This one wasn't dried and shriveled like the one he'd seen twenty-four years ago: this had fresh blood on it. It had probably been cut no more than a week ago. It was the conduit between a womb and a mother's body, an interface between the inner world and the outer.
The umbilical cord looked strangely like it had been torn—the ends had clearly not been snipped by sharp scissors.
His field of vision had shrunk even further: now all he could see was Sadako's face. He had no way of knowing what was causing the symptoms now fast progress-ing through his body, but he had a vague premonition of death. It looked, ironically enough, like he was to be granted his wish of dying in Sadako's arms.
He tried to smile. He wanted Sadako to respond in kind, but she remained without expression.
Out of habit, Toyama's forefinger began to move.
When it used to be time for him to play the theme music at the end of a show, he'd always focus himself by rubbing his thumb and forefinger together before pressing play.
Sadako opened her mouth and began to speak.
What? What are you trying to say?
But whatever she was about to say stopped at her throat, and never reached Toyama's consciousness. In the end, maybe the Girl in Black hadn't been trying to say anything at all.
Play button, on.
He moved his forefinger, then gently squeezed the umbilical cord. There was no longer any doubt in his mind whose it was.
Sadako's been reborn.
A moment later the lights went out, signaling that the curtain was about to fall for Toyama.
He heard applause, somewhere. And the many gazes that had been turned on him all simultaneously...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
1
The images stopped. Reiko Sugiura sat there trying to bring her heartbeat under control, muttering to herself, It's like watching a play or something.
It was a perfectly understandable reaction.
Instead of donning the instrument-studded head-mounted display and data gloves to watch what she'd just watched, she'd simply gazed at a flat-panel monitor as the scenes unfolded within it. Reiko was pregnant, and any potentially disturbing stimulus was out of the question. Living someone else's life, dying someone else's death—the shock would be far too great. The experience of simulated death had been known to cause real psychological damage. That couldn't be good for the baby. Amano had recommended that Reiko use the monitor instead.
Prior to her viewing, Reiko had been given a lecture about the Loop project by Professor Toru Amano, a spe-cialist in it. She'd thought she understood, but there was still a part of her that couldn't quite believe it. It was easy to get confused—she had to keep telling herself that the people on the monitor were not playing roles, but living out their lives. They weren't acting...
Still, now that it was over, it felt like she'd been watching a TV show.
Why is that, she wondered. If she'd been shown a video of someone's everyday life, she probably wouldn't have found it stagy. That would depend, of course, but she'd probably feel like she was stealing a look at someone's life. Perhaps not—if it wasn't a mundane scene but instead some unusual incident that she saw, perhaps she'd feel like she was watching a movie or a play. Speaking of unusual, what she'd just seen certainly was that.
First, a woman fell into an exhaust shaft on the roof of a building and there gave birth to a baby. The baby gnawed through its own umbilical cord, then climbed a rope up the side of the shaft, all by itself. There was no way it could have happened in real life. It was too strange. Then came the man's story. The baby grew into an adult woman in the space of a week, and the man died cradled on her knees. She'd once been his lover. Maybe it was precisely because Reiko understood his feelings so well and empathized with his story so much that she'd found it theatrical.
Amano turned off the monitor and waited for what she'd just seen to sink in. Then he asked, gently, "What do you think?"
Reiko repeated the words she'd muttered to herself.
"It's like I was watching a play or something."
Amano smiled and nodded. "The first time I viewed something in the Loop I had the same reaction."
His tone was generous. Judging by the stage he was at in his research career, he had to be in his late forties, but he looked much younger. His pale, plump face, with its silver-rimmed glasses, showed no trace of ill will.
Reiko found herself relaxing in his presence.
He had a way of calming people down. She'd felt it in his voice when he'd telephoned her three days ago.
Not much else could have brought her there, no matter how many times they'd asked.
When Amano, whom she'd never met, had called her, Reiko's depression had been at its worst. She'd lost, she could say without exaggeration, her reason for living. The embryo growing within her only symbolized her mount-ing anxiety. Her attachment to life was weakening.
She had a choice to make—to have the baby or not—but had no strength of will left to choose one option or the other. She simply passed the days carried forward by inertia. Suicide was an evident solution, but even it had retreated into the distance. Instead she lived on, watching indifferently, as through the eyes of another. Eventually she'd be ravaged by the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus,- certain death awaited her and she lacked any means to resist it.
The only thing that gave her any hope was Kaoru Futami, the father of the child she was carrying. At least, he should have given her hope. Two months ago, he'd left on a journey into the American desert, determined to find a way to eradicate the cancer virus that had brought the human race to the edge of extinction. A month later, over the phone, he suggested that he'd found, or was about to find, something, and then disappeared. He was presumably still wandering through the wilderness on his motorcycle. She had no way of contacting him. A month of that was too long.
When he'd left, they'd made a promise. She could still remember how his voice had sounded as he'd said the words:
Let's meet again two months from now. Until then, you have to keep living, no matter what.
The two months had passed. The fetus, three months along at the time of the promise, was now at five months. She'd had no word from Kaoru. How was she supposed to muster the hope to go on living, to have the child?
Reiko would turn thirty-four within the year. Perhaps this was her last chance to have a baby. She'd had her firstborn, a boy, at twenty-two, and she'd lost him in the worst possible way—suicide. This new life had been vouchsafed her around the very same time. Considering the timing, it was easy to imagine her first child being reborn as this one—all the more reason to take good care of it. But Reiko carried the MHC virus, and the child was sure to be born infected. What was the point of forcing it to live a life of suffering? Its father Kaoru had taken it upon himself to find a reason.
Then three days ago she'd gotten a call from a Mr. Amano at the Life Science Research Center who had something he wanted to talk to her about regarding Kaoru. She'd been doubtful. Amano had asked her to come to his lab, but she couldn't rouse herself to do it. It was probably her instinct for self-preservation kicking in; she couldn't handle any more bad news. Though Amano's voice was soft, it could be the sympathy and hesitation the bringer of bad news must always feel.
Reiko's guard was up. The man might have something awful to tell her about Kaoru.