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CHAPTER.01 |F|L|A|S|H|B|A|C|K|
PRE-DECISION
Scenario by Kotaro Uchikoshi
December 26, 2028: Just after noon
“Six billion will die if we don’t do something!”
Sigma stood in the center of the Infirmary, a crowbar gripped in his hands. What used to be the door of a medicine cabinet lay at his feet among shards of broken bottles.
None of the participants dared make a move. A furry face poked through the wall of legs.
“Gab…” Sigma’s voice trailed off. His gaze caught on the canister hanging from the dog’s collar.
“Could it be-?” No sooner had he spoken than Sigma leapt towards the dog. Carlos seized the opportunity and tackled Sigma. The two wrestled across the floor and slammed into the wall, shaking the room.
“Get off me! It might be in the case!”
“What might be? You’re not making sense!”
“The very thing that will kill six bil—dammit!” Sigma held tight to the crowbar as Carlos attempted to pin him.
“Don’t just stand there! Do something!” Carlos struggled to get the words out.
Junpei and Eric quickly leapt into action. The three men piled on him and Sigma put his full strength into trying to buck them off.
“There’s still some fight left in this old man!”
“Who’s an old man? You’re stronger than any of my crew back at the station.”
The four women watched the scuffle from a safe distance. Mira was simply bemused. Diana looked out of her element. Phi just grit her teeth. And as for Akane… She calmly knelt down and opened the case on Gab’s collar. Removing the contents, she presented them to Diana.
“You said you were a nurse, didn’t you, Diana? Can you tell me what this is?”
Diana examined it carefully. “It’s nitrate. You’d use it to treat cardiovascular disease.”
“You mean like, heart attacks?” Phi narrowed her eyes and Diana responded with a nod.
Mira interjected. “So Gab’s like one of those rescue dogs. Someone’s heart gives out, and Gab’s there to provide the medicine. He’s more reliable than some people I know.” Hearing the explanation, the fight went out of Sigma and he finally stopped struggling. Carlos wrested the crowbar away from him and Eric picked it up. He raised it over Sigma’s head. “Throw this asshole in confinement!”
Junpei stood and brushed himself off. “Yeah, that’s the course of action the emergency guidebook suggests. ‘Should a participant become mentally unstable during the experiment and pose a possible threat, the participant may be restrained in a confinement room at the leader’s discretion.’”
Mira wasn’t convinced. “But it’s still the first day. We only just started the cohabitation a few hours ago. Are you saying he went crazy already?”
“Whatever, just lock him up!” Eric urged.
“Carlos, you’re the leader,” Junpei suggested. “You decide.”
“Let’s just pretend this never happened. The staff will shut the whole thing down if they find out. I don’t want that—and neither do any of you.”
Mira studied her nails and murmured, “Call off the experiment, and we end up with less money in our pockets.”
Carlos left without another word. The others followed, leaving Diana with a prostrate Sigma. She crouched down next to him and offered her hand.
“Are you hurt?” she gently asked with a smile.
December 26, 2028: Late night
The first night of the experiment saw Phi stopped by Sigma’s room. She did not look pleased.
Akane arrived soon after. She let out a deep sigh, closed the door behind her, and turned on the music player in the corner of the room. It was playing an idyllic country song. She cranked the volume up before speaking.
“Sigma, did I not make myself clear? We’re not supposed to mention the future to others.”
“Yeah. I know what you said…”
Phi was not about to let Sigma sulk. “What the hell is wrong with you? Did you expect them to immediately agree? The truth will only confuse them. Remember what happened this afternoon?”
Akane continued, “If the three of us end up in confinement, nobody else will be able to stop the release of the virus.”
Sigma hung his head low and let out a heavy sigh. “So what do you suggest? We searched the facility top to bottom. No sign of Radical-6.”
The cramped room fell into silence. The song shifted to commiserate about a bad breakup that made the tense situation all the more uncomfortable.
“Maybe we’re in the wrong place.” Sigma suddenly raised his head.
“Wait, what?” Phi looked surprised.
“It could be that the pandemic started somewhere other than at Dcom.”
“No… That’s not possible,” Akane began before Sigma cut her off.
“No, you don’t know. Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not the Akane Kurashiki from 2029. You’ve yet to live through the end of civilization.”
“But Sigma-“
“I was there. April 13, 2029, the day the world’s antimatter reactors exploded. And that’s not all. I know what caused it—the Radical-6 outbreak. But the one thing I didn’t see was how the virus escaped from Dcom. The pandemic started right here. Allegedly. I know this because you told me, Akane. The future you.”
Akane couldn’t hide her discomfort as she looked at him. She seemed on the verge of tears.
“Sigma, what are you getting at?” Phi asked him, arms crossed.
“I’m saying… What if the future Akane lied?”
“W-Wait just a moment.” Akane raised a placating hand.
“Assume that’s true. Blaming me wont’ do anything. You said it yourself, Sigma. It wasn’t me in the present. It was me in the future.”
“Then how do you know about Radical-6?”
“I had a… vision.”
“A vision?”
“My future self reached out to me through the morphogenetic field. But the images are fragmented. I can’t be sure of anything.” “So you can’t be positive that the virus escaped from Dcom, now can you?”
“That’s true, but…” Akane lowered her eyes.
Silence filled the room once more. The country song switched to a ballad.
“Akane, look at me.” Sigma gripped her shoulders. “The future you doesn’t matter. I need you – the you right now – to convince me that you’re not lying. Do you swear?”
Akane raised her face to look Sigma straight in the eyes. “Yes. I swear.”
Sigma sighed and relaxed enough to quirk a small smile, which Akane returned. Phi simply watched them in silence.
December 27, 2028
The Dcom facility was comprised of several independent units. One functioned as a living room of sorts for the participants to gather and hang out. They called it the Home Unit, and that’s where Carlos, Mira, Eric, and Diana were now, staving off boredom. The others were off in their private rooms, working up a sweat in the gym, or tending to the soil in the Gardening Unit. The four of them held what looked to be parts for some sort of device. They were building something. A blueprint was spread across the table. Next to it, a box was overflowing with even more parts.
“What do you think it will be once we’re done?” Diana asked.
“Who even knows. A washing machine? Fighter jet? Or heck, a robot maid?” Eric shrugged, completely uninterested.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure there’s no point to it,” Mira added. “Dcom is supposed to simulate cohabitation on Mars, right? The goal of the experiment is to collect our psychological data. Our only job is to have blood samples taken three times a day. Which means—“
“This is a good way to kill time.” Diana glanced down at the parts in her hands.
“We need some sort of goal. Otherwise we’d go cuckoo. Like that guy yesterday.” Mira held the tip of the screwdriver close to her temple and spun it loosely in a circle.
“Hey Carlos, you sure we made the right call?” Eric stopped working to ask uneasily. “Maybe we should’ve locked Sigma up after all.”
Carlos answered without looking up. “My decision stands. I can’t afford to abort the experiment.”
Pursing his lips, Eric simply shook his head.
December 28, 2028
The sprinklers in the Gardening Unit sprayed a thin curtain of mist that glittered in the light and formed a small rainbow. A solitary figure passed under it. It was Junpei. He stopped just short of Akane, her back turned to him. She sat in the center of the unit bathed in the mist of the sprinkler.
“Are you here to ask me something?” Akane asked without turning around.
Junpei balled his hands into fists. “Oh, I’ve got things to ask! I’m practically choking on them there’s so many things I need to get out!”
In the void after his outburst, the only sound for a few moments came from the intermittent cycling of the sprinklers.
“Akane, I’ve been waiting this whole time for you to talk to me. But you didn’t on the first day. On the second. You’re acting like nothing happened last year.”
“It’s not that. I just didn’t want to jeopardize everything I’ve worked for.”
“What are you up to this time?”
“I’m not ‘up to’ anything.”
“Stop acting so goddamn coy. I know all about the secret meetings you’ve been having with Phi and Sigma.” Akane didn’t respond.
“Does it have to do what Sigma said on the first day?”
“When the time comes, I’ll tell you everything.”
“I knew it! What exactly are you scheming?”
Akane silently stood. She turned and brushed past Junpei, the streaks on her cheeks clear to see. Junpei inhaled a quiet breath and watched her walk away.
Two figures stood in the shadow of the hallway, having overheard the entire exchange. Sigma and Phi lowered their voices, their eyes on Junpei.
“So that’s our young Tenmyouji, huh,” Sigma commented. Phi mused, “I never thought I’d hear words like that out of his mouth.”
“I knew what to expect when we met two days ago. But it’s still a shock.”
“He still sort of looks like Tenmyouji.”
“Acts like him, too. He’s the same crotchety grandpa on the inside.”
“Like they say, ‘a leopard can’t change its spots.’”
It was easy enough for them to joke. They had no idea what Junpei had gone through over the past year.
December 29, 2028
Sigma was alone in the gym, running on the treadmill. Diana appeared suddenly with a smile and water bottle extended. She offered it to him.
“You’re really going all out.”
“Sorry, but I’ll pass.” His response was flat, barely acknowledging her presence.
Diana put the drinking straw of the bottle to her lips, face slightly downcast. “You’re not avoiding me, are you?”
Sigma continued to run, eyes straight ahead.
“You haven’t made eye contact with me since we met.”
It wasn’t strictly true. When they first met the day the experiment began, Sigma’s eyes had been locked on Diana for a full ten seconds. She’d looked away in embarrassment, but Sigma kept staring. It was as if a spear had pierced his spine straight down from his skull, freezing him in place. But after that first moment, she was right. Sigma hadn’t so much as glanced at her for the past three days. He kept any conversation between them to the absolute bare minimum.
“I feel like I know you from somewhere,” she blurted out.
“Impossible. You’re—“
Diana tilted her head to the side. Sigma swallowed his words and instead wiped the sweat from his forehead. Diana pressed a button on the treadmill with a mischievous smirk. The motor screeched as it flew into high gear.
“Just so you know, I won’t turn it off until you look at me.”
“You shouldn’t be here. I’m crazy, if you haven’t heard.”
Her only response was to increase the speed again. Now it was her turn to stare at him. Sigma’s legs pounded the tread at full speed. Soon he was gasping for breath.
“Please, no more…of this…torture. My chest… It feels like it’s going to burst. It just might…if I don’t stop.”
Sigma couldn’t last any longer. He leapt from the machine and headed towards the shower, panting heavily. The door clicked shut behind him followed by the sound of running water.
Diana left the gym, head cocked in contemplation.
Inside the empty room, buried under the noise of the shower, was the faint sound of someone choking back tears.
December 30, 2028
Over the past several days, Sigma had repeatedly ignored Akane and Phi’s explicit instructions not to warn the others about the impending deaths of six billion people. He’d even let Eric goad him into admitting he was working with Akane and Phi. But for better or worse, nobody took him seriously. Every time he started up again, they simply rolled their eyes and ignored him. Now it was December 30, the eve of the day of destiny. One member was building something in the Home Unit. Another was playing in their room with Gab. Still another was trying to sweat at their memories at the gym. The normal routine in Dcom. Except for one thing: The crops in the Farming Unit had finally sprouted.
That night everyone gathered in the Home Unit for a toast. Sigma, Akane, and Phi may have joined in the celebration physically, but their minds were preoccupied with what was to come. No one could say that their expressions were anything but dour as a cloud of gloom hung over them.
The hour grew late. Everyone turned in for the night and fell asleep, unaware of what tomorrow had in store.