Loop (15 page)

Fundamentally, no reason exists in the world to explain why two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, when combined, have to form water: the rules are simply set up that way. And who made the rules? If you had to give it a name, it would be God.

The fact that evolution in the Loop proceeded exactly as it had in the real world was suspected to be due to the first primitive RNA life form that had been caused to be born. Or, rather, since the physical conditions of the Loop had been precisely modelled on those of the real world, evolution there probably couldn't help but follow the path it had already followed in the real world.

One of the purposes of the Loop was to enable researchers to trace the actual process of evolution. If evolution in the Loop followed the same path as it did in reality, then the results of the Loop's evolution would predict the future of the real world.

Suddenly chills ran along Kaoru's spine. The Loop predicted the future of life on earth. All life would turn cancerous.

What in the world? That's exactly what's happening now.

Cancer cells reproduced with no respect for persons, they were sexless, and they were immortal to boot. At the moment there were only a few million victims worldwide, but there was always the chance that the numbers would shoot up due to some mutation or population explosion in the MHC virus. It would be the same as what had happened in the Loop. Was it just a coincidence? Or was the Loop in fact an accurate prediction of the future?

As he sat before Kaoru, Amano was not about to assert a scientific connection between the results of the Loop and reality. And it was no wonder. How many people would believe such a ridiculous story?

Kaoru struggled to mask his shock with rationality as he asked, "What was the cause? Why did the Loop's life forms turn cancerous?"

Amano answered him in clipped tones. "That's easy. It was the appearance of the ring virus. But that emerged in a way we simply don't understand, as if by magic."

"You're saying that a single virus managed to influence all of the patterns in the Loop?"

"Yes. It shouldn't be that hard to believe. Not when a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can affect the weather on the other."

The butterfly effect. Kaoru guessed it wasn't all that strange that the ring virus could change the fate of the Loop world. What he didn't understand was why it had appeared.

"Are there any theories as to the emergence of the ring virus?"

"Theories?"

"You know, like maybe one of the staff members introduced it into the program."

"Security was perfect."

"Well, maybe it was a computer virus."

"That's not impossible. In fact, they say most people took that view."

Something appeared to be bothering Amano; he seemed to sink into thought.

"Excuse me, but is there anybody from the original staff I can contact?"

Amano smiled wanly. "I'm the only survivor," he said, then hurriedly put a hand over his mouth. Hideyuki Futami wasn't dead yet. Kaoru didn't let it bother him, but laughed bitterly.

Amano quickly added, "My participation in the project was limited to the very final stage, just before it was shut down. You'd be better off consulting the father of the whole project, Cristoph Eliot, but he's hidden himself away…" Amano fixed Kaoru with a meaningful gaze and then continued. "Oh, I do know of one person who was fairly close to the centre of the project. An American researcher. Supposedly an odd duck-he had problems with teamwork."

"Do you know his name?"

"Wait a moment," Amano said, and stepped out of the room. When he returned, several minutes later, it was with a file under his arm. He flipped through it. "Ah, there it is," he muttered, glancing up at Kaoru without raising his head. "Kenneth Rothman."

Kaoru repeated the name. He was an old friend of his father's. He'd visited five years ago: there were photographs of Rothman and members of the family standing on their balcony overlooking Tokyo Bay. Rothman had been in Japan to speak at a conference, and Kaoru's father had put him up for several days.

Those days were deeply etched in Kaoru's memory. Rothman's appearance left quite an impression, from his thin goateed face to the gold chains that flashed around his neck and wrists; his manner, too, was impressive, from the cynical smile he'd flash during scientific discussions to the cutting logic with which he'd announce his pessimistic analyses of the future.

"Has Futami-sensei told you anything about this man?"

"Yes, he's a friend of my father's. I've met him myself once, five years ago. I remember his beard, mostly. Where is he now?"

Amano flipped through the file again.

"According to this, he moved from Cambridge to the laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico, ten years ago."

New Mexico.
The name sent a jolt through Kaoru's brain. He looked around the room, then stood up and took a close look at the world map on the wall.

Los Alamos, New Mexico.
He held down the spot with his finger: it wasn't far at all from the Four Corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, where his family had been planning to go.

Kenneth Rothman had moved there ten years ago. The first MHC victim had been in New Mexico. The coincidences were piling up…

Kaoru shut his eyes tightly. He couldn't help but feel that an important clue lay hidden there. Hoping against hope, he asked, "Is it possible to contact him?"

Amano's answer was brusque.

"I sincerely doubt it."

"Why is that?"

"The last I heard from him was six months ago. What I heard then grabbed me, but I haven't been able to contact him since."

"Grabbed you how?"

"Something about having figured out the MHC virus, and that Takayama held the key… Tantalizing, isn't it?"

"Takayama? That's someone's name, I take it? Whose?"

"I'll give you the short version. The canceriza-tion of the Loop came about through the emergence of an unknown virus and a series of events linked to it. At the center of those events were three artificial life forms: one called Takayama, one called Asakawa, and one called Yamamura. It's been determined that these three life forms played important roles in the cancerization of the Loop."

"The artificial life forms have names?"

"Of course."

"So Kenneth Rothman disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the name Takayama?"

"Yes. I didn't think much of it-in this day and age, when I lost contact I simply figured that the cancer must have gotten him, too." Amano threw up his hands. "Especially in his case. He had his own laboratory in a remote town called Wayne's Rock. It was the kind of situation where he could slip out of touch at any time and nobody would be too surprised."

"Wayne's Rock?"

"Wayne's Rock, New Mexico. Basically a ghost town in the middle of the desert."

Kaoru sighed and turned back to the map, placing his fingertip on one particular spot.

Wayne's Rock, New Mexico.

He had the feeling Rothman was waiting for him there, in his lab.

His finger still on the map, Kaoru turned back to Amano. "Have you watched the whole series of events involving Takayama and Asakawa?"

Amano shook his head. "No. I think only a few staff members watched it. The memory is stored in America, not here."

This aroused Kaoru's interest still more.

"Would it be possible for me to… see it?"

"It would take a while, but it wouldn't be impossible. I think you'd be wasting your time, though," was Amano's answer. Kaoru's finger was still on the map.

It had been some time since he'd gone out onto the balcony at home and gazed at the night sky. Even from a hundred yards above he could tell that no ripples disturbed the black surface of the bay. It was a hot, windless evening. The humidity bathed him where he stood.

He saw the sky differently this evening-he couldn't help but do so after everything Amano had told him this afternoon about the contents of the Loop. As a child, so full of the desire to understand the universe, he'd stared at the glittering stars with a passion born of the feeling that if he just looked long enough he'd understand.

What's at the end of the universe?
That was the kind of naive question that had presented itself to him. Staring at the cosmos now, it was utterly beyond his imagination what might lie outside the universe.

Kaoru tried to imagine himself as a denizen of the Loop. Assuming he were a being aware of time and space, how would he interpret that universe? It would most likely appear to be expanding. The Loop had gradually grown with the changing passage of time. Before the program had been started, there had been nothing there at all. A mountain of silicon chips, yes, but no time, no space. But from the moment the staff had started the program, space had grown at an explosive rate. The Big Bang.

The Loop space did not exist within the massively parallel supercomputers enshrined beneath the ground, just as a nature scene on a movie screen was not actually contained within that screen. That space existed neither inside nor outside the computers. It was only experienced as space by beings able to recognize it as such. As life forms evolved and their awareness grew, that space must have expanded, as if fleeing before the eyes that sought to recognize it.

Kaoru turned his eyes to the actual sky. The universe he was looking at was expanding, but he wondered suddenly if it wasn't simply trying to get far away from earthly DNA and its powers of recognition. He couldn't discard the possibility that the real universe was a hypothetical space just like the Loop. Would that interpretation cause any inconvenient problems?

No, it wouldn't. In fact, he felt that regarding the real world as a hypothetical space was getting closer to the truth. Maybe the ancient ways of thinking-the Buddhist idea that form is emptiness, or the Platonic notion of the ideal world-did a better job of capturing the reality of things.

And if one assumed the universe was a virtual space, then there was the possibility that it was being observed through an open window in space, just as humans had been able to peek into the Loop world. Make the right time and space adjustments, and images of a particular moment in a particular place would unfold on the monitor in 3D.

Kaoru placed one hand on his other arm, then moved it to his chest, his belly, and below.

Do I just think I have a body, when really there's nothing at all?

But there was that little organ located just below the centre of his body, and there were desires which emanated from it. He couldn't believe those were without reality. As he touched it, stroked it, he thought of Reiko's face.

There was nobody behind the glass door at his back. The television was showing something different from a while ago. His mother was probably shut in her room, absorbed in Native American myths.

Kaoru glanced behind him, and then allowed his organ to tower in the direction of the window that might be there in space somewhere; allowed it to insist on its existence.

Kaoru wanted to shout to the night sky:
This flesh can't be a fictional construct. Reiko’s body can't be a fictional construct.

There in the awkward darkness, Kaoru considered the two facts of which he'd just been made aware. Both were pieces of extremely bad news, and it was taking him a while to accept them. He knew they were coming, but now that they'd come he couldn't help but go unnaturally rigid as he looked down at his father.

Up until a few minutes ago Kaoru had been in Ryoji's sickroom. As soon as Ryoji had been taken away for his test, Kaoru had locked the door from the inside and lost himself in passion with Reiko. Afterwards, he'd stopped by his father's room. What he'd heard there felt like a punishment for lewd acts in an inappropriate place. The scent of Reiko's skin still lingered in his nostrils, and he could still feel the soft touch of her skin here and there on his body. On a deep cellular level his excitement had yet to subside.

Now he regretted coming to his father's room while still in the throes of afterglow.

His father seemed to have physically shrunk a size over the last few days-the swelling of the sheet over his chest was pitifully small. When Kaoru was a child his father had been a giant in his eyes. He could beat on his father's muscular chest with both fists and his father wouldn't flinch in the slightest. His physique had been out of place on a scientist, but now it hardly disturbed the flatness of the sheet.

So it wasn't that much of a surprise to hear that the cancer's spread to his lungs had been confirmed. But still it was news he hadn't wanted to hear-he'd been putting off thinking about it for so long-and revulsion was his first reaction, followed by something like anger as the facts sank into his head.

"Don't just stand there. Have a seat." Whereas Kaoru's expression as he stood there was one of rage, Hideyuki's was soft. Kaoru only then realized that he'd been standing ever since hearing the two pieces of bad news.

Kaoru did as his father said and sat down on a stool. Suddenly his anger receded; he felt drained.

"Are you going to have surgery?" His voice sounded hollow to himself.

Hideyuki had the answer ready. "No, not this time."

Kaoru was of the same opinion. Cutting the cancer out of his lungs wasn't going to prolong his life. The end result was all too clear. Chances were, an operation would actually shorten his life.

"Right," was Kaoru's response to his father's determination.

"But never mind about me. This has turned into something really nasty." Hideyuki was referring to the information Saiki had just brought him.

The second piece of news had to do with the results of animal experiments conducted simultaneously but independently in Japan and America. Until this point, it had been thought that the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus only affected humans: only humans could catch it, and only human cells would turn cancerous under its influence. But experiments on mice and guinea pigs had just revealed that animals could contract the disease, as well.