I wake up in a round bed, alone as a chucked-away toy. This love hotel room is a temple of pink. Not flower pink - offal pink. The curtains are soiled with morning. I hear jackhammers, traffic crossings and crows. Husky sunflowers bend in their vase. My head is corkscrewed from temple to temple. My tongue has been salted and sun-dried and shat on by desert weasels. My throat has been attacked by geologists' hammers. My elbows and knees have been friction-burned raw. My groin smells of prawn. The bedsheets are twisted, and the undersheet is dashed with crusty blood. So, two virgins defrocked one another. That groin sneeze was sex? That was no Golden Gate bridge to a promised land. It was a wobbly plank across a soggy bog. Nobody even gives you a badge to sew on. This room is a public tissue - love hotels must have the highest sex-per-cubic-metre ratios this side of . . . where? Paris. I grope for a cigarette - empty. Still. All things considered, I got off lightly. The telephone riiiiiiiiings. Daimon calling from the room next door, I bet.
At seven-forty I suddenly know where I am. Omekaido Avenue. That zirconium skyscraper is PanOpticon. I walk a little farther towards Shinjuku and get to the intersection with Kita Street. Jupiter Cafe. The morning is already shallow-frying. I check my money. If I walk back to Ueno, I can afford my submarine back to Kita Senju and buy a light breakfast. So light it would blow away if I sneezed.
I slide the ashtray between us. "That's nice of her." Lao Tzu flicks ash. "You call getting my cretin son to sell off my rice-fields to a supermarket owner nice? So much for filial duty! I let the brat have the land to stop the tax wolves attacking when I die and this" - he prods the machine - "is how I get repaid. I got to go shake the hose - you get leaky at my age. Care for a test drive while I'm gone?" He slides his vidboy3 over the counter toward me, and wanders off to the bathroom. I take off my baseball cap, plug myself in and press RUN. The screen clears.
I wake up in a round bed, alone as a chucked-away toy. This love hotel room is a temple of pink. Not flower pink - offal pink. The curtains are soiled with morning. I hear jackhammers, traffic crossings and crows. Husky sunflowers bend in their vase. My head is corkscrewed from temple to temple. My tongue has been salted and sun-dried and shat on by desert weasels. My throat has been attacked by geologists' hammers. My elbows and knees have been friction-burned raw. My groin smells of prawn. The bedsheets are twisted, and the undersheet is dashed with crusty blood. So, two virgins defrocked one another. That groin sneeze was sex? That was no Golden Gate bridge to a promised land. It was a wobbly plank across a soggy bog. Nobody even gives you a badge to sew on. This room is a public tissue - love hotels must have the highest sex-per-cubic-metre ratios this side of . . . where? Paris. I grope for a cigarette - empty. Still. All things considered, I got off lightly. The telephone riiiiiiiiings. Daimon calling from the room next door, I bet.
"Good morning, sir, this is reception." A man, brisk and breezy.
"Uh, g'morning."
"This is just to remind you that your suite is booked until seven . . . " My watch is on the bedside: 6:45. "Okay."
"After seven, hourly charges reapply."
"Okay, I'll be right out."
"Will you be paying cash or credit, sir?"
"What?"
"When your lady friends left just now they didn't know if you were paying cash or credit. Two rooms for all night comes to fifty-five thousand yen, provided nothing is taken from the minibar, and that you vacate the room in the next fifteen minutes."
Cold shock squeezes down my colon.
Still brisk, less breezy. "So I'm calling up to ensure there has been no kind of unpleasant misunderstanding."
Would vomiting help?
"No kind of problem, is there, sir?" Veiled menace.
"No, none at all. Uh, I'll pay cash, I think. I'll be right down."
"We'll be waiting for you in the entrance lobby, sir."
I get dressed in my gummy clothes and dart into Daimon's room. Nobody. Identical to mine, only on the mirror, scrawled in some sort of jelly, are the characters - "ONLY A VIDEO GAME". Daimon, you prime time bastard. Miyake, you idiot. I turn out my jeans pockets and find 630 yen, in small change. This isn't happening. I try to wake up. I fail. This is definitely happening. I am 54,370 yen short. I need a fantastic plan in the next nine minutes. I sit on the toilet and shit as I run through my alternatives. One: "You see, the guy I was with, he promised he would pay for everything on his, uh, father's expense account." The Yakuza king places his fingertips together. "Eiji Miyake, employed in a lost property office? A position of trust. How fascinated your employers would be to learn how you spend your weekends. I feel it is my civic duty to report this matter unless you are willing to compensate us with certain duties, not all of which, I must warn you, could be described as pleasant." Two: "Buntaro! Help! I need you to bring me fifty-five thousand yen to a love hotel right now or you'll have to find another tenant." Not a choice that poses him much difficulty. Three: "The Yakuza king licks his razor blade. So, this is the thief who attempted to escape from my hotel without paying for services consumed." I raise my bloodied head and swollen eyelids. My tongue lies in his shaving bowl.
If only crises could be flushed away down toilet bowls too.
In movies people escape along rooftops. I try to open the window, but it isn't designed to open, and anyway, I can't crawl down the sides of buildings. I see people in the littered streets and envy every single one of them. Could I start a fire? Trigger alarms and sprinklers? I follow the fire alarms to the end of the corridor, just so I feel I'm doing something. "In the event of fire, smoke alarms will automatically unlock this door." Uncle Tarmac says love hotels are designed to stop people doing runners - the elevator always takes you straight to reception. What else do people do in movies? "Out the back way," they hiss. Where is this "back way"? I try the other end of the corridor. "Emergency stairs. No way out." Back ways are through kitchens. I dimly remember Daimon, may his bollocks fester, telling me there was a kitchen. Hotel kitchens are in the basement. I slip through the door and start down the stairs. Stupidly, I look over the handrail. The distant floor is the size of a stamp. The Aoyama escape route. I go as fast and quietly as I can. What will I say if they catch me here? That I get claustrophobic in lifts. Shut up. I get down to the ground floor. A large glass door opens into reception. A huge male receptionist is standing there. An exsumo wrestler, waiting for me. The stairs continue down one more floor. I can beg for mercy, or up the stakes and continue down. The receptionist narrows his eyes, running his finger down a ledger. Him and mercy do not sleep in the same bed. I slip by the glass door - a statue of Atlas and the globe blocks his line of sight - and creep down the stairs to a door marked STAFF ONLY. Please let it be open. It doesn't open. I barge it. It judders open. Thank you. Beyond is a stuffy corridor of pipes and fuse boxes. At the end mops are stacked against another door. I turn the handle and push. Nothing doing. I barge it. The door is locked. Worse still I hear the glass door opening one floor above - and I didn't close the STAFF ONLY door behind me. "Hey? Anyone there?" Mr Sumo. Doom pisses hot dread on my head. What can I do? Desperate, I knock on the locked door. I hear Mr Sum's shoes on the steps. I knock again. And suddenly a bolt slides, the door is yanked open and a chef is glaring at me - behind him a striplit kitchen chops and bubbles. "You," he snarls, "had better" - his eyes belong to Satan - "be the new mousseboy."
Huh?
"Tell me you're the new mousseboy!"
Mr Sumo is nearly here.
"Yes, I'm the new mousseboy."
"Get in here!" He pulls me through, slams the door behind me and, giving me my first lucky break of the morning, bolts it shut. Head Chef Bonki is sewn into his hat. "What the hell are you doing turning up for your first morning forty-five minutes late, looking like a vagabond? Take off that baseball cap in my kitchen!" Behind him, junior chefs and kitchen hands watch the human sacrifice. I take off my cap and bow. "I'm very sorry." Cream, steam, mutton and gas. I see no windows and no doors. How do I get out of here? Head Chef Bonki snarls. "Master is disappointed. And when Master is disappointed, we are disappointed. We run a very - tight - ship!" He suddenly yells at the top of his voice and blasts what are left of my nerves away. "And what do we do to members of the crew who let the ship down?" The kitchen staff chant back in one airpunching chorus. "To the sharks! To the sharks! To the sharks!" I seriously consider giving myself up to Mr Sumo, after all. "Follow me, mousseboy. Master will conduct his inspection." I am hustled between shining counters and racks of pans, past a rack of punch-cards. A door. Please let there be a door. "This is where you check in, if Master forgives your disgraceful start." Mr Sumo must be at the bolted door by now. All these knives worry me. A boy with a sunken nose scrubs floor tiles with a toothbrush - the chef deals him a powerful kick for no apparent reason. We come to a poky office full of the chug, grind and kiss of a knife-sharpening lathe. On the far side is an open door - steps lead up to a yard of rubbish bags. The chef raps on the door frame, and shouts. "The new mousseboy has reported for active duty, Master." The lathe dies. "Finalemente." Master does not turn around. "Show the scoundrel in." His voice is far too high for his bulk. The head chef stands aside and prods me forward. Master turns around. He is wearing a blowtorcher's mask that reveals a petite mouth. He holds a cleaver sharp enough to castrate a bull. "Leave us, Head Chef Bonki. Hang the sign on the door." The office door clicks shut. Master tests the blade on his tongue. "Why prolong your little deception?"
"Sir?"
"You are not the mousseboy who served me so amply at Jeremiah the Bullfrog's, are you?"
Lie, quick! "Uh, true. I'm his brother. He got sick. But he didn't want to let down the crew, so he sent me instead." Not bad.
"How supremely sacrificial." Master advances. Not good.
The door touches my back. "My pleasure," I say. Do I hear banging?
"My pleasure. Mine, I tell you. Touch it. Mousse is springy."
I see my face in the black glass of his mask wondering what the mousseboy is supposed to do exactly. "You are the best in the business, Master." Sudden commotion is loose in the kitchen. No way around him to the yard door. Master pants. I smell liver pate on his breath. "Tweak it. Mousse is delicate. Slice it. Oh yes. Mousse is soft. So soft. Sniff it. Mousse will yield. Oh yes. Mousse will yield." Four fat fingers swim towards my face.
A shout. "Oy!"
"Irksome. Irksome." Master lifts up a tiny curtain next to my head that covers a peep-hole. His mouth stiffens. He picks up his cleaver, knocks me aside, flings the door open, and barges through. "Whorehouse vermin!" he screams. "You have been warned!' I glimpse Mr Sumo throwing assistant chefs over counters. "You have been warned!" shouts Master. "You have been warned what happens to pimps from the dark side who bring herpes and syphilis on to my spotless ship!" He hurls his cleaver. No point hanging around to examine the damage - I am out through the door, running up the steps, leaping over the plastic garbage bags, scattering through the crows, sprinting across the back yard, down a side street, and I don't stop zigzagging and checking behind me until seven-thirty.
At seven-forty I suddenly know where I am. Omekaido Avenue. That zirconium skyscraper is PanOpticon. I walk a little farther towards Shinjuku and get to the intersection with Kita Street. Jupiter Cafe. The morning is already shallow-frying. I check my money. If I walk back to Ueno, I can afford my submarine back to Kita Senju and buy a light breakfast. So light it would blow away if I sneezed.
Jupiter Cafe is air-conned soggy cool. I buy coffee and a pineapple muffin, sit at my window seat and examine my ghostly reflection in the window: a twenty-yearold Eiji Miyake, hair matted with sweat, smelling of dope and shrimpish sex, and sporting - I see to my horror - a lovebite the size of Africa over my Adam's apple. My complexion has completed its metamorphosis from Kyushu tan to dronepaste. The waitress with the most perfect neck isn't working this morning - if she saw me in this condition, I would give a howl, age nine centuries and desiccate into a mound of dandruff and fingernails. The only other customer is a woman studying a fashion magazine with a toolbox of makeup. I vow never to mentally stroke another woman again, ever. I savour my pineapple muffin and watch the media screen on the NHK building. Missile launchers recoil, cities on fire. A new Nokia cellphone. Foreign affairs minister announces putative WW2 Nanking excesses are left-wing plots to destroy patriotism. Zizzi Hikaru washes her hair in Pearl River shampoo. Flydraped skeletons stalk an African city. Nintendo proudly presents Universal Soldiers. The kid who hijacked a coach and slit three throats says he did it to stand out. I watch the passing traffic, until I hear a hacking cough. I never noticed Lao Tzu appear. He takes out a pack of Parliament cigarettes, but has lost his lighter. "Hello again, Captain." I lend him my lighter. "Morning." He notices my lovebite, but says nothing. In front of him is a flip-up video game screen, book-sized but designed in the twenty-third century. "Brand-new vidboy3 - ten thou by ten thou res, four gigabytes, wraparound sonics, Socrates artifical intelligence chip. Software was only launched last week: Virtua Sapiens. A present from my daughter-in-law." Lao Tzu shifts on his stool. "On doctor's orders, to stave off senility."
I slide the ashtray between us. "That's nice of her." Lao Tzu flicks ash. "You call getting my cretin son to sell off my rice-fields to a supermarket owner nice? So much for filial duty! I let the brat have the land to stop the tax wolves attacking when I die and this" - he prods the machine - "is how I get repaid. I got to go shake the hose - you get leaky at my age. Care for a test drive while I'm gone?" He slides his vidboy3 over the counter toward me, and wanders off to the bathroom. I take off my baseball cap, plug myself in and press RUN. The screen clears.
Welcome to Virtua Sapiens (all rights reserved)
I see you are a new user. What is your on- line title? >eiji miyake Congrats for registering with Virtua Sapiens, Eiji Miyake. You will never be lonely again. Please select a relationship category. Friend, Enemy, Stranger, Lover, Relative. >relative Okay, Eiji. Which relative would you like to meet today? >my father, of course Well, excuse me. Please hold still for three seconds while I digitalize your face. An eye icon blinks and a microlens built into the screen frame blinks red. Okay, now hold extra still while I register your retina. One wall, a floor and a ceiling appear. A whirlpool carpet bitmaps the floor. Pinstripes unroll up the walls. A window appears, with a view of plum blossoms tossing in a spring storm. Curtains of rain blur the glass. I even hear the raindrops, ever so faint. The room is gloomy. A lamp appears on the left and glows cosy yellow. A seethrough sofa appears under the window. The sofa is inked in with zigzags. And in the centre of the sofa appears my father, right foot folded on left knee, which looks cool but cannot be comfortable. The program has given him my nose and mouth, but made him jowlier and thinned his hair. His eyes are those of a mad scientist on the eve of world domination. His wrinkles are symmetrical. He is wearing a black dressing gown - he sort of glows, as if he got out of the bath five minutes ago. My father leans over to screen right, where a winebucket appears - he slides the bottle out and reads the label. "Chablis, 1993." A crisp, clear, even voice, perfect for weather forecasting. He pours himself a glass, makes a great show of savouring the bouquet, and sort of snorts it through his lips. He winks. An enamel smile flashes. "Welcome home, son. Refresh my memory, will you - how long has it been?" >never, actually His eyebrows shoot up. "Such a long time? Time flies like an arrow! What a lot of news we have to catch up. But you and I will get on like a house on fire. So tell me about school, son." >I left. i am 2O He sips his wine, slooshing it around his tongue, and runs a hand back through his hair. "Is that so, son?" He leans towards the screen between us. The resolution is amazing - I flinch back. "So you must be at university, right? Is that a cafeteria I see in the background?" >I didn't bother applying for university. no parents to pay and no money. My father reclines, and lounges a lazy arm over the back of the sofa. "Is that so, son? That strikes me as a pity. Education is a wonderful thing. So how do you spend your time exactly?" >I am a rock star His eyebrows shoot up. "Is that a fact, son? Tell me. Are you a successful rock star, with fame and fortune, or are you one of the unwashed millions still waiting for your lucky break to come along?" >very successful. all over the world He winks and flashes an enamel smile. "I know meeting your old man after all this time is tough, son, but honesty is always the best policy. If you are such a big noise in the entertainment world, how come I never heard of you from Time magazine?" >I perform under an alias to protect my privacy He knocks back the rest of his wine. "It isn't that I don't believe you, son, but could you tell me your alias? I want to boast about my rock star son to my buddies - and bank manager!" >john lennon My father slaps his knee. "The real John Lennon was assassinated by Mark Chapman in 1980, therefore I know you are pulling my leg!" >mind if I change the subject? He comes over all serious, and puts down his glass. "Time for a father and son heartto-heart, is it? We don't have to be afraid of our feelings any more. Tell me what's on your mind." >who are you exactly? "Your father, son!" >but as a human, who are you? My father refills his glass. Lightning fuses the sky, the plum blossom scratches the window pane, and the purple on grey is transformed to black on titanium white. I guess the program needs more time to respond to unlikely or general questions. My father chuckles and places his feet together. "Well, son, that is one big question. Where would you like me to begin?" >what sort of man are you? My father rests his left foot on his right knee. "Let me see. I'm Japanese, fifty next birthday. By profession I am an actor. My hobbies are snorkelling and wine appreciation. But fear not - all these details will come to light as our relationship unfolds, and I trust you'll be visiting again soon! I would like to introduce you to a special person. What do you say?" okay The screen pans to the right, past the wine bucket. A woman - in her late thirties? - sits on the floor, smoking, humming snatches of Norwegian Wood between drags. She is wrapped in a man's shirt, and black leggings hug her shapely legs. Long hair flows down to her waist. She has my eyes. "Hi, Eiji." Her voice is tender and pleased to see me. "Can you guess whom I might be?" >snow white? She smiles at my father and puts out her cigarette. "I see you have your father's sense of humour. I'm your mother." >but mummy dear, you haven't seen daddy for 17 years The program processes this unexpected input while the storm head-butts the window. My mum lights another cigarette. "Well, we had a few fences to mend, I admit. But now we get on like a house on fire." >so you finally ran out of suckers to give you money? "That hurts, Eiji." My virtual mother turns away and sobs alarmingly like my real one, a sort of dry, hidden quaking. I am typing in an apology, but my father responds first. He speaks in a slow and threatening thespian lilt. "This is a home, young man, not a hotel! If you can't keep a civil tongue in your head, you know where the door is!" What a pair of virtual parents the program generated for me! They are thinking, what a virtual son reality generated for us. The plum blossoms suffer wear and tear in the unseasonal weather.
"Hello? Wakey! Anybody home?" A man in Jupiter Cafe shouts so loudly he drowns out the sound of the virtual rainstorm. "Wrong change, girlie!" I unplug myself and turn around to see what the fuss is about. A grizzly drone in a stained shirt snarls at the girl with the most perfect neck in creation - when did she get here? She stares back, surprised but unfazed. Donkey is washing dishes, staying out of trouble, while my girl struggles to be polite with this human hog. "You only gave me a five-thousand-yen note, sir."
"Listen to me, girlie! I gave you a tenthousand-yen note! Not five! Ten!"
"Sir, I am quite sure-"
He rears up on his two hind legs. "You accusing me of lying, girlie?"
"No, sir, but I am saying you are mistaken."
"You a feminist? Short-changing 'cos you're frigid?"
The queue of customers ruffles uneasily, but nobody says anything.
"Sir, I-"
"I gave you a ten-thousand, you abortion bucket! Correct change! Now!"
She pings open the till. "Sir, there isn't even a ten-thousand note in here."
Hog slavers and twitches his tusks. "So! You steal from the till as well!"
Maybe I am still semi-stoned from the hash, or maybe Virtua Sapiens reshuffled my sense of reality, but I find myself walking over and tapping the guy on his shoulder. He turns around. His mouth is one bent sneer. Hog is larger than I thought, but it is too late to back out so I attack first and hardest. I douse his face with coffee and head-butt his nose, really, really hard. Christmas lights flicker in my eyes - Hog backs off, leaking a bubbly "Aaaaaaaaa" noise. Blood trickles from his nose through his fingers. I steady myself and my hand gropes for something to brandish. The pain in my forehead crushes my voice jagged. "Get out right now or I'll smash your fricking teeth into tiny fricking splinters with" - I look at what I'm holding - "this ashtray!" I must look deranged enough to mean business - after wheezing about police and assault in a beaky voice, Hog retreats. The customers look on. Lao Tzu pats my shoulder. "Neat work, Captain." Donkey comes over to her coworker, all concern. "Are you okay? I didn't know what was going on . . . " The waitress with the perfect neck slams shut the till, and glares at me. "I could have handled him."
"I know," I reply. The Christmas tree lights fizz dangerously.
"But thank you anyway." She gives me a cautious smile, so when the Christmas lights fuse I have something to take my mind off the pain. I sit back down and pain takes over my head for a while.
David Mitchell 2001