The Tokyo Domain

The nights were long, longer then they had been in years.  Sometimes it was hard to remember what the days were like way back when.  The sun used to shine a lot then, for hours and hours.  I still remember those summers when the sun was still up when I went to bed at night. Maybe I was just younger then, but now.  The nights were cold and lonely.

Dinner with the people downstairs was the same as always, warm food and good company.  I was never in the right mood for that kind of interaction.  It reminded me too much of home, being forced to sit down to dinner every night.  Listening to my father and mother talk to each other.  My brother and I always sat there silently, waiting for them to decide to go watch TV.

In the old days TV was very low tech.  Eight hundred channels, arranged randomly, streamed slowly via low-end cables.  Thinking about it now made me smile sometimes.  What with the way television is now.  Now I have a million channels, and too much to watch.  None of it I actually enjoy. When Japan’s economy fell, so did the Anime industry.  Now television was all trash.  Cartoons were lost long ago; the new thing was interactive movies.

Like bad video games the whole family could enjoy.  Strap on a visor built by your favorite company, sit down on the couch and live out an entire movie from the eyes of one of the characters. Oh mom could be the witty heroin and dad the drug addict camp counselor, Tom and Sue would take on the roles of adventurous campers, and they would all hop along merrily.  Then the twist, a crazy serial killer is out on the loose, and starts killing everyone.  Nothing like watching your own mother dismembered by a crazy guy with no face.

The world is just like that I guess.  Nothing I could do about it.  I actually endorse the whole endeavor.  That way when a real serial killer tears the kids moms head off, they wont be scarred for life.  Everybody wins in the long run right?  That way all the big corporations make tons of money, and newer better ways to interact virtually are created.  It all comes back to the net, everything does.  The better the net is the better off I am.  Everything is much simpler online anyway, you don’t have to think as much.

I used to play too many violent video games when I was a kid.  They consumed a good portion of my time and money.  I loved them, they taught me more about the world then anyone ever could.  I always heard rumors that the military was using them to train their units in a safe environment.  That would make sense I guess, most games now are recruiting tools for the corporate armies.  If you are awesome at Microsoft’s “Battle Field 2020: The South Pacific” You will get all sorts of requests to join their forces in “Eliminating the terrorist threats in the Microsoft Islands!” and what not.  It was hard as hell to keep those guys off your back once you started playing their games.

I was just sitting around now, letting the food from the night digest.  My stomach was in bad shape.  All of the stuff I had eaten so long ago, most of junk, none of it good for me.  It tore me up pretty bad.  I had all of the corrective procedures done; I was supposed to be good as new.  Still, after a big meal, I’d get amazingly tired.  In ways that regular people shouldn’t be tired.  I just disregarded it and downed another bottle of Mountain Dew.

My screen was off now and everything was quiet.  I liked it that way.  For an hour everyday I would shut everything down and just let my mind settle.  This was all before a run on the net.  You needed all your wits about you online.  You never know who is out to get you out there.  Perverts, slave traders, corporate spies, annoying ten-year-old girls, everyone was a suspect.  Just keep your head down, and don’t talk to strangers.  That’s my motto.

The night had progressed, like every night did.  The restaurant was crowded.  It was packed with students form the nearby school.  All of them were decked out in the latest high fashion.  All of them set on jabbering aimlessly about what kind of clothes they were wearing, or why they loved their brand new car.  I was never comfortable around these people.  I hated them.  I didn’t even know why, somewhere deep in me I could feel it.  They should be feared; they are not to be trusted.  The voice in my head would tell me this whenever I saw one.  I wasn’t one to argue with myself.

We ate in the back, in the kitchen.  The food was much better then what the kids up front ate.  They didn’t even realize it though.  They were all force fed the same industrial goop everyday.  Anytime they could they would escape out to town to eat real food.  That was the irony though I suppose.  Going to a big school like that, getting an education to put them in the top of their fields once they got out into the “real world” and, they were fed garbage.  More business for us then I suppose.

I polished off my dinner like I had been starved for days in one of the corporate prison camps.  I listened politely to the family’s conversations; I knew exactly what everyone was saying.  I don’t think they realized it though.  Maybe I should talk to them more, maybe then they wouldn’t say things I don’t think I should be hearing.  Oh well, I can’t really change any of that.  I’ll just stay the quiet guy who lives upstairs, and pays all of his rent in full every month, in cash.

Walking through the room with all those posh kids, it made my skin crawl.  They all looked at me when I walked through the restaurant, thanking the owners politely in Chinese.  I can only imagine what the rumors about me are there, and what they all say about me.  I had a sudden urge to do something violent, but it was subdued quickly by a beeping noise.  I had an important email.

I put my glasses on and the screens hummed to life instantly.  Konpyuuta chan was asleep on the couch next to me.  I shook her awake; she looked around drowsily for a moment before yawning.

“Rise and shine.  We got work to do.” She looked at me.

“I was having such a nice dream too.” She stuck her tongue out at me again.  She rose and walked over to the closet, disappearing inside and emerging in a new outfit.  Black was the order of the day, a nice ensemble too.  Tight black pants with a black shirt that only made it down past her bust line.  Her makeup changed too, dark eyeliner and too much mascara. Her rips were a deep unreal shade of red.  She smiled as she slid a pair of black sunglasses on and tied her hair back in a ponytail.

I stood up and walked over to my sensor ring, I waved my hand and the room disappeared.  I was wearing my usual; a brown trench coat, like something out of a fifties gangster movie, worn over a pair of black dress pants and fancy looking shirt.  The black suspenders just pulled the outfit together.  I suddenly wasn’t real, my face was lost and replaced by that of a stern looking thirty year old anime character.  My hair so gray it was black pulled back into a long ponytail.  I pushed my rimless glasses into place on my face.

Konpyuuta chan stood next to me now, we made an odd couple.  I looked down at my belt, silver pistols glinting in the non-existent lighting.  Each bullet deadly now, a viral core that would eliminate any unprotected system instantly.  The interface was my own choosing, something real to touch.  It made it that much easier for me to hit my targets.  It was just a way my system represented things.  Konpyuuta chan pulled a black motorcycle jacket over her shoulders.  She smiled at me.  One last check, everything was in position.

“Ok, lets go to the meeting place.”

“Roger.” She smiled and waved her hands.  The world fell out from beneath us.