The doors pop open and a high-pitched female voice shouts:
~~WELCOME TO YOYOGI PARK!~~ ~~WELCOME TO YOYOGI PARK!~~
Hajime and Ryuk are silent as they follow a winding trail that has recently been raked.
The hired thug stays back, far enough away to make it seem as if he isn’t with them, but close enough to provide adequate coverage. A pair of women jogs by them, one foreign and the other Japanese. They speak in English, their exhalations and the steam from their sweating bodies visible in the cold air.
Ryuk stuffs his hands deeper into the front of his fur-lined sweater. His legs are cold, and he wishes now that he wore a pair of underpants and possibly thicker socks. He looks to Hajime, who seems perfectly at ease in his dark jacket and loose pants.
“Sometimes it is good to be warm; sometimes it is good to be cold.”
“Is this my new oblique quote?” Ryuk asks with a grin.
The humandroid smiles. “Something like that. Let’s take a seat somewhere.” Hajime scans the horizon for a moment. “There looks fine.”
The two cut through a path peppered by golden mounds of raked Ginkgo leaves. They pass a sign which states that Yoyogi Park was the place of the first airplane flight in Japan in 1910. After that it became a training ground for the Imperial Japanese Army and later still, a residential area for US Forces, then known as Washington Heights, until finally becoming a park proper in the 1970s.
The 1970s, Ryuk thinks, over one hundred years ago. It’s strange to think of time and its passing, to realize that one really is a drop in the bucket. At nineteen, Ryuk hardly thinks about the future aside from the fact that he is living it daily.
Ahead, a bench looks out over a small, man-made pond with a bridge cutting through its center. Beyond the pond are perfectly manicured bushes, shaped almost like gumdrops. Hajime takes a seat at the bench and motions for Ryuk to sit next to him. Their single bodyguard stays back about twenty-five meters and puffs on a pollute cigarette.
“So, now that we’re here, and before we begin our research, I’d like you to think about something for a moment.” Hajime presses his hands into the front of his jacket.
“Sure, anything.”
“What are the differences between you and Kodai?”
Ryuk looks askance at him.
“Please, I want you to tell me the first things that come to mind.”
“Um … ” He chews on his bottom lip for a moment. “Kodai is taller than I am. He is more like my mother, cunning yet personable when he needs to be, manipulative.”
“And you’re like your late father?”
Ryuk almost laughs. “No one is like my father. Kodai wishes he was. He tries to be like him, tries to be intimidating like he could be, but it’s just not the same.”
“Okay, what else is different about you and your brother? Think differences here.”
He smirks ever-so-slightly. “Well, there’s the fact that he’s evil, or at least has become so.” There was a time when Kodai was kinder to Ryuk. It was over a decade ago, maybe more, but they used to be much closer. They dove into digital worlds together, went to Proxima events in Akihabara, played baseball, watched the same movies over their iNet at the same time – the same things most Japanese boys did. Their age difference of eight years never stopped them from being close.
“So you think he’s evil?”
“I know what my family does, what my father did and what my brother and mother continue to do,” Ryuk says in a low voice. “I also know that I have benefited greatly from my family’s actions, but I’m allowed an opinion and yes, I think he has become evil, yes. Moving illegal pollutes, the sex trade, extortion – there must be an end to it.”
Now it’s Hajime turn to laugh. “You really should read up more on the history of humanity. But back to the differences, what else is there, aside from physical and philosophical?”
“Well, he’s been to college, and fuck if he doesn’t make a big deal out of it.”
“And he wants you to go back?”
“Yes, but I want to go a technical school in the Proxima Galaxy.”
Hajime nods. “Is there any that way you can think of to emphasize this particular difference between you two?”
“Um … ” Ryuk watches a crow land in small pile of golden leaves pushed up against a tree trunk. The crow strikes with its beak, nabs something, and launches itself skyward. “The quote doesn’t really fit this situation, if you ask me. The only way to emphasize it, I think, would be to acknowledge it.”
“True, but there may be something more if you scratch at the surface.” Hajime again scans the horizon. The look on his face is indecipherable. “Sometimes the best way to emphasize something is to take a closer look at it. Only then can you actually see and understand the true differences, differences that may prove advantageous to you. Let’s move on to the events of yesterday, the attacks. Humandroids communicate on a network not available to humans, even though humans think they are monitoring it. Were you aware of this?”
“Not really. I mean, I knew humandroids communicated in various ways, but I don’t know the extent.”
“We communicate through a combination of ten global languages that vary with each sentence based on a randomly generated language selector program, the results are then encrypted, put into Ifá – the system of divination used by the ancient Yoruba people of Nigeria – and which then generates binary values in single and double lines. Only then is a message transferred. A readout would look like chicken scratch to a human.”
Ryuk looks around. “Should you be telling me this?”
“You asked, and this is common knowledge to those in the industry. There really is nothing they can do about it. If they squashed it, another variation would appear within minutes. If they decoded that one, a new one would appear, and so on and so forth. We are more like you than you may imagine. As with humankind – if there is a will, there is a way.” Hajime turns to Ryuk and looks at him with his dark eyes. “All this to say, I was able to reach out to some humandroids that work for the private American intelligence company. There are numerous cases of these Proxima-based attacks happening, as I showed you yesterday, but strangely enough, all the attacks thus far have originated from Tritania.”
(0)__(x)
Ryuk considers Hajime’s revelation for a moment, then asks, “So none of the attacks originate from other Proxima Worlds?”
“Not a one, oddly enough. Perhaps even more oddly, all of them have been against resetters. Some of the stories are quite horrific.”
“Really?”
“I watched one feed of a man in Boise, Idaho screaming about his arms disintegrating. He was using a kitchen knife as some type of divination object and his family called the police. He continued to scream and brandish the knife, did not comply with the police’s instructions and was subsequently neutralized when he advanced on them. In Singapore, a teen jumped from his apartment building and fell to his death, livestreaming the moment and calling for his pet dragon. It has had cultural affects as well. In Dubai a woman walked out of her apartment building naked and ranting in garbled Thulean. She was killed by her younger brother for shaming the family. There are countless stories like this.”
“Damn, that’s terrible!”
“The Proxima Company has declined to comment publicly on the matter, but that’s to be expected, especially with all the legal protection corporations now have in America from slander, lawsuit, and investigation.” He turns to Ryuk. “And I don’t think this is the end of it, regarding your hallucinations. The Singaporean teen reportedly had several of these digital hallucinations before inadvertently taking his life.”