Tokyo Zero | Page 9

the atoms got the more data he got. Until one day he became convinced of
it... the evidence was irrefutable... little men were inside the atoms. It could be proven by
a complicated mathematical process that he had to invent essentially from scratch.
He realized that science would take him no further, and was resolved to leave this in the
hands of a professional mystic. He read around a little and found the works of Ko
Samsara and was impressed by the clarity of his vision... he would see the unseen. For a
few months after quitting his job he went through a bad period of depression that
terminated in his beating a prostitute almost to death. Ko Samsara had to help him with

that and so he was more than happy to reciprocate by entering Samsara's inner circle.
I had entered that circle. My reasons were more complicated. I had always been meant to
do it, and was happy just to be there.
SIX
I woke up in the middle of the night. Why?
Well, I've mentioned the heat enough that You know it was there, sitting like a vulture on
my chest as my eyes opened. Also, I was on a wood floor on a futon about two inches
thick, so all of my bones were getting to know the outside world much better than they
had before.
Also it was no time at all, my body clock was in free float. SO a burp or an inch could
have thrown me out of the castle of sleep. And finally, all the people around me, who I
had never met before, were committed without scruple to the primacy of death. That
knowledge will turn the scuttle of a cockroach into a stuka dive.
When I woke up the light of the world was four long rectangles, like glowing scarves of
two very friendly priests. In moments I saw the bars on the windows.
I took a deep breath and then I was on the bars, couldn't keep my hands off them.
When I felt them give a little, like I could maybe tear them down, I could let go and
remember that I had happily lain down before those bars to sleep as I had happily chosen
to come to Japan, and Japan was the reason for the heat and that I should lie down. The
moon berated me. I went back to the thin futon on the harsh floor to sweat and worry
about whether I could breathe in my sleep when I was not there to force each gasp of the
awful soup in and out.
I began to have second thoughts about the operation: it seemed a little whimsical, and not
fully described by Dad's master plan as it had gradually been revealed to me over the
years.
The first real inkling of the plan came when I was about 7. Dad was ironing. Dad looked
a lot like Muammar El Qadafi back in those days. You cannot really imaging Qadafi
ironing but you must try.
I was reading a comic describing the adventures of Judge Dredd... a violent policeman of
the future who had a law book extrapolated from the norms of western society until
almost all offenses against human propriety were punishable by death. As he lived in a
city of a hundred million people in the middle of a nuclear wasteland, this seemed
acceptable. But even then I had my doubts, as the society was affluent and advanced
enough that all crime seemed to have minimal consequences. How do you steal a hundred
creds, y'know? Just make a hundred more. You made a new face last week and about a
month ago there were talking monkeys in the city.

Anyway, Dredd was through with his killings for the week. There was a fact page
describing various statistics about Dredd, and I was poring over it. Judge Dredd was
thirty-three. I had heard that Jesus Christ maxed out at thirty-three. I asked my dad how
old he was and he said... "I'm thirty-three."
I told him about that Dredd was the same age, and I described his role in Mega City 1.
"So they had a nuclear war?" he asked and I told him that they had.
"And they all still live in a city and they do the same sort of things we do? Do they still
hunt each other down and find weak people and kill them."
I mentioned that they did, and further outlined that those whose genes were damaged by
the radiation were expelled from the city, and that they had recently suppressed a robot
slave rebellion.
"Bloody typical," he said. "Mankind blasts the planet to near extinction and of it gains
new enemies and new sub-humans to hate. Does this