“Anyways, after I started to worry about you, I tried FacePhoning but wasn’t able to connect. That was when I checked your inner profile and found you were in a factory yard in Shinagawa, crouching with illiquids.”
Amon said nothing. He was getting drowsier by the second. The car turned, swinging his bowed head to the left against the door. He let it rest there, the smell of rubber in his nose, hoping for just a wink of sleep. But he couldn’t relax on the soggy seat in his soggy clothes. After a few minutes passed, he lifted his head.
Outside the window he saw a dragon with long, streaming whiskers whip just above the roof of the car. Inside little cubbies in its undulating serpentine torso, people sat side by side, screaming with their mouths wide open. Having come off the overpass, Amon and Mayuko were driving along a four-lane road into a district that integrated theme park and condominium sprawl. It was Mayuko’s neighborhood—Wakuwaku City.
The track for the dragon coaster snaked and spiraled upwards above the thoroughfare, threading its way through the knotted, aerial spaghetti of other tracks. Done up as warheads, griffins, desert caravans, sound waves, drilling braids of strobing psychedelic pinwheels, dozens of roller coasters whizzed straight at and around each other. They rose to peaks high above the roofscape. They plunged through tunnels bored diagonally in skyscrapers. They ripped along hallways past bedrooms, kitchens, and private Jacuzzis. They loop-de-looped low to bring the heads of riders skimming just above traffic.
The scaffolding that supported the tracks was bolted at the base to outer walls, reaching across streets from one building to the next to form a pervasive canopy of interlinking steel beams that blocked out the InfoClouds. The still-falling InfoRain was channeled down its structure to pour onto particular points along the street. Some sections of the scaffolding had been digimade to match the various rides they supported: scuttling spider legs beneath Arachnid Twirl, licking flames for Runaway Dragon, and one that had been completely edited out with the riders flying in sitting position through empty air.
Children inside stars spun through space like the movement of the cosmos in time-lapse photography, and couples strapped in transparent tubes rose and fell on wires like pistons through hydraulic cylinders. Merry-go-rounds hula-hooping skyscraper shafts and Ferris wheels crowning their rooftops rotated at a steady pace like massive horizontal and vertical cogs, some of the buildings themselves turning gradually like slow-motion dreidels.
Crowds queued along rope dividers for blocks, the lineups bending around intersections and narrow alleys. They waited for outdoor ski lifts and escalators that led to boarding zones on raised platforms, balconies, and rooftops. Stalls peddling various sorts of junk food were stationed between the ropes and the narrow pedestrian lane running along the curb. Even inside the car, Amon could smell hot grease, curry, caramel, and could hear screams of different volumes layered on top of each other—some growing louder as they approached, others fading as they retreated—a multi-track soundscape of exhilaration.
Mayuko turned down a ramp that ran beneath a skyscraper into a basement parking chamber and parked in the center of a circular pad. Once they were out, the pad lifted the car into a hole in the ceiling and they stepped into a nearby elevator. The elevator rose for mere seconds before the doors opened directly into their weekly-rental apartment.
Beyond the single stair of the entranceway was a white rectangular room. On the left was a wall of windows; on the right a wall with four faux-wood doors; on the far end a kitchen with narrow counters, a single sink, and a small fridge; in the middle a small white dining table with two wooden chairs. And between the table and where they stood, a black leather couch. Aside from a glass vase of white and black roses on the table, nothing was decorated: the dark, reddish-brown floorboards were without rug; the walls without paintings. They took off their shoes and entered.
Once inside, Mayuko opened a closet beside the entrance, taking out a white towel and a yukata robe patterned white and grayish-blue. “You must be wanting a shower,” she said, and handed them to Amon, who nodded in thanks. She then opened the nearest door, ushered Amon into the shower room, and closed the door behind him. Amon undressed, put his wet clothes and duster in a plastic basket, and got in the shower. Steam filled the off-white plastic chamber. He stood there for a time on tired legs, struggling just to hold his head up, before finally succeeding in urging his arms to lather his body in soap. He savored the hot water as it ran down his flesh, washing away the rain, the sweat, the residue of fear.
After drying off, Amon slipped his arms into the yukata sleeves, tied a fabric belt around his waist, and returned to the living room. At that moment, Mayuko was at the entrance taking a white plastic bag from a man in a navy blue jacket that stood in the doorway. The man bowed low, displaying the top of his head, where the LVR Logo—swirling spirals of letters and numbers that coalesced into a leaping dolphin—was animated in the shave pattern of his buzz-cut, before Mayuko shut the door.
She brought the bag towards the kitchen and, as she was passing Amon, said “I got some dinner for you.”
“Great! Thanks. I’m starving.”
“You must be.” Mayuko put the bag on the counter. Amon could see the neck of a green glass bottle sticking over the lip of the white plastic. Mayuko drew out a black bento box, brought it to the table, and placed it on top in front of the seat facing the window.
“You go ahead. I’ve already eaten.”
Without wasting a moment, Amon sat at the table before the box and removed its transparent lid. The black plastic was divided into six square compartments in two rows of three with a different dish in each. Running clockwise from the bottom leftmost compartment were white rice; teriyaki chicken; slices of yellow pickled daikon; potatoes, carrot, and pork simmered in soy sauce; squid and salmon salad; and stir-fried eggplant. Amon drew his disposable chopsticks from their paper sheath, snapped them apart, said thanks for the food, and began to eat ravenously. He knew it was just fast food, but being used to vending machine fare—not to mention excruciatingly hungry after all the exertion on an empty stomach—it tasted like the most wholesome, delicious meal he’d ever had.
When he was finished, Amon realized that he could hear a muffled hissing. It appeared that Mayuko had slipped off to the shower while he was absorbed in eating. Now that his belly was full, he began to feel woozy and leaned back on the chair, listening to the sound of the water and feeling the cool A/C air from a vent above.