by Kōji Suzuki
Mutation, mutation.
He kept muttering the word under his breath as he stared into the distance. He hoped that maybe the more he intoned it the clearer Ryuji's intent would become.
In the distance he heard a foghorn. The train slid into a station and stayed there; an announcement said they were waiting for an express to pass. Ando was on the last carriage. He stuck his head out the door to see the name of the station. Sure enough, this was where Mai lived. From the train he could see the street outside the station, lined with shops, and he started looking for Mai's apartment, relying on his eight-day-old memories. He remembered that when he'd stood in her room and looked out the window, he'd seen the Keihin Express station at right about eye level. He could see people waiting on the platform, which meant that he should be able to see her apartment from here.
But he couldn't see very well from inside the train, so he got off. He walked down to the end of the platform and stuck his head out over the fence. The shopping street stretched east at a right angle to the train tracks. Less than a few hundred feet away, he saw a seven-story apartment building he recognized.
Abruptly, he heard the sound of the express approaching from the direction of Shinagawa. Once it had passed, the local Ando was riding would shut its doors and continue on toward Kawasaki. Ando hurriedly looked for her window. He knew she lived in room 303, and that was the third window from the right. By now the express had passed, and the bell was ringing to announce the departure of the local. Ando looked at his watch. It was just past six. Miyashita would be eating dinner with his family right now. Ando was reluctant to arrive too early and disturb their precious family time. He figured he was about thirty minutes earlier than he wanted to be, so he decided to take the next train down. He let the local leave without him.
The third floor windows were more or less level with the platform where he was standing. He looked carefully at each of them in turn, but there was no light in any of them.
So she's not there after all.
It had been a faint hope, easily dashed. Then, just as he was about to look away, his gaze was arrested by a band of pale blue light emanating from the third window from the right. He squinted, wondering if he was imagining it, but there it was, fluttering like a bluish-white flag. It glowed so faintly, flickering in and out of view, that he would have missed it if he hadn't been looking so carefully. He leaned even farther forward, but it was too far away. He couldn't quite make it out.
He wanted to go back to her apartment. It should only take twenty minutes or so, which would put him right on schedule for the next train. Without hesitating another minute, he went through the ticket gate and out into the street below.
It was only when he was standing directly below her window, looking up at it, that he was able to figure out the strange light. Her window was open, and her white lace curtain had been blown outside the window, where it was dancing in the breeze, and the neon sign of a car-rental agency across the street was reflecting off the pure white of the lace. Sometimes the primary colors shining on the white cloth showed up like fluorescent paint, which explained the pale blue tinge that was just barely visible from the station. Still, there was a lot about the scene that didn't sit right with Ando. The window had been open and the curtain half closed when he visited eight days ago, but he could distinctly remember closing the window and pulling the curtain to the side before he left. He knew he hadn't left that window open. But there was something that bothered him even more. There was no wind to speak of on this early-winter evening. And yet the curtain had been blown beyond the railing until it was nearly horizontal. Where was that current of air coming from? He couldn't hear any wind. The leaves of the trees lining the street weren't moving. And yet, just above those motionless branches, the curtain danced. The scene was eerily off-kilter. But none of the passersby so much as glanced upward; nobody seemed to notice the odd phenomenon.
The only explanation Ando could think of was a mechanical one. Perhaps a powerful fan was blowing in the room, creating an artificial current flowing outward. But why? His curiosity was aroused.
He went around to the lobby. The only way he'd be able to find out would be to confront that room again.
The superintendent seemed to have the day off. The curtain was drawn at the counter of his office. The whole building felt quiet, with no signs anybody was about.
He took the elevator to the third floor and then walked toward room 303. The closer he got, the smaller and slower his steps became. His instincts were telling him to turn back, but he just had to know. The door to the outside hallway was open, and beyond it he could see a spiral staircase for emergency use. If something happens, maybe I shouldn 't use the elevator. Maybe I should just run down the stairs… Without knowing what exactly he was afraid of, Ando found himself planning an escape route.
He came to the door marked 303. Below the doorbell was a red sticker on which was written TAKANO. Everything was just as before. Ando went to ring the bell, but then thought better of it. Checking to see that the hall was deserted, he put his ear to the door. He couldn't detect a sound, certainly not the motor of an electric fan. He wondered if the lace curtain was still waving outside the window at this very moment. From what he heard beyond the door, he had a hard time believing it was.
"Mai."
Instead of ringing the bell, he called her name, gently, and knocked. No answer.
Mai watched the video, he reminded himself. And she, or someone, had taped over it, only two days before Ando's visit. The fifth day of her disappearance. Who had done it, and why?
Suddenly, Ando could feel again on his skin the strange atmosphere of the room, like the inside of a body. The water at the bottom of the tub, the dripping, the feeling of something brushing against his Achilles tendon.
Ando backed away from the door. In any case, all four copies of that demon video had been wiped from the face of the earth. The crisis was over. No doubt Mai's body would be found soon. No amount of screwing around here was going to bring him any closer to turning things around, Ando told himself as he started back toward the elevator. He was eager to get out of this place again, even at the expense of leaving without an explanation. He wasn't sure why, but he seemed to feel like this every time he came here.
He pushed the elevator call button. While he waited, he kept repeating to himself, mutation, mutation. He wanted to keep his mind on something else, anything. The elevator was taking forever.
From the hallway to his right he heard a resounding snap as a dead-bolt clicked. Ando's body stiffened. Instead of spinning completely around to look, he turned his head just far enough to see out of the corner of his eye. He saw the door to room 303 open slowly outward. He could see the red sticker: there was no doubt which door it was. Unconsciously, Ando pressed the elevator button again and again. The elevator was spending an agonizingly long time on the ground floor.
Seeing a figure emerge from the doorway, Ando braced himself. It was a woman in a summery green one-piece dress. She took a key from her handbag and locked the door, her face visible to Ando in profile. Ando studied the face. She was wearing sunglasses, but even so, it was clear to him that it wasn't Mai. It was someone else. There was no reason for him to be afraid, but his body was running far ahead of his mind at this point.
The elevator doors opened and Ando slipped inside. He went to push CLOSE but accidentally pushed OPEN instead. Finally, a few beats late, the doors started to close. Then, at the last second, a white hand insinuated itself into the crack between the doors, which reacted by springing wide open again. The woman was standing there. Her sunglasses hid any expression her eyes might have had, but Ando could see that she was around twenty-five, with perfectly regular features. With one hand against the edge of the doors, she stepped smoothly onto the elevator and pressed the close button, and then the one for the ground floor. Ando inched nervously backwards until his back and elbows were pressed against the elevator wall and he was standing on tiptoe. From that position,
he stared at this strange woman, this woman who had come out of apartment 303, and directed a single question at her from behind:
Who are you?
An odd smell, different from the scent of perfume, tickled his nose, and he made a face and held his breath. What could it be? It smelled like it contained iron, like blood. The woman's hair reached down to the middle of her back, and her hand on the wall was so white it was almost transparent. A closer look revealed that the nail on her index finger was split. Her sleeveless dress was much too light for the season. She had to be freezing. On her legs she wore no stockings, and on her feet just a pair of pumps. He could see purplish bruises on her legs. This shocked him, but he didn't know why. As hard as he tried, he couldn't stifle the trembling that welled up from deep within him.
Shut up in that tiny box of an elevator alone with that woman, time seemed to drag for Ando. Finally they arrived at the ground floor, and Ando held his breath until the door opened. The woman walked straight across the lobby and disappeared into the street outside.
She looked to be about five feet tall, with a well-balanced figure. Her tight dress ended a few inches above the knees and showed off her derriere nicely, and she had a lithe walk. With no stockings to cover them, the backs of her legs showed up especially white, making the bruises on her calves stand out even more. The night was so cold that every other person on the street was wearing a coat, and yet off she went wearing nothing but a sleeveless summer dress.
Ando got off the elevator and then just stood there for a while, staring into the darkness after her.
6
Ando waited for Miyashita in front of the bank like he was told. It was a weekend evening, and the bank was closed. With its metal shutters down, the area in front of it looked curiously orderly. The darkness here was cozy, but as he waited for Miyashita to emerge from it, he couldn't rid his mind of the image of that woman from apartment 303.
He tried, but she was burned onto his retinas. The whole time he'd half-sleepwalked back to the station from Mai's building, and then the whole way here to Tsurumi Station, he'd been seeing her in his mind.
Who was she?
The most sensible explanation that occurred to him was that Mai's sister had gotten concerned about her sibling and come to check on her apartment. Ando himself had called Mai's mother and told her in simple terms what he'd found. If Mai did have a sister, and if she too lived in Tokyo, there wasn't anything in the least strange about running into her at Mai's apartment.
But there was something in the indescribable aura that the woman had exuded that negated such an easy answer. Riding in the same elevator with her had shaken Ando to the depths of his soul. She didn't seem to be of this world, and yet, she didn't look like a ghost, either. She'd definitely been there with him in the flesh. But Ando thought he would have had an easier time accepting her if she had been a ghost.
He saw a bead of light emerge from behind a mixed-occupancy office building and head straight for him.
"Hey, Ando!"
Ando squinted toward the light, and realized it was Miyashita, hurtling toward him on a small ladies' bike, complete with shopping basket. He must have borrowed his wife's bicycle.
With a squeal of brakes, he came to a stop in front of Ando. At first, Miyashita was too out of breath to speak. He just stood there, straddling the bike, elbows on the handlebars, head bobbing up and down as he gasped for air. Ando never thought he'd see Miyashita on a bike. The slightest exertion usually left him panting.
"That was quick." Ando thought he'd be waiting for at least ten minutes. Miyashita was never early for anything.
Having parked the bike on the sidewalk in front of the station, Miyashita put a hand on Ando's back and guided him into an alley where every building seemed to have a red lantern hanging from its eaves. His breathing had finally calmed a bit, and as they walked, he spoke to Ando.
"I think I know what 'mutation' might mean."
That explained why Miyashita had come on a bike. He was dying to tell Ando his ideas.
"What does it mean?"
"Let's have a beer first."
As they ducked under a shop curtain, Ando noticed that it said Beef Tongue. Miyashita didn't trouble to ask what Ando wanted; instead, the moment they were inside he called for two draft beers and an order of salted tongue. Miyashita seemed to know the proprietor. They exchanged glances of recognition as Miyashita and Ando headed for two counter seats in the back. Those were the quietest seats in the house.
First, Miyashita asked Ando what he had done to figure out the code embedded in Ryuji's virus. Ando took the printout from his briefcase and began to explain the steps he'd gone through. Miyashita nodded repeatedly. Before Ando was half finished, Miyashita seemed to be convinced of the soundness of his method.
"It looks like 'mutation' has to be the answer, alright. The proof of your approach is that it yields exactly one solution." Miyashita patted Ando on the shoulder. "By the way, I'm sure you've noticed what all this is analogous to?"
"What do you mean?"
Miyashita took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. It had something drawn on it. Whatever it was, it had been done roughly, merely to illustrate a spur-of-the-moment idea.
"Have a look at this," Miyashita said, handing him the paper. Ando took it and flattened it out on the bar in front of him.
He understood immediately. It was an illustration of how the DNA double helix inside a cell replicates itself. The strands of the double helix are complementary: when the structure of one is determined, the other one is automatically determined, too. When a cell divides, the two strands separate, each one faithfully creating next-generation copies of the original. This process of copying a gene and passing it down from parent to child can be thought of as the basics of heredity.
This was, of course, elementary to Ando. "What about it?" he asked.
"Think for a minute about the mechanism behind the evolution of species."
There was a lot that still wasn't known about evolution. For example, the basic concepts of Kinji Imanishi's theory differed from those of Neo-Darwinism, but it was impossible to determine, definitively, who was right. All in all, it was "let a hundred flowers bloom" in the world of evolutionary theory; everybody, qualified or not, weighed in with strongly held opinions. But even without decisive evidence to settle the question, Ando knew that recent developments in molecular biology had come close to showing that sudden genetic mutations were a driving force in evolution.
So he answered by saying, with some confidence, "It probably begins with genetic mutation." He felt he could guess where the conversation was going.
"Right. Mutation is the trigger that moves evolution forward. So, how do mutations happen?" Miyashita took a long swig of his beer, and then pulled a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket. Before Ando had a chance to reply to his question, Miyashita was writing again on the illustration. The reason mutations occur. Ando tried to peer past his hand at the sketch.
"An error arises in the genetic code-some chance damage or displacement to the genes- and that error is copied and passed down. Thus, a mutation. Are you with me? This is the current thinking on the mechanism of mutation."
Miyashita pointed at his diagram with his pen to emphasize his points, but this wasn't anything that had to be explained to Ando. Genetic damage can be caused on purpose in a laboratory using X-rays or ultraviolet radiation. But, usually, mutations occur at random. The DNA sequence, which theoretically should be faithfully copied and transmitted to future generations, sometimes mutates due to a copying error, so to speak, and as enough of these mutations accumulate through replication, gradually a new species arises. A given mutation can be looked at as one small step toward evolution.
"Remember that analogy I mentioned, my friend?" Miyashita murmured. Finally it dawned on Ando what Miyashita was getting at. X was like Y. Now that Ando considered it, there was indeed a resemblance.
"You're talking about duplicating videos, a
ren't you?" Ando finally said.
"Don't you think it's basically the same thing?" Miyashita shoved two slices of tongue into his mouth and washed them down with beer.
Ando turned the paper over and spread it out on the counter, and then borrowed Miyashita's pen and began to make a diagram of his own. He needed to take stock of the points of similarity. Even if it was something he thought he already knew inside out, he knew it often helped him to map a thing out on paper.
On the 26th of August, a videotape came into the world in Villa Log Cabin. On the twenty-ninth, four young people lodging in that same cabin erased part of the end of the tape-the part that said, Whoever watches this video must make a copy of it and show it to someone else within a week. The kids taped commercials over this section of the video. To the videotape, it was as if an unforeseen, random event had damaged its genetic sequence, the chain of images. An error was introduced. The tape, now containing the error, was then copied by Asakawa. Naturally, the error was copied as well. Thus far, the process was exactly like the one DNA uses to replicate itself. Not only that, but the erased section of the tape, the message, was meant to play a critical role in the tape's ability to reproduce. In genetic terms, it was a regulator gene. Shock to a regulator gene can make it easier for mutation to occur. Had a trauma to the end of the tape caused the video to mutate?