"Alright. It's about time we left this room. I think Kaoru has things he wants to tell you. He was evidently quite insistent that Dr. Eliot promise him this meeting.
He didn't want to leave you a message by holographic memory. I think he just wanted to feel for an instant that you and he were in the same place at the same time, to feel that you were there before his eyes."
They went into a laboratory divided down the middle by a standing screen. Amano went to a computer and input a time and a place. Reiko sat where she was told.
He asked if she wanted to use a helmet display and data gloves.
"What happens if I use them?"
"The experience will be three-dimensional. Alto-gether more realistic. The data gloves will allow you to touch Kaoru's body."
Without a moment's hesitation, she chose to use them.
She put on the equipment and waited for the time to come. Two minutes to go. She steadied her breathing and wiped the coffee from her hair with a handkerchief, arranging it behind her head. She knew he wouldn't be able to see her, but her feminine instincts insisted.
It had been two months since she'd last seen his face. Now he was dead—seeing him would feel like they'd put TV cameras in heaven or something. Her anticipation mounted. She wanted to see him calm and at peace. She thought it might reassure her, to a degree.
3
In Loop time, it was nearly two pm on June 27, 1991. The latitude and longitude coordinates were aligned precisely as they should be. Reiko was about to experience the Loop world in three dimensions, sight and sound.
As the system started, she could feel that she was being taken to another place. Her surroundings were blurry white, and countless droplets of moisture floated all around her. Her body was thrust between them. She seemed to be floating in clouds and her body felt light.
She was not afraid. In fact, she felt quite comfortable, as if she'd obtained a new, freer body.
It didn't take her long to realize that those were actual clouds obscuring her field of vision. She made her way forward until she passed through a rent in the clouds to the other side. She found herself looking down at a coastline, a peninsula extending out into the sea.
Her point of view descended until the intricate coastline became so clear she felt she could reach out and touch it.
The land sloped steeply down to the ocean, leaving precious little space for the seaside pines and only a thin strip of beach.
A paved road wound its way through the hills, shining up at her grayly. The Loop world's sun seemed to be at her back; she couldn't see it, but she could see the reflection of its rays on the road, and on the waves, glitter-ing. She was able to sense that the sun was there behind her.
She saw a human figure on an animal track that veered off the road toward the ocean. At first she couldn't tell what it was looking for as it wandered back and forth along the pine-covered hillside. Was it trying to find a clear field of vision? Or someplace where it could bask in the rays of the sun as they broke through the clouds?
Finally the figure sat down in a grassy clearing on the slope. It then looked straight up at where Reiko's
"eyes" should be.
All was silent, except for the surf in the distance and the wind that surrounded her. As her vantage point lowered and the ground rose to meet her she got a curious sense of spatial relationships. It wasn't like landing in an airplane; it was slower than that. She'd never para-chuted, but she imagined this was what it felt like.
The figure sitting there holding his knees was known in her world by the name Kaoru Futami, while in the Loop he was called Ryuji Takayama. Time in the Loop moved six times faster than in the real world; the month Reiko had spent since last talking with him corresponded to six months there. But that wasn't important. What mattered right now was that Kaoru, too, was aware that Reiko was right in front of him.
She looked down on him from a height of several meters, gazing at his forehead, his nose, the strong-willed set of his mouth. He smiled up as if searching for Reiko's face floating there in the sky. He knew, he had to know, that she was looking at him.
Reiko stayed where she was for a while and allowed memories of Kaoru to pass through her mind. They'd spent so little time together, shared so few spaces. The hospital was practically the only place where they'd voiced their love for each other, but Reiko's son had committed suicide there. Pleasant memories of the place coexisted with sorrowful ones.
Reiko searched for recollections that were purely of Kaoru, fleshing them out, comparing them with the face she was now seeing. Kaoru was right there in front of her, but she closed her eyes.
An image of herself and Kaoru replayed in her mind.
He was walking along the hospital corridor. When he saw her, his face lit up with a joy he didn't even try to conceal. She missed that innocence of his. She could recall the warmth of his skin as he hesitantly touched her—as he picked her up with ease and carried her to the bed. She recalled how they had stood looking over the city from the top floor of the hospital, talking about what they'd do if they could conquer the illness, losing themselves in unrealizable dreams.
Do I want to capture those memories? Do I want to re-experience them?
No, that wasn't it. She wanted to go forth with Kaoru into the future. But he was dead. He didn't really exist anymore. He wasn't anyone she could go forth with.
But when she opened her eyes, he was even closer.
He moved his lips. Clearly he was trying to say something, but she couldn't hear him—was the machine mal-functioning? She told Amano, who was sitting beside her, watching her, and sure enough, it seemed there had been a mistake. He adjusted the automatic translator so that Kaoru's words could reach her.
Kaoru was looking straight upward, and his gaze bristled with determination. He was saying something, in simple, clearly enunciated words. At first it sounded like static, but as Amano made the requisite adjustments Reiko began to make them out. As a result of passing through the translator, Kaoru's voice sounded subtly different, but she understood what he was saying.
"It's going—to be—alright."
He gave a big nod, as if to confirm it with himself.
It's alright.
What was alright? Was he beating a drum for the world he'd given his life to protect? Where did he get that kind of confidence? Yet, Reiko could tell that her attitude toward life, which had already undergone such drastic changes in the few hours since she'd come to the research center, was approaching a new conclusion.
Kaoru had sacrificed himself to save Reiko and the child she carried, and now he sat before them saying,
"It's alright." With him affirming the world, she had no grounds for doubt.
I'll live.
The thought pierced her body. She'd begun to lose the sense that she was really alive, but now, in a way that transcended all causes, she suddenly had it back.
Just before Kaoru had set out for the desert, Reiko had been hinting at suicide, and he'd extracted a promise from her.
Let's meet again two months from now. Until then, you have to keep living, no matter what.
His promise was that in two months he'd reappear, a solution in hand. He'd kept his promise.
Reiko moved her hands, encased in data gloves, and touched Kaoru. She placed her hands on his shoulders and felt his prominent shoulder blades, covered in well-toned muscle. He was just the same.
Kaoru rearranged his legs so that he was sitting Indian-style and stretched out his hands. Reiko grasped them; he didn't respond. Of course he didn't. He couldn't see her. But she didn't give up.