You’re a coward, Kazuko!
Then suddenly there came a voice: “Okay, Kazuko. You can come out now. I’ve known all along that you were hiding there.”
It was a voice Kazuko knew well. The voice of someone close to her. Surely, it couldn’t be him!
Kazuko gingerly stepped away from the partition to find the intruder standing by the chemicals cabinet, smiling at her.
“Kazuo!” screamed Kazuko in both surprise and relief as her friend stood before her with his usual daydreaming expression.
Was he really the one she was after? Could it really be that Kazuo — who’d been with her through this whole thing — was the intruder? Kazuko found it hard to believe. But she knew she had to, and that it would be better if she could hear it directly from him.
“So it was you? You made that odd chemical and gave me these strange powers?” said Kazuko, doing
her best to suppress her anger. He was supposed to be her friend, but he’d been watching her suffer all along without ever saying a word!
“Yes, that’s right. But I didn’t do it to cause you trouble. It was just a coincidence that you came to have those powers. I didn’t mean for it to happen. There’s a reason why I didn’t tell you before. I was trying to protect you. I just hope you can believe me!”
“But, but…” Kazuko was suddenly lost for words.
There were so many questions, so many things she wanted to say. “I just can’t believe it. Why would you…”
Kazuo wore a smile of pity on his face, and Kazuko was surprised to see there was something a little more mature about him. Not like when some of the students pretend to be grown-ups, but a genuine maturity. The person standing in front of her was no longer a boy — at least not like the rest of the kids at school.
THE BOY FROM THE FUTURE
“I don’t know how to tell you this…” Kazuo said thoughtfully. “It’s going to take a little time to explain. But believe me when I say everything I’m about to tell you is the truth. And you should now have an easier time believing me because of everything you’ve been through. To put it simply, Kazuko, I am… from, er, the future.”
“From the future?” Kazuko was shocked. She thought she was prepared to hear anything, but this was well beyond her expectations — well beyond common sense, or what she believed was common sense, anyway.
“I… I can’t believe it,” said Kazuko, her voice trembling.
“I thought you might say that,” said Kazuo with a nod. “It’s a bit like science fiction, isn’t it?”
But Kazuko wasn’t in any mood to make light of the situation. “So how did you get here? In some sort of time machine or something?” she asked in a sarcastic voice.
“No. I came just like you did. By time-leaping and teleportation.”
As she struggled to take this all in, Kazuko felt a bit faint, and the room started to spin a little.
“If you can’t believe what I’m saying, that’s okay,” continued Kazuo. “You can just listen to it as if it were a fairy tale. You’ve suffered enough, so you have the right to hear my story. But don’t blame me if you think my story is outrageous. I’m not going to lie to you. But it’s the only explanation I have.”
“All right,” said Kazuko. “I’ll listen.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you. But let’s stop time before we start. We don’t want anyone interrupting us.”
“What?” Kazuko yelled.
Unruffled by her shock, Kazuo reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a transistor radio, and extended its antenna.
“Okay. Now we are the only people moving and talking in this world. If you don’t believe me, take a look out the window.”
Kazuko wondered if Kazuo might be losing his mind.
“Go on!” said Kazuo. “Have a look, if you don’t believe me.” And with that, he took her hand and led her to the window.
Kazuko allowed herself to be led to the window, noticing at the same time how cold Kazuo’s hand was and how much it felt like the hand of a woman. Then, when they reached the window, they both stared out at the road in front of the school.
Kazuko was dumbfounded. There were cars on the road as usual, but not one of them was moving. Buses, trucks and passenger cars — they were all frozen to the spot. Even more amazingly, Kazuko could see people on the pavement and the zebra crossing arrested in mid-step. There was even a dog that must have been sprinting along, because it was now just hanging in the air with each of its paws a good ten centimetres off the ground!
“Time really has stopped,” whispered Kazuko, noticing the silence all around them.
“You could say that,” offered Kazuo. “Or, to be more accurate, you could say that we are backtracking at exactly the same speed as time is moving forward. So it’s only to our eyes that time appears to be standing still.”
“But how can you do such a thing?”
“It’s this device. It’s releasing a very strong energy field around us, cutting us off from the outside world and moving time backwards inside. It’s a barrier with all sorts of applications.”
“I don’t think I understand…”
“That’s fine. You don’t really have to understand how it works,” said Kazuo casually as he took her hand, and led her back to the middle of the science lab. “Okay then.” He continued with a smile. “Let’s start from the very beginning.”
IN THE YEAR 2660
Kazuo’s story went something like this.
Throughout the twenty-seventh century, the Earth’s population had been increasing exponentially. There were colonies on both the Moon and Mars, and many people were forced to go there due to the extreme overcrowding back on our planet. At least that was the way it was for people who didn’t have so much money or social status. But for the people who did have money and status, they remained on Earth, where they were busy working on the development of a new civilization run by machines.
By the year 2620, the peaceful use of nuclear energy had freed mankind to concentrate on other issues, and many bold new discoveries had been made in much shorter time than ever before. But because science was progressing so fast, the general public began to have difficulties in keeping up with it. In time, the various technologies surpassed the understanding of many scientists as well, who had become more specialized and had to delegate their work. So even though the scientists knew how to do their jobs very well, each of them concentrated only on one small task and they were not abreast of all the other technological developments. In fact, they no longer needed to know much about anything other than the one simple job they’d been allocated. Needless to say, this had a rather bad effect on society.
In the beginning, it was schools and other educational institutions that suffered the most. In the past, they’d been able to teach a range of subjects to students at a basic level. But now such basic information was no use to anybody in such an advanced world. So schooling was extended. Kids were sent to elementary school from the age of four. Then, for fourteen years they were taught basic education. Then junior education followed this for five years, and that concluded compulsory education. Completing compulsory education, however, didn’t mean you were ready to take a job. Simple tasks and calculations were performed by machines and computerized brains, so no human with a junior-high-school-level education was much use in any work place. If one wanted to become an office worker, more specialized education was required in a specific field, so you had to attend high school or a specialized school for another five years.