Nippon 2357: A Utopian Ecological Tale

Nippon 2357: A Utopian Ecological Tale

By Alex Shishin

Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Alex Shishin

All Rights Received

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner and publisher.

Smashwords Editions License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Chapter One: Abduction and Apologies

When they said I’d live to a hundred, those Japanese socialists, I scoffed.

I’m the kind of person who ages quickly and not gracefully. By the time I was thirty-five there were patches of gray on my head and in my beard. At forty-eight I had a leftover beer gut from the days when I was hitting the bottle pretty badly. Even my subsequent addiction to cycling couldn’t reduce it. The weird thing is I feel I’m growing younger. You know, I might just turn into a dashing young thing yet. Look, I had a bald spot in the center of my dome. It’s almost gone.

I mean, hey, I’m growing hair back!

This isn’t where I wanted to start. Let me start from the beginning. I’m Thomas Redburn, American. Born and raised in San Francisco, California. A resident foreigner--gaijin--in Japan for 25 odd years. Married to Yuriko Tanigawa. Second time for me, first time for her. Our kids are Mari and Ken, ages 9 and 7. Our life was about as normal as a so-called international family could have in a small provincial town. We were running a portrait studio in Shirokuso City, located in the outback between Kobe and Osaka, when I was kidnapped--or rescued--on Awaji Island...

Okay, let’s start from the real beginning.

On March 13, 2006, I had to go to Megumi City on Awaji Island. The city fathers were holding a small awards ceremony for a number of local photographers that, by chance, included me. I’m basically a street photographer, and I’d been shooting around Osaka of late. But I’d done some panoramic photography in Awaji on one of my bicycle trips and had taken some shots of Megumi, which Asahi Camera liked and published. The Megumi town officials were so happy that they invited me to their annual Camera Arts Award banquet where they would give me a plaque and some cash for one of the panoramas. I had to go alone since Yuriko needed to see to our business. I decided to go off by bicycle. Bicycling cleared my head. Any time I felt like I might want to hit the bottle again, I’d take off.

This worried Yuriko in the early days of our marriage. Her brother Sadao, a pro mountain bike racer, convinced her this habit of mine was good for my physical as well as mental health. She took up the spot and became a pretty strong cyclist herself. Since Sadao, who ran a pro shop, lived near Megumi City, I decided to see him after the ceremony.

I estimated I would need at least a day at my non-competitive pace to get to Megumi City, which is on the Shikoku side of Awaji. It was cold on March 12 when I set out at 5 in the morning. I bundled up well and stuck some extra warm clothing into my bags. Then I rolled down to the train station, took the bicycle apart, stuck it a bike bag, and took the express to Akashi City where I caught the Awaji ferry.

You know, when I say that cycling cleared my head I think I’m crazy. It meant fighting with cars on narrow roads and breathing their exhaust. It meant riding through these small towns with old cars abandoned on the side of the road and ugly noisy pachinko parlors and gas stations. It meant putting your aesthetic enjoyment through a mental strainer. To appreciate a Japanese seashore you had to block out the plastic bottles and metal cans and old bento boxes strewn all over the place. I guess I’d been a sleepwalker of sorts, being stupidly grateful for what I had.

Back in the States, before I came to Japan, I was piss poor. I was applying for welfare and telling them I was illiterate though I had a college degree in Art. I was that desperate. By sheer luck an English language in Nagoya hired me as conversation teacher. A lot of bad luck followed. Job problems, failed marriage, booze problems, visa problems. I’d have ended up homeless back in the States if Yuriko hadn’t come along.

Anyway, the farther you got away from the Kobe-Osaka side of Awaji the nicer it was. Less traffic. Towns with rivers that didn’t stink like the river running through Shirokuso. I got to Megumi City in a good mood and the awards banquet was great. Only I did something really stupid. I let those nice people get me drunk. That night, after the taxi deposited my alcohol-reeking person in front of my hotel, I did something else really stupid. I got this idea of riding my bicycle. I changed into my cycling duds, put on my helmet (thank goodness) and rode off into the night. Drunk on a bicycle.

I don’t know where I rolled. I do remember singing dirty songs I’d learned in college as I pedaled out of Megumi City and into the hilly countryside. How long did I ride? I have no idea. I do know that I’d started before eleven because the beverage machine I stopped by was still dispensing beer. I bought as many cans as my handlebar bag would hold. What time was it when I fell off my bike? I only recall that I bent the front wheel rather artistically. I also remember thinking that I had to save the Nikon F5 camera in the rear bag. (Yeah, in that digital age I was a reactionary, maniacally stuck on film--black and white developed in my own special soup and cheerfully printed in a real darkroom, not on a computer.) I took that out and hung it around my neck. From the front bag I took out the beer I hadn’t finished when riding. I finished it. Then I started walking in the direction that I thought would lead to Megumi City. Somewhere, looking for the main road, I passed out.

I had a dream. In this dream I saw a bright wheel turning in the sky and I was saying, A UFO! Not swamp gas, not a mirage but the real thing! No one will be able to say my shots are faked. Then I dreamt I was back at this photo class I taught privately once a month. I was talking about street photography: Just act as if you and the camera are a lamp post or part of the shrubbery, you would-be Cartier-Bressons and Eugene Smiths. It’s a bit like hypnosis. If you seem ordinary enough, dull enough, you simply disappear. As artists we all assume we are always the center of attention, but it’s not usually so. Once you understand that, you can move about more easily in a world of decisive moments without being self-conscious and, therefore, without attracting attention. Then one of the students stood up and pointed at me and said, We did it! He’s definitely the one!

Then I woke up.

I was lying on a white bed, actually a Japanese futon, which was neither too soft nor too hard and which seemed to fit the shape of my body perfectly. I opened my eyes and saw something like a Japanese paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling itself was blue. The flooring looked like tatami, except that it felt warm, as if alive, when I touched it with my bare foot.

I was still wearing the jeans and wool shirt and jacket I’d changed into at the hotel. My head hurt like hell when I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

The room was the size of a regular hotel suite, except it was round. The walls were yellow. Not a bright yellow but a subdued warm fleshy yellow that seemed as if it was breathing.

A hospital, I thought. Someone found me and hospitalized me.

I needed a painkiller and wondered how to buzz for help.

There was a low round wooden table with a Japanese teapot and a cup on a wooden saucer at one end of the room. Better than nothing, I thought and drank. I suddenly felt a hell of a lot better. I mean my headache just went away! Then this very good feeling came over me. Not a stupidly euphoric feeling like you get from drugs. Just a good feeling on top of a few bad feelings about what I’d done the other night.

May I come in? said a woman’s voice.

I looked around and saw no one.

So come in, already! I called out.

A panel slid open. A young woman entered. She wore a light-blue single piece garment like a jump suit and her beautiful oval face was enclosed in a transparent helmet like a reversed fish bowl.

Don’t be alarmed, she said in Japanese. I am wearing this for our mutual protection against any contagious diseases.

What have I got? I cried in English. Is this covered by my National Insurance? I asked in Japanese.

A doctor will examine you presently. I am a historian and an artist--a painter. I’ll be your guide. I can imagine your confusion.

I’m not confused. To be confused you’ve got to have a notion of what’s going on, and I don’t. Do you mind filling me in?

We’ve abducted you. The historian blushed. Not for any bad reasons; for very good ones--besides our curiosity, which may be a bad reason. Believe me, we had quite a debate about doing this--even at the last moment.

Okay, I give up. What is this place?

A time machine. We are Japanese from the year 2357, Common Era.

I burst out laughing.

Yes, I know this sounds absurd--

Nice joke, I laughed. Now I’d better go. People are probably worrying about me. Unless this is some elaborate plot to stop me from drinking. Hey, is this a psycho ward?

This is a time machine, Mr. Redburn, she said.

I may be the biggest idiot on Awaji after what I pulled last night, but I’m not that stupid, I replied. You are speaking twenty-first century nihongo. The standard Japanese my kids learn to read and write in school. I also know language change over the centuries.

Then it would sound like this--

She spoke to me in a language sounding like a weird distant dialect of Japanese--with a few words sounding as if they were derived from Russian, Korean and English.

I learned my ancient Japanese from a Japanese man from your time, she said. He joined us a few years ago.

That’s clever, I said and smirked.

She sighed.

Something about that sigh, which sounded like a slow leak from a bicycle tire, suddenly convinced me that whatever was happening was on the level.

Every night in Japan millions of men fall down dead drunk. I’d never heard of any finding themselves in a place like this.

I saw myself faintly reflected in her helmet. The smirk was leaving my face.

The expression on her face was meditative. We won’t hurt you, she said. We only wish to talk with you.

Talk all you want. As long as I can get home in reasonable time.

The woman’s head inside that reversed fish bowl turned away. The back of her neck flushed pink. Like my wife’s when she got embarrassed.

Hey, talking is part of my work, I said. In my studio I chat to make my customers relax, particularly children. I’m also a real good listener. How about telling me why you picked me of all people for your so-called time machine.

She turned to me again. Her face was flushed.

I’d should explain a few things first, she said. Within the last fifty years we have perfected time travel, which seemed like a daydream to our grandparents. We can go back nearly a million years now, but we cannot go to the future from our time, which we call Real Time.

Real Time. I have a camera which automatically exposes for real time.

We have much information about what were once called prehistoric people, but very little first hand information on literate times. It’s our policy to be as unobtrusive as possible. We believe that we must at all costs avoid time imperialism.

That’s very politically correct, I’m sure. What does this have to do with me?

We chose to rescue you. Surviving records show that shortly after your return from Awaji you were killed in a freak accident in Osaka. Apparently a piece of masonry fell on you in Umeda. You were a fairly well known photographer, but not an important enough of a historical personage to disrupt history by your premature disappearance. Or if were we to return you to your age--

If! Am I a prisoner?

Absolutely not! You’ll be free to live among us as you wish.

I’ve got a family, I let the woman know. You are separating a man from his family. Look, if this is a time machine, I’ve got a great solution for your needs and mine. Talk to me to your heart’s content and then bring me back to the day after I am supposed to die.

We cannot simply do that, Mr. Redburn. Time travel is very difficult. It takes months of preparation. It’s not like in the movies you saw in your time. It’s very dangerous. Quite a few of us were lost in the time warp.

I’m sorry to hear that.

I too am sorry. They were my friends. She sighed inside her helmet and said nothing for a moment. Rest now. Time travel is physically exhausting. Do not worry about anything. Our world is much happier than yours. You will like it, I promise.

I was happy in my world! I love my wife and kids, lady! This is like death. Hey, it is death! I mean, in your time they’ll have been dead for three and a half centuries. Can’t you just turn around, drop me off at home now, and let me take my chances?

At this stage that would be suicide, I’m afraid.

Listen to me! It’s difficult enough to be separated from my family for a few days. I mean the moment I’m out the door on one of my therapeutic cycling journeys I start to miss them. Think about what you’re doing to me!

I know. Please understand, Mr. Redburn, we would not have done this if it were not your fate to be separated from them in the worst possible way! Grief is something we all share, no matter from which age we come. When your grief hits you hard you’ll be among friends. Excuse me, I must go. She turned.

A notion hit me. If I could learn how this time machine operated, maybe I could take it over.

Wait! Tell me something about time travel. Like how you do it?

She turned back to and said eagerly: By breaking the light barrier. Mr. Redburn! It’s incredible! We’re now traveling about twenty times the speed of light! I only vaguely understand how we do it since I’m not a scientist. And not even our scientists are certain about exactly what happens to us when we do this. We seem to pass through a time warp. Navigation is very difficult for us--even with our most advanced instruments!

How long will it take to travel back to your Real Time?

About two bio-days, as we say. Conventional clocks go out of control when we are beyond the light barrier. So we measure time through body rhythms. See this wrist watch. She held out her hand and showed me a fleshy pink thing with numbers. This measures my body rhythms. All the watches and clocks on board are synchronized to our body rhythms so that there are no disparities.

Amazing.

Yes, it is, isn’t it? But save your energy. Sleep. Time travel, I repeat, is extremely exhausting. I must go.

Wait! Don’t go yet. Tell me this. How do you know where you are going when you’re inside this time warp?

No one really knows, except the brain of this craft that carries us by an instinct that it itself seems to have created.

You mean a super computer?

I mean a living brain.

A flesh and blood brain?

Yes, only synthetic flesh and blood. Almost every object around you is alive. This whole craft is a living organism.

What will your time machine do if I grab you and threaten to strangle you if you don’t take me home?

You’re not that sort of person, Mr. Redburn. We wouldn’t have taken you if you were.

I knew, damn it, that she was right. I couldn’t even be mean to my ex-wife after she dumped me for a richer man. I never even considered beating up the teachers who hit my kids at school. I guess I’m sort of a pacifist. The influence of my older brother, wounded in Vietnam. The older brother who was now organizing protests against President Bush’s evil little wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A better man than I...

The door slid open.

Hey, wait! One more thing, I said. What makes you think I’ll be happy with you people? What’s this society you’re running?

In your time it was called ‘democratic socialism, or ‘libertarian socialism,’ or even ‘anarchism.’ You’ll see. I must go.

I made a rush for the opening. It shut in my face.

Damn it! I cried. I’m going to some jolly ‘workers’ paradise.’ Where Big Brother probably tells you when to take a shit and how to fold your toilet paper.

I’d traveled in China and the Soviet Union as a young man. And States-side, I was a magnet for proselytizers of every stripe. Burned out old hippies and yippies, tree-huggers, utopian dreamers, Trotskyites, decrepit commies. All had preached to me about how they were going to change the world into a communal flower garden.

Come to Japan, assholes, I’d tell those people when I’d go back to the States. That’s a ‘workers’ paradise’ that really works. You want an all-powerful State run by Wellsian ‘samurai’? We’ve got that. The ‘samurai,’ of course, are a bunch of corrupt hicks. That’s what all workers’ states turn into. You want to see Edward Bellamy’s industrial paradise? Come to Japan. We’ve got the Industrial Army right here. Everyone wears a uniform and sings their organization’s song. You hate individualism and love communalism? Everything in Japan is group oriented and if you object to being exploited you’re called ‘selfish.’ Yup, this is the place where everyone lives beyond freedom and dignity. The reality is that a few bosses take credit for the group’s work, and the workers all drink themselves silly to forget it. That’s what all utopias are ultimately about.

Well, what we propose is different, the hippies, yippies, utopians or whatever would whine.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

I knew, I just knew, that when I started arguing, the people who held me captive would say, Ooooh, this is different. Then comes you know what: We have ways of making you happy. Oh yes! Be happy or else! Ho, ho, ho--

Bother! I put my head down and the twenty-fourth century pillow cradled it. The bed conformed to the contours of my body. After I got used to it, I actually started to feel good. The woman with the fishbowl over her head was right. This nonsense was exhausting. But I couldn’t sleep. My brain was going. Suddenly I was thinking about how much I hated super-patriotism, company loyalty, group loyalty no matter what forms they took. Hari Krishnas, Christian fundamentalists, Children of God, AUM-goons, Islamic suicide bombers, Zionist fanatics--those nut cases were no different from the average flag-waving Joe Blow. I’d listened patiently to them all. In Russia and China I indulged the Communists as they lectured me about how great their paradise was. In the U.S. I did not argue with the patriots who were constantly telling me how wonderful the Land of the Fee was and that I was missing out on the American dream by living in Japan. (The patriots went berserk after 9/11--like that horror was more of an excuse than a reason--to the eternal glee of George W. Bush and his band sociopaths.) What was the point of arguing with any of them? They only listen to themselves anyway.

Once, back in the 1985, I almost got into a fight with a drunken sailor in Russia who was planning to jump ship in New York and become a millionaire.

I like Ronald Reagan, this would-be U.S. patriot told me.

I told him that Ronald Reagan was an immense glob of shit. Then I said what I really thought of the U.S., which shocked him. He never expected to hear an American say, You jump ship in the Land of the Fee and you’ll starve, brother. There’s only high unemployment, homelessness and poverty to forward to. I know.

So what are you talking about? rejoined the sailor. Anyone can dig a ditch. I’ll dig a ditch, save money and go into business and become like an American capitalist. Like Mister Trump."

To do that you have to be lucky, and also a creep, I said.

Good. So I’ll be a creep!

Who knows, maybe he did jump ship and made a fortune selling junk bonds or something.

There was an old sailor listening to us. He just smiled and shook his head. There’s no paradise, he mused. I was with him then and with him now on March 13, 2006, or whatever the time was at that point.

My paradise was simple. My family. My work. I’ve got mine and tough nuts if you ain’t got yours. I’d ventured out of my paradise to receive some miserable little award for some panoramic landscapes that I did with a rotation lens camera in a dipstick town on Awaji Island, and look what happened! The proselytizing nut cases had finally gotten me. And in a big way.

Fine, I thought. I’ll fight; I’ll be one bad gaijin in their world just as I was one bad gaijin in my Japan when I was fighting language schools that were trying to rip me off.

I found myself suddenly laughing over a trivial memory from my European journey in 1994 with Yuriko, when we didn’t have kids. We had just gotten into London’s Victoria station when, sure enough, some proselytizer had to pick on us out the thousands of other potential victims. He was a Trotskyite who was canvassing for some splinter of a splinter group. He tagged along after us and wouldn’t leave us alone. Finally, thinking I could make some use of him, I asked him if he knew where William Morris’s house was in Hammersmith. I’d studied a lot of English Literature in college and liked some of Morris’s poetry. I loved all of his artwork.

Who’s William Morris? the Trot asked.

One of the greatest socialist writers in your literature, shithead!

He left us