by Kevin Nguyen
I wandered into a multistory arcade with five floors of games. I didn’t recognize most of them. I put a token in one cabinet that featured a large drum made to look like a gigantic plastic melon, and a set of drumsticks that looked like carrots. The instructions were in Japanese, meaning I couldn’t understand them. I attempted to hit the drum to the beat of the music, but I couldn’t tell if I was doing it right. The game was noisy—a string of disappointed blips and bleeps that indicated I was doing a piss-poor job. The sounds kept coming until I was finally struck with a “game over,” the first time the game had presented me with an English phrase.
I wandered upstairs, looking for something I might be able to play without instruction. On the third floor, I found a Pac-Man machine. But it wasn’t traditional Pac-Man. It was a new variation that involved four players. I watched as a group of Japanese teens played, their eyes trained on the game. The concept seemed similar—eat white pellets, avoid ghosts. But it wasn’t clear whether it was meant to be played collaboratively or competitively. The teens teased each other whenever one of them was caught by a ghost, let out a celebratory holler every time a Pac-Man ate a ghost. It looked like fun. When the round was over, one of the kids offered his spot to me. I said I was happy to spectate, but he insisted, gesturing emphatically toward the arcade machine.
There were two boys—a taller one and a shorter one—and a girl, her hair cut with severe bangs. They nodded excitedly as I approached the game.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
The two boys said nothing. The girl giggled and said “Pac-Man.” It appeared that they did not speak English.
“You know, I had a friend who really loved Pac-Man,” I said. “She told me all the tricks.”
The game announced itself beginning with a chirpy jingle, and suddenly our Pac-Men were chomping little orbs, letting out a repetitive squishy trill with each consumed pellet.
“The blue ghost is the one to look out for,” I advised. “It tries to get ahead of you, and then trap you.”
“Ano jiisan wa zutto hanashi wo suru no ka?” said the short boy.
“Zenbu torikku wo shitteru you na hito ni meccha yabai nee,” said the tall boy.
“But the blue ghost, his movements are relative to the red one too, so you have to keep track of him too.”
“Ano yarou wa geemu dake shite, tada damare.”
The girl giggled.
When the game ended, the three teenagers bowed and said thank you in English. They couldn’t stop laughing, and suddenly I was laughing too. I wasn’t sure what was so funny, but for a moment, I felt welcome.
Jill, hi!
You probably don’t want to hear from me right now (I barely want to hear from me right now). But I’m in Tokyo (it’s a long story) and it felt wrong not to email you (I realize this is the first time we’ve emailed since we met in person).
We once talked about how Margo was obsessed with Japan, that she always wanted to come here. I get it now. It’s a metropolis for introverts. The thing, though, is that almost everyone here is Japanese. I can go a whole day without seeing a white person, days without seeing a black person. Margo would’ve stuck out. I don’t know if that would’ve made life difficult or inconvenient for her in Tokyo, but she’s always wanted to be in a place where she felt she belonged. Tokyo is that place but isn’t that place. It is like a city constructed for her, but filled with people who do not look like her.
I went to the cemetery you told me about (the future cemetery, with the thousands of LED Buddha statues, you showed me on your phone that one time). It’s more magnificent in person—smaller and more intimate than the video let on, somehow more brilliant. The way the colors shift feels more like a subtle change in the direction of the breeze rather than a pre-programmed experience. I found the whole thing very moving. Maybe one day you will come here and experience it for yourself.
Anyway, my thinking was that if Margo couldn’t make it to Japan in life, maybe it would be a fitting place for her to rest. There were plots available, still many little LED Buddhas for purchase. They’re crazy expensive (3,250,000 yen, that’s like $40,000) but I’ve come across a lot of money recently (nothing illegal, just immoral) so I went for it. Usually someone’s ashes are stored in a small locker behind the Buddha, but as you know, Margo was buried. So in place of an urn, I placed the iPod you gave me—the one with all of Margo’s recordings, all the stories she’d ever recorded (as far as we know). I know it’s not Margo’s physical presence that I’m storing here, but in a way, it feels like her spiritual presence (I guess most people would call that a soul).
Anyway, I don’t expect you to respond to this email. I know no one wants to receive a long-winded email from an ex (if I am technically an ex). Mostly I wanted to apologize for how things ended (sorry) and also to tell you that you’re not getting your iPod back (sorry).
Lucas
* * *
—
IT TOOK ME A week of wandering around Shinjuku, in and out of bars where I stuck out. I wanted to drink alone, and though Japanese people tended to leave me be, oftentimes the bars would be rowdy or there’d be karaoke. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than singing in front of strangers, except being in the audience while it was happening, wishing that everything could just be quiet and peaceful for a goddamn second.
But eventually, I stumbled into Crawlspace. Up a flight of stairs, I was stunned to discover that the bar was just a counter and four stools. The name was fitting. There was no room for anything else—the entire place maybe a hundred square feet tops, smaller than the bedroom I’d had back in Queens.
No one else was at the bar except the bartender, a tall, wiry Japanese man who looked like he was in his early sixties. He had long gray hair and a neatly groomed matching gray mustache. He wore a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt that featured a print of intricately illustrated pineapples.
I asked for a whiskey.
“You are American?” he asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Ah yes, very obvious.” His English was strong, though he carefully overenunciated each syllable, the way a language-learning program might. “What is your name?”
“I’m Lucas.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Lucas.” He bowed. “You can call me Joe.”
“I can call you by your Japanese name.”
“But I would like you to call me Joe.”
So I called him Joe.
* * *
—
THE ONLY THING BEHIND the bar besides booze was a small record player, the kind with a footprint that was smaller than the record itself. The LPs and the needle arm extended over the body of the player, which also meant Joe was often accidentally bumping into it.
“Ha-ha fuck,” he’d say, amused, seemingly thrilled to use an English curse in front of an American.
I asked him what record was playing. He told me, but I didn’t recognize it. I couldn’t even tell if he’d named a person or a band.
“Would you like to listen to the Beatles instead?”
“No, this is great. I want to listen to Japanese music.”
This pleased Joe. He pulled out a milk crate from below the bar and set it on the counter, presenting it like a gift.
“Please pick the next record.” He bowed again.
I thumbed through Joe’s small vinyl library while he poured me another whiskey. I was by no means an expert on Japanese music, but I thought I might find something familiar from my PORK days. No dice. Most of the music was Japanese, but nothing I could identify by the text or shape or design of a record. Even if it was an album I’d heard before, it was unlikely I would know since I couldn’t read the Japanese titles.
Eventually, I pulled out something at random.
“You know this?” Joe asked.
“I don’t.”
> “Let us listen together.”
Joe put the record on. It was heavy metal—not what I had been expecting. The little record player filled the even littler room with the sound of shredding guitars oscillating from high-pitched shriek to muddy growl, the relentless pounding of the bass drum, a singer shrieking something in Japanese. Joe began air drumming to the beat, thrashing violently. I was concerned he was going to knock over a bottle behind the bar, or accidentally punch me in the face. He was having fun, and I realized I was too.
* * *
—
I WENT TO CRAWLSPACE every night. Usually I was the only patron, and I wondered how the hell Joe stayed in business. Why was I always drawn to bars that no one else went to? We’d talk, and I would check my phone to see if Jill had written me back. She hadn’t.
Each night, Joe wore a different Hawaiian shirt and brought a different crate of records. He explained that he had a massive collection at home, but since the bar was so small, he had to bring a rotating selection every day. It was a joy to drink whiskey and browse the new arrivals each day.
When Joe had asked if I wanted to listen to the Beatles, I had assumed he’d said so because the music would be familiar to me. But it turned out Joe genuinely loved the Beatles. In each crate there was at least one Beatles record, or at the very least a Wings album (Joe argued repeatedly that Paul was the best of the bunch, even though I never disagreed). He would always put it on before closing, which was usually when I finally left.
Joe and I talked a lot. He had an endless number of subjects to discuss with me, a stranger, which I deeply appreciated. Since I’d landed in Tokyo, I spent most of my days talking to no one because I had no one to talk to.
Maybe it was because he was talking to a foreigner, but Joe liked to tell me about Japan. He had philosophical ideas about the country’s place in the world, its fate. He asked me if people in America liked Japanese people.
My gut immediately went cynical. “Well, during World War II, Japanese people were sent to internment camps in twenty-two different states.”
Joe did not recognize the word “internment.” I had to look up a translation on my phone for him.
“Ha-ha fuck,” he said, as if he’d just bumped the record player.
I’m not sure why, but I didn’t want Joe to feel like he belonged in the U.S. I wanted him to understand why I was here, in Japan.
“Let’s not forget: Asians are the only people who’ve ever been nuked,” I said.
He paused for a moment, having taken a slight affront to my phrasing. “Japanese are the only people who have been bombed by an atomic weapon,” he said.
I nodded and felt the need to apologize, so I did. I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for how I’d said it or for saying it at all, or if I was apologizing on behalf of America.
“We Japanese all fear”—he spent a moment searching for the word—“annihilation.”
He went on: “But it is not just the atomic bomb. We fear earthquakes and tsunami. People forget, but more Japanese died during the earthquake in 1923 than from the bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.”
Joe couldn’t remember how to say large numbers in English, so he took a pen from his breast pocket and wrote it on a napkin: 50,000.
“That’s how many died in the earthquake?”
“No, Nagasaki.”
He wrote another number: 80,000.
“Hiroshima, with radiation poisoning,” he explained.
He wrote a third number. It was astronomical.
“142,000 people died in the earthquake?”
“Yes, the Great Kantō earthquake.”
Japan, Joe explained, had always been doomed. Because of the way the island was situated, the tectonic plates far beneath the surface would cause small earthquakes frequently, and large, human-erasing devastations every so often. Joe referred to it as a kind of reset. It almost sounded like he was welcoming it—oblivion, for the people he knew and loved and cared about. It was an inevitability. Nothing could stop it. Everyone was just waiting for it to happen, for extinction to come.
* * *
—
IT WAS FIVE OR six days before I finally recognized something Japanese in Joe’s record crate. I leapt out of my seat when I saw it—just at the recognition of something familiar. It was that song Jill knew. Or, it was the song she thought she knew, but had been sampled by a newer, American artist. Joe could see how excited I was, so he interrupted the current record to put it on.
The music played. Crawlspace was suddenly taken by the sound of melancholy synths, the notes dancing slowly.
It was a rare occasion, when there were other patrons at the bar—two company men, still dressed in their suits. I tried to make conversation, but they didn’t speak a lick of English. Not that it mattered. Even though the two knew each other, they were barely speaking. Mostly they just wanted to get shit-faced, exhausted from what must have been a very long day at the office.
They were also going through cigarettes like crazy. The two were splitting a pack and it was finished almost immediately. The bar was smoky to the point that I was rubbing my eyes and clearing my throat. But Joe didn’t seem to notice, and if he did notice, he certainly didn’t seem to mind. When the first pack was done, they pulled out another.
One of the men said something to Joe in Japanese. I couldn’t understand it, but I could tell from his body language that it was a complaint.
Joe translated for me. “He says the music is too sad.”
Joe responded to the man, gesturing toward me, indicating that the music had been my selection. The other man said something to Joe. He translated again.
“He says you must be a very sad man if you listen to this music.”
I raised my glass at the man, then downed the whiskey in a single gulp. Joe and the two men started laughing. Then there was another round of drinks. And then another.
THE BARBARIANS OF TOKYO
It’s Japan, the year 3009. We live in a society ruled by technology. Everyone is connected through vast digital networks; organic flesh and bone have been improved upon through cybernetic implants. For enough money, you can replace your weak, feeble human arm with a stronger, more durable mechanical one. For a price, your beating heart can be improved by a small generator, one that will never fail, never be susceptible to disease and illness. Everything can be upgraded except the brain, the last bastion of humanity.
Technology has improved human life in every capacity—if you are a person of certain means. And from the rise of enhanced human beings emerges a new kind of caste system, one that favors, if not reinforces, the wealthy and the elite. Neo-Tokyo’s empress is M4V15, a woman who had her entire organic body replaced with a robotic one. The only thing left of her humanity is her mind, and it is a brilliant one.
Though the full embrace of technology may sound cold and inhumane, the country of Japan has never flourished more. There are no wars, no hunger, no greed. M4V15’s mechanical body strips her of any identity, and, no longer tied to any physical human attributes, she is able to rule without prejudice. M4V15 believes that the world would be a better place if everyone could free themselves of their physical form, if everyone could just be like her. She makes that her mission, the imposition of progress. At first, people will resist, but eventually they will see the long-term good it will do for everyone: the end of bias and bigotry.
M4V15 is surprised when her subjects oppose the mandate of technological upgrade, even when her regime generously offers it for free. Can’t they see that this is the future? No matter, she concludes, logically. Progress is inevitable.
The Great Uprising of Neo-Tokyo occurs in 3054. M4V15 is not surprised. (She is too coolly rational to ever be surprised.) The common people storm the castle of the ruling regime, ripping apart everything and everyone in their path. And though the enhanced humans of M4V15’s ruling
class are stronger, smarter, eventually they succumb to the rebels in their numbers. She observes that they are violent and brutal in ways that only lesser humans can be. The force with which she ruled was more benevolent. Sure, it could be vicious at times. Those who resisted upgrade had to be punished—there couldn’t be exceptions to progress. But M4V15 was sacrificing short-term discomfort for long-term benefits. These common people couldn’t see that. They can only think of themselves, only consider right now.
When the rebels eventually reach the throne room, M4V15 is waiting for them. The people demand to know why she has been such a cruel ruler, and she explains that sovereignty is simply defined by a monopoly on violence. They don’t understand what that means. They tear her limb from limb, like barbarians.
Failure was always a possibility, and knowing that meant M4V15 always had a backup plan. For more than a decade, she’d dedicated resources in her government to funding a small, secret lab of the country’s best scientists in pursuit of a single mission: to duplicate the mind.
M4V15 knew that every great leader had a single vision, but could find many paths to it. The Great Uprising was a foreseeable outcome, and it would not stop her from completing her life’s work. Progress could only be rolled back if M4V15 was mortal.
In the moment just before that horde of angry fools can reach her, M4V15’s consciousness is sent to another body, perfectly replicated and immediately awakened. The transition is instant, flawless. Hundreds of miles away, on a small island off the coast of northern Japan, a second version of M4V15 comes to life.