Dojo Delivery
San Francisco, 2062
A smart looking young Nipponese man dressed in a black leather aviator's jacket, goggles, white silk scarf, and boots roared up the steep hill on his 950-cc. BMW motorcycle.
He paid no attention to the unmarked blue Chevro that followed him from the Imperial New Nippon Consulate in Pacific Heights to Russian Hill where the American bio-mangaist lived. The two FBI men inside the vehicle reciprocated with likeminded indifference. It was routine surveillance. They parked a block away.
The courier had a Diplopouch slung over his shoulder, the silver Imperial Chrysanthemum emblem clearly visible on its leather flap. He stated his business on the intercam, then rode the capsule to the third floor of the apartment building.
Jake Hill was waiting for him at the door. "Come on in," he said eagerly. It was a big day for him. The courier was delivering the official invitation to the Meta-Manga Awards ceremony in Tokio, a special travel permit, and a ticket for his flight tomorrow.
Jake had taken time to compose himself. He spent twenty minutes under a fermented algae hormone shower, shaved, and was feeling as crisp and fresh as a virgin REM storyboard. Maybe his therapy with Dr. Dante was beginning to do him some good, especially after their last session.
He had put on a fresh thong-jumpsuit for the occasion, the stretched spandex jockstrap clasped in an Oxford knot around his neck. It had been a long time since he had felt so "together." In fact, he was eager to get back to work. And then, of course, he thought to himself, he couldn't wait to get back to the Z-Zone to see Necroangel again.
The messenger bowed as he took a few steps into the foyer. "Mr. Jake Hill?" He spoke in perfect English.
"Yes."
"Courier Mizoguchi from the Imperial New Nippon Consulate." The Nipponese carefully unsnapped his pouch and brought out a small scroll wrapped in green brocade. "Would you sign here please?" he said as he handed the scroll over to Hill.
"Where?" Jake Hill asked as he accepted the scroll. He looked puzzled as he watched Mizoguchi roll up the sleeve of his motorcycle jacket.
"Right here, sir." The young man said as he revealed an infrared polymer screen patch that was implanted in his right forearm.
Jake shook his head. "First time I've seen one of those things, though I heard about them."
"For security purposes, sir. To activate the scroll."
"Excuse me?" Jake gave him a quizzical look.
The young Nipponese messenger smiled back. "Special 'psio-rhythm' delivery. No mix-up that way. Would you prefer to connect with your palm or use universal 'hanko'-seal?"
Mizoguchi produced a three-inch long brass cartridge that was attached to the end of a chain connected to his belt. A slight pressure of his thumb, and a holo-crystal emerged like a lipstick from the mouth of the brass cylinder.
Jake raised an eyebrow. "You've got me there again."
"If you would unwrap scroll, sir. This won't take long." Mizoguchi was beaming now, as though he clearly relished his job of Class B, Level 2 bio-messenger boy.
"Why don't you come inside?"
"Thank you, sir," Mizoguchi entered the living room with a confident stride, but then his Class B, Level 2 training showed. He stopped and scowled when he saw a foreign woman sitting on the couch by the window smoking a cigarette. She was gazing out at the southern exposure of the city with a view of Twin Peaks. A convoy of Muni dirigibles was rounding Potrero Hill on their downtown-SFO International Airstation route.
The woman was in her thirties, attractive, had short curly brown hair, and a Mediterranean cast to her features. "Don't mind me," she waved a slender hand at the Nipponese messenger, the bracelets on her wrist tinkling.
Her eyes turned to Jake's. "Would you prefer some privacy? I'll step into the other room if you like."
"That won't be necessary," Jake replied, as he introduced her to the Nipponese. "This is my colleague Inga Roberts . . . Mr. Mizoguchi is from the Nipponese consulate and he's just delivered a package."
He unwound the brocade from the scroll, then whistled as he held both ends of the scroll open between his hands. "It's blank. How does it work?"
"Like this, sir," Mizoguchi was at Jake's side, holding his own forearm erect. "Please place palm on my screen to commence the download. Or use the seal like this."
He demonstrated the maneuver by inserting the tip of the crystal into the crypto-slot at the end of Jake's blank scroll. "Insert inside."
"What's the difference?"
"First method, you agree to transmit your personal psio-rythm to Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs for verification purposes."
Mizoguchi's eyes were blank as he stared at Jake. "If you plan to travel to New Nippon within the next two months, this procedure will expedite your formalities going through Immigration. Short-cut," he explained. "Very efficient."
"And the second method?"
"For Americans," Mizoguchi's eyes still retained their blank expression. "Privacy option. You retain original copy of your psio-rhythm. But it is erased immediately after confirmation of receipt of this parcel. The New Nippon government is very sensitive to ethnic preferences."
"Sounds like quite a choice," Inga gave a throaty laugh as she ground out her cigarette in a celadon ashtray on the Korean mother-of-pearl coffee table.
Jake Hill pressed his palm against Mizoguchi's forearm. "They're going to get a copy of my original psio-rhythm anyway, aren't they? So I may as well shave a few minutes off the procedure going through New Narita."
He felt his psio-rhythm recoil against the echo of Mizoguchi's link-up. The mild buzz dissipated within seconds. Then the blank screen on his scroll began to download the official travel documents.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Hill," Mizoguchi bowed. "Transmission has been confirmed. I have fulfilled my duty. Goodbye, sir."
"Well, that was impressive," Jake said as he let Mizoguchi out of the apartment.
"A pleasure to be of service."
Mizoguchi took the capsule down to the street and climbed aboard his motorcycle. As he kick-started the powerful machine, he spoke into one of the studs on his leather jacket. "Message to Colonel Tanaka from Courier Mizoguchi in San Francisco. Subject has received packages. Yes, both of them. Package 'B' is now fully operational." He flew down the hill followed by the blue Chevro automobile driven by the two FBI men.
"What did you make of that little ritual?" Inga Roberts asked Jake after Mizoguchi had gone.
Inga was Jake's on-again, off-again girlfriend. She worked in Firewall Security for Pentacle Krull, the Munich-Oakland-based consortium that had successfully developed galactic cookies for use in interstellar network systems.
Jake laid the scroll down on the coffee table and wrinkled his nose in distaste. He couldn't decide whether to be flattered or offended by New Nippon's sudden interest in his bio-anime serials.
He was practically a forgotten artist in his own country. Now a barbarous machine intent on wholesale domination of Asia was honoring his work. On the other hand, unmitigated bloodthirsty fascism must have its good side, he thought.
"Look at that!" Inga pointed at one of the virus-detector bracelets that she wore on her wrist. She was a walking armory of Krull firewall-gizmos. Her bracelet had turned a bright phosphorescent blue.
"That's a sure sign of a photon dump on the premises!" she exclaimed. "That guy must have planted some psi-surveillance bugs when he was here."
Inga pulled up her skirt a few inches above her attractively shaped thigh and searched in the elastic of one of her Swiss Army garter belt. She unclipped an aerosol pin, and shook it expertly. Then she rose from the sofa and walked over to the place where the Nipponese bio-courier had stood earlier.
She released a fine aerosol mist into the air. The steadily rippling cloud began to tag the electrons in the room with its vector-defining gel. The blank plasma field soon revealed its hidden images. Jake and Inga exchanged glances. They had company, all right.
Jake was always impressed by Inga's sexy magic. He loved how she made the invisible perform its latent strip-show until only a shiny residue was left behind to be explored at your leisure.
"They aren't even aware of the fact that we can see them," Inga grinned. Fascinated, they watched the photon-ninjas orient themselves to their new environment before they began to case the joint.
"They can't hear us either," Inga laughed as she squirted the aerosol in the direction of his bedroom. "I've just neutralized their link to their home-base. But they still believe that they're going about their business undetected. Fun, isn't it?"
"A neat trick."
They watched three vaporous figures move sluggishly through the room's now illuminated secret dimension.
"They know how to make them, that's for sure," Inga nodded with professional appreciation. "They're Nihongi drones. See those EM-polymers?" She pointed at the electromagnetic stitches on the tiny ninja hoods. "They look like ghosts wearing pajamas. That's what they remind me of."
Inga exclaimed with mock seriousness. "Don't say I didn't warn you, Jake. Fool around with these New Nippon 'psio-rhythym' delivery systems and they'll penetrate your E-field like bubonic fleas on a rat's ass. Just think what would have happened if you'd opted for their other 'secure' channel. The radiation would probably have killed you eventually."
Inga bit her lip as she realized her faux pas. She embraced him, and planted her hip against his as if to remind him that this-this shape, this curve of her body, would be enough to anchor him to the earth plane for a while longer.
She had other remedies in her bag of resuscitating tricks, too. Other life-support options. And he was grateful to her for all of them.
"You're a sweet, sweet woman, Inga, thank you," Jake whispered as he held her.
Inga harumphed as one of the industrial phantoms brushed past them. The ninja plasm moved like a dark wave towards the bookshelf with its EM-'corder, prepared to suction its entire contents. They saw the dark glint of its eyes as it scoured the bio-anime reference tubes.
"Let them play a while longer," she said. "You can learn something about their directives that way. So far, it looks like a random sweep. They're not searching for anything specific."
"Are you sure?" He wondered out loud. "They look pretty intent to me."
"Those are just knee-jerk subroutines. They're the latest generation of photon-ninjas, Jake. They look menacing, but there's not an ounce of sense in them. If they only knew we were watching them, they'd commit instant hara-kiri."
"Really?"
"Their system eventually implodes. They're designed that way."
"Otherwise they'd just keep on watching us?"
"That's right," Inga chuckled. She caught one of her hands in the loop of Jake's jumpsuit-thong and began to tug him in the direction of the bedroom. "Don't mind them. As voyeurs they're worthless shits," Inga joked. "In Europe, they're much more kinky. They get turned on by watching people fuck."
The two ninjas slowly turned around as Jake and Inga entered the bedroom. They immediately began to record the proceedings: One infrared form of female, Caucasian, 32, prone, legs in a V, primary position for human intercourse. Another infrared form--
They filmed the male as he tossed his clothes to the floor and pushed the female onto the bed.
Infrared role-play: Housewife from Arcturus being sold at slave auction on Neptune. Servicing ten thousand mirrored reflections of her new master's pendulum. Both are wearing thongs of ultraviolet light. Her hands are 'cuffed behind her back as he leaves crimson marks on her plump posterior orbs with a sentient belt named Harold that screams at her, 'How do you like that, bitch?'
"They're saying goodbye now. Take a look."
Jake rolled over on his side and glanced at the side of the bed. The three Nihongi drones stood in a row. They were bowing and waving farewell.
"It's part of their ritual," Inga surmised. "Rather cheeky programming, wouldn't you say?"
Jake shook his head incredulously. "I hate to say it, but they do look like tourists with those cameras around their necks."
"Don't they now?" Inga waved back at the ninjas. "Too bad they're not going anywhere. All that terrific footage going to waste. What a pity."
She removed one of her Krull earrings and aimed a photon-killing beam at the intruders.
One of the ninjas reacted to the warp suction first. His image began to crumple like an origami into a micron hole, then folded back elliptically as he struggled to retain his centrifugal force.
"Any moment now . . . " Inga's eyes were riveted to the scene. She was obviously relishing the deconstruction of these Made in New Nippon particle beings.
The ninja tottered, half-dissolved, then waved a suddenly regenerated hand at them.
"What's he doing now?" Inga exclaimed in surprise. The ninja's spastic reflex had caught her off-guard. "I think he's regurgitating one of his subroutines!"
The ninja took a few unsteady steps in their direction then wavered. He made a sign to Inga with his EM-'corder, motioning at himself and at the other ninjas.
"Pretty quirky," Jake said. "I think he wants to know if you'd be willing to take a group picture of them as a souvenir."
Inga clapped her hands. "'Shoo! Enough already!"
Like a corkscrew of light being poured into an hourglass, there was a zigzag streak of lightning. Then nothing was left, except for some sparks of plasmic fall-out that settled like burnt cinders at the foot of the bed.
"Do you have a dustpan?" Inga asked him. "I'd like to measure the telemetric density of their droppings."
Jake winced. "You're planning on doing a post-mortem?"
"Don't you want to know the provenance of these things? " Inga snapped at him. She was beginning to lose her patience with this man who kept her constantly amused with his otherworldly charm and eccentric ways. But he could really drive her up the wall sometimes. He was like, well, a vicarious lover. Most of the time, he was somewhere else, even when he was with her. In a dimension all his own.
"Aren't you the least bit curious about what's going on?" Inga prodded him. "Why all this sudden interest in you and your work? What do the Nipponese want from you, Jake? What are you getting into here?"
"Hell if I know," Jake shrugged. He smiled to himself inwardly. He had inadvertently answered Inga's question. The hell that he knew . . . That's what they wanted from him. That and the source of all its power.
"It's Fuji antimatter film." Inga announced her findings to Jake an hour later. "That's the stuff these photon-ninjas are composed of. Their flesh and blood, you might say." She had rigged a connection with a lab aboard a remote Pentacle Krull satellite that was orbiting at a safe distance of 4.3 light years away. The test-results were coming in now. "It has an energy density of 5.0 x 1016 J/kg. Pretty amazing."
Inga shook her head in disbelief. "This is really high end! It's used by the Nipponese security services, mainly the Tokko, the Special Higher Police. But it's a product of Ishi Meta Systems. They're a shell corporation for this secret rightwing organization called the Camellia Group. Pentacle Krull has had its eye on them for years."
"Impressive," she remarked as she studied the report. "This antimatter film shoots femtosecond x-ray pulses a quadrillionth-of-a-second long."
"Meaning what?" Jake inquired.
"Put it this way, "she explained. "Whoever is on the receiving end of a transmission like this can develop quite an interactive dossier on you."
"Interactive dossier?"
Inga patted Jake on the knee. "What I'm trying to say is this: They can take remote pictures of your DNA plasm, hell, of your entire subatomic structure! Then they can download everything you know, everything you are. Then they can manipulate it--and beam it back at you!"
To Inga's surprise, the news didn't seem to faze Jake. He had a tranquil expression on his face as though he was observing a caterpillar crawling on a leaf. It was certainly not the look of a man who had his head on the block as he listened to the rainlike gush of the falling guillotine.
"Don't you get it, Jake?" Inga exploded in frustration. "Soon they'll be able to beam you into their cross-hairs and reconfigure you any way they like. They can make you disappear if they want. Or freeze you in hell forever."
Jake was silent. He had that faraway look in his eyes again. Suddenly Inga was struck by a realization.
"You know what I'm talking about! None of this is news to you! They know you've been there, to that Z-Zone place! That's what this is all about, isn't it? For Christ's sake, Jake! Why can't you tell me where you go? And what you do over there?"
Jake felt a strange relaxation come over him. It was as if he had reached some sort of a decision about where he really belonged-and to whom.
"Well?" Inga demanded. "Are you going to tell me, or not?"
He shook his head at her sadly. "I . . . can't. Not yet, Inga. I think I'm dreaming things. I'm learning about who I am. And who I'm not."
"Fuck you, Jake," Inga scowled as she turned away from him. "Get some sleep. It's a big day tomorrow."
Yiiiiiiiiii . . . An eerie moan rose from the edge of his mind as he lay there in bed. It was Necroangel's cry. He listened to it, then rose quietly, careful not to awaken Inga. He always felt a twinge of guilt leaving her behind. But the Z-Zone was where his heart now belonged. The blackness that inspired him with its terrifying beauty.
Time to reconnect. Jake slipped on his kimono of woven African reeds and walked down the carpeted hallway to his bio-manga studio. He plodded along in bare feet like a straw man in search of fire. He pushed the door open and approached the dais where his Hakusai workstation was connected to the headrest on the raised REM-platform.
He always felt at home in this space. His old studio! Launch pad to the infinite realms of the sublime and the absurd! How many more times would he make use of it? He wondered for a moment. He already felt himself a guest here. A temporary visitor who would soon overstay his welcome. Was that a sign that he was truly slipping away into another world?
Jake had gel-taped some of his favorite inspirational sayings to his Hakusai REM-processor, a smooth black oval machine the size of a bird's nest. He glanced at them fondly. "Creativity is a drug I cannot live without."-Cecil B. DeMille . . . "We should be afraid! The reason that we suffer from anxiety is that we are unable to live with our fear."-Tatsumi Hijikata (Founder of Butoh, 1928-1986). Yet another Hijikataism: "It's a strange habit of mine to put myself in helpless situations."
One of the maxims had no attribution (Inga had inquired), but for some reason it struck a warped chord with Jake: "Excuse me, sir, but is that birdshit on your turban?"
It was always strange to slip from one state of sleep into another. They were different channels, of course. But the difference never failed to amaze him.
One delta state was warm, chaotic, and full of the rumblefish fragments of the day that meshed together to create a fuzzy inner environment. The "other" delta state, the one he was about to enter now, was like an ice-cold stream that ran its course until it reached an underground sea that raged beneath the tectonic plates of consciousness.
What was it really? He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything anymore. He was still learning to navigate through the darkness.
Jake lay down and snapped the 'trodes into the slots of his headband. He took a deep breath, then moved his head ever so slightly to the left and to the right. He switched on the archived clips of his "Tao" Smith neurals that were mounted into the blinking gel-screens on the walls. He studied them sadly for a moment.
Ten years of work flashed before his eyes. A tribute or a fond farewell? Did it really matter?
Then "Tao" Smith's manga-handsome features melted away, and another face assumed the vacuum left by Jake's swashbuckling anime creation. He recognized the half-smile, the half-fuck-you expression in the specter's bright black eyes. The shaved head with its white chalk make-up. The skull in all its living glory.
For a terrifying second, Jake experienced a moment of clarity akin to a Chinese puzzle-box going through a sawmill, all its hidden compartments churned into a pulp beyond the grasp of human revelation. Jake Hill knew that face. Knew it from a million years ago.
"Fuck you, Johnny Hara," Jake said. "Fuck you, you seriously insane bastard."
With his left hand shaking, Jake reached for the delta-toggle and injected a hyperborum capsule into the delivery mechanism of his Hakusai workstation. The acrid fumes hit his nostrils at almost the same moment that they reached his brain. The effect was instantaneous like a scream tipping over into a vat of mind-splitting green light.
He was >>in<< before he knew it.