Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan Page 8

  The island map is at a scale of one hundred kilometers to the centimeter, and uses a projection that favors accuracy of bearing and distance around an arbitrary central point, rather than Universal Transverse Mercator, which preserves bearing and shapes within a localized area. As you are well aware, the Earth is spherical; consequently, the Universal Transverse Mercator projection is only effective within 85 degrees of latitude, beyond which distortion becomes untenable. This other projection was chosen because sea charts and the like require a projection that is effective across the globe.

  My pages run from streets and topography at the small scale, and entire islands in the sea at the large scale; yet I am merely a map.

  The Young Master’s Predecessor, his late and estimable father, held me most dear. A taxi driver, the Predecessor purchased me when he began working as an independent. In those first days, he used many different maps, but while the others lacked in thoughtfulness and passion for their duties, I devoted every effort to matching his expectations, and in the end, somehow, I alone survived.

  “Who is a map like you to talk of devotion,” you may object, and rightly so. But if I may presume to explain the duties of us maps, I think I may dispel any such prejudices you bear. There once was a time when maps were viewed with an importance second only to the lives of our masters. Nowadays, we have been relegated to the same stature as common stationery, but in the past, only the hands of kings and monarchs—or others of considerably high station—could touch upon our pages. Our current state of decline is due in part to the progression of civilization—the changes of culture brought with the marching of time. In the past, conveying oneself from one point to another was fraught with mortal peril; excepting certain professions, this is no longer the case. Excluding certain locales, getting lost no longer brings about an immediate fear for one’s life.

  But if you ask me, our decline cannot be entirely attributed to such changes. Are we maps not maps as our elders were? If we had properly carried out our duty, wouldn’t we have prevented this precipitous decline? Perhaps what led us here was negligence and carelessness borne of our arrogance, as evidenced by the emergence of the navigation systems that have come to be used in our place—such bizarre and idiotic things as I have ever seen. If I may be so bold, I say they may look like maps, but they are not indeed maps. Just as a mannequin or robot will never be the same as a human, even when made to look like one, navigation systems are as bona fide as a back-alley can-can dance. Truly, the inconveniences perpetrated by their “guidance” are met with resentful anger and tearful cries as no rare occurrence. To those who have such inconveniences put upon them, I humbly suggest they re-examine their choices. Entrusting one’s route to a navigation system is as foolish as telling a horse a destination, then closing one’s eyes for the ride.

  It is my belief that maps have two essential duties: to conceal and to emphasize. Please consider what I’m about to say not as personal opinion, but as an observation spoken by the long, unbroken blood lineage of my ancestry. Maps are used by humans, such as the Young Master and his Predecessor. Humans, along with some other animals including the hummingbird and certain walking creatures, perceive their surroundings as divisions of objects and empty spaces (those wanting to sound smart might use a term like “euclidean perception”). In other words, humans make sense of their surroundings not only through what they see, but by an internal representation of the place—an inner map, if you will. Even if more than one person is in the same location, each person’s map will have slight differences; when deciding to take the shortest route from point A from point B, individuals’ paths will diverge. We maps have long held the enduring theory that humans will always move, in the absence of any other intent, according to the rule of closest proximity. To summarize: when faced with multiple options, humans will always elect the choice that presents the least amount of difficulties. And yet, even given the existence of one physically shortest route between two points, individuals’ selected paths will contain significant variations. This is because of deviations within their inner maps.

  These deviations arise from the constituent parts of the inner maps—for example, the relative appeal of the starting point and the destination, the type and number of obstacles in-between, or the familiarity or appeal of the chosen route.

  In other words, when deciding on a path from point A to point B—even when selecting for the shortest distance—the choice is influenced by other factors: whether or not a familiar route exists, the pros and cons of freeway driving, whether or not any favored locations are along the way, and so on.

  This selection is an exceedingly intricate decision, and our role is to present the routes most taken by our masters. That brings us back to the two aforementioned concepts: conceal and emphasize. To conceal means just that—when shown en masse, the entirety of our data is difficult to comprehend. Certain information should be diminished, or made indistinct from other data. To emphasize is the opposite: to offer certain data in a way that our masters can easily perceive. In practice, our methods are awfully modest; say, lowering the shade of a color ever so slightly, or deepening it instead. Mere child’s play, and yet we road maps have remained in continuous use, never falling out of favor since the times of the Roman Empire, when General Agrippa, on the orders of Emperor Augustus, spent twenty years of his life completing history’s first road map: our originator, the Tabula Peutingeriana. Surely you will agree this unbroken legacy continues not by coincidence.

  Allow me to illustrate. Say my master is going to a certain destination; if I blithely display my full contents, my master will take a route that roughly follows the rule of closest proximity. But when the situation calls for a race against time, and every minute and second counts, or when a need arises to make an efficient getaway from a certain locale, I must break through my master’s faulty assumptions brought about by the deviations of his inner map. When my master’s child is having a medical emergency, not a single kilometer is to spare, no matter how accustomed the familiar route may be. In such cases, I temporarily conceal the familiar landmarks: restaurants, train stations, office buildings, and the like. A momentary confusion will beset my master, but his learned awareness will be reset, and he will examine the map as with fresh eyes. At the same time, I can emphasize something that my master had previously excluded from his recognition—say, a narrow bridge through which his car can only barely fit—and he will select it for his route. Of course, most of my work is modest, but a master will create such contrasts.

  But forgive me, for I’ve forgotten to explain the most important part: a map’s work must be done in secret. When we conceal or emphasize, we must not arouse a hair of suspicion among the humans. We exist to provide them assistance, and nothing more. We must not obstinately lead them around by their nose out of some desire for recognition. Such greed is to be reviled and viewed as a level of extreme arrogance, and its perpetrators worthy of a book burning. We remain behind the scenes, and should our masters elect the route we seek them to take, they must do so with the impression they found it on their own. Otherwise, some time in the future, certain trouble will arise between us maps and the humans.

  In this way, I firmly believe that my forebears and I have built the best possible partnership with our masters. Of course, I can’t claim that we all work in perfect harmony.

  You again have my apologies for only having provided an exceedingly commonplace example, but if you would consider my words, I think you’ll see they’re not something to be casually dismissed as the nonsensical ramblings of a map.

  Please forgive me if I end up repeating myself, but among us maps, we refer to the humans’ inner map as a cognitive map. Its primary constituents—the most readily visualized routes, such as railways, freeways, and the like—we call ways. Rivers, seas, and other boundaries that aid in providing structure to the cognitive map are called edges. Boundaries formed by cultural rather than geographical considerations—gover
nmental administration centers, nightlife spots, et cetera—are called zones. Centers of activity such as major intersections, train stations, and prominent stores are called junctures, while notable landmarks, high rises, and trees are all called bindings.

  I must beg your pardon for prattling on at such length, but my feeble hope is to cast but one stone from the darkness against the apparent rise of those navigation systems over us maps. For what is the extent of their abilities? If all they think they have to do is carelessly regurgitate data to some puppet terminal, with no regard to their masters’ needs and intentions, then all I can say is that they are thoroughly witless things, stuff on the same level as bathroom graffiti. But there I go again. Please give no regard to my petty gnashing of teeth.

  The Predecessor changed two years before his death. Late at night, he picked up an appallingly drunk woman who seemed displeased with him from the very start, for she hurled curses and abuse at him the likes of which I couldn’t bear to hear. Whoever she was—I didn’t know if she had a profession or if she was the daughter of some distinguished family—I knew that her words must have been hurtful to my ever-gentle master. It pained me to watch him endure her torrent of abuses. She had told him to take her a good 25 kilometers from the city’s center, but when we arrived, she suddenly changed her mind and demanded a new destination. Though suspicious of the request, my master set out for this new location, where she again changed her mind. After that, my master and the woman exchanged several words. I remember they talked mostly of money. After the woman promised the next destination would be the final one, my master set out once more. The woman’s abuses gained in ferocity. None of what she said to him was at all true, and yet on she ranted. She even called him a lousy listener, and said that’s why he was stuck as a common taxi driver. Finally, she noticed his ID display card beside the meter and began berating his very name. At this offense he seemed no longer able to remain silent. His mother was endeared to his name, because it shared one kanji with his, and he had lost his mother at a very young age.

  When, without thinking, he spoke out in protest, the uncharacteristic ferocity I heard in his voice was no trick of my imagination. This I know because of what happened next. He stopped the car in an unpopulated area alongside a dam and insisted the woman prove she could pay her fare. She roared with laughter, and beaming with delight she announced, “I have no money. I just wanted to see how long I could trick some stupid driver.” Without warning, as the Predecessor was stunned in shock, she punched herself in the face and shouted, “If you don’t take me back to the city for free, I’ll run to the police and tell them you beat me!”

  The Predecessor looked at her sadly and said, “All right.” He took the road leading back to the city, but when he turned onto a side road, I knew he was up to something. This paved road appeared to be a major highway, but in fact had been hastily laid down to supply access for construction crews, and eventually narrowed, winding up the mountainside. The highway would naturally have provided the shortest course into the city; I had offered him the route to the bypass, a suggestion I was sure he had understood. Unable to grasp his intentions, I could do nothing but watch.

  Suddenly, he stopped the car, got out, and circled to the rear passenger-side seat. The woman started into her cursing, but he silenced her with a single blow. From my place beneath the front seat, I sensed him strike her and heard her low moan. He dragged her out from the car and took her, disappearing into the darkness. After roughly an hour, he returned. The Predecessor slumped his head onto the steering wheel, exhausted, and remained that way for a time. When he lifted his head, I was comforted to see an untroubled look of relief had replaced the severe expression so unlike his mild-mannered nature. He marked me with the tip of a screwdriver, leaving an X right in the center of my page, in the forest twenty meters to the north-northwest of where we were parked. I felt searing pain as he pressed the tool into my paper. The mark was wet, a liquid I perceived as not all that dissimilar in composition to his sweat—only this stuff was red.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.

  Can you believe it? The Predecessor spoke to me. My master, a human, spoke to me, a mere map! And not out of jest or drunkenness—he spoke to me square-on. What fortune, what an honor! The act was without question one of the reasons I decided to follow him from that point on. These emotions, along with the mark itself, changed what I was.

  My thoughts, which I’ve been taking the liberty of expressing to you, were not always so active. We maps typically operate at a much slower tempo than humans do. This is generally believed to be due to differences in the perception of time between species. Most humans’ lives end in less than one hundred years, and their memories are restricted to their individual lifespans. But we maps can pass down our memories. We believe this ability stems from the age-old process of tracing and copying our pages by hand, continued to the modern mass production of prints. Each map’s knowledge is restricted to the geographical region under his or her charge, but every map carries the accumulated memories passed down and shared across hundreds of years. Whatever comprises the vessels of our thoughts—our consciousness—is dragged along this span of centuries. Consequently, ours is a more prolonged existence than that of mankind. To put it another way, a month is as slow to a map as a year is to a human. Perhaps this is true for maps alone; if cell phones and credit cards possess consciousness, surely they experience time far more rapidly. But now, I have been granted a perception of time much the same as humans. This is my aforementioned change.

  What was one X mark became two, and two became three. Each mark came as if a ray of morning sunlight illuminating a dark room, making my consciousness more pronounced, and wielded with more rapidity. These changes affected my work. Before, as much as I did to conceal and emphasize, highlighting the ideal route, my master would apprehend it barely three times in ten. After my change, I found myself succeeding more often than not, and by the end, I was able to achieve a rate of 80 percent. Please don’t misunderstand my motives for stating this; I’m not trying to boast. I only wish for you to understand the true connection I came to share with my master. If I may be so bold, I would call it a bond.

  By the end, my master had marked me eight times.

  He approached this extracurricular activity with such a passion that I called it nothing short of our mission. My master took on his mission in earnest, and his ardor showed no sign of abating. Meanwhile, a change came to the form of duties. Previously, the majority of my efforts were aimed at avoiding the loss in profits that seep in through the differences between perceived and actual geography. But now the planning of my master’s mission become of even higher import. One major issue was the burial sites. My master endeavored not to leave them near any one central location, but his idea of random was not so random. Though he tried his best each time, on a macro scale, those ever-present precepts of deviation and closest proximity were at work, and a kind of pattern could be discerned in his methods. That’s why, after the third woman, I decided to offer my guidance in locating the burial sites. Before, even if I were to come up with such a reckoning, my master would never have utilized it; but this was another skill brought out by my change. Now, the Predecessor grasped my plans and chose to follow nearly every suggestion. This was quite the feat, if I do say so myself—of course, it should go without saying that my master still proudly believed he had discovered the locations through his own inspiration.

  My methods were as follows. My master preferred hunting grounds within zones of nightlife activity—and in particular, the back streets where females rarely ventured. I widened his potential hunting grounds to include other zones, such as shopping areas, and even edges like the harbor and ways like highway onramps. Furthermore, my master had a tendency to form an isosceles triangle between his residence, the burial sites, and his hunting grounds, but these missteps I corrected. The Predecessor was only able to acquire as many targets as he did because their bo
dies remained undiscovered; the women were only reported as having gone missing. The Predecessor was exceptionally capable of leaving no traces. Just in case, I randomized his travel distances after each crime to confuse any computing machine that might attempt numerical tracking, and I strove to locate the burial sites outside the radius of his residence and other areas he frequented. Furthermore, in order to keep the hunting grounds, his residence, and the burial sites from creating a shifting triangle, I modified direction and distance in order to avoid being enslaved by the distance decay effect.

  Despite my relationship with the Predecessor having come into full blossom, the end came suddenly one sunny afternoon. He was driving away from a train station where he had dropped off an elderly passenger. As he approached a major intersection, he grunted and clutched his chest. Soon after, the car jolted. Later, I learned that the Predecessor had suffered a heart attack and, unable to apply the brakes, rear-ended a truck that was stopped at the light. I fell from my place on the passenger seat into the footwell. Always conscious of safety, the Predecessor had his seat belt fastened and avoided striking his head on the windshield. He noticed me on the floor and reached for me with his left hand. A metallic shriek engulfed the car. The Predecessor looked up in surprise, and the windshield shattered, raining down, and a gas cloud filled the interior. I heard footsteps running toward us, and someone opened the door, dissipating the gas. When the cloud cleared, the first thing I saw was my master looking down at me, his gaze vacant, from the nearby passenger seat. I found this somewhat odd, since the rest of him—from the neck down—remained seated on the driver’s side. Shrill screams sprang from the crowd noise. The Predecessor’s right hand still gripped the steering wheel. Above his shoulders, a piece of corrugated sheeting had severed the headrest and extended into the rear cabin. Where the sheeting met his body, fresh blood spilled forth as if from poorly fitted plumbing, and his hand at the wheel slowly opened, a wilting flower, and thudded to his lap. His eyes remained open, staring at me.