I was in the middle of sifting through millions of files when the message came through. We had finished the format on the HK processor, I was checking out its stats. The bike’s CPU had to be perfect; perfect and small. The processor itself had capabilities I hadn’t explored, as of yet, the specs weren’t really available to the public, especially in corporate controlled territory. I had to figure most of it out for myself, scrolling through line after line of code, testing it.
The message came down through its usual channels, protected several times over with all sorts of encryption levels. Standard communiqué for the contents, albeit as simple as they were. A single line of text appeared in my field of vision, blurred slightly. An uneven scrawl of long forgotten Japanese lay before me. Only two words “Tokyo Domain”. Then all at once it vanished from all existence, not even Konpyuuta Chan would have ever realized it was ever even processed.
I looked up from my desk slowly, letting the thousands of letters and numbers scrolling before me blur into a black and white nothingness. How long had it been since they had asked me to go there? Years if memory served, I was always active, it just seemed like I never had enough time anymore. Once it was an escape from all this, from the sleepless nights and endless darkness. I would wander through the streets of Tokyo for hours at a time, unsure of where I was going or why, just knowing there was always something to do there to occupy myself.
I tried to remember, I had last logged about two weeks ago. The usual business had to be taken care of, nothing much really. Log in, check on construction, debug a few lines of code here and there, look into expanding domain space, and finish it up with an update to the library. I had withdrawn from the limelight of Tokyo some time ago, I was a little happier with what I did now, just a simple librarian really. I left the big issues to those who thought to make it more their business. Now it seemed as though they wanted me there. Something must have been up.
Konpyuuta Chan was still busy, going through all the same system and tech checks I was. She had all the hardware there; it was already wired into place on the board. The black processor reflected no light at all; it sat there on a board of metal, soaking up everything that came nearby it. I glanced up at the screen one more time before deciding that I had better go. Time had a strange habit of passing differently once you were in Tokyo, I didn’t want to be late.
I walked over to the small platform that rose about a foot from my apartments floor, I stepped up onto it, adjusting my glasses slightly. The world slowly started to lose its definition as the machine began to warm up. The holographic projector located on the top of my room, rotating like some kind of twisted disco ball, suddenly lit up. The area around me started to represent objects that I could not see clearly yet.
As the real world around me began to slowly filter itself out of my consciousness a new one began to take shape. Suddenly I found myself standing in a sea of nothingness. Then a simple word appeared in front of me “Domain:” A cursor flashed alongside it, waiting expectantly. I scribbled in the word “TOOKIYOO” in messy Japanese in the emptiness. The floor fell out form underneath me, and I was standing in line at a security checkpoint in Tokyo International Airport.
The line was tremendous; it looked like over a thousand users were trying to log on at the same time. They all must have gotten the message as well. We shuffled along slowly, toward the first in a series of checks before being allowed admittance to even the lowest levels of Tokyo Domain. It was never this bad, usually you would se one or two people waiting at the gate for friends to log in, but never anything as bad as this. Something big must be going on. I looked ahead, just under a thousand people, users and software programs alike. They flooded the gate; even with twenty open checkpoints the line seemed to stretch forever.
Tokyo Domain was written with many things in mind, its rules were complex and overly realistic. Nothing you could do in a standard domain could be done here. It was not your ordinary existence. It was a serious effort, a combined effort, completely user written. I true representation of Tokyo in the year 2000, down to the exact detail. All of re-created from documents salvaged after the fall of Japan. Everything was saved and hoarded, but only by a few.
In the years following the downfall of Japan, no one thought anything of it. It had all but completely disappeared from existence. It’s culture, language, history, and music, all of it lost. It only took a single year for an entire culture to disappear from history forever. Still some of it survived, if only in name, Kawasaki, Sony, they were all still around. They had hardly anything to do with their old Japanese roots, but that was their loss.
In the beginning we were all separate, only a handful of us. We collected everything we could of the old world, thousands of seemingly meaningless hours of Japanese television and media. We salvaged records of all manner and size, divorce papers right up to the architectural plans for Tokyo Tower. Everything we could find. Eventually we began to find one another in our mutual quest for this knowledge. Most of it required a certain amount of talent and skill to obtain, and that is how the Domain was formed.
Since those humble beginnings the domain had spread steadily as users mapped out sections of the city. They populated it with programs written to act as ordinary citizens, wrote the code to govern its laws of physics, and breathed new life into a now dead city. Its rules were serious, and unbreakable. Even I wouldn’t be able to skip the security checks at the domain’s entrance. I had even written the very code upon which they were based; all of the perky looking Japanese women who were checking us were modeled by me after favorite Anime characters. We all had a place in the Domain, and the Domain was built upon very strict rules.
After waiting about ten minutes a group of men dressed in black suits approached me silently. I knew them well enough; an old friend of mine programmed them to be our secret police inside the Domain. The Yakuza. They walked up to me and bowed slowly.
“Sir, we are here to escort you to the palace.” He spoke in a deep voice, his words echoing softly in the air around us. Everyone here spoke in Japanese; it was the only accepted language, another interesting rule here in Tokyo. Learn Japanese, or do not speak at all.
I bowed back to him and let them lead me through the throngs of people waiting at the security check. We walked right up to gate one, the people waiting in line quickly and quietly, stepped back to allow us to pass. I looked at the simple looking metal detector; modeled after the ones I had seen hundreds of times before when I had visited Japan. The nicely dressed security officer asked me politely to step through the detector. I did as I was told.
Of course it picked up on all of my software processes and gave her an immediate output. I wasn’t sure if they would let me in as is, I would probably have to lose some of the programs I was running. She looked at me nervously.
“Sir you are currently running more then twenty programs which are not permitted inside Tokyo.” The people waiting behind me stepped back a little, they looked nervous. “All outside messaging programs must be shut down, no outside weapons can be brought into Tokyo, there is a strict virus check at the gate, you are carrying 6 viruses, there are no software of the “punter” variety you are carrying 6….” She kept going for a little while; I stopped listening at some point. I just smiled, and then realized she had finished.
“I agree to comply.” I reached out and took off my gun belt, as I let it drop into her hands it vanished into nothingness, I then cut off all outside contacts. She bowed to me politely.
“Thank You sir, you may now continue.”
We kept going through the layers of security, over thirty minutes just to get inside of the Domain, serious stuff in the day and age we live in now. As me and my escorts emerged from the final layer of security two of them left to fetch a car for me. The other three stayed behind. Maybe I had missed something big, or maybe traffic was just bad this time of day. I couldn’t tell. I looked up at the sun; it looked to be about noon here in Tokyo, the air was hot and thick. The car drove up in front of me, and one of the men opened the door for me.
“Please sir, Emperor is waiting for us.” His mouth was the only thing that moved on his face, he always looked stern and serious. No expressions.
“The Emperor?” I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly.
“Yes sir, the Emperor has called an emergency meeting.” Now I knew something big was going on.
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