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kashiwritesChapter 9
Chapter 10
"Spin was part of the study of atomic particles for some time before scientists made one of the remarkable discoveries in connection with the phenomenon," said professor Narita. "This was the suggestion that whatever happens to an elementary particle in this area of space, exactly the same thing will happen to its counterpart," he waved an arm, "out there, wherever it is in the universe. It will happen simultaneously, without any intervention between the two. No medium to convey the action in a split second from one particle to the other, no billiard ball hitting another billiard ball hitting another – nothing. Two particles perhaps separated by billions of miles, yet if you act upon one, you act upon them both." He peered at the first-year class over the tops of his glasses. "Needless to say, while the theory is mathematically solid, it's been very difficult to prove conclusively. They very act of trying to observe the particles alters them in the first place. Nevertheless, research continues, and scientists are fairly certain the theory will be proven in the near future."
"Sir?" asked one of the first-years. "Weren't they trying for a while to use the theory to create new methods of communication across distances in space?"
"Yes," professor Narita nodded. "There have been some promising results, but nothing reliable enough, yet, to start building comm systems around. Even when the experiments seemed to work, the quality of the communication was quite poor, and they certainly weren't going to start building anything based on it, until it improved. One could compare it to reverting back to Morse code after fibre optics were developed. So any communication results are still far in the future."
Miaki stretched his legs out under the desk and asked, "Do you think, professor Narita, that this concept of spin would ever have implications for VR simulations?"
Again the tall, slender man at the front of the room peered over his glasses, smiling slightly. "I'm surprised you even ask the question, Miaki, to be honest. Remember that we're speaking of 'virtual' reality in that case. Whatever effects happen in a virtual world, we put there by choice, by programming them in. There can be no question of a particle in one part of a virtual world affecting a particle somewhere else in that virtual world, unless we designed it that way."
Jin knew that that wasn't what Miaki had meant at all, but she noticed that he didn't pursue the question further, lest anyone remember how interested he'd been. She made sure not to do more than glance at him, but she knew what he was getting at. He was very interested in the means by which a VR simulation could be used to influence the real, non-virtual world. Perhaps, somehow, it might be the "spin" connection between particles. If that were the case, research into the phenomenon was much further along than professor Narita indicated.
And that would bring up the question, yet again, of how much the professor really knew – whether he was lying in what he taught, or whether he really believed it. In the week since the six of them had begun investigating the simulations in the special folder, they were no closer to answering the question of how involved the school might be in the plot they were uncovering.
But one thing they were more and more certain of: that the military department of the Pacific Rim Alliance government was using those special simulations to further some sort of plot to stage a coup in their government, and change that region's stance in relation to the rest of the world. Undoubtedly their stance after taking over the Pacific Rim would be far less friendly than it was now.
This was a personal matter for five of them: Toshi, Miaki, Julie, and Kenji were all Pacific Rim citizens from the East Asia side, while Jin's family (her grandparents' families had both moved to Vancouver when they were children) were citizens in the Western North America side of the region. Yet even Chika, coming from the South Atlantic Alliance province of Brazil, knew that the security of the whole world could be in jeopardy if one of its regions turned against the others. So it affected all of them.
And Kenji and Miaki were affected far more personally than any of the rest. The group didn't generally refer to their specific situation any more, but one look at Miaki's rigid stance and averted face and Kenji's obvious misery, when the Pacific Rim plot was discussed, revealed how close to the surface things still were for both of them. At least Miaki was no longer directing his animosity at Kenji; he had remained true to his promise. But the two of them were far from friends. For one thing, Kenji clearly suffered from vicarious guilt, the more he learned about his father's plots. And while it was still hard to tell, Miaki undoubtedly had not forgiven himself for taking his rage and grief out on Kenji, and hurting him so badly. So the two of them worked together alright when necessary, but there was no camaraderie there, as there was for the others.
Meanwhile, Chika had messaged all of them to meet her briefly after classes this afternoon, and before the evening meal. As the first-year physics class ended, Miaki left the room with the general stream of students, and Jin straggled behind after packing up her books. They both headed in the same general direction, but she made sure to take a separate route. Another thing the group had become almost fanatic about was making sure they were rarely all seen together.
Eventually they all ended up near the change rooms adjoining the gymnasiums, and Chika led them on toward a VR room generally used only by fourth-years. It was smaller than most, with only eight terminals and a couple of full-body VR tubes, but the furnishings were just a step above the usual terminal rooms. There was a deep carpet on the floor, and some of the equipment seemed to be trimmed with gold foil. The far wall, beyond the two short rows of terminals, actually had a tapestry hanging on it.
"For some courses," she explained, "third-years can partner with fourth-years for special projects, and I signed up for one the other day. We came here, and I saw something that made me do some more investigating into the background of the special sims."
She turned them to look at the wall beside the door they had just entered. Upon it hung a gold-tinged plaque, mounted on dark, polished wood. Chika stood back while the others leaned forward to read what was etched onto it.
'In memory of Katsu Tanaka, one of the finest students ever to study at I.S.C.E. He will be missed by his class-mates, and by his father Kazuo and brother Kenji.' And it gave the dates of his birth, and his death.
The others stood in silence for a moment, and Kenji hung his head, blinking.
Julie finally said, softly, "Wow, Kenji. He must really have been a great person, for the school to honour him like that. You didn't say he'd been a student here."
"He was," Kenji said. "He was in his fourth year..."
"And," Chika said, "he died at the school, didn't he?"
"Oh no!" Julie burst out. "Really?"
"Yes," Kenji said. "He had some sort of seizure."
"That's what the school told you?" Chika asked.
"My...my father told me," Kenji said, shifting uncomfortably, almost pointedly not looking at Miaki, who was equally as pointedly not looking at him.
"That was the public story," Chika said. "But I got curious, and looked through some of the records, when I realized he'd died here. The story you were told wasn't the truth, Kenji."
He eyed her uncertainly. "What do you mean? Why wouldn't they tell the truth about something like that?"
"Because," she said, "he died in this room. Inside a Virtual Reality simulation."
Miaki's head snapped toward her, his eyes sharpening on her face.
Kenji gaped at her. "No," he said faintly. "That's...that's not what happened. He was diabetic. He hadn't been eating properly. He...he had a seizure. That's what happened."
"I'm sorry. I really hoped the reports were above board," Chika said gently. "But I had already seen his name, when I was looking at the user logs for the special simulations. I'd seen his name three times in the logs, and wasn't even thinking of a connection at first. But I suddenly realized that the date of his death was the same as the date of his third log-in. And then I just had to hack into the medical records to find out for sure what happened."
Kenji had begun to shake. Jin pulled out a chair for him, and Julie pushed him down onto it. Toshi, meanwhile, stepped closer to Miaki.
"Alright," Jin said. "You'd better tell us what else you've learned, and let's get it over with."
Chika replied, "The thing is that I had already heard about this, but I'd forgotten the student's name. When I was a first-year, the third and fourth-years sometimes used to talk about the guy who had died in a simulation a couple of years before that. It was the only time a student had ever died at the school. It totally went out of my head till I saw this plaque and made all the connections.
"What I learned is that they began introducing the special simulations about five years ago, and fourth-year students were just beginning to test them. This was the very first of those simulations, and Katsu Tanaka was one of the first two students ever to use it. Something went wrong the third time he logged in, and they took it – and two others they'd just added – offline for several months until they could tweak them to work better. So none of those fourth-years did any more work on them. The use of the new simulations didn't really get underway till the next year."
"Who?" Miaki asked. "Who took them offline? And who authorized them in the first place?" Surprisingly, she hesitated. He barked, "Chika! Who did this?"
"Miaki," Toshi said quietly. "Calm down. Just let her tell – "
"It was my father, wasn't it?" Kenji said.
"Well..." Again Chika seemed to hesitate.
"How could it be Mr. Tanaka?" Julie asked. "He doesn't have any say in how the school teaches things, or what equipment it uses. Does he?"
"He doesn't," Chika said. "It was actually professor Yoshida, the fourth-year Advanced Space Cyber Electronics teacher. He added the simulations into the curriculum."
"Then he's the ICE mole," Julie said. "We finally know who – "
"Where did the simulations come from?" Miaki interrupted, his fierce gaze never once leaving Chika's face. "Did he code them?"
She didn't seem happy. She bit her lip momentarily and then seemed to brace herself. "No, he didn't code them, though I think he was the one who tweaked them. They originated...they came from an office in the Pacific Rim military department. They were authorized by – "
"My father," Kenji said again.
"Yes. I'm afraid so."
They digested this news in a long silence. Kenji's face was pasty white, and he clasped his hands together in his lap as though to hide the fact that they were trembling.
Toshi murmured at last, "His son..."
"Yes," Kenji said. "He killed my brother."
Julie tried to be reassuring. "Oh, I don't think you can blame an accident on your father. He wouldn't have deliberately put his own son in danger."
"Yes he would. He's done it twice now."
"How can you say that? When was the second time?"
"Can't you guess?" Kenji laughed, and it chilled them. They'd heard that laugh before, in the simulation when Miaki had had him trapped, and had hoped to use him to bring his father running.
Toshi's gasp cut the air sharply. "Kenji. You're not thinking of the simulation where you and I almost..."
"What do you think?" Again the painful laugh. "The simulation was there, and then it was taken out of that folder right after our accident. How do you suppose that happened? And don't you remember, Toshi – we went in there together because I asked if you'd consider helping me get a little more experience."
"Yes, but that was you, not your – "
"He suggested it," Kenji said. "We'd been messaging the night before. He suggested I try a simulation I hadn't tried before. Like a moon walk."
"He said that? He actually suggested a moon walk?" Toshi asked shakily.
"He did more than that. He suggested I ask Miaki to go with me." The others watched him, horrified, as he related his story, his face growing more sickly white by the moment. "I – I was too intimidated by Miaki, so I asked you instead, because you were so friendly. And so you went with me – and then the rock fall happened. And it wasn't an accident. It wasn't an accident."
"That's impossible!" Julie said. "Your father wasn't in the simulation with you. He was on earth, not the Moon. He couldn't control what happened to you in the simulation. It was just an accidental rockfall. How could it be anything else?"
Jin said, "I read all the reports. The wall of the crater was considered very geologically stable. No one's been able to figure out why it suddenly fell. But the crater and sheds," she suddenly remembered, "are in the Pacific Rim area of control on the Moon."
"It wasn't an accident," Kenji repeated as if by rote, staring at his hands, whose trembling could no longer be concealed. "He used my brother as his first guinea pig, and Katsu died. And then he tried to use me to – to – " As though he couldn't stop it happening, at last his head lifted, and his wide, anguish-filled green eyes moved to Miaki's face.
They stared at each other for a very long time, their expressions of horror almost mirrors of each other. Then Miaki spun around and fled the room, with Toshi close on his heels. Kenji buried his face in his hands and began to weep.
Toshi caught up to Miaki near the gymnasiums, when Miaki finally stopped, leaned one hand against the wall and stood there, head lowered, panting and waiting for his cousin to come up beside him. The corridor was dark here, and they stood in deep shadow, with only a glimmer of light from a lamp on the wall farther down the corridor, where it joined another hallway.
“Don’t think about it,” Toshi said in a rush, putting a hand on Miaki’s shoulder. “It didn’t happen. He didn’t get you, and both Kenji and I came out alive. Don’t think about what Kenji’s father was trying to do.”
“Don’t you understand?” Miaki said. His voice was so low that Toshi had to lean close to hear. Miaki looked sideways at him, his eyes cold and narrow. A stray flicker of light from the distant lamp seemed to strike reddish sparks from his hair and kindle a small flame in his dark eyes. “When my father stumbled onto Kazuo Tanaka in his online search, Kazuo’s response wasn’t just instinctive and defensive. He knew who he was killing. If he didn’t know right then, he made sure to find out. And just in case I had any information about my father’s death, he tried to kill me too. And he didn’t even care if he killed his own son in the process.”
Toshi leaned back against the wall beside him, his shoulders slumping. Now standing between Miaki and the distant light, his profile was limned with gold sparks from his own bright hair. “This gets worse and worse,” he said. “It’s turning into a real nightmare.”
“I swear, Toshi,” Miaki said, even more quietly. “Once we’ve got everything we need to reveal this conspiracy – he dies. Kazuo Tanaka dies.”
“And…you’ve decided you’re going to be the executioner? Is that it?”
“He murdered my father. He’s tried to kill me, and almost killed you. Don’t I have some sort of right?”
“I don’t know.” Toshi lifted his head and looked upward at the shadowed ceiling. A gleam of blue flashed from one of his eyes. “Maybe you do. Maybe it’s only right.” He took a long, shaky breath. “But you’ll destroy yourself too, if you kill him. And then Kazuo Tanaka will have taken away both my uncle and my…best friend. I don’t know if I can bear that.”
Miaki slammed his other hand against the wall and now stood leaning against it with both fists. “What do you want me to do, then?” he cried. “Just let him go?”
“I don’t know. Miaki, I don’t know the right thing to do, here,” Toshi said, his hands open helplessly. “I just don’t want him to take you away too. Can you possibly think you’ll be the same person after you’ve killed him that you are right now?”
Miaki averted his eyes. “He’s already made me a different person,” he said. “It’s too late.”
“No he hasn’t. Not yet.”
A long silence. “I don’t know what else I can do,” Miaki whispered.
“Well, you can start by thinking about something else. If he suspected you knew he’d killed your father, and if he’s even tried to kill you once – then maybe he’s watching you at the school. Or has someone here watching for him.” Toshi paused at Miaki’s sharp intake of breath, but the other said nothing. He was listening, though, so Toshi went on. “What if he’s gotten a co-conspirator to watch you? Maybe professor Yoshida. Or maybe others that we haven’t discovered yet.”
“Then…we could all be in danger.”
“Yes. Despite every precaution we’ve taken. It’s like Chika said before – there’s a bigger picture here that we can’t forget. This isn’t just about you and Kazuo Tanaka. It’s not even about you and Kazuo and Kenji. It’s about Jin and Julie and Chika too, and whether they’re in danger.”
Miaki stood in silence for a moment. “And about you,” he said.
“Well yes, there is that,” Toshi smiled briefly.
Miaki lifted his head. “Then I guess we have to go back over everything we’ve done so far, and make sure we’ve covered our tracks.”
“Always remembering that the teachers here are generally smarter than we are, and could have ways of weasling into our passwords and other protective measures, that we don’t even know about.”
Miaki cast him a sidelong glance. “I don’t know if they’ve ever encountered anyone as devious as Julie, when it comes to ‘protective measures’. And,” he added sardonically, “I don’t think they really know what I can do either.”
Toshi smiled again, crookedly, with affection. “I know they don’t. I know you as well as I know myself, and you leave even me lost, half the time. So if you really set your mind to it, I think you’re probably the only person who can make sure we’re hidden from their scrutiny.”
“If it’s not already too late,” Miaki said.
“So you see. You’re right – it’s terrible what’s happened, and Kazuo Tanaka is a nastier person than we ever dreamed he was. I think I’d call him downright evil. I hate him almost as much as you do – after all, he almost killed me too. We’re right to be as horrified as we are. And it’s hard to get past that, to think clearly about everything else. But we have to, Miaki. If we’re going to stop whatever Tanaka is involved in, and stop him from doing the same horrible things to maybe millions of other people, we have to swallow all the horror, no matter how unfair it is that we can’t go after him and blow his brains out and feel a lot better. We have to get on with the thinking part, I’m afraid.”
Miaki took a long, slow breath. “Damn, Toshi,” he said softly. “Do you know how much I hate it when you talk common sense to me?”
Toshi grinned. “I know. I try not to. But I get this weird compulsion every now and then, and I just can’t help it. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist and see if there’s a prescription for it.”
His cousin lowered his head again, and laughed helplessly. “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t think I’d survive a day if you did.” He reached out a hand, blindly, and found Toshi’s arm and gripped it. “I’ll try to stay sane, Tosh. Just for you.”
“Good. Because one of us has to,” Toshi said, drawing yet another reluctant smile from his cousin. He turned Miaki toward the far corridor, and they headed back to their dormitory.
Chapter 11
Chapter 10
"Spin was part of the study of atomic particles for some time before scientists made one of the remarkable discoveries in connection with the phenomenon," said professor Narita. "This was the suggestion that whatever happens to an elementary particle in this area of space, exactly the same thing will happen to its counterpart," he waved an arm, "out there, wherever it is in the universe. It will happen simultaneously, without any intervention between the two. No medium to convey the action in a split second from one particle to the other, no billiard ball hitting another billiard ball hitting another – nothing. Two particles perhaps separated by billions of miles, yet if you act upon one, you act upon them both." He peered at the first-year class over the tops of his glasses. "Needless to say, while the theory is mathematically solid, it's been very difficult to prove conclusively. They very act of trying to observe the particles alters them in the first place. Nevertheless, research continues, and scientists are fairly certain the theory will be proven in the near future."
"Sir?" asked one of the first-years. "Weren't they trying for a while to use the theory to create new methods of communication across distances in space?"
"Yes," professor Narita nodded. "There have been some promising results, but nothing reliable enough, yet, to start building comm systems around. Even when the experiments seemed to work, the quality of the communication was quite poor, and they certainly weren't going to start building anything based on it, until it improved. One could compare it to reverting back to Morse code after fibre optics were developed. So any communication results are still far in the future."
Miaki stretched his legs out under the desk and asked, "Do you think, professor Narita, that this concept of spin would ever have implications for VR simulations?"
Again the tall, slender man at the front of the room peered over his glasses, smiling slightly. "I'm surprised you even ask the question, Miaki, to be honest. Remember that we're speaking of 'virtual' reality in that case. Whatever effects happen in a virtual world, we put there by choice, by programming them in. There can be no question of a particle in one part of a virtual world affecting a particle somewhere else in that virtual world, unless we designed it that way."
Jin knew that that wasn't what Miaki had meant at all, but she noticed that he didn't pursue the question further, lest anyone remember how interested he'd been. She made sure not to do more than glance at him, but she knew what he was getting at. He was very interested in the means by which a VR simulation could be used to influence the real, non-virtual world. Perhaps, somehow, it might be the "spin" connection between particles. If that were the case, research into the phenomenon was much further along than professor Narita indicated.
And that would bring up the question, yet again, of how much the professor really knew – whether he was lying in what he taught, or whether he really believed it. In the week since the six of them had begun investigating the simulations in the special folder, they were no closer to answering the question of how involved the school might be in the plot they were uncovering.
But one thing they were more and more certain of: that the military department of the Pacific Rim Alliance government was using those special simulations to further some sort of plot to stage a coup in their government, and change that region's stance in relation to the rest of the world. Undoubtedly their stance after taking over the Pacific Rim would be far less friendly than it was now.
This was a personal matter for five of them: Toshi, Miaki, Julie, and Kenji were all Pacific Rim citizens from the East Asia side, while Jin's family (her grandparents' families had both moved to Vancouver when they were children) were citizens in the Western North America side of the region. Yet even Chika, coming from the South Atlantic Alliance province of Brazil, knew that the security of the whole world could be in jeopardy if one of its regions turned against the others. So it affected all of them.
And Kenji and Miaki were affected far more personally than any of the rest. The group didn't generally refer to their specific situation any more, but one look at Miaki's rigid stance and averted face and Kenji's obvious misery, when the Pacific Rim plot was discussed, revealed how close to the surface things still were for both of them. At least Miaki was no longer directing his animosity at Kenji; he had remained true to his promise. But the two of them were far from friends. For one thing, Kenji clearly suffered from vicarious guilt, the more he learned about his father's plots. And while it was still hard to tell, Miaki undoubtedly had not forgiven himself for taking his rage and grief out on Kenji, and hurting him so badly. So the two of them worked together alright when necessary, but there was no camaraderie there, as there was for the others.
Meanwhile, Chika had messaged all of them to meet her briefly after classes this afternoon, and before the evening meal. As the first-year physics class ended, Miaki left the room with the general stream of students, and Jin straggled behind after packing up her books. They both headed in the same general direction, but she made sure to take a separate route. Another thing the group had become almost fanatic about was making sure they were rarely all seen together.
Eventually they all ended up near the change rooms adjoining the gymnasiums, and Chika led them on toward a VR room generally used only by fourth-years. It was smaller than most, with only eight terminals and a couple of full-body VR tubes, but the furnishings were just a step above the usual terminal rooms. There was a deep carpet on the floor, and some of the equipment seemed to be trimmed with gold foil. The far wall, beyond the two short rows of terminals, actually had a tapestry hanging on it.
"For some courses," she explained, "third-years can partner with fourth-years for special projects, and I signed up for one the other day. We came here, and I saw something that made me do some more investigating into the background of the special sims."
She turned them to look at the wall beside the door they had just entered. Upon it hung a gold-tinged plaque, mounted on dark, polished wood. Chika stood back while the others leaned forward to read what was etched onto it.
'In memory of Katsu Tanaka, one of the finest students ever to study at I.S.C.E. He will be missed by his class-mates, and by his father Kazuo and brother Kenji.' And it gave the dates of his birth, and his death.
The others stood in silence for a moment, and Kenji hung his head, blinking.
Julie finally said, softly, "Wow, Kenji. He must really have been a great person, for the school to honour him like that. You didn't say he'd been a student here."
"He was," Kenji said. "He was in his fourth year..."
"And," Chika said, "he died at the school, didn't he?"
"Oh no!" Julie burst out. "Really?"
"Yes," Kenji said. "He had some sort of seizure."
"That's what the school told you?" Chika asked.
"My...my father told me," Kenji said, shifting uncomfortably, almost pointedly not looking at Miaki, who was equally as pointedly not looking at him.
"That was the public story," Chika said. "But I got curious, and looked through some of the records, when I realized he'd died here. The story you were told wasn't the truth, Kenji."
He eyed her uncertainly. "What do you mean? Why wouldn't they tell the truth about something like that?"
"Because," she said, "he died in this room. Inside a Virtual Reality simulation."
Miaki's head snapped toward her, his eyes sharpening on her face.
Kenji gaped at her. "No," he said faintly. "That's...that's not what happened. He was diabetic. He hadn't been eating properly. He...he had a seizure. That's what happened."
"I'm sorry. I really hoped the reports were above board," Chika said gently. "But I had already seen his name, when I was looking at the user logs for the special simulations. I'd seen his name three times in the logs, and wasn't even thinking of a connection at first. But I suddenly realized that the date of his death was the same as the date of his third log-in. And then I just had to hack into the medical records to find out for sure what happened."
Kenji had begun to shake. Jin pulled out a chair for him, and Julie pushed him down onto it. Toshi, meanwhile, stepped closer to Miaki.
"Alright," Jin said. "You'd better tell us what else you've learned, and let's get it over with."
Chika replied, "The thing is that I had already heard about this, but I'd forgotten the student's name. When I was a first-year, the third and fourth-years sometimes used to talk about the guy who had died in a simulation a couple of years before that. It was the only time a student had ever died at the school. It totally went out of my head till I saw this plaque and made all the connections.
"What I learned is that they began introducing the special simulations about five years ago, and fourth-year students were just beginning to test them. This was the very first of those simulations, and Katsu Tanaka was one of the first two students ever to use it. Something went wrong the third time he logged in, and they took it – and two others they'd just added – offline for several months until they could tweak them to work better. So none of those fourth-years did any more work on them. The use of the new simulations didn't really get underway till the next year."
"Who?" Miaki asked. "Who took them offline? And who authorized them in the first place?" Surprisingly, she hesitated. He barked, "Chika! Who did this?"
"Miaki," Toshi said quietly. "Calm down. Just let her tell – "
"It was my father, wasn't it?" Kenji said.
"Well..." Again Chika seemed to hesitate.
"How could it be Mr. Tanaka?" Julie asked. "He doesn't have any say in how the school teaches things, or what equipment it uses. Does he?"
"He doesn't," Chika said. "It was actually professor Yoshida, the fourth-year Advanced Space Cyber Electronics teacher. He added the simulations into the curriculum."
"Then he's the ICE mole," Julie said. "We finally know who – "
"Where did the simulations come from?" Miaki interrupted, his fierce gaze never once leaving Chika's face. "Did he code them?"
She didn't seem happy. She bit her lip momentarily and then seemed to brace herself. "No, he didn't code them, though I think he was the one who tweaked them. They originated...they came from an office in the Pacific Rim military department. They were authorized by – "
"My father," Kenji said again.
"Yes. I'm afraid so."
They digested this news in a long silence. Kenji's face was pasty white, and he clasped his hands together in his lap as though to hide the fact that they were trembling.
Toshi murmured at last, "His son..."
"Yes," Kenji said. "He killed my brother."
Julie tried to be reassuring. "Oh, I don't think you can blame an accident on your father. He wouldn't have deliberately put his own son in danger."
"Yes he would. He's done it twice now."
"How can you say that? When was the second time?"
"Can't you guess?" Kenji laughed, and it chilled them. They'd heard that laugh before, in the simulation when Miaki had had him trapped, and had hoped to use him to bring his father running.
Toshi's gasp cut the air sharply. "Kenji. You're not thinking of the simulation where you and I almost..."
"What do you think?" Again the painful laugh. "The simulation was there, and then it was taken out of that folder right after our accident. How do you suppose that happened? And don't you remember, Toshi – we went in there together because I asked if you'd consider helping me get a little more experience."
"Yes, but that was you, not your – "
"He suggested it," Kenji said. "We'd been messaging the night before. He suggested I try a simulation I hadn't tried before. Like a moon walk."
"He said that? He actually suggested a moon walk?" Toshi asked shakily.
"He did more than that. He suggested I ask Miaki to go with me." The others watched him, horrified, as he related his story, his face growing more sickly white by the moment. "I – I was too intimidated by Miaki, so I asked you instead, because you were so friendly. And so you went with me – and then the rock fall happened. And it wasn't an accident. It wasn't an accident."
"That's impossible!" Julie said. "Your father wasn't in the simulation with you. He was on earth, not the Moon. He couldn't control what happened to you in the simulation. It was just an accidental rockfall. How could it be anything else?"
Jin said, "I read all the reports. The wall of the crater was considered very geologically stable. No one's been able to figure out why it suddenly fell. But the crater and sheds," she suddenly remembered, "are in the Pacific Rim area of control on the Moon."
"It wasn't an accident," Kenji repeated as if by rote, staring at his hands, whose trembling could no longer be concealed. "He used my brother as his first guinea pig, and Katsu died. And then he tried to use me to – to – " As though he couldn't stop it happening, at last his head lifted, and his wide, anguish-filled green eyes moved to Miaki's face.
They stared at each other for a very long time, their expressions of horror almost mirrors of each other. Then Miaki spun around and fled the room, with Toshi close on his heels. Kenji buried his face in his hands and began to weep.
Toshi caught up to Miaki near the gymnasiums, when Miaki finally stopped, leaned one hand against the wall and stood there, head lowered, panting and waiting for his cousin to come up beside him. The corridor was dark here, and they stood in deep shadow, with only a glimmer of light from a lamp on the wall farther down the corridor, where it joined another hallway.
“Don’t think about it,” Toshi said in a rush, putting a hand on Miaki’s shoulder. “It didn’t happen. He didn’t get you, and both Kenji and I came out alive. Don’t think about what Kenji’s father was trying to do.”
“Don’t you understand?” Miaki said. His voice was so low that Toshi had to lean close to hear. Miaki looked sideways at him, his eyes cold and narrow. A stray flicker of light from the distant lamp seemed to strike reddish sparks from his hair and kindle a small flame in his dark eyes. “When my father stumbled onto Kazuo Tanaka in his online search, Kazuo’s response wasn’t just instinctive and defensive. He knew who he was killing. If he didn’t know right then, he made sure to find out. And just in case I had any information about my father’s death, he tried to kill me too. And he didn’t even care if he killed his own son in the process.”
Toshi leaned back against the wall beside him, his shoulders slumping. Now standing between Miaki and the distant light, his profile was limned with gold sparks from his own bright hair. “This gets worse and worse,” he said. “It’s turning into a real nightmare.”
“I swear, Toshi,” Miaki said, even more quietly. “Once we’ve got everything we need to reveal this conspiracy – he dies. Kazuo Tanaka dies.”
“And…you’ve decided you’re going to be the executioner? Is that it?”
“He murdered my father. He’s tried to kill me, and almost killed you. Don’t I have some sort of right?”
“I don’t know.” Toshi lifted his head and looked upward at the shadowed ceiling. A gleam of blue flashed from one of his eyes. “Maybe you do. Maybe it’s only right.” He took a long, shaky breath. “But you’ll destroy yourself too, if you kill him. And then Kazuo Tanaka will have taken away both my uncle and my…best friend. I don’t know if I can bear that.”
Miaki slammed his other hand against the wall and now stood leaning against it with both fists. “What do you want me to do, then?” he cried. “Just let him go?”
“I don’t know. Miaki, I don’t know the right thing to do, here,” Toshi said, his hands open helplessly. “I just don’t want him to take you away too. Can you possibly think you’ll be the same person after you’ve killed him that you are right now?”
Miaki averted his eyes. “He’s already made me a different person,” he said. “It’s too late.”
“No he hasn’t. Not yet.”
A long silence. “I don’t know what else I can do,” Miaki whispered.
“Well, you can start by thinking about something else. If he suspected you knew he’d killed your father, and if he’s even tried to kill you once – then maybe he’s watching you at the school. Or has someone here watching for him.” Toshi paused at Miaki’s sharp intake of breath, but the other said nothing. He was listening, though, so Toshi went on. “What if he’s gotten a co-conspirator to watch you? Maybe professor Yoshida. Or maybe others that we haven’t discovered yet.”
“Then…we could all be in danger.”
“Yes. Despite every precaution we’ve taken. It’s like Chika said before – there’s a bigger picture here that we can’t forget. This isn’t just about you and Kazuo Tanaka. It’s not even about you and Kazuo and Kenji. It’s about Jin and Julie and Chika too, and whether they’re in danger.”
Miaki stood in silence for a moment. “And about you,” he said.
“Well yes, there is that,” Toshi smiled briefly.
Miaki lifted his head. “Then I guess we have to go back over everything we’ve done so far, and make sure we’ve covered our tracks.”
“Always remembering that the teachers here are generally smarter than we are, and could have ways of weasling into our passwords and other protective measures, that we don’t even know about.”
Miaki cast him a sidelong glance. “I don’t know if they’ve ever encountered anyone as devious as Julie, when it comes to ‘protective measures’. And,” he added sardonically, “I don’t think they really know what I can do either.”
Toshi smiled again, crookedly, with affection. “I know they don’t. I know you as well as I know myself, and you leave even me lost, half the time. So if you really set your mind to it, I think you’re probably the only person who can make sure we’re hidden from their scrutiny.”
“If it’s not already too late,” Miaki said.
“So you see. You’re right – it’s terrible what’s happened, and Kazuo Tanaka is a nastier person than we ever dreamed he was. I think I’d call him downright evil. I hate him almost as much as you do – after all, he almost killed me too. We’re right to be as horrified as we are. And it’s hard to get past that, to think clearly about everything else. But we have to, Miaki. If we’re going to stop whatever Tanaka is involved in, and stop him from doing the same horrible things to maybe millions of other people, we have to swallow all the horror, no matter how unfair it is that we can’t go after him and blow his brains out and feel a lot better. We have to get on with the thinking part, I’m afraid.”
Miaki took a long, slow breath. “Damn, Toshi,” he said softly. “Do you know how much I hate it when you talk common sense to me?”
Toshi grinned. “I know. I try not to. But I get this weird compulsion every now and then, and I just can’t help it. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist and see if there’s a prescription for it.”
His cousin lowered his head again, and laughed helplessly. “Don’t,” he said. “I don’t think I’d survive a day if you did.” He reached out a hand, blindly, and found Toshi’s arm and gripped it. “I’ll try to stay sane, Tosh. Just for you.”
“Good. Because one of us has to,” Toshi said, drawing yet another reluctant smile from his cousin. He turned Miaki toward the far corridor, and they headed back to their dormitory.
Chapter 11
