Sulphur Sunset
Aiki looked at me through hooded eyes, head slightly cocked, as I bowed slightly at the waist, my hands in front of my chest, palms together, and introduced myself, looking at her chin. I waited for her nod before I sat down next to her, turned to the side a little to make room for my legs.
“You’re Masahiko Ito?ˮ she asked. “The Prince? Seriously?ˮ
She had expected a Gaijin, just not that I’d be one.
Part of my first name actually means ‘prince’, but I got the nickname from my consigliere after I took over my father’s enterprise, taking care of competitors in an apparently Machiavellian way, which he had to explain to me.
She was sitting on a stool with one elbow on the bar of the Yatai. Behind her, a curtain of rain streamed from its roof, illuminated by cascading signs advertising women, drugs, alcohol, music or any combination of those. The neon Kanji were almost in sync with the acid rain that prevented most pedestrians from venturing out.
“Yeah,ˮ I said. “And you must be Aiki.”
She wore a careful combination of black and dark purple. Her hair in a bob, curled against her neck at the shoulders, was as black as you’d expect but with a soft dark blue hue I didn’t think came out of a bottle. She was small compared to me, but around average height and slender. She looked fragile. But the dedicated efficiency of her movements, which were few, the way her eyes moved to take in her surroundings, how she sat with both feet on the ground, ready to move in an instant, told me she was anything but.
“You don’t look like a prince,” she said. I shrugged apologetically. But indeed, a strapping young man I’m not. I’ve got a small forehead, big eyebrows, cauliflower ears, and stand at over two meters.
We ordered noodles with bacon from the guy frowning at me, who glanced at Aiki confused before shuffling off to complete the order. Holding the edge of my steaming paper cup at chin level after I received it, I started to use my chopsticks to shovel the noodles in my face. Aiki nodded almost imperceptibly and followed suit.
It wasn’t actual bacon, not anymore. When Avian flu first infected bovines, then pigs, there was fear of mutation combining Avian flu with the Porkine variant that could jump to humans. This more or less made almost all of us vegetarians overnight. Still, it was good food. She knew her Yatai.
When she was done she used a napkin to dab at the corners of her mouth, looking at me while I lifted the cup and slurped the last of the soup out, catching a few chunks that almost, but not quite, tasted like bacon. She lit a cigarette with a thin, gold lighter that produced a tiny blue flame probably hot enough to weld with. The 拒否(*) tattoo between her thumb and index finger matched the colour of her jacket, and I briefly wondered what the colour would be if she was naked, if it would be visible at all.
She noticed what I was looking at and her eyelids lowered a little again. I raised both hands shoulder high, palms toward her and leaned back on the barstool. Now her eyes narrowed. I was doing alright, so far.
*If you tell a guy ‘no thanks’ 10 times and he won’t go away, you use 拒否
We talked a bit more and checked each other out while she finished her smoke. Then we stepped from under the Yatai’s awning. Our umbrellas emerged from our jackets, created a spiderweb of supports and unfolded simultaneously. Hers was purple, mine black. They exchanged information and where they connected a pattern of aubergine flames fading into darkness emerged.
They reached down to below our shoulders, the front only visible where raindrops joined and cascaded down sideways to the left in infinitely changing patterns.
We walked in silence until we reached the row of banking kiosks, entering one of the big ones designed for two people, and waited for the mist from the doorframe to solidify.
Originally, these things were designed for banking, an ATM evolved into a personal space providing more security against increasingly desperate beggars than shielding your PIN. But soon enough, they were the only locations left where it was possible to have a conversation or communication with parties remote without ending up in numerous databases. Space for the payment description exploded into something resembling the internet, but under Swiss banking and privacy laws. So we signed with blood, her thumb on one sensor, mine on the other. Cameras scanned our faces and eyes and, satisfied, the screen came to life to show us a recording of an avatar of Mr. Chang, smiling at us. Mr. Chang always used an avatar because a Molotov cocktail had scarred the left side of his face when he was younger, and was still working his way up the strict hierarchy of his organization.
“That explains it,ˮ Aiki said when the briefing was over and we had received our instructions. She looked up at me while we waited for the wall to dissolve and sucked away again, playing with a thin black card with a green logo the machine had produced, moving it between her fingers like a stage magician would a coin. “But I don’t understand why you would do it yourself. I mean, you’re the Prince, right?ˮ
The Prince was in charge of a clandestine hydra, a multi-headed Japanese outfit in a constant tug of war with the Russians, the Chinese and the newly imported Westerners, which were the easiest to deal with since they still hadn’t figured out whether the Italians or the Irish were in charge. My father had moved to Japan in his early twenties and exponentially grew the business that had been passed from father to son since the end of world war two, and was a combined Japanese-American enterprise. The fact we had many westerners in our employ since long before the recent influx explained why Mr. Chang had reached out to us for assistance in this affair.
Those newly imported westerners resulted indirectly from Covid-2, which circled the globe with terrifying speed and made short work of disinformation. Within months, half of American conservatives had perished, defending their personal freedom not to wear masks to the very end, in what at that point in time still was the United States of America. After, Japan welcomed the refugees with open arms, grateful for the solution to their declining population.
I was born in Osaka, looking like my father, definitely not my mother. I sounded like her though, with an accent that betrayed roots near the harbor. But the fact that I was born and raised in Japan was impossible to tell from my appearance, so I’d always be regarded as Gaijin, foreigner, outsider, for the native born, who would associate me with the more recent influx of Westerners.
And so, as I had suspected, Mr. Chang had informed us we were to go to Glacier, the district on the outskirts of town, where abandoned and subsequently refurbished industrial buildings, the majority catering to logistics and transport now obsolete, housed most of the refugees. As a Gaijin, I’d fit right in and, in my company, Aiki wouldn’t be harassed. Just frowned upon.
As soon as we stepped from the kiosk I noticed movement to my right, where little neon reached and steam from subsurface utility rooms leisurely billowed from sunken grates. My shoulders lowered, I felt my ears pulling back as I saw the guy emerge. His upper face was shaded by a hoodie, both lips and nostrils lined with piercings to confuse facial recognition. Aiki moved in front of me to the left, raising her hands, fingers relaxed, as if moving into a Tai-Chi position. The punk faltered, thought better of it, turned and ran.
“That’s odd,ˮ I said, “In Namba.ˮ
Aiki evidently agreed because she was already giving chase before the second word left my mouth and I immediately rushed after them. I turned into the alley just in time to see the guy barge through the door he must have come out of earlier, since nobody leaves a door unlocked. He wasn’t fast enough to lock it because when Aiki reached it she went through as well. A single shot had already rung out by the time I got through the door. The punk was holding a broken wrist, the gun just out of reach on the floor.
All that running had pushed the hoodie from his skull and blue eyes moved from Aiki to me and back, squinting in pain. A Gaijin with a shit ton of pancake on his face. I had no idea what the guy was trying to achieve when he reached for Aiki, but a second later he had two broken wrists. He looked at me in despair, both arms now at his side, as if a fellow Whiteface would come to his rescue.
“Who sent you?ˮ Aiki asked. The punk focused on her.
“Wouldn’t tell you if I knew,ˮ he snarled at her. “But I don’t know anything.ˮ His eyes, pupils huge, belied the defiant aggression in his tone.
“Oh, darling,ˮ she replied, producing her thin gold lighter. “I’m sure you know something we can use.ˮ
I had been right. That tiny blue flame was hot enough to weld with.
Even with the odds raised, we decided to continue to Glacier and Aiki summoned her car. It was a low two-seater, doors opening upward, and yellow. I raised my eyebrows at her.
“Okay, okay,ˮ she said, rubbing the side of the ring that was the interface for the car. The vehicle turned a dark purple to match her jacket as she approached. We got in, and she placed the ring in its socket, her thumb validating ownership in the process. She told it where to go, and after a moment’s hesitation she rotated her chair to look at me. I didn’t rotate mine, out of habit, not because I didn’t want to look at her. On the contrary. But I don’t like my back to the door. James Butler Hickok, aka Wild Bill, was shot in the back when he had done so by some asshole he didn’t see coming.
“So, why do you?ˮ she continued the conversation she had started the moment we left the kiosk, assuming I could also ignore the fairly violent intermezzo. “Last thing I heard was you and Chang aren’t exactly friends.ˮ
The car’s movements were almost imperceptible. It was talking to every other vehicle in a two mile radius and so there weren’t any surprises requiring sudden brakes. We passed intersections with now-redundant traffic lights blinking a steady orange, reflecting on the wet tarmac like a solid base drum under the unpredictable neon jazz.
“We’re not enemies either, usually. Competitors. And in this case, we seem to have a mutual interest.ˮ
She sighed. “Yeah, ok, point taken. But then, why you? Yourself? Why not hire a cheap goon like me, or a couple?ˮ
I seriously doubted she came cheap.
“Because of subtle undertones in what little information we got, I strongly suspected we’d be dealing with Glacier. And nobody knows it like I do.ˮ
She pursed her lips and uttered a small grunt. She wasn’t satisfied but couldn’t find a crack to pull at. There was one, she just didn’t find it because she didn’t know what I suspected we were retrieving for Mr. Chang. And if I was right, we weren’t retrieving it for Mr. Chang, but for me.
She knew my outfit wasn’t just Gaijin. Hell, nobody but my most intimate and trusted inner circle knew the Prince was one. During meetings for example, I’d take my consigliere, a small, balding Japanese man with a mouth that always smiled and eyes that never did. He’d take the seat as Masahiko Ito and I’d stand behind him, Big Ugly, the bodyguard.
The cat was out of the bag now, I assumed, not expecting any form of loyalty from this contemporary rōnin.
Which would get exponentially worse if my suspicions were accurate. A woman like Aiki was for rent, for a period of time or a certain job. They don’t flip. That’s the end of their career. Never to be trusted again. This bothered me, because I didn’t want to kill her, provided I could.
We reached our destination, a vast expanse of industrial storage units back to back, with a street wide enough for two trucks to pass between the fronts, converted into an impromptu market. A rainbow of tarpaulin sheets spanned the streets, each with a pole in the centre to create a low pyramid shape. The curtains of rain between the squares were intersected with large chunks of concrete sewer pipes, big enough to walk through but I’d have to bend my back a lot more than most people. The majority of refurbished storage units housed shops. Food, booze, drugs, meat, adult entertainment.
“Jesus wept,ˮ Aiki muttered, rotating her chair back to face forward while the car stopped and both doors hissed upward. “Let’s go find 4711,ˮ she said while the car drove off to find a place to park.
We got out of the car, muting our umbrellas, and hurried to the first tarpaulin cover. We moved through clusters of people, all of them white. I admired how Aiki moved with ease and confidence, even anticipating the sudden stops and hesitations in the flow when people realized there was an actual Japanese woman among them and started staring. Also, I’ll admit, I admired how her tight black jeans hugged her backside.
“Fuck,ˮ Aiki whispered. “I feel like a Junior Idol at a convention of paedophiles.ˮ I grinned.
“It’s alright pumpkin, daddy is here.ˮ
She looked up at me, eyes wide, mouth open, full lips parted slightly to reveal a row of white and remarkably small teeth.
“Ooowww,ˮ she uttered in a low breath and suddenly laughed, poking my arm with her elbow, then surprised me by hooking her arm into mine when we continued walking, glancing left and right, checking the numbers still mounted on some of the units.
I stayed behind her when we traversed the first tunnel. I bent down far to prevent my skull scraping the concrete of the sewer pipe. The smell of her hair lingered in my nostrils long after.
Immediately after we emerged from the crossing she hooked her arm into mine again. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had a woman at my arm I didn’t pay for. I knew it was a role she played for an audience but that rational thought didn’t seem to percolate into all of me.
When we found 4711, a string of seven red kanji painted on the rusted steel covering the facade, with a little door in the center of it, informed us anything could be repaired or your money back. The kanji were old and dripped crimson tears from years of exposure, telling us this shop had been here before the place turned into a section of Glacier.
We stood a meter from the door, looking at a camera mounted high up in a corner, its black beady eye peeking from a granite casing. A little red LED told us it was operational, but not if somebody was actually watching the footage.
Aiki stepped forward, kicked the door and stepped back.
“What?ˮ a voice barked from a speaker invisibly mounted in the camera casing. Aiki held up the black card produced by the banking machine, showing the green logo.
“Oh, it’s you,ˮ the voice muttered, followed by the sound of a chair scraping over concrete.
After a while the door opened and an old man ushered us in, eyes big behind thick glasses dancing to check behind us.
“Truth be told,ˮ he said, leading us into the unit between racks of shelves filled with components with passages between them so narrow I had to navigate them sideways, “I never thought I’d get rid of the thing.ˮ
We emerged from the maze into a small open space featuring a workbench against a wall on one side and some machines scattered around against the other. I noticed a frame on the door of a locker, an Asian woman holding a baby. The picture was faded and I could see fingerprints on the bottom part of the glass.
The thing in question was sitting on the workbench. It was what I had suspected, or feared.
“I’d like to say I forgot about it, but since it keeps me up at night or I have nightmares about it, that wouldn’t be fair,ˮ the old man said, with both hands fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. An old habit it seemed, since at those two places the shirt was worn to shreds. I realised he looked older than he actually was. Worn, tired, rather than aged. “I thought everybody else forgot about it though.ˮ
Aiki recognized the object as well.
“You’ve got to be joking,ˮ she whispered and slowly walked to the workbench to touch it like a Catholic priest would approach and touch a splinter from the cross.
I looked like the flattened shell of a turtle, painted in desert camouflage. With straps, like a rucksack, but this was worn up front. The bulge that would protrude from the user’s sternum featured four little holes on each side to insert fingertips, though actual human control was optional. A small indentation at the base showed the same logo as was on the little card Chang had provided.
“A fucking nano drone swarm.ˮ She lifted it to peer at the bottom which curved slightly inward for a comfortable fit. “And a LAW too. But these don’t exist anymore, do they?ˮ
After the United States dissolved, China and Russia’s eternal friendship lasted for some 36 seconds more and they turned on each other, aiming for dominance. There were a few things, however, that superseded their animosity. One of these was their determination to prevent the proliferation of nanotech military hardware, and especially Lethal Autonomous Weapons. Technology that could create itself and kill without human oversight or intervention. They had it, and nobody else could. Everybody knew that. And yet, here we were staring at one—or better, one half of one.
“I don’t think so,ˮ the old man admitted, “apart from this one.ˮ
“How did it surface now?ˮ I asked. “Why?ˮ The old man glanced at the picture, back at us, then reached out and touched the glass once again.
“Couple of weeks back, it was 10 years ago that Brishu beached,ˮ he said, softly. “I arrived here, but my daughter and her kid didn’t make it. I got drunk, trying to forget.ˮ
“So?ˮ Aiki said, “You shoot your mouth off in a bar or something?ˮ He shook his head.
“No, no. I don’t think so anyway. But after…ˮ He hesitated, his Adam’s apple moving up and down before he swallowed hard. “I felt like a woman. An… eh… exotic one. Like my wife, may she rest in peace. I probably told her about the future I was going to build for us. And how I’d afford it.ˮ The corners of his mouth twitched and his eyes moistened behind the thick glasses. “I was drunk,ˮ he apologizes, more to his departed wife than to us. “I mixed up.ˮ
Exotic woman. Enter Mr. Chang. Aiki glanced at me, thinking the same.
“And a few days after,ˮ she ventured, “somebody contacted you and offered to buy it off you.ˮ
He nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t want money. I don’t want to be complicit. I want it out of my place, my dreams, my soul.ˮ
And so, a few minutes later, we walked out of the repair shop carrying an inconspicuous plastic bag featuring the logo of a nearby supermarket, holding the control interface for the drone swarm, wrapped in a blanket. Also in our possession, albeit not in physical format, was the location of its counterpart.
“Wanna go get it?ˮ Aiki asked after we had navigated the market, again as if we were a couple, and had entered her car.
“Why wait?ˮ I replied, a knot in my stomach tightening as the point of no return approached.
“We need transport to get there though,ˮ she observed, patting the redundant steering wheel of her city-slick car.
“I got it sorted,ˮ I said, sending Nicki a location. “Just get us to Misaki.ˮ
At the edge of Misaki, the border of the Osaka Metropolitan Area, I gave Aiki’s car the coordinates where Nicki was now waiting.
“Dude,ˮ Aiki moaned when we approached her in the parking. “Why do you even own a thing like that?ˮ
The thing, Nicki, was a modified, barely street-legal Humvee, designed to be thrown out of military aircraft at low altitude and buzz into combat seconds later.
“I like to get out of town,ˮ I replied, clambering in and syncing my implant. You’d need a car like that, if you’re going to stray from the cities, because with the incessant rains and storms and mudslides, maintenance of all but the most important infrastructure was impossible to afford.
The sunset bled through the sulphur band-aid on a mortally wounded planet as we drove from the parking lot, roughly west, and into it.
“Fuck, look at that,ˮ Aiki sighed some time later, when we rounded the hill to the south of Miyama, what was left of the road turned right and we had an unobstructed view on the shore that stretched North from Kada Beach. I stopped the car and we looked in silence at the beached ships that created a skyline of rusted squares and triangles that reflected the sulphur sunset in shades of red and crimson. Cracked and broken windows shone a brighter red, the eyes of demons once roaming free, now stranded. The biggest one, Brishu, was a container ship too big for the Suez Canal once the water levels dropped, and too expensive to sail around Africa. It was converted into a floating refugee camp for its last trip. And even while Japan was welcoming to the flotsam from the civil war, the vast number of people took time to process and a flotilla of ships had to wait to be processed.
Brishu was the first to decide it had waited long enough and beached itself to unload its cargo and barf thousands upon thousands of Illegal Americans onto Japanese shores. Other ships followed before the navy stepped in and sank two other attempts, restoring some semblance of patience.
The old man from the repair shop had worked on Brishu as part of a contingent, all ex-military, who had the double task of maintaining order on the bee’s nest of rudimentary converted shipping containers crammed full of people and keeping that shit operational. He had hidden the second part of the LAW in one of the shipping containers which he assumed weren’t of much interest to the looters that descended on the ship like a locust swarm and stripped it to its bare hull in under a week.
We left Nicki out of sight as close as we could get her and slowly navigated the maritime junkyard on foot. Nicki kept track of us and gave directions to Brishu via the implant under my right ear, a tiny needle with a nano wire that could rub my eardrum. We reached a crack in the hull at the flood-line, created where the ass of the structure moved slightly up and down with the tide. Aiki stepped through. I followed, sideways.
We navigated the bowels of the vessel and finally arrived topside. It was almost dark now, the sunset a red band fading into an indigo sky that turned to black over our heads. The neat grid of shipping containers converted into living quarters stretched from bow to bridge, filling the deck a few stories high, leaning toward the bow because of the momentum of beaching.
The systematic design made it easy to find the location the old man had disclosed. Upon entering the container we immediately saw our target. It had been stripped but the bunk beds, 3 on each side, providing for 12 people, were part of the structure, fat pipes welded in place and way too much hassle to remove. One of these pipes, some 10 years back indistinguishable as being different, stood out like a sore tooth, unblemished between its rusted counterparts.
The problem was only one of us could walk out with it. But Aiki didn’t know that, and the only advantage I could see myself having was surprise. My bulk would mean nothing to her, all nerves and pressure points are at the same place. I was going to allow her to take two steps toward the shining rod but before she did Nicki chimed.
“Two vehicles arrived. Eight individuals emerged. They are wearing body armour and are armed. And heading your way.ˮ
I tapped Aiki on the shoulder. She had been staring at the discrepancy in the bunk bed with a slight frown, as if she couldn’t believe it was going to be that easy. When she turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder I pointed at my skull, where the needle was embedded. She nodded.
“They are speaking Russian,ˮ Nicki added.
I conveyed the information to Aiki and her face contorted, frowning, eyes in slits, corners of her mouth pulled backwards.
“Russian?ˮ she snarled. “Fucking Russians?ˮ Then her face lost all its tension, slacked, her mouth slightly open, she lowered her head and looked at the floor.
“I briefed Chang,ˮ she whispered. “He must have ratted.”
My breath left me in an explosive sigh she couldn’t know was relief. She’d never turn on her employer. But if her employer was the one to turn on her… hell hath no fury. Apparently, it wasn’t just the Russian and Chinese governments who suspended their animosity with respect to nano LAW. It was the gangsters too.
We’d walk out of that container together, even if we wouldn’t make it very far. And strangely enough, the first pleased me more than the latter bothered me. “FUCK!ˮ she then shouted and raised her head to look at me.
“Nobody knows about this,ˮ she sighed and at first I wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about. Then I noticed the collar of her jacket melted away and crept up her neck. Sleeves extended into gloves. At the waistline her jacket merged with her tight black jeans, briefly resembling the pattern our merged umbrellas had created as the material was turning into a matte black and gained a scaly texture.
Aiki, for the love of god, was fused with a fucking skinsuit. Impossibly expensive, and insanely hard to work with or get into and out of. I had a nano wire tickling my eardrum. She had a few hundred webbed in her brain, talking to the suit. A skinsuit, a hybrid of Graphene and organic matter, grown from your own DNA, isn’t something to wear. It’s a part of you. I stared at her in disbelief.
“Nobody knows about this,ˮ she repeated when the skinsuit had almost completed it’s transformation.
“Nobody knows the Prince is Gaijin,ˮ I answered. Her cheeks moved up a fraction, squeezing those deep, dark, slanted eyes.
“Deal,ˮ she said, just before the collar of the suit expanded to cover her face and skull. Then she flickered and was gone, before she even left the shipping container.
I yanked the shiny pipe from the bunk bed and sat down, turning the tube around and around in my hands for countless hours, which I think was about 40 minutes for somebody who wasn’t worried sick.
I didn’t see or hear Aiki return but I sensed her presence. “I was in Kaohsiung,” I began when the air shimmered and she appeared, the skinsuit slowly peeling away from her head. Her face looked thinner, bonier. I wanted to buy her a steak. If I lived that long. After all, the LAW was worth a fortune, enough to buy you a place in Granite City.
“My father had sent me to take care of some business. Epic timing. I hadn’t even been there a week when the fucking Chinese invaded.” And the Chinese had cared a lot about the infrastructure Taiwan’s main harbor provided while they cared much less about the people living in the city around it.
“I got my ass out of there in a hurry,” I continued, “heading for Tainan since they took Kaohsiung Airport almost immediately. At the bridge crossing Houjin River there was a contingent of soldiers trying to organize the stream of refugees crossing. They waved me past, since I was on a bike. Then I saw a bunch of Chinese soldiers, small group, perhaps 12 or so, must have parachuted in. I stopped to look at what happened, didn’t think they stood much of a chance, outnumbered by both military as a mass of infuriated civilians.”
To this day, I wish I hadn’t stopped to look. Aiki stepped forward, reached out and put her hand on my shoulder while I stared at the floor of the container and into the past.
“One of them tossed a cylinder just like this one up. Some small balls scattered from it, fell to the ground and then a swarm of drones emerged from the craters they created to come into existence. A nano drone swarm. They opened fire with needle guns. Tore through everything, ripping it to shreds indiscriminately. Soldiers, civilians. Men, women. Children. Descending to reload, just creating the ammunition out of anything they landed on. Took under a minute. It didn’t stop. It just didn’t stop.”
I swallowed. Her hand squeezed.
“Tore out of there, made it to Tainan and back to Japan.”
I held the cylinder in my hands, in front of me, almost like an offering, when I finally looked up at her.
“What would you do with it?ˮ she asked. She knew already, just wanted me to say it.
“Bury it in a cubic meter of concrete and chuck it in the Nankai Trough,ˮ I complied.
“Then I suppose I’m with you now,ˮ she smiled, with all of her face. And even while I knew she meant the Prince and his outfit, that rational thought didn’t seem to percolate into all of me.
Ferdinand (Nerdinand) Francino was born in The Netherlands but moved to the UK decades ago to end up in Glasgow, Scotland.
He has been Field Service Engineer, Translator, Unemployed, DJ, manager of pubs and an underground Punk/Metal concert venue, webdesigner and creator of Virtual Worlds, about which he lectured at University, profoundly disliking the word, since nobody wants to be lectured.
He currently combines writing Fiction and Code with 3D CGI renders to create Visual Novels and Games.