The Future Is Japanese Read online

  “I remember they were full of giant robots. I thought, Japan is so powerful.”

  I try to imagine it: heroic giant robots all over Japan, working desperately to save the people.

  The Prime Minister’s apology was broadcast through the loudspeakers. Some also watched it on their phones.

  I remember very little of it except that his voice was thin and he looked very frail and old. He looked genuinely sorry. “I’ve let the people down.”

  The rumors turned out to be true. The shipbuilders had taken the money from the government but did not build ships that were strong enough or capable of what they promised. They kept up the charade until the very end. We found out the truth only when it was too late.

  Japan was not the only nation that failed her people. The other nations of the world had squabbled over who should contribute how much to a joint evacuation effort when the Hammer was first discovered on its collision course with Earth. And then, when that plan had collapsed, most decided that it was better to gamble that the Hammer would miss and spend the money and lives on fighting with each other instead.

  After the Prime Minister finished speaking, the crowd remained silent. A few angry voices shouted but soon quieted down as well. Gradually, in an orderly fashion, people began to pack up and leave the temporary campsites.

  “The people just went home?” Mindy asks, incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “There was no looting, no panicked runs, no soldiers mutinying in the streets?”

  “This was Japan,” I tell her. And I can hear the pride in my voice, an echo of my father’s.

  “I guess the people were resigned,” Mindy says. “They had given up. Maybe it’s a culture thing.”

  “No!” I fight to keep the heat out of my voice. Her words irk me, like Bobby’s remark about Go being boring. “That is not how it was.”

  “Who is Dad speaking to?” I asked.

  “That is Dr. Hamilton,” Mom said. “We—he and your father and I—went to college together in America.”

  I watched Dad speak English on the phone. He seemed like a completely different person: it wasn’t just the cadences and pitch of his voice; his face was more animated, his hand gestured more wildly. He looked like a foreigner.

  He shouted into the phone.

  “What is Dad saying?”

  Mom shushed me. She watched Dad intently, hanging on every word.

  “No,” Dad said into the phone. “No!” I did not need that translated.

  Afterward Mom said, “He is trying to do the right thing, in his own way.”

  “He is as selfish as ever,” Dad snapped.

  “That’s not fair,” Mom said. “He did not call me in secret. He called you instead because he believed that if your positions were reversed, he would gladly give the woman he loved a chance to survive, even if it’s with another man.”

  Dad looked at her. I had never heard my parents say “I love you” to each other, but some words did not need to be said to be true.

  “I would never have said yes to him,” Mom said, smiling. Then she went to the kitchen to make our lunch. Dad’s gaze followed her.

  “It’s a fine day,” Dad said to me. “Let us go on a walk.”

  We passed other neighbors walking along the sidewalks. We greeted each other, inquired after each other’s health. Everything seemed normal. The Hammer glowed even brighter in the dusk overhead.

  “You must be very frightened, Hiroto,” he said.

  “They won’t try to build more escape ships?”

  Dad did not answer. The late summer wind carried the sound of cicadas to us: chirr chirr chirrrrrr.

  “Nothing in the cry

  Of cicadas suggest they

  Are about to die.”

  “Dad?”

  “That is a poem by Bashoˉ. Do you understand it?”

  I shook my head. I did not like poems much.

  Dad sighed and smiled at me. He looked at the setting sun and spoke again:

  “The fading sunlight holds infinite beauty

  Though it is so close to the day’s end.”

  I recited the lines to myself. Something in them moved me. I tried to put the feeling into words: “It is like a gentle kitten is licking the inside of my heart.”

  Instead of laughing at me, Dad nodded solemnly.

  “That is a poem by the classical Tang poet Li Shangyin. Though he was Chinese, the sentiment is very much Japanese.”

  We walked on, and I stopped by the yellow flower of a dandelion. The angle at which the flower was tilted struck me as very beautiful. I got the kitten-tongue-tickling sensation in my heart again.

  “The flower …” I hesitated. I could not find the right words.

  Dad spoke,

  “The drooping flower

  As yellow as the moon beam

  So slender tonight.”

  I nodded. The image seemed to me at once so fleeting and so permanent, like the way I had experienced time as a young child. It made me a little sad and glad at the same time.

  “Everything passes, Hiroto,” Dad said. “That feeling in your heart—it’s called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us; we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon.”

  I looked around at the clean streets, the slow-moving people, the grass, and the evening light, and I knew that everything had its place; everything was all right. Dad and I went on walking, our shadows touching.

  Even though the Hammer hung right overhead, I was not afraid.

  My job involves staring at the grid of indicator lights in front of me. It is a bit like a giant Go board.

  It is very boring most of the time. The lights, indicating tension on various spots of the solar sail, course through the same pattern every few minutes as the sail gently flexes in the fading light of the distant sun. The cycling pattern of the lights is as familiar to me as Mindy’s breathing when she’s asleep.

  We’re already moving at a good fraction of the speed of light. Some years hence, when we’re moving fast enough, we’ll change our course for 61 Virginis and its pristine planets, and we’ll leave the sun that gave birth to us behind like a forgotten memory.

  But today, the pattern of the lights feels off. One of the lights in the southwest corner seems to be blinking a fraction of a second too fast.

  “Navigation,” I say into the microphone, “this is Sail Monitor Station Alpha. Can you confirm that we’re on course?”

  A minute later Mindy’s voice comes through my earpiece, tinged slightly with surprise. “I hadn’t noticed, but there was a slight drift off course. What happened?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” I stare at the grid before me, at the one stubborn light that is out of sync, out of harmony.

  Mom took me to Fukuoka without Dad. “We’ll be shopping for Christmas,” she said. “We want to surprise you.” Dad smiled and shook his head.

  We made our way through the busy streets. Since this might be the last Christmas on Earth, there was an extra sense of gaiety in the air.

  On the subway I glanced at the newspaper held up by the man sitting next to us. USA STRIKES BACK! was the headline. The big photograph showed the American president smiling triumphantly. Below that was a series of other pictures, some I had seen before: the first experimental American evacuation ship from years ago exploding on its test flight; the leader of some rogue nation claiming responsibility on TV; American soldiers marching into a foreign capital.

  Below the fold was a smaller article: AMERICAN SCIENTISTS SKEPTICAL OF DOOMSDAY SCENARIO. Dad had said that some people preferred to believe that a disaster was unreal rather than accept that nothing could be done.

  I looked forward to picking out a present for Dad. But instead of going to the electronics district, where I had expected Mom to take me to buy him a gift, we went to a section of the
city I had never been to before. Mom took out her phone and made a brief call, speaking in English. I looked up at her, surprised.

  Then we were standing in front of a building with a great American flag flying over it. We went inside and sat down in an office. An American man came in. His face was sad, but he was working hard not to look sad.

  “Rin.” The man called my mother’s name and stopped. In that one syllable I heard regret and longing and a complicated story.

  “This is Dr. Hamilton,” Mom said to me. I nodded and offered to shake his hand, as I had seen Americans do on TV.

  Dr. Hamilton and Mom spoke for a while. She began to cry, and Dr. Hamilton stood awkwardly, as though he wanted to hug her but dared not.

  “You’ll be staying with Dr. Hamilton,” Mom said to me.

  “What?”

  She held my shoulders, bent down, and looked into my eyes. “The Americans have a secret ship in orbit. It is the only ship they managed to launch into space before they got into this war. Dr. Hamilton designed the ship. He’s my … old friend, and he can bring one person aboard with him. It’s your only chance.”

  “No, I’m not leaving.”

  Eventually, Mom opened the door to leave. Dr. Hamilton held me tightly as I kicked and screamed.

  We were all surprised to see Dad standing there.

  Mom burst into tears.

  Dad hugged her, which I’d never seen him do. It seemed a very American gesture.

  “I’m sorry,” Mom said. She kept saying “I’m sorry” as she cried.

  “It’s okay,” Dad said. “I understand.”

  Dr. Hamilton let me go, and I ran up to my parents, holding on to both of them tightly.

  Mom looked at Dad, and in that look she said nothing and everything.

  Dad’s face softened like a wax figure coming to life. He sighed and looked at me.

  “You’re not afraid, are you?” Dad asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Then it is okay for you to go,” he said. He looked into Dr. Hamilton’s eyes. “Thank you for taking care of my son.”

  Mom and I both looked at him, surprised.

  “A dandelion

  In late autumn’s cooling breeze

  Spreads seeds far and wide.”

  I nodded, pretending to understand.

  Dad hugged me, fiercely, quickly.

  “Remember that you’re Japanese.”

  And they were gone.

  “Something has punctured the sail,” Dr. Hamilton says.

  The tiny room holds only the most senior command staff—plus Mindy and me because we already know. There is no reason to cause a panic among the people.

  “The hole is causing the ship to list to the side, veering off course. If the hole is not patched, the tear will grow bigger, the sail will soon collapse, and the Hopeful will be adrift in space.”

  “Is there any way to fix it?” the captain asks.

  Dr. Hamilton, who has been like a father to me, shakes his headful of white hair. I have never seen him so despondent.

  “The tear is several hundred kilometers from the hub of the sail. It will take many days to get someone out there because you can’t move too fast along the surface of the sail—the risk of another tear is too great. And by the time we do get anyone out there, the tear will have grown too large to patch.”

  And so it goes. Everything passes.

  I close my eyes and picture the sail. The film is so thin that if it is touched carelessly it will be punctured. But the membrane is supported by a complex system of folds and struts that give the sail rigidity and tension. As a child, I watched them unfold in space like one of my mother’s origami creations.

  I imagine hooking and unhooking a tether cable to the scaffolding of struts as I skim along the surface of the sail, like a dragonfly dipping across the surface of a pond.

  “I can make it out there in seventy-two hours,” I say. Everyone turns to look at me. I explain my idea. “I know the patterns of the struts well because I have monitored them from afar for most of my life. I can find the quickest path.”

  Dr. Hamilton is dubious. “Those struts were never designed for a maneuver like that. I never planned for this scenario.”

  “Then we’ll improvise,” Mindy says. “We’re Americans, damn it. We never just give up.”

  Dr. Hamilton looks up. “Thank you, Mindy.”

  We plan, we debate, we shout at each other, we work through the night.

  The climb up the cable from the habitat module to the solar sail is long and arduous. It takes me almost twelve hours.

  Let me illustrate for you what I look like with the second character in my name:

  It means “to soar.” See that radical on the left? That’s me, tethered to the cable with a pair of antennae coming out of my helmet. On my back are the wings—or, in this case, booster rockets and extra fuel tanks that push me up and up toward the great reflective dome that blocks out the whole sky, the gossamer mirror of the solar sail.

  Mindy chats with me on the radio link. We tell each other jokes, share secrets, speak of things we want to do in the future. When we run out of things to say, she sings to me. The goal is to keep me awake.

  “Wareware ha, hoshi no aida ni kyaku ni kite.”

  But the climb up is really the easy part. The journey across the sail along the network of struts to the point of puncture is far more difficult.

  It has been thirty-six hours since I left the ship. Mindy’s voice is now tired, flagging. She yawns.

  “Sleep, baby,” I whisper into the microphone. I’m so tired that I want to close my eyes just for a moment.

  I’m walking along the road on a summer evening, my father next to me.

  “We live in a land of volcanoes and earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis, Hiroto. We have always faced a precarious existence, suspended in a thin strip on the surface of this planet between the fire underneath and the icy vacuum above.”

  And I’m back in my suit again, alone. My momentary loss of concentration causes me to bang my backpack against one of the beams of the sail, almost knocking one of the fuel tanks loose. I grab it just in time. The mass of my equipment has been lightened down to the last gram so that I can move fast, and there is no margin for error. I can’t afford to lose anything.

  I try to shake the dream and keep on moving.

  “Yet it is this awareness of the closeness of death, of the beauty inherent in each moment, that allows us to endure. Mono no aware, my son, is an empathy with the universe. It is the soul of our nation. It has allowed us to endure Hiroshima, to endure the occupation, to endure deprivation and the prospect of annihilation without despair.”

  “Hiroto, wake up!” Mindy’s voice is desperate, pleading. I jerk awake. I have not been able to sleep for how long now? Two days, three, four?

  For the final fifty or so kilometers of the journey, I must let go of the sail struts and rely on my rockets alone to travel untethered, skimming over the surface of the sail while everything is moving at a fraction of the speed of light. The very idea is enough to make me dizzy.

  And suddenly my father is next to me again, suspended in space below the sail. We’re playing a game of Go.

  “Look in the southwest corner. Do you see how your army has been divided in half ? My white stones will soon surround and capture this entire group.”

  I look where he’s pointing and I see the crisis. There is a gap that I missed. What I thought was my one army is in reality two separate groups with a hole in the middle. I have to plug the gap with my next stone.

  I shake away the hallucination. I have to finish this, and then I can sleep.

  There is a hole in the torn sail before me. At the speed we’re traveling, even a tiny speck of dust that escaped the ion shields can cause havoc. The jagged edge of the hole flaps gently in space, propelled by solar wind and radiation pressure. While an individual photon is tiny, insignificant, without even mass, all of them together can propel a sail as big as the sky and pu
sh a thousand people along.

  The universe is wondrous.

  I lift a black stone and prepare to fill in the gap, to connect my armies into one.

  The stone turns back into the patching kit from my backpack. I maneuver my thrusters until I’m hovering right over the gash in the sail. Through the hole I can see the stars beyond, the stars that no one on the ship has seen for many years. I look at them and imagine that around one of them, one day, the human race, fused into a new nation, will recover from near extinction, will start afresh and flourish again.

  Carefully, I apply the bandage over the gash, and I turn on the heat torch. I run the torch over the gash, and I can feel the bandage melting to spread out and fuse with the hydrocarbon chains in the sail film. When that’s done I’ll vaporize and deposit silver atoms over it to form a shiny, reflective layer.

  “It’s working,” I say into the microphone. I hear the muffled sounds of celebration in the background.

  “You’re a hero,” Mindy says.

  I think of myself as a giant Japanese robot in a manga and smile.

  The torch sputters and goes out.

  “Look carefully,” Dad says. “You want to play your next stone there to plug that hole. But is that what you really want?”

  I shake the fuel tank attached to the torch. Nothing. This was the tank that I banged against one of the sail beams. The collision must have caused a leak, and there isn’t enough fuel left to finish the patch. The bandage flaps gently, only half attached to the gash.

  “Come back now,” Dr. Hamilton says. “We’ll replenish your supplies and try again.”

  I’m exhausted. No matter how hard I push, I will not be able to make it back out here as fast. And by then who knows how big the gash will have grown? Dr. Hamilton knows this as well as I do. He just wants to get me back to the warm safety of the ship.

  I still have fuel in my tank, the fuel that is meant for my return trip.

  My father’s face is expectant.

  “I see,” I say slowly. “If I play my next stone in this hole, I will not have a chance to get back to the small group up in the northeast. You’ll capture them.”