Part 2
Chapter Two
Toy
1
A small table, some kitchenware, a television, a beaten old umbrella, an empty beer can substituting as an ashtray, a corrugated box of potatoes, newspapers scattered about the room, an unmade bed and the exhausted face of a young man. That was everything in the room.
It was a cramped room in a filthy apartment. Outside, lines of factories spewed filth into the air and it rained down on the zinc rooftop. The city-side corner of the room was lit by the dim setting sunlight, and there the boy continued watching television. He had been lying in front of the television for more than twelve hours. It was not that he had anything he wanted to watch, it was just that he had nothing better to do. He went to the toilet several times. He ate the potatoes. That was really all he did. His mother sent the potatoes to him from the country. Mold grew on the potato peels scattered all over his floor, but when he ate the potatoes it brought back memories of his hometown.
Near his home there flowed a clear stream. If children sat down in the greenery of the riverbed, they could fish for young carp until it got dark. The sunset reflecting off the river's surface was so lovely. There were no waves on the river and so it seemed like a mirror reflecting orange, nothing could be more beautiful.
He wanted to see that one more time. The sunset reflected by the river's surface, just to stand and see it again. But he could not go back ever again. There had been a terrible quarrel with his father about going into his line of work, and the boy had been disinherited and left. He could not remember when he began to want to go to the city, or why.
He had hated the boring countryside, and believed in moving to the city he could open up a whole new life for himself. But he had no concrete plans; no real clue what he wanted to do. At first he had burned with enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was crushed by failure and betrayal after betrayal, all piled upon each other until he broke. Everyone he met cheated him. He worked at many kinds of jobs. That was why he was a squatter. Squatting like a bug. So he usually stared fixedly at the television. While he watched, he could think about his home town. The sparkle of the evening sun, the hometown river, he could think about that.
On the television an idol sang a wonderful love song, and the red tricycle happened to pass in front of the apartment, sending the channels madly changing. After the tricycle moved away the channels continued their busy changing, but that phenomenon was simply accepted by the lethargic youth. Then the television began to change.
Finally the boy took notice. The surface of the cabinet began to pulse with what seemed to be blood vessels. The screen expanded and split in half. The blood vessels swelled. Suddenly tentacles slashed out, grabbed the boy by his ankles and caught him up. The screen split, crack opening into a mouth with a sticky, wet sound. The mouth opened and sucked the boy in, leg to hip, hip to chest. Little by little the television began to move. It lengthened and expanded like an octopus and moved towards the door. The last thing the boy saw was the sunset out his window. He had never thought it looked like much when compared with the river's evening sun, regretting its dull colors.
2
Kaori, Ako and Lyta took their daily twenty kilometer run, thinking all the time of what Odagiri had told them earlier. Recently, a lot of unbelievable, weird things had been reported. It was as though toys and machines were revolting. Cars that started up by themselves; stuffed toys attacking children; gas ranges suddenly spurting gouts of fire; and too many more things to count.
Just yesterday during rush hour an electric train went out of control. Countless people were killed and wounded. According to Odagiri, this kind of bizarre phenomenon happened before. She had reports dating back years.
For example, there was a famous case on June third, 1980. The North American Continental Air Defense Headquarters' greatest computer declared war on the Soviet Union. The computer set off alarms in the World's Federal Nuclear Control Center, and the whole mechanized system was set into motion. If it had not been for the hand of one man stopping it, the world would have been plunged into the third World War. The process leading to war had gone on for three minutes and fourteen seconds.
1978 in Florida, and a car of its own volition ran down its owner, killing her. When the woman stopped her car in a supermarket parking space, the engine turned itself on and the car backed up, running her over viciously. It was fifteen minutes before people were able to get close enough to help.
In 1983 there was a really weird incident. A Connecticut State resident who was sadly childless put a doll in a baby bed. Perhaps it cried and climbed out, for several times it was found in different parts of the house. When the lady returned home one evening, she found the doll blocking her way. Before her eyes it began to speak. "Why did you leave me no blanket? Why did you not sing me to sleep before you left? I'm not just a doll!" Frantic for help, the woman went to get someone to exorcize the doll, and he saw it floating in the air. The exorcist shoved his cross at the doll and it fell onto the bed.
There were other cases of unmanned fast moving trains and boats, airplanes taking off and touching down, the portrait of Mary shedding tears, statues that moved and just too many other things to count.
To Odagiri, that was just humanity and their unconscious desire to give life to inanimate objects. So the celebrated Swiss psychologist Carl Gustaf Jung was cited as saying, "Things merely exist. Even though things do not have wings or legs, people sometimes feel hatred for them, or may pour their love into objects. Such strong emotions may breathe life into them." That was what Odagiri wanted to say.
Kaori, Ako and Lyta continued to run in the suburbs during the dead of night. Recently, the results of all their practicing were beginning to be apparent. They no longer suffered aching muscles after weight training. There was no more collapsing during jogging.
The three really understood Odagiri's worries. If people's thoughts could give things life, then powerful thoughts could manipulate that life. And if that was the Vyram's strategy... if the recent craziness with toys and machines was caused by the Vyram... then very soon something truly terrible would probably happen.
The trio was out in a hilly area heading to the very edge of a residential district. Their footsteps and the sound of their breathing were the only things that disturbed the silence of the night. The crescent moon in the sky was beautiful. A small star shone in the arc of the moon. It was so rare, thought Kaori, it had to be a lucky omen. Surely something grand was going to happen. Surely Odagiri's worries were the result of thinking too much. The Vyram could not be that important a group.
Kaori did not know. The crescent moon with a star in its arch was known to be an evil omen. The ancients thought it summoned demons, and the stars foretold death.
When their run took them by a garbage dump, Kaori heard faint noises and she stopped. "What's up?" Ako asked her. Kaori put her finger to her lips in caution, prompting the two to listen carefully. And they heard it. There was someone groaning. The sound came from somewhere amongst the garbage.
There was kitchen waste and other unburnable material mixed together there. A bittersweet stench rose from the mountain of waste. The sound came from deep within the pile. It was like a belly-deep groaning.
Kaori timidly took a step towards the pile. Lyta said quickly, "Y -- you'd better not go, Kaori. I have a bad feeling about this."
Before he finished speaking, the mountain of garbage began to quake and crumble. From inside came a boxlike shape rolling along the ground.
"What is it?" screamed Ako.
It was a television. It was the television that had eaten the boy. Right before their eyes the television's smashed up screen was dribbling and then it vomited up an amniotic sack. It was from that violet skin sack that the groaning continued to come, the wet surface skin vibrating in tune with the groaning.
The three humans shrieked and clung together. A horribly ugly human was tearing its way from the amniotic sack. No, you could not call it a human. It was certainly something alive. The body glittered golden. Its metal skin was illuminated by the moonlight. It had small eyes, a small mouth, no nose and no ears, green fluid oozed from the skin of its cheek and chest. The skin looked scaled, like fish skin.
It was the boy, and he had been completely changed.
"Geh!" Ako cried. "It's impossible! I don't believe it! I can't believe it!"
"Well," murmured a voice in the boy's head, "kill. Show them your power." Step by step the boy moved closer to the three people in front of him.
"Everyone change!" Kaori called, but before she could operate her bracelet she was struck by a terrible blast and she fainted. The boy could call up tremendous power. Kaori's body was sent flying into the walls of a house and she lay crumpled where she fell.
"Ka -- Kaori!" Lyta and Ako both raced over to where she had fallen. She did not respond to them.
The boy got ready to attack again, bending his knees. The fluids that dripped from his body to his feet made puddles, and he slipped in them. Lyta and Ako fled with Kaori in their arms.
Silence returned. It was a silence so deep, you could imagine hearing noise from the pouring moonlight. Radiguet's feet did not break the silence.
The man with the old and young face moved slowly into the boy's vicinity. Toran and Maria followed along behind him. "Stand," Radiguet commanded. "You obey the Vyram. The Vyram are your mother. Stand."
The boy's body started to straighten up. Again he slipped back into the puddles. Fluid splattered this way and that from him. It looked as though, little by little, his body was dissolving.
"Hunh," Toran gave a little snort through his nose. "Looks like it was too soon. Premature delivery."
"It is a failure!!"
Maria's necrod whip flashed out at the boy. It struck again and again, and bits flew from the boy's back. The boy screamed. In his agony his cries had no words. His scream was like an animal's howl, long and resounding in the air. It was as if the scream itself had a life. The night air trembled eternally with his cry.
Gray slept inside Juuza's body. Since she swallowed him, his body had shrunk to the size of an embryo. He did not move. Juuza was giving Gray power. Mothers nourish their children in their wombs; and Juuza gave Gray the power to emanate thoughts. Very powerful thoughts, harboring in objects and creating new life.
Odagiri's theory was all-too correct. The Vyram were inducing the rebellion. Because Gray was a robot, it was possible for him to breathe a kind of life into the machines of Earth. It was Gray's will given to the red tricycle that began it all. The tricycle followed his voice, and so to speak became a messenger.
But the Vyram's true aim was more than that. The mutiny of the machines and toys was merely a prologue for a greater attack. Juuza's bones creaked. Her dried face looked up, her eyelids opened. There was nothing in those eyes. Instead of eyeballs, they were small pits of blackness. Gray's will swelled forth in a sensory wave of power, coming out in a straight shine from Juuza's eyes.
3
Kaori was in Lyta's vinyl house. They were there together. He had always enjoyed meeting her in the vinyl house after practice and chatting. They had not spoken in an hour, though.
Lyta smashed an insect crawling on a small tomato leaf. He had no idea what to say. She surely blames me for it, he thought. She's disappointed in me because I couldn't rescue her. Kaori sat in a chair and stared at the green tomatoes. But it was not an ordinary chair. She sat in a wheelchair.
After that terrible metal man had attacked her, Lyta and Ako carried the unconscious Kaori back to the base in their arms. When she regained consciousness, she discovered that she had no feeling whatsoever in her legs. Odagiri diagnosed it as paralysis of the lower body caused by psychosomatic shock. Detailed examinations could detect no physical reason.
It had been two days since she woke up and discovered that she could not walk. She was still vomiting. Every time she closed her eyes she saw that strange, metal man again. His shining metal body, his flaking skin, the dripping fluids, the total lack of expression in his tiny eyes. That monster shot me, she thought. It touched my body. That thought was what made her nauseous.
"Um... Kaori?" Lyta spoke resolutely. For two days he had fallen into deep self-contempt, and could not bring himself to speak to her. "I'm so sorry. I... I should have protected you -- "
"Ah," Kaori exclaimed. "I didn't know. You have the power to protect me?"
"No," Lyta answered her miserably. "No I don't. I was really... I'm so sorry."
"Please stop apologizing so much!" Kaori's voice rose on an edge of hysteria. "No matter all your apologies cannot fix my legs!!" She was anxious and terrified. Will I ever be able to walk again? She had been defeated so easily, even after all the work to improve herself. I can't transform. I'm no good as a warrior! I just have to face it, Kaori thought. Nothing will make me a good warrior. I'm meant to be just a rich girl in a big mansion. I want to return to the old Kaori. The boredom and ordinariness, truly I never noticed how luxurious it was.
"Um. If there's anything I can do for you, just tell me please," Lyta pleaded with her.
"Oh, yes. Cure my legs." Lyta could not say anything, so Kaori spoke again. "Oh, beat the Vyram." When he still could say nothing, she just kept going. "Yeah. There's nothing you can do. Really nothing at all. Nothing will stop you from coming in here and growing tomatoes." Lyta chewed his lips unhappily and at last she said, "Yes, there is actually something you can do. You can get out of here. Just please leave me alone."
He did as she said. After he was gone, Kaori buried her face in her hands and wept. I don't understand why this happened to me. Why me?! I wish it had happened to someone else!
Someone laid their hands on the back of her shoulders. She thought Lyta had returned and turned her head angrily only to find... "Ryu...." Thrown into confusion, she wiped her tears away.
He looked down at her, his expression never changing. There was no sympathy but also no condemnation. "When are you going to stop being so timid?" he asked her. "You have to start practicing moving your legs. You must rehabilitate. Your body is not broken."
"Every day every day practice practice... it's too much!" The tears overflowed.
"Don't complain. You're a warrior."
"No, no I'm not. I'm not fit for it. Even after all that practice I -- "
Ryu said nothing for a moment, then he bent down and pulled Kaori out of the wheelchair and onto his back. He took her out of there. Confused into silence, she clung to his back and entrusted herself to him. He left the vinyl house behind and took her out into the cool evening. The wind brushed her face. He took her to where they could look up easily and see the twinkling stars and just stood there.
Little by little Kaori regained her composure. "Ryu," she whispered in his ear. "If I never get the use of my legs back, would you... sometime take me out like this?"
Ryu dropped her. She landed heavily on the ground and cried out, but then stared indignantly up at Ryu. He stared back at her. And it was then, in the startling compassion in his eyes, that Kaori realized Ryu had been dealt a wound to his heart. This man, he isn't merely strong. I never imagined he could have been so deeply hurt. Only someone who's been terribly wounded could have such compassion in his eyes. What kind of life has he led that he's been so badly hurt?
She wanted to know the secret of Ryu's wound. Now she wanted to understand him much more. The only way to do that was for her to become a real warrior. Engulfed in the expression of his eyes, Kaori understood at last.