very attractive women spot Kujira and me, then tell us, “You’re both much cuter in real life,” which doubles my spirits.

  But Kujira, usually so boisterous, becomes uncharacteristically quiet. I tease him about it, and he whispers to me, “I think they’re trying to make their boyfriends jealous.”

  “What boyfriends?”

  On cue, both of their boyfriends show up and aren’t too pleased to see their girlfriends talking with us.

  Before they can make a scene, Nori comes to the rescue, buys everyone drinks, and whisks us away.

  I thank her, and she urges us, “Think of yourselves as public figures now so stay out of trouble.”

  I ask Kujira, “How did you know?”

  “I saw them when we first came in,” he answers. “I usually take notes on everyone when I enter a new place.”

  Randomly, I pick out a male having drinks. “What’s his deal?”

  “He’s had three beers, and he’s been practicing lines to himself for the last twenty minutes and laughing about jokes that aren’t funny.”

  “How do you know they’re not funny?”

  “I read his lips.”

  “What about that couple over there?” I ask.

  He peeks at them. “They’re just friends, but he’s hoping for more. She only brought him so she won’t be alone, but she has no interest. She’s been looking over at the guy drinking with his friends at the bar. They’ll probably end up together in a few minutes.”

  Shortly afterward, she leaves her “friend” to flirt with the other guy.

  I’m amazed and wonder how much his people-reading skills will help him at gambling. When we hit the tables, Kujira takes his chances at blackjack. Nori takes a small stack to the poker table. Kazu is talking with his daughters via portical, while Chieko plays the pachinko machines.

  I stand over Kujira and watch his game. First hand, his two cards are a jack and a 4. He asks for a hit, gets a queen, and busts out. The next four hands don’t go any better. He loses all of his gambling money within ten minutes.

  “Don’t forget you owe me 10k,” Kazu reminds him as he returns.

  Kujira looks at me confused. “I don’t get this game.”

  Meanwhile, Nori, whose game face is as intimidating as her piloting one, has tripled her stack. She shows no expression and doesn’t say a word as she wins multiple hands. Her opponents question out loud if she’s bluffing, if she really has the superior combination of cards. Her silence melts the opposition.

  “Do you always play so seriously?” I ask her when she gets up to cash in her coins.

  “Only when I play to win.”

  * * *

  • • •

  There are so many things to do, from watching samurais duke it out in real sword combat, to arcades with retro portical games, that I feel like I could spend a year here and not do everything. There are big portical displays showing off all the popular shows on the strip, including the bawdy comedy act with Mr. Walrus whose punch line is, “I’d buy that for a yen!”

  People can gamble on anything, from sumo matches on the main island, to bondage baseball games in the underground Minci league, and even the kyotei matches of the day. At three in the morning, Kujira wants more food, so he goes to the packed twenty-four-hour buffet with Kazu, who accompanies him. Chieko, Nori, and I end up on top of the Matsumoto’s Eiffel Tower–sized Ai doll, which overlooks the whole city. It’s hot and dry outside. We can’t see any stars, but I marvel at the neon sparks of the Vegas strip below.

  Nori and Chieko ruminate about perception.

  “Our bodies are like simulations, but our brains are the porticals, and our eyes are the display cameras,” Nori suggests. “Say a hundred thousand years ago, people could choose which virtual world to live in, and this is just the one we synced our portical brains to. On other planets, their existence isn’t carbon- or solid-based like us, so they have completely different social structures. With every ‘life,’ you experience a full cycle according to a different set of physics. You die, you reincarnate in another world where you live as a gaseous amalgam or as an organism that thrives in liquid ethane. Repeat.”

  “So basically, you live as a fart or piss?” Chieko asks.

  “That is a crass way of putting my metaphysical speculation.”

  “It’s all the same, right? Stardust becomes planet becomes human who creates crap and piss that spurs growth in farms and plants and eventually, becomes Chieko Two and Noriko Two, who use the bathroom three to four times a day.”

  “Mac, can you please explain to Chieko why life isn’t just about defecation and urination?”

  “I will, after
I use the bathroom,” I reply.

  * * *

  • • •

  Somehow, we all make it back to our suite. I fall asleep and wake five hours later because Chieko snores extremely loudly. She and Wren really were the perfect match.

  Kujira is sleeping with his mouth agape and his body scrunched up. Kazu has earplugs on and is resting soundly. There are cards, bottles of wine, and paint all around us. Someone painted, “I’m a whale,” on Kujira’s back, and I sincerely hope it wasn’t me—I can’t remember.

  I don’t see Nori until I go to the living room and see her in a quarter lotus position, meditating. I was hoping to sleep out here but don’t want to disturb her. I’m about to tiptoe back in when Nori asks me, “Did you have fun tonight?”

  “I did. You?”

  “Vegas is always a spectacle.”

  I nod in agreement. “You sleeping at all tonight?”

  “I’ve trained myself so I can get by with only four hours of sleep a night.”

  “Four hours?” Is she kidding?

  “You’ll be amazed how much you can get out of your body with the proper training and discipline.”

  “I like my sleep.”

  “A person who lives to seventy-five years spends an average of twenty-five of those years sleeping. Twenty-five. Think how much you could do with even half of that back.”

  When she puts it like that, it seems an awful waste. “That’s a trick you need to teach me.”

  “It’s not a trick. It’s a lifestyle. And, of course, I’d be more than glad to teach you. But it’ll take years to retrain your body to maximize efficiency.”

  She gets back to her meditation. I reenter the room and try to sleep. Four more hours of sleep before morning would be a boon, but Chieko is too loud, so I throw a pillow at her. She wakes for a second, then goes back to sleep and snores again. I take a blanket, pillow, and sleep in the bathtub, with the bathroom door shut.

  * * *

  • • •

  When we get back to BEMA in the morning, Kazu guides us to one of the private conference rooms. Only Nori looks refreshed, while the four of us look like we slept in trash cans.

  “I’m really honored that you’re part of the Tigers,” Kazu says. “One of the biggest privileges being part of this group is we get to test mecha prototypes for the R and D department. After your classes end next week, we’ll be spending our evenings doing simulation tests to familiarize ourselves with the controls on some new mechas they’re developing.”

  “What happens after we’re familiar with them?” Chieko asks, unperturbed by all the alcohol inside of her even though I’m barely standing.

  “Test drives.”

  “In San Francisco?”

  Kazu shakes his head. “Underneath the bay.”

  “Underneath?”

  Kazu looks at Nori who explains, “There’s a whole underwater facility to test out top secret prototypes.”

  “Nazis are so proud of what they did to the Mediterranean, they have no idea we have something even better.”

  He puts his hand, palm down, in between us. The four of us pile our hands on top of his.

  “For Berkeley!” he exclaims.

  We all yell, “For Berkeley!” as we raise our arms.

  He gives us all a thumbs-up and leaves. The four of us lock arms and help one another back to our dorms. Nori makes sure we’re safely in our rooms before going to her own apartment. I literally blink and am woken by the alarm. It’s Monday morning, and I have class.

  13

  I like the Bay Area, but I miss the hotter climate of Dallas and Los Angeles. Mornings are cold and foggy in Berkeley, making early exercises a challenge. My muscles feel bloated, and my joints feel stiffened by the cold. We have electric heaters in our rooms, but they take a really long time to warm the room. The only way for them to work is to leave them on all day. But the dorms are set up with motion sensors that shut off all electricity when we’re not in the room so I’m always too cold.

  Kazu’s breakfast arrangements have me drinking weird concoctions of fruits and vegetables that taste like blended celery with apple strips thrown in. I hate celery. No toast, or anything with bread, is included. The focus is on proteins, with eggs and seasoned anchovies. When I ask for replacements, substitutes, or additional food, they check my records and inform me, “Your diet is strictly limited. We’re not allowed to give you anything else.”

  Thank you, Kazu-sempai.

  I know there are ways around it if I really wanted to try. But I’ll give it a shot for a week.

  * * *

  • • •

  After the frenzy of the tournament and the entry into the Circle, daily school life is a jarring reminder that the majority of cadet work is studying and practicing. I still hate homework, though I try to be more diligent about it.

  Kenjutsu class with Professor Sugiyama is still my favorite as we learn new ways to wield our sword. The lessons were invaluable during the tournament. Since then, she spends much of her time teaching us defensive parries, criticizing all of us for “relying too much on offense.”

  Nori recommends I join a boxing club and drop in once or twice a week so I can work on nonweaponized combat. The first class I attend, I strap on my headgear and spend the whole hour getting pummeled in the face. Even with the protection on, it hurts, and when the class is over, I have to go home and close my eyes because I feel like I’m still getting pounded.

  I’m completely lost in Literature and Rhetoric because I haven’t read any of the assigned material. Math is an obscure language that gets more confusing with each class. My elective, calligraphy, is a real chore. Chieko’s writing is excellent. Even Kujira is good with brushes. The smell of ink oddly makes me hungry, and that’s about the only good thing because my calligraphy is egregious. When my professor sees my attempts, he yells, “Are you using your toes to write?”

  One of my biggest (and most pleasant) surprises is that corporal punishment isn’t allowed. I ask Nori about it, and she tells me, “It was banned a long time ago. The cadets here are the most dedicated in the USJ. Hitting them won’t serve any purpose.”

  They’ve started giving us voluntary mecha training on the weekends, and, of course, everyone attends. Our teacher is Professor Okamoto, and his class is on the east side of campus, surprisingly, in the art building. His room is filled with paintings, and when he begins, he reviews the two San Diego conflicts, citing specific lessons from real battles.

  “Anyone know what war actually is?” he challenges the cadets.

  “Fighting our enemies for justice,” someone suggests.

  “It’s all-out combat with other nations.”

  Most of the answers are along that vein.

  The professor doesn’t refute them, but explains, “War is the most extreme form of diplomacy. That’s it. Every mecha pilot is a diplomat. We just don’t use words. We use our mecha fists to achieve a political objective. In that negotiation, anything can become a weapon. The George Washingtons were short on bullets, but do you think they surrendered? No. They cut up bronze curtain rods, filled them with gunpowder they got from our mines, primed them with sulfur and carbon from coconut shells, then fired them right back at us. Sometimes your weapons will not be enough to defeat the enemy. Use their tools against them. How do you that? Understand and study your enemy.” He points to several paintings behind him, powerful illustrations of the Americans and mosaics of different art styles. “I learned to paint like the George Washingtons in order to understand how they approach art. Liberto is one of the greats when it comes to warfare. Study him and the artists of that generation so you’ll always keep one thing in mind. In this class, I’m training you to be a diplomat, not a brute in a big robot suit.”

  It’s an approach I’ve never thought about and something I ponder the whole week. It definitely makes my military hist
ory and battle-theory classes more interesting. I can’t wait until we begin the prototype testing in the underwater facility.

  * * *

  • • •

  Before we can do that, I receive a notice from the Tokko, asking me to send in my portical. I send it in via the academy courier service. I spot Nori on my way to class, and inquire, “Is it normal for the Tokko to ask for our porticals?”

  She assures me, “This is standard for all of us to get security clearance. They’ll check your portical activity, every message you’ve sent, and everything you’ve said on the kikkai.”

  “Everything?” I ask, thinking back on a thousand dumb things I’ve said, looked at, and taken part in. I’m sure for every stupid message that I remember, there are twenty more I’ve forgotten.

  “Everything,” she confirms, and a part of me sinks. “They’ll also do a sweep of your room to make sure you aren’t bugged and talk to your family members and friends.”

  “They’re doing the same for you too?”

  “All five of us.”

  “I’ve said some stupid things in my messages,” I confess. Maybe I’m preemptively warning her in case some of the things I’ve said become public.

  “We all have,” she says. “But is there anything treasonous?”

  “No, of course not.” What I really mean is, not that I remember. But I can’t guarantee that some comment won’t be taken out of context and misinterpreted in a negative light.

  “Then you don’t have to worry. By the way, don’t try to delete anything because that’ll only raise a red flag for them.”

  Scratch plan B. “Thanks for the warning.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I spend the whole week worrying about my security clearance, second-guessing myself. What if my messages to Griselda are misconstrued? Will my connection to Hideki cause any issues? All it takes is one misspoken word for the Tokko to cart me away on suspicion of clinging to a subversive ideology. No one is exempt. Not even military. I remind myself that after Hideki’s death, Agent Tsukino said other agents had gone through my messages and found nothing. It’s probably the only reassurance I have.