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kashiwritesChapter 13
Chapter 14
“Did you get the message?” Chika asked abruptly, as Jin came to the breakfast table. Julie and Kenji were already there, and looked up curiously as their fellow student approached.
Jin nodded, sitting down. “If you mean Miaki’s message that he’ll be busy till after lunch, yes.”
“What do you make of it? That he wants us just to keep working without him till sometime in the afternoon?”
Jin had her own ideas, but wondered what Chika was thinking. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“There’s something up with him, don’t you think? I’ve been wondering, the last couple of days.”
“Me too,” Kenji said, and Julie nodded beside him.
Jin sighed. “I think you’re right. But I’m not sure yet what it is. This makes me uneasy, though. I wonder what he could be working on today, that he needs to do on his own.”
“Well,” Kenji said, “maybe he’s figured out something that’s finally going to fix the virus problem. You know what he likes to do – he’ll probably produce it for us this afternoon, pretty much complete.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Jin nodded thoughtfully, dialling up her breakfast from the table controls.
“It is,” Julie agreed. “His mind does tend to work that way, doesn’t it? He works with people, and listens to all the ideas, and things percolate in his head for a while, and then suddenly it all comes together and he finds the one missing piece, and there it all is. It’s still a joint effort, but he finds the way of connecting everything.”
“I hope that’s what it is,” Chika said. “Whoever finally figures this out once and for all, I hope we get it done soon. Toshi can’t last much longer like this.”
Kenji picked up his cup of coffee and stared into it for a moment. “What I worry about – almost as much as losing Toshi – is what will happen to Miaki if we do. You remember how Toshi described him, the months after his father died. If Toshi dies now – and Miaki thinks it’s his fault – “
“And he will,” Julie interjected grimly.
“Then he’ll kill himself,” Chika said bluntly. “Won’t he?”
For some reason, they were all looking at Jin. Probably because she knew the answer as well as they did. “Yes,” she whispered. “If Toshi dies, then Miaki dies too.”
*********
There was really no other way. He’d seen it. It had become glaringly obvious when Toshi had produced the network spectre of his father. He’d hoped against hope that it wouldn’t come to this, but...now he could see that there was no other choice left to him.
He’d have to do the DNA inoculation, and he’d have to do it tonight. Toshi’s latest action had been so unspeakably cruel, knowing his cousin as he did, that there was only one thing that could be next on his agenda.
He would try to kill Miaki tonight. And he wouldn’t merely make one of those casual attacks that were potentially damaging but not fatal. No, he would try something very serious tonight, as deadly as he could manage.
He wouldn’t necessarily succeed, of course. But that wouldn’t mean that Miaki was home free, and could continue working on the problem. This virus had been commissioned by someone who hated him ferociously and wanted him to suffer. He knew perfectly well that if Toshi didn’t succeed in killing him, then the virus would probably kill Toshi himself, as the “next best thing.” In fact, maybe that had been the real goal all along: destroy Toshi slowly, before his eyes, to make him suffer as much as possible, before destroying him utterly as he had to watch Toshi die.
Because it would destroy him. Katsuo Tanaka knew that.
So he’d have to end this tonight, one way or another. Either he freed Toshi completely tonight, or –
Once he had composed himself enough to return to his room after his last online encounter with his cousin, Miaki had allowed himself one hour to weep, and grieve, and feel the pain. But when the hour was done, he steeled himself against it, blocked all thoughts of his father out of his mind, and drove himself to think. He called up all the programs he’d been working on, everything to do with the analysis of his and Toshi’s DNA, everything to do with the structure of the network.
If he could somehow inject a simulation of his own DNA into Toshi’s network I.D., interpose it between his cousin and the virus, the virus itself might just start to unravel and back out. In fact, he was pretty sure it would shrivel and withdraw, not finding any more of whatever it fed from. He knew there was a danger that, instead of doing that, it could turn and adapt itself to Miaki himself, and suck the life right out of him. But he had to take the risk. He would devise whatever safeguards he could manage, to keep it from doing that.
And yet, it was possible the safeguards wouldn’t protect him. He knew that too. So he had to set up other safeguards, farther along in the process.
In fact, there was really only one safeguard that would do the job once and for all. Nobody had talked about it, and he himself had tried everything possible to avoid having to take it into account, but it was now inescapable.
If he couldn’t make the virus pull away from Toshi – if he couldn’t save his cousin, but got infected himself instead – then they would both have to die. Toshi would die anyway, and who knew what terrible things the virus would induce Miaki to do if he lived for very long after he’d been infected? He just couldn’t allow it. Better to end it, quickly, for both of them.
All of their efforts to this point had been aimed at eliminating the virus but keeping Toshi alive. Well...now Miaki had to plan for the other alternative.
And anyway, if Toshi died tonight, even if Miaki hadn’t been infected himself...he wouldn’t want to go on. Whether or not Aunt Keiko’s accusations had been motivated by grief rather than rationality, she was right. Associating with Miaki had brought Toshi nothing but danger, and if it now brought him death, then Miaki would not wish to go on living. He couldn’t live, with that on his conscience. Being responsible for the destruction of his dearest friend, his cousin and brother – he could never live with that. He wouldn’t deserve to.
So as the darkness of night gave way to morning, he worked feverishly, designing the program none of them had wanted to create: the one that would watch over the process of the inoculation, that would sense if it had gone wrong, and would finally send the killing bolt if it became necessary. It would destroy everything – his and Toshi’s avatars, their settings, their login identity – and it would follow back all the connections out of the network to jolt their physical bodies with killing force. It would follow the clear path he was creating for it, to destroy not only the virus nodes but the simulations in which they resided. In fact, whether the inoculation succeeded or not, it would destroy the virus nodes. He’d make sure the system was entirely clean, whatever the outcome.
Just before breakfast time, he realized that he’d need to set some more safeguards, against his own friends. If they caught even the smallest clue of what he was up to, he knew they’d stop him. And it was long past the time for that. So he sent them the message that he’d see them later, even as he hacked into the security system to figure out how to access their logins. He’d only need to do it the one time, when he ventured into the system to confront Toshi. So he’d add another task to the overarching system that would observe and act after he was done: remove the blocks on the logins.
Everything would be perfect, when he was done. It was the least he could do, after everything they’d been through because of him. He loved them all so much, and had brought such terrible things into their lives – if he was living the last hours of his own life, then at least he could try to make things smooth for them from now on.
He was hardly aware, as he worked through the morning, that the tears were streaming and streaming, without stopping, down his face.
*********
To their surprise, Miaki showed up for lunch after all. At their curious inquiries, all he would do was smile wryly and shrug. “I thought I had something that might help, but it was just a waste of all the time. Tell me what you’ve done this morning, instead. It’ll be nice to hear that someone didn’t blow their whole morning on something useless.”
Instead of gulping down his food and rushing back to the VR room, he seemed almost casual. He even took a few minutes to walk over to another table, where Akio and Jason were sitting, and talk to them for a while. Then he wandered to another table, for a few words with some more of his own second-year class-mates, before finally returning to the table of his closest friends.
Jin watched him uneasily the whole time.
When they all seemed to be pretty much done their lunch, he set both his hands on the table and said, “Right. Now I need to catch up on what you did this morning.”
All afternoon, as they showed him what they’d done and as he re-inserted himself back into the work, Jin had the strange feeling that he was only going through the motions. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what gave her that idea; he seemed as intent as ever on working through the coding problems, and actually added a couple of elements that pushed them much farther than they’d gotten before this.
But a couple of times she found him staring into an unseen distance, eyes blank. When he let his guard down, he looked rather weary, and a little sad. She could understand it, given the circumstances, but for some reason, it bothered her more than usual today.
They had been working in the VR room as they usually did, a couple of cubicle rows away from what had effectively become Toshi’s sick room. When they broke for supper, Miaki walked slowly over to that area and Jin followed him. Keiko glanced up from where she sat beside Toshi’s stretcher, and looked away again. But Takumi stood and came to him. Together they watched in silence as the doctor checked all the tubes and monitors.
Then Miaki’s eyes widened. “He’s on a ventilator,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Takumi nodded. “They needed to do that this morning. He was breathing on his own, but they thought he needed a little help. And more oxygen.”
Miaki’s eyes closed painfully. “Some day...I hope you can forgive me for what’s happened to him.”
The man pulled him close. “Miaki. Hush, now. I have never blamed you. I never will.”
Jin tried to maintain some distance, without walking out altogether. She looked at Miaki’s hands, tightly clutching his uncle’s back as he pressed his face into the man’s shoulder, and suddenly wondered that his own father had looked like, and whether the uncle resembled him.
Finally Miaki pulled away, mumbled, “Good-bye,” and left the room, Jin walking staunchly at his side.
He was quiet through the supper break, and through the evening as they continued to work. When Chika suggested they go back into the network to test what they’d done today, he shook his head. “I think we need some sleep,” he said. “We’re so close, we don’t want to get it wrong. We should be able to do this in the morning, and who knows? We might have Toshi out by this time tomorrow.”
As always, he was very convincing, and as they all walked together toward the dormitory wings of the school, Jin was perfectly prepared to sleep as he suggested. But when Chika and Julie turned off toward the women’s wing, and Kenji headed beyond them toward the men’s, Miaki stopped Jin from following.
They stood together in silence while a few other women walked past them down the hallway. When they were alone, he took her hand.
“I just wanted to tell you – that is – it occurred to me – “
“What is it, Miaki?”
He shrugged a little awkwardly, as though embarrassed, his face averted. “I don’t remember the last time I told you how glad I am to know you. That’s all. You really – you really mean a lot to me, Jin.”
She smiled. “You know the feeling’s mutual. You’re the best person I know, Miaki.”
Finally he looked directly at her, and her breath caught painfully at the sadness in his eyes. “I wish...I really wish that were true,” he murmured. “But never mind. I just wanted to tell you.” He made as though to leave, but suddenly turned back, still holding her hand and cupping the other hand under her chin. Leaning down, he lightly kissed her lips.
She felt him smile, and heard him whisper softly, “Jin, my very tall friend.” And then he was gone.
She couldn’t sleep a wink. She laid there in bed, staring at the ceiling, pondering and wondering. He had seemed fairly normal – and not. What was on his mind, that they were missing?
And then, sitting bolt upright in bed, she suddenly understood. In a flash she was at her terminal, signaling the other three with the special alarm they had arranged, messaging them to meet her at the VR room, adding urgently: “Miaki has gone in alone, and doesn’t expect to come back.”
*********
He wasn’t there when they got there. But they took their places at their terminals anyway, putting on their equipment as quickly as they could.
And threw down the equipment a moment later, in frustration and fear.
“The bastard has blocked us out of the network!” Chika hissed.
Kenji said, “Then he’s doing something he doesn’t want us to stop.”
The doctor, who’d been dozing when they arrived, now got up and came over to their terminals. “Miaki was here,” he said, “about 45 minutes ago.”
“Did he do something at the terminals?” Julie asked.
“No. It was strange. He didn’t go near them.” The doctor glanced back, toward his patient. “He just knelt beside Toshi’s stretcher for a while, holding his hand. I just thought he couldn’t sleep...”
“He was saying goodbye,” Jin said. The others stared at her.
“That’s it,” Chika nodded, slowly. “That’s got to be it. Whatever he’s doing in there...he really doesn’t expect to survive.”
“Damn him,” Kenji muttered. They could see tears in his eyes. “He’s doing it again – just what he did last time. Letting go so that everyone else makes it out alive.”
Julie slipped her hand into his, before saying to the others, “Well, I’m not giving in without a fight. Whatever he’s doing, he’s got to be in one of these VR rooms. We’ll just have to find him. And then – I don’t know. Figure out a way in.”
But when they did find him – in a room not far away, in fact – they couldn’t even get in. He had recreated Julie’s device from last year, that had blocked entry into the room where they’d all been conducting their last push against the conspiracy, and now had turned it against them. They could see him sitting still and alone at a terminal in the room, but couldn’t get past the barrier. And he had tweaked it just enough that even Julie, its creator, couldn’t figure out how to disable it.
“Miaki!” she yelled, finally, beating her hands against the barrier. “I think I hate you!!” Then she slumped against the wall beside the door, buried her head in her hands, and started to cry. Kenji joined her, also weeping, pulling her into his arms.
“So what happens,” Chika growled, “if he does die in there? Are we going to have to stand outside here and stare at his corpse till it completely decomposes?”
“Of course not,” Jin said, wiping her eyes. “You know what he’s like. He’s arranged everything. If his life signs vanish, the barrier goes down. I bet he’s even written a program to destroy the viruses when he’s done what he’s trying to do, or else when he dies.”
“Damn,” Chika muttered. “You’re right.” She leaned her forehead against the open space that the barrier blocked. “So all we need to do,” she said gloomily, “is keep touching this thing. And if it vanishes, and he isn’t already pulling his goggles off...then we know.”
“Yes,” Jin whispered. “Then we know.”
Chapter 15
