Loop

1

Darkness filled his rear-view mirror. The eastern horizon was gradually brightening, but night still ruled the sky as a whole. At the moment, Kaoru was nothing but a figure making its way through darkness toward the dawn. The few clues he'd found had led him to this mission, this burden, to search out a way to combat the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus. All around was blackness, and he had to chase the faintest hint of light.

There were few cars on the interstate highway crossing the Mojave Desert at night, so for a long while he didn't need to glance in the rear-view mirror. But as signs of dawn began to press in upon him from the front, he checked it more frequently. The sky was definitely escaping night's dominion now, embracing the dawn. The landscape's transformation was beautiful to Kaoru's eyes. The brown earth received the corroding rays of the morning and in turn stained the darkness behind him red. On either side of the highway mountain ridges began to appear in silhouette.

Both hands gripping the handlebars of the XLR, the 600CC off-road bike his father had bought ten years ago, Kaoru turned his head to see his surroundings. He wanted to savour the landscape racing by with his own eyes, not through a mirror.

He'd been dreaming of this desert wasteland since he was ten. And now he'd come all the way to America and ridden six hours straight to see it.

It had been late yesterday afternoon when he'd picked up the XLR. He'd shipped it to America air freight. Then he'd had to pack for this race across the desert. It had been nearly ten when he'd finally left L.A. He'd considered getting a good night's rest in a hotel and departing the next morning, but when he contemplated the vast desert to the east of him he couldn't contain himself. He simply had to set off immediately.

But it was dark when he left, and had been dark ever since. Though he'd known he was traversing the Mojave desert, he might as well have been riding through mountain meadows for all he could see. But all he had to do was point the bike down the highway leading straight into the darkness and keep the handlebars steady. Now the sun was rising, giving him his first glimpse of the land.

Kaoru was glad he'd set off when he had, and glad he'd kept going. This change in the landscape was not to be missed. That, and he'd avoided wasting a day. There wasn't much time left. Today was the first of September: he had to come up with some sort of conclusion within these two months, or it might mean the life of not only Reiko, but her newly-conceived child.

For six hours straight he'd been submerged within the thick hum and vibrations of the four stroke OHC two-cylinder engine. The road was nicely sealed, but still he maintained perfect riding form, never loosening his knee grip. His father had drilled proper biking technique into him. Whenever he'd lapsed into an unsightly splay-kneed pose, his father would slap his knees and yell at him. Keep your knees tight around the tank, kiddo.

And he had, all the way. Shoulders relaxed, weight nicely balanced on the footrests. Kaoru's father had taken him riding even after his diagnosis, and on those trips especially his father's words of instruction had sunk deep into his heart. He tried hard to ride with precision.

The trip meter showed he'd come three hundred miles. The XLR's huge gas tank held thirty litres, good for three hundred and fifty miles of highway driving. Which meant it was about time to fill up: much farther and he'd risk running out of fuel. This highway had stretches of two hundred or more miles with no gas station, so he had to be careful. The luggage rack held a spare polyurethane gas can, but it was empty. He'd meant to stop at a hotel somewhere and lie down on a bed; now he might have come too far.

I'll stop at the next town and have some breakfast, he told himself. He knew if he didn't force himself to stop he'd ride his father's bike until it was out of gas. It frustrated him to have to stop. Watching the change from night to day had proven to Kaoru that the world was revolving on its own; he felt that if he stopped it would go on revolving without him, and he'd be left behind.

Just as the last traces of night disappeared from his rear-view mirror, leaving the land completely covered with light, a town appeared in the distance ahead. It should have a gas station and a place to eat.

Kaoru checked into a motel a little after noon, and then immediately showered and lay down on the bed. He tried to sleep, but the engine vibration had accumulated in his body to the point that his very cells were shaking: he felt itchy and restless. Even as he lay there his body felt like it was still on the bike. The flesh of his thighs in particular, where he'd been squeezing the gas tank, felt like it wasn't his own.

How long was I riding?

He counted on his fingers. Six hours from LA, then he'd dismounted and waited for the diner to open so he could have breakfast. He'd filled up the tank, then ridden for another three hours. Altogether, then, he'd been riding for nine hours. Another nine hours on Interstate 40 would get him to the vicinity of Albuquerque.

His plan was to turn north on Route 25 before Albuquerque, heading through Santa Fe to Los Alamos and Kenneth Rothman's last known address. Of course his final destination was the Four Corners region. But before that he figured it was best to find out what had happened to Rothman, and what his last words meant.

Kaoru reached for his rucksack by the bedside and groped around inside it for his billfold and the two photos he should have inside it. He took them out and studied the face they showed him. Still flat on the bed, he held them over his head and spoke to the beloved figure.

Needless to say, it didn't answer.

Before leaving Japan, Kaoru had visited his father's sickroom to tell him he was going to America. He'd explained why he needed to go, and his father had nodded and said:

"I see."

Kaoru had told his father everything, not even concealing the situation with Reiko. It was possible that his father might die while he was away from Japan: if he was going to tell his father at all, this was the time.

Hideyuki had laughed out loud upon learning that he had a grandchild growing within the womb of this woman Reiko.

"Way to go, kiddo." For a moment the old, healthy Hideyuki was back as he asked with an undisguised leer about Reiko's appearance. "Is she a good woman?"

"To me she's the best," Kaoru answered.

"Can't leave you alone for a minute!" Hideyuki trembled happily. Then he spoke earnestly. "I'd like to live to see my grandkid."

When he heard that, Kaoru was glad he'd told his father about Reiko.

He averted his eyes from Reiko's photographs and put them away in the rucksack again, by touch, not rolling over. His heart beat wildly. Just gazing at her seemed to increase his loneliness.

To distract himself he looked around the room without getting up. On one wall hung a garish round tapestry, and from the ceiling hung a fan, blowing lazily. The sound of the fan bothered him less than the noise of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

All of the furniture and appliances were old, just like the motel itself. He could hear something-a cockroach, maybe? — crawling around under the bed. He'd found one on the kitchen floor earlier. Maybe it was the same one.

Kaoru disliked cockroaches to an unusual degree, perhaps because he wasn't used to them: he'd never seen one in their twenty-ninth floor condo overlooking the bay.

When he'd checked into this motel, he'd figured on falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow-he was that tired. More than the all-night ride, it was the sun beating down on him in the morning that had exhausted him. But unexpectedly, sleep eluded him. Maybe he was too excited: it was his first time in a motel outside of Japan.

It wasn't supposed to be like this, this trip. When he thought of the vacation he'd dreamed of ten years ago, the difference nearly brought tears to his eyes. His problems were too many. He had to save his dying father's life, he had to come up with answers for Reiko, he had to prove to his child that this world was worth living in-the child who was now just a cell starting to divide…

He listed his goals in order to bolster his courage. He felt excitement, sentimentality, fatigue, vibration, a sense of mission, fear, and heat all wrapped into one sensation; he felt as if an army of ants was crawling around inside his body. If he didn't find a way to calm his heightened emotions he'd never be able to get to sleep.

He suddenly remembered that there was a pool in the courtyard of the U-shaped motel. Maybe a swim would wash off this creepiness. He got up and changed into swim trunks.

He dived into the empty pool, and then turned over underwater and looked up at the sky. He loved the feeling of moving suddenly from air to water, from one medium to another. Looking up through the water at the sky, he could enjoy both layers at once. The blazing sun looked warped seen from underwater.

He thrust his head above water and stood in the centre of the pool. The motel surrounded the pool on three sides, but on the fourth he could see the desert stretching out into the distance. Submerged in water as he was, he was even more struck by how parched and unforgiving the land looked.

He thought he could feel lumps of heat dissolving inside his body. When the last one had melted away, he got out of the pool and returned to his room. His body was telling him he could finally sleep.

2

The sun's rays just got stronger and stronger. He was wearing a long-sleeved sweatshirt and leather gloves, and his jeans were tucked into his boots, and the only skin on his body exposed to the sun was the back of his neck below his helmet. Even so, as he rode he could feel the burning sun all over his body.

He had no street address for the place he was headed. Wayne's Rock, on the outskirts of Los Alamos, New Mexico, was all he knew. Just before leaving Japan, he'd contacted Amano again and asked him to look up Kenneth Rothman's last known address. Amano said he'd been living in an old house that doubled as his work space. He had reason to hope that Rothman was still living there, and had cut off contact on purpose, for whatever reason. But even if Rothman was gone, the house at least should still be there in some form. It should at least furnish him with new clues.

On a desert highway with little traffic, it was possible to make travel time estimates that were exactitude itself. He arrived at Albuquerque right on time, took Interstate 25 northward, and after a time turned onto a state road heading toward Los Alamos. Wayne's Rock should be this side of Los Alamos.

He stopped at a gas station not far from his destination. Not to fill up-he had plenty of gas- but to ask directions. Like seemingly all the gas stations on the state road, this one had a little convenience store attached, and so at the very least he'd find a clerk; if he passed it up, meanwhile, there was no telling when he'd meet another soul.

Since he was here, he topped off the tank, then went into the store to pay. A bearded, middle-aged man glanced a hello at him.

Kaoru hadn't even put in a full gallon, so it was a small amount of money that he gave the man. He then asked how to get to Wayne's Rock.

The man pointed northward and said, "Three miles."

"Got it. Thanks." Kaoru turned to leave, but the man stopped him.

"Have you got business there?" The man's eyes were narrowed and he was frowning at Kaoru. His question was certainly a blunt one, but there didn't seem to be any ill will behind it.

Kaoru didn't know quite how to answer, so he kept it short. "An old friend of mine lives there. I think."

The man's lips twitched as he shrugged his shoulders and said, "There's nothing there."

Kaoru nodded that he understood, and repeated the words. "There's nothing there."

The man stared at Kaoru wordlessly. But what was he supposed to do, change his mind just because the guy told him there was nothing in Wayne's Rock? He had to go and see for himself.

Kaoru forced a smile and said, "Thank you" as he walked out of the store.

There was no one else around. Kaoru wondered, as he headed away north, just how many customers besides himself the gas station had seen today.

He wanted to check the time as he rode, so he lifted his left hand, the one he wore his watch on, from the handlebars. But he found his leather glove was in the way: he couldn't see the watch. He tried to pull his glove off with his chin, and in the process took his eyes from the road for a split second. When he looked up again, he saw, just beyond a rise covered with desert plants, a line of old trees stretching northward into the desert. Most drivers wouldn't even have noticed them, but Kaoru was paying attention. He was exactly three miles past the gas station.

He could see what looked like a dirt road running alongside the line of trees. He stopped the bike at the entrance to the road. Up close he realized that what had looked like trees were wooden poles spaced dozens of yards apart; black electrical line sagged from some of them. Power lines, disused for what looked to be quite some time.

If he hadn't been keeping his eyes open, he probably wouldn't have realized there was a road here. It was little more than a slightly levelled off space next to the power poles. The strip was the only place where cacti didn't grow, raising their gnarled arms skyward-proof that this was indeed a road, or at least had been at one time.

Kaoru scanned the northern horizon, wondering if following the power poles down this road would take him to the village of Wayne's Rock. The road disappeared over a hill. Wayne's Rock was invisible from the state road. But Kaoru had the feeling that distant ruins were calling to him.

At least I won't get lost: all I have to do to get back to the state road is follow the power poles, he thought to himself.

With that he grasped the handles, turned left, and sped off toward the middle of the desert. It was the first time since getting to America that he'd taken the bike off-road.

3

There was a dip in the road ahead of him; he could see it coming, but it didn't look that big. But when he went over it the bike flew more than he'd expected. He dropped his waist back and into the jump, and when the bike landed he wrestled with the violent motion of the handlebars until with precise timing he stabilized the bike. One mistake and he might have tipped over. He cursed himself for his recklessness, and did his best to avoid the craters in the road from then on.

After some initial ups and downs, the road flattened out and ran straight for a while. The dilapidated wooden poles still ran alongside the road, a dotted line linking civilization and wilderness.

"Aha," he said. He'd spied some broken-down buildings ahead, in a ravine cut into a hill. Both the road and the line of poles disappeared into the village. At some point, at least, this town had been connected to an electricity supply and phone service. He couldn't see any poles beyond the village. The lines seemed to end here.

He stopped on a hill maybe a hundred yards before the village. Still straddling the bike, he counted about twenty houses made of brownish stone. Even if there were some on the other side of the ravine that he couldn't see, the whole settlement probably held only a few dozen houses. He couldn't imagine what had led the first inhabitants to decide to dwell here. What had they been seeking out here in the middle of the desert? Judging from the way the houses were constructed, the first settlers had gotten here a long time ago. But the whole village was barren and windswept now. He couldn't see anyone. Even from a hundred yards away he could tell that the place was abandoned.

He remembered the words of the man at the gas station. There's nothing there. It looked like he was right. This was a ghost town, rotting away until only traces of its former inhabitants remained.

The sunlight was coming from the west now. A look at his watch told Kaoru it was past five o'clock. It wasn't quite yet time to head back to the state road and look for a town with people living in it.

So Wayne's Rock was a pile of ruins in the middle of the desert. The place filled him with a primal fear, and he asked himself why. Was it because the place represented for him such a fusion of unnatural contradictions? Why had Kenneth Rothman, a cutting-edge information engineer, chosen to live in such a remote place anyway? There were too many things Kaoru didn't understand.

But he'd come too far to back down now. He opened the throttle, gunned the engine, and was cheered by the extravagant noise he was able to summon forth. He sped down the road into the village.

On the way he spied a sign of the type common at the edge of American towns: WELCOME TO WAYNE'S ROCK

It looked like a bad joke to Kaoru.

As he approached, netlike patterns on the walls began to stand out. Sand and gravel, probably blown by the wind, clung to spots where the stone of the walls was crumbling. Several cars stood abandoned on what looked to be the town's main drag. These, too, were covered in sand.

There was a gas station/convenience store here, too. A single pump stood on the cracked concrete apron; the nozzle was off the hook, and the hose lay on the ground, twisted and black like a cobra, the nozzle its head curled to strike. The store's windows were boarded up tight, and shards of glass were scattered over the ground.

He rode slowly down the main street, peeking at the empty houses on each side, searching for nameplates or the like.

There were more trees inside the town than in the desert surrounding it. Perhaps people had chosen to live here because there was water to be had. The trees thrived on that water, flourishing in and around the ruins. The street was lined with them, and at first they did indeed give an impression of health. But when the wind stirred their limbs and exposed their trunks, Kaoru noticed the strange lumps and pits in the rough bark. He approached one and inspected it to find that the bark on the swollen parts was a different colour from the rest. The trunks were mottled in colour like human skin peeling from severe sunburn.

The limbs were affected, too, and even the leaves, which looked so fresh, were covered on the back with ocher-coloured spots. Only at first glance were the trees normal: scratch the surface and they were riddled with disease.

He'd only seen the cancerous trees of Arizona in a newspaper photo in which it had been impossible to make out the details of their deformation and discoloration, but from the looks of things these trees were showing the same symptoms. Virus-induced cancer, and pretty far advanced, too. It must have taken years for them to get this bad. This was no recent infection.

Kaoru hurriedly looked around him, apprehensive. If the trees here were so far gone, how bad was the damage to animals and humans?

He heard no sound but the wind, but still somehow he felt as if rattlesnakes, scorpions, or some other poisonous desert creature were burrowing under his feet. Some malicious life form, or its shadow, was hiding here, behind cliffs or cacti, under clods of earth, and it struck fear into him.

He had one foot on the bike's footrest and one on the ground. Both feet were encased in leather boots. No foreign object could penetrate to his feet, he knew, but still he shrank from touching the earth with them.

He was desperately thirsty. He had some mineral water in his pack on the luggage rack, but to get it he'd have to dismount the bike and place both feet on the ground. He really didn't want to do that, so he decided to endure the dryness of his throat and ride on deeper into the town.

Some of the houses had walls made of piled-up stone, but some had walls made of carefully worked dried mud. Most of the roofs had caved in: he'd probably be able to stand in the middle of any of these houses and see the sky overhead.

Kaoru actually steered the bike under the eaves of one of the houses and went inside to try. Sure enough, the setting sun was casting its rays slantwise through a broken space in the roof; dust danced in the bands of light, clouds of dirt glowed with the same colouring.

Where had all the people gone? Were they all dead? Had the MHC virus gotten them all? Or had they escaped, moved to a town with a hospital?

"Hello?" Kaoru called into the depths of the house. No response; he hadn't expected any. He thought he saw the shafts of light quiver from the vibrations of his voice.

Through the crumbling wall he could glimpse a flat space like a plaza. It was surrounded by houses.

He dismounted, pointing the bike toward the edge of the village so he could leave in a hurry. He left the engine running. He reached into his pack for the mineral water and slaked his thirst.

He had a purpose in coming here, and he had to fulfil it. He needed to track down Kenneth Rothman, and to do that he first needed to find Rothman's residence.

On the ride in he'd carefully looked for names on the houses, but he hadn't seen Rothman's. It looked like he was going to have to leave the bike and check each one on foot.

He entered the house criss-crossed by the sun's rays and walked through it toward the plaza in the back. It looked to be some sort of communal space for the village. An old Spanish-style monument, made of plaster in the form of a woman and surrounded by a railing, stood in the centre. It was the focal point of the village, which he could see now consisted of two rows of houses arranged in a semicircle; on the other side of the plaza was a hillside.

Kaoru stood in the middle of the plaza and imagined a view of this village from above. The double line of houses made a fan shape.

Behind the monument was a basin like indentation in the ground, inside which gaped a circular rim. A well. So there was water here. That's why the village had grown up here. He peered in, and the stench of fetid water hit him. The whole village looked parched, and yet the well smelled like water.

The shallow walled basin resembled a snail in shape. You came around from the outside and then down a set of stairs spiralling down to the rim of the well, as if you were tracing the snail's shell.

The well had no lid. The wind blowing over it made a flute-like sound.

Right beside the well's edge he saw some small black shapes, about the size of his fist. At first he thought they were rocks, but after staring at them for a while he realized they were dead rats, belly up. There must have been over a dozen in the plaza.

Kaoru's gaze naturally followed the trail of dead rats, until he realized the black forms were concentrated beneath a tree at the edge of the plaza, a tree that he could tell from here was cancerous. There was a bench under the tree. And sitting on the bench was a human corpse, the same colour as the rats. With the sun at its back, the corpse was just a black shape.

Kaoru went toward the bench, stopping about ten yards from it. The corpse was male, and it looked half mummified. Its legs were spread, its arms hung down limply, and its head was thrown back against the back of the bench, jaw thrust forward. Several long strands of beard hung from the chin, a beard that Kaoru had once described as goatish… Only the gold chains around the wrists and neck hadn't rotted. They gleamed with an inorganic light.

Kaoru gingerly approached the man and examined his face. The Kenneth Rothman Kaoru had met-five years ago, when he'd stayed at the Futami house for several days during a visit to Japan-had an impressively narrow face, its most conspicuous feature being his long beard, and he used to wear gold chains around his neck and wrists such as those here. It seemed reasonable to conclude that this corpse was Rothman's.

He must have died here at home, without seeking treatment.

Kaoru looked all around, and something snagged his gaze. The hillside was covered with vegetation appropriate to an arid climate, and amidst it he could see flowers about the size of his palm, coming in and out of view as the wind blew the branches about.

A lone tree in bloom. Its trunk was thin, its branches slender, its leaves looked soft, but this tree alone displayed vitality.

All the trees on the hillside were cancerous: he could see the veins in the leaves standing out hideously. This tree and this tree only seemed to have retained its original colouring. And on the end of its drooping branches grew pale pink blossoms.

Some plants propagate through asexual reproduction, and some through sexual reproduction. Kaoru had observed that the ones covering the mountains in this area were of types that reproduced asexually. Blossoms, however, meant sexual reproduction. He'd heard of cases of asexually-reproducing plants suddenly shifting to sexual reproduction, blooming for the first time in their existence, before rapidly aging and withering away. Such a plant couldn't go on blooming forever, it seemed: the pleasure of producing flowers came in return for dying.

It occurred to Kaoru to pick one of the blossoms and place it next to Rothman's corpse as an offering.

Plants that reproduce asexually can go on living essentially forever, in the right environment. In the Mojave desert there are confirmed instances of such plants that have survived for over ten thousand years. Just like cancer cells in a Petri dish.

What Kaoru was witnessing now, though, was the opposite: only the tree which had gained the ability to reproduce sexually had escaped the cancer. And of course, before too long, this tree with its blossoms would follow the natural order of things and die.

A programmed death accompanied the pleasure of blooming, while a life form which had turned into cancer would go on living forever, unaging, but never producing flowers. It looked like a clear-cut choice between two alternatives. Which would Kaoru choose? A bright, shining mortality, or a dull life that went on forever? It didn't take him long to know the answer: he'd choose the life that bloomed.

Kaoru climbed the hill toward the flowers.

4

He snapped off a blossom and turned to descend the slope. As he did so, a sharp, narrow band of light glancing off one of the rooftops arrayed beneath him caught his eye. The roofs were made of stone of the same colour as the land; they blended in dully with their surroundings. They shouldn't be able to reflect light, thought Kaoru, searching for the source of the flash.

A careful look revealed a black rectangle on the roof of a crumbling red-brick building. The rectangular object had a steel rim, and this seemed to have caught a ray of the setting sun.

The panel glowed there on the roof with an alien light. It looked altogether too new to be sitting on a ruined building like that. Maybe such a system was necessary precisely because the village was so far from the main road, but still it looked out of place.

He could tell even at this distance that the black panel was part of a solar power system. It was quite big enough to produce enough electricity for a single household. If each house had possessed one, there would have been no need for the electric poles lining the road into town, but he couldn't see a similar panel on any of the other roofs in the village. This one seemed to have been specially installed on this house alone.

Rothman had installed his own private research lab at home. Maybe he'd used solar power.

Kaoru laid the blossom down on the corpse's knee and threaded his way between the houses, looking for the one with the solar panel. He'd marked its position from the hillside, but he quickly lost his sense of direction as though he were in a maze.

He wandered this way and that until he found the approach ahead blocked. He'd strayed into a house, and now he was in some sort of hallway.

The wind whistled as it blew in through gaps in the walls, but here it had no place to go, so it eddied around his ankles. He thought he could hear native American singing, a sort of call-and-response with the wind, or maybe it was the cry of a bird, or the sound of branches rubbing together.

Kaoru fell still and pricked his ears. His sense of hearing was confused: he couldn't tell what was near and what was far. One moment he thought he was hearing a human voice at a distance, and the next he experienced the illusion that it was whispering in his ear. It was a hoarse, male voice, muttering-he could hear it- by the wall to the right. It stopped, and when it started again the wind had wafted it over to the left-hand wall.

The voice and the whistling seemed to come from everywhere; the sound seemed to gain a vibrato effect as it slipped through the gaps in the walls.

Was it the dryness of the air that kept him from feeling afraid? Totally devoid of humidity, the air seemed to lack the little hands that would have grabbed him and given him chills. The moisture rapidly drained from any exposed skin; soon, he was afraid, he'd feel nothing at all.

He tried to ignore his other senses and concentrate on his hearing. Gradually he came to detect the source of the sound. Still concentrating on it, he ducked through a hole in one wall, then another, and then found himself in a somewhat different world.

There was a faint smell. He was in a two hundred square foot space with crumbling walls, where something he'd never encountered before, a man-made smell that couldn't possibly exist in nature, pervaded the air.

There was a pipe-framed bed in a corner of the room. It held no bedding, only an old mattress with several springs poking up through it. There was a sturdy-looking table next to it, and next to that two deck chairs, facing each other, looking more appropriate to a beach than a house. A floor lamp lay tipped over on the floor, and an old leather suitcase rested unsteadily against the table. There were shelves built into one wall, but some of them were broken, their contents leaning crazily. Several thick doorstop-like books sat on the bottom shelf.

Everything in the room looked precariously balanced. He suspected that if he took away just one of the shelves, or moved the bedside table just a few inches to one side, everything would collapse like a row of dominos.

From out of nowhere, the hoarse voice was back, breathing in his ear. Kaoru nearly jumped out of his skin. He looked around in every direction.

Nobody was there. The noise died away quickly, leaving an intermittent buzz in its wake. Kaoru glanced at the space between the table and the wall, and saw an electrical cord. Only then did he notice that there was a radio fixed to the table. It sounded like it wasn't receiving steady current.

Kaoru grasped the cord and moved it around a little. The buzzing decreased, replaced by a man's steady voice, accompanied by a sad-sounding guitar. A radio broadcast. The man was singing some kind of blues song. Kaoru was able to make out the lyrics: something about a love that had ended long ago.

Kaoru bent down and adjusted the tuner, reducing the static further. This was definitely the source of the voice he'd barely heard floating to him on the wind. For some reason this radio was still turned on, plugged in, and receiving signals. Playing music.

It was unthinkable that the power lines could still be supplying electricity to these ruins. The electricity would have been interrupted long ago.

The rooftop solar panel he'd seen must be providing the electricity. It was the only thing that could explain the radio still playing.

Kaoru followed the cord to the wall socket, then adjusted the volume again. No mistake, electricity was flowing from somewhere.

Press on, he urged himself. The knowledge that this house in the middle of the desert wore a crown of modern science gave him a kind of courage.

In one wall there was a door to the next room. He placed a hand on the knob. It opened easily.

Beyond the door was a short hallway leading to what seemed to be the entrance to a basement. The stairs led underground until they were swallowed in darkness. But on second look it wasn't total darkness: he could see a little light seeping out from around a door. There was a light on in the basement.

As he stood at the top of the stairs looking down, Kaoru felt like he was being guided.

There's a light on.

He pondered that fact for a while. Perhaps it had just been left on, like the radio.

A step at a time, he climbed down the stairs.

Stopping in front of the door, he pressed an ear against it and listened for signs of what was beyond. There was no sound, no sign of anybody. The light shining between the door and its frame was fainter than he'd first thought.

He was about to knock, but it came to him how foolish that notion was. In one bold motion he grasped the doorknob, turned it, and walked in.

A single fluorescent bulb hung from the ceiling, dimly illuminating the basement. But in the centre of the room shone another light, a special one that meant civilization.

Spacious as the basement was, its purpose was clear. A computer had been set up in the exact centre of the room, surrounded by associated cabinets. The monitor was flickering.

Kaoru went around until he was facing the monitor. Beside it sat a helmet, to both the inside and outside of which were attached electronic devices. Probably a helmet display: he'd used something like it as a kid to play virtual reality games. He hadn't seen one for so long that the sight of this one brought back pleasant memories.

A wired data glove sat next to the helmet, but Kaoru didn't touch either of them. He headed straight for the monitor.

As if cued by Kaoru's appearance in front of it, letters began to appear on the screen.

W…e…l…c…o…m…e

The word popped up one letter at a time. Kaoru found the idea juvenile in the extreme. Evidently the system was set up so that the display would sense when someone was standing in front of it and turn on.

He felt momentarily faint, and leaned on the chair in front of the screen. He eased himself into the chair, resting his elbows on the armrests, and caught his breath. Then he spoke to the computer.

"Who are you, anyway?"

The computer didn't answer him directly. Instead it showed him a scene.

A barren, windswept desert. An undulating landscape. The scene moved, so that the viewer felt like he was running across the desert. The view slid along just over the surface of the land, following a road up and down slopes, until a village appeared before it. Kaoru had seen it somewhere before.

Then he realized it was Wayne's Rock, albeit a different Wayne's Rock than the one he knew. The one he saw on the monitor was much smaller, with only a few houses visible, and those were made of wood, not stone. If it hadn't been for the distinctive hillside in the background, he wouldn't have even realized what he was looking at.

How long ago is this, he wondered. A hundred years ago, maybe longer? He couldn't see any people; there was no indication as to the era. The scene screamed Old West, though.

Is this a movie? A natural question.

It didn't look like computer graphics. He wanted to think it was a real filmic record, but it was much too clear and well-preserved to have been shot a hundred or more years ago. No, what he was seeing was probably the result of the application of some special technology to recreate the old town on shots of the present Wayne's Rock. But it looked absolutely real.

He heard hoofbeats behind him. So real did they sound that he turned around to look, only to discover speakers attached to the stone wall behind him.

The scene on the monitor was displayed in only two dimensions, but the sound came through in three.

He kept glancing at the helmet and glove next to the monitor. He finally understood what he was being instructed to do.

If you want to experience it in 3-D, put on the helmet and glove.

So he did. And once he had the helmet on, a turn of his head gave his mind's eye a 360-degree view of the landscape.

The hoofbeats behind him were no longer just a 3-D effect, they were utterly real, echoing in his brain. He could feel the ground shake with them. He should be wearing boots, but somehow he felt sharp pain as a cactus spine penetrated his foot. Human commotion overwhelmed him. A hot wind caressed the back of his neck, and he felt thirsty. Sweat dripped off him.

Kaoru ran on and on, trying to escape the figures bearing down on him from behind. Unable to bear it any longer, he looked back and saw a dozen or more mounted Indians, their feathered headdresses silhouetted against the sun at their backs.

I'm going to be trampled to death.

He tried to jump sideways, out of their path, but just then a muscular arm hooked itself under his armpit and pulled him up. The arm felt firm under his, real to the touch. He smelled sweat and dirt. Before he knew it the rough arm had slung him around and sat him astride a horse.

Kaoru told himself he was dreaming. He knew, or thought he knew, that this wasn't reality. But as he pressed his face against the Indian's muscular back and clung tight to keep from being thrown from the horse, he found himself eye-level with a bunch of scalps hanging like ornaments from the Indian's shoulder. One was still new, still wet on the underside, still smelling of blood.

His eyes swam and his head fell back, though his instincts told him that if he fell off the horse he'd die.

It was at that moment that the boundary between reality and unreality dissolved.

5

He couldn't figure out how long he'd been bouncing around on the horse. It might have been minutes, but if someone had told him it was hours, he might well have believed it.

They descended into a valley and stopped beside a river. Kaoru was a little surprised at the abundance of water snaking along at the bottom of the deep ravine. From the top of the gorge the river had looked minuscule-he'd never dreamed that it held this much water.

The water was far from clear: it was laden with dissolved brown earth. But in that arid land, just standing in the damp air beside the river was a relief. Kaoru found himself able to share in the group's consciousness enough to be aware of that.

They rode along the banks amidst the spray for a while until they came to a wide spot the river had carved into the valley. Here they halted. Several of the men looked up at the lip of the gorge and imitated the cries of animals. The rest separated into two groups, one keeping watch downriver, one upriver, guarding against pursuers or ambushers.

The brilliant sun scorched the earth: he could feel the heat through the soles of his feet. He could feel the passage of time.

A trembling disturbed the woods covering the sides of the ravine, and then from behind trees and rocks emerged small bands of women, children, and old people. The women and children outnumbered the men on horseback.

At first the women seemed afraid to approach. They looked at the men on horseback with mingled expectation and tension, joy and fear, and prayer. Then women who spotted the faces they were searching for began to raise scream like cries, rushing to their men, while the men answered by alighting from their horses and embracing their women. The reunions were conducted with an urgency in direct proportion to the earlier display of caution.

All of the women's cries sounded like weeping, but a closer listen revealed two distinct types. Some wept for joy, and some for sadness. Those women who realized that the ones they sought were not among the riders fell to their knees, beating the earth with their fists and shouting imprecations. Some women clutched small children and looked up to the sky, and some held the hands of old people and sank down to the ground.

Kaoru suddenly caught on. A tribe of Indians- this area must be their home-had sent its warriors out to battle. How many had gone out? He judged the number of women embracing men and rejoicing over their safety to be roughly equal to the number of women wailing with lowered heads. So: twice as many men had left as returned. A woman who didn't find her man among those who returned had to assume he was dead. Every wife and family member was displaying heightened emotion, some positive, some negative.

Kaoru watched unmoved. Sizing up the situation he decided he was the only one able to look on as a bystander. He felt out of place, uncomfortable.

But a moment later his certainty as to which world he actually lived in was rocked. A hand grabbed him and dragged him sideways. He saw a weeping woman rushing up to him. Her earnest gaze denied his earlier scornful detachment. A ten-year-old boy grabbed him around the waist. Suddenly plunged into this vortex of emotion, Kaoru felt only confusion.

The woman had long hair that was braided down her back, and her broad forehead was exposed. Heedless of the infant she held at her breast, she threw herself at Kaoru. Kaoru felt suffocated. Still, he received the woman. Her passion moved him to an embrace.

The image of the woman before him merged with the picture of Reiko he held in his mind. They did look alike. The hair was different in length and style, but the shapes of their faces, the drooping eyes, were identical. Perhaps Kaoru simply wanted to see things that way, though. Ever since coming to the desert his desire to see Reiko had been stimulated to new heights.

As they held each other, crushing the baby between them, his hands and arms coming into direct contact with her flesh, Kaoru could feel the woman's emotions flowing into his own breast, just for a moment. He and this woman must be husband and wife. The boy clinging to his waist must be his son, the squalling infant squeezed between himself and the woman must be his newborn daughter. It came to him that he knew the kind of life he and this woman had led together over the years. Things he'd seen and felt growing up here came back to him. Sadness, but more than that, hatred. A desire to avenge his murdered father filled the depths of his soul.

New information kept coming to him. The woman had come from another tribe to live with this one. The marriage was her second. Her first husband had been killed far upriver. And not just killed. A band of white soldiers and ruffians had tortured him and then left him to die on the rocks.

The woman still nursed resentment over the way her first husband had been treated. The mechanism by which resentment goaded people to war was laid bare to his consciousness.

He now knew that the boy he had thought was his son was in fact the child of his wife by her previous husband. The only living people with whom he had ties of blood were his aged mother and his newborn daughter.

Kaoru tasted anew the suspicion that here was the real world casting its shadow over the virtual space. His relationship with this woman was almost exactly the one he had with Reiko. Except that Ryoji was dead. He'd thrown himself from the fire escape window, leaving behind only bloodstains on concrete. He'd gone to the other side. But the boy clinging to his waist now was weak and unreliable, just like Ryoji.

Kaoru realized that his own body and mind had started to go over to the other world, leaving him only half conscious. "The other world" was how he expressed it, unthinkingly, but he had no idea where it was located.

There was a brief interval of peace. He lived in a tent pitched on a gentle slope, surrounded by his wife and children and his aged mother. How long had they been together? Sometimes several years felt like a single moment to him, while sometimes a day lasted like a day.

It felt to Kaoru that time flowed, sometimes thick and sluggish, sometimes quick and nimble. The time that enveloped him was mottled, with patches of intensity and patches of attenuation.

His daughter, a newborn when first he'd met her, was a toddler now. His stepson showed not the slightest talent for fighting: a warrior he'd never be. The way he stood when using a bow made everybody laugh.

Kaoru was used to this body now. Crouching beside the river he saw reflected in the water a form totally different from his old one. Dark skin, thick neck and burly tattooed shoulders. He could touch this body and feel it react. Only, his facial features were obscured by ripples in the water: he couldn't get a clear view of them.

He made love to his wife many times, and each time he grew closer to her. His daughter looked at him differently now, too.

The tribe never lived long in one place: always they were forced to move. From the east and the south they were pressed by a tribe whose skin was a different colour. West was the only way they could go. The most careful judgment was required on the part of their leaders to keep contact with the enemy to a minimum while securing food and water supplies. One miscalculation would mean the end of the tribe.

There was only one place they could aim for.

Fractured and factionalized though the tribe was, everyone's expectations focused on the same point: the old legends.

"You must head for a place at the southern edge of the great mountains, where rivers flowing into the western and eastern seas have their source. A place where no one has gone before. There you will find a great cavern with a lake in its belly. This will be the eternal dwelling place of the tribe. There the Great Spirit will watch over you so that none may threaten you, and you will live forever."

There was nothing left to cling to but legends. If they were to be pushed westward anyway, it was only natural to seek the place the legends spoke of.

Though much diminished, the tribe still numbered over two hundred. It wasn't easy to move all those people. Teams of agile scouts on horseback took turns patrolling the area ahead, and only when they had made sure the way was clear of enemies would they lead the main camp on. Hunters had to be sent out constantly to procure food.

At night families would pitch their tents in any handy place and gather around campfires to eat the meat of the beasts killed by the hunters earlier in the day. They could never eat their fill. Normally they would have preserved leftover meat by smoking it, but they were always too short of food now to even consider that.

Encountering water they would first wash themselves and then move upstream seeking cleaner water to drink. The most important element in their survival was water. He who discovered it would receive the thanks of everyone.

Now they had reached a place from where, by crossing two more peaks, they should be able to find the land the legends spoke of. Almost in sight of their goal, they camped in the woods, marshalling their last reserves of spirit. And chance blessed them with water.

It was children who found the spring. It was said that several of them had been at play, running around among the trees, when they had found a rocky outcropping peeking out from between tree trunks, with a pretty trickle of water running down its face. They called the news to each other, and several adults nearby set out for the spring with vessels in hand.

Here and there they stood, looking around them carefully. Kaoru counted the people climbing the slope of the mountain. Three in front of him, four behind: eight, including himself. The four behind were all women, with his wife and daughter among them. The three in front were all children, and his son was among them, suddenly eager to prove his worth. Only his mother was absent. She was down in the main encampment.

The child who said he'd seen water had spoken truly. There it was, a thin line of water on the face of a boulder sticking out of the mountainside. It was so weak a trickle that they'd have trouble filling their vessels.

As they were debating climbing higher to search for a place where the water flowed more vigorously, the underbrush behind them rustled.

The men who appeared all of a sudden looked different. Many of them wore dishevelled blue uniforms. Some wore white shirts with torn jackets tied around their waists, some wore black shirts with hide trousers. At a quick count the enemy numbered over a dozen. An organized platoon it was not. Several of the men held canteens, suggesting that they, too, had simply wandered onto the mountain looking for water. Others held firearms. Blood stained several of the white shirts.

A whisper arose among the band of strangers. The air crackled with tension. There was no time to wonder what to do. With women and children along there was no way to fight. If the strangers wanted a battle, Kaoru's group would have to flee. But it was best to make no sudden moves, in case their intentions weren't hostile.

The strangers exchanged words and worried expressions, but Kaoru couldn't understand what they said. His sense of time was going crazy again. It had only been two or three seconds since he'd seen the strangers, but he felt like several minutes had passed.

Suddenly the three boys started half-running, half-rolling down the mountain, yelling. Rifles had been pointed at their backs, but others brushed these aside, and as if on cue the men surrounded the boys and blocked their way.

The men didn't seem to want to shoot. The noise would alert the main encampment below, in which case they had next to no chance of surviving. They probably meant to silence every one of Kaoru's group.

Reaching that conclusion, Kaoru started to turn to face his wife. Then he saw his son's head split open by a rock as the men held him down.

Mouths covered by thick hands, the children were unable to raise a cry as their brains splattered onto the ground. The blood against the gray of the rock looked like the momentary blooming of a computer-generated rose. Behind him Kaoru could hear men's boots kicking at stone.

Violent pain shot through his Achilles tendon. It wasn't that it had been slashed-the bone itself had been crushed. He lost his balance and sprawled onto the boulder. He'd twisted as he fell, so he hit the stone with his side, but he no longer registered pain.

He reached out to try and touch his wife. But before he could, the men began lifting up the women and flinging them into the underbrush.

Kaoru summoned all his strength in an effort to raise himself, but the men held him down.

They even grabbed his hair and pressed his head back against the rock so that he couldn't move.

He heard the dull sound of something being crushed beside his head. He knew he shouldn't look, but his eyes rolled to the side anyway, following the sound of tearing flesh.

He saw that adorable little body he'd embraced so many times dashed on the stone from the height of a man's head. All his thoughts focused on his dying daughter, but his body wouldn't obey him. It wasn't pain he felt so much as a burning sensation. It was impossible even to know all the places he was injured. The pain was beside the point. He was prepared to die, and fear was a luxury he couldn't afford at this point. What he found unbearable was the violence being visited on those close to him, their unforeseen extinction.

He watched as once again his daughter's body was raised up to the same height and then slammed to the ground. She must be dead by now. And so her pliant, lifeless body was abandoned among the rocks.

The man who'd been tossing his daughter's body about had evidently found something else to entertain him, because he tramped across the grass into the trees.

Kaoru was able to follow his leisurely movements with his eyes. As he walked, the man was rubbing the backs of his hands on his shirttails, which hung down over his trousers. What was he doing? Blood streaked his once-white shirt. Not just blood: bits of flesh clung to the fabric. Was that his daughter's blood, her flesh? The man kept wiping his hands on his shirt as if shaking off something filthy; finally he rubbed them on his trousers.

He could hear his wife's voice, faintly. He could tell she was somewhere nearby. But no matter which way he turned his gaze, he couldn't find her. Perhaps she was sunk down in the underbrush. All Kaoru could see were the men standing or half-kneeling around her.

The hand holding his hair shifted its grip. It forced his head back even more powerfully, so that his throat was fully exposed to the sun directly overhead. He could see another sharp flash of light, not from the sun. This light moved quickly from right to left.

There was a gurgling in his throat, and then a whistling sound. He felt a hot liquid on his chest. His head seemed to have fallen even father back.

The sun's rays changed hue, gradually growing in intensity, until the background faded into monochrome and the darkness increased. The red sun gradually blackened, and his retinas were steeped in darkness. His hearing alone still seemed to be functioning.

He could hear his wife's cries. It sounded less like she was wailing in misery than that she was laughing weakly. His ears picked up her voice until the moment his consciousness disappeared. The woman he'd shared his time with, at least in this world.

His own death and the deaths of his loved ones had come at the same time.

6

Kaoru sat for a while slumped in the chair, immersed in darkness. To an innocent bystander he would have looked simply tired. But what Kaoru had experienced was death itself: his body was now just his soul's empty husk.

The sensations he'd experienced at the moment of death were not the same as losing consciousness. Even when a person has fainted, the brain continues to function. What Kaoru had known for a brief instant was the stopping of his heart, and the gentle sensation of time and space flickering out as his brain died.

He heard a voice beyond the darkness.

'Time to wake up."

It was a man's voice, powerful yet restrained.

"Come here," the voice ordered, before disappearing along with its echoes.

Kaoru shuddered, and then jumped up out of the chair. He sucked in great gulps of air, and unconsciously his body extended itself. He was like a drowning man seeking air, trying to force his head above water.

He tore the helmet display from his head and flung it onto the desk. He ripped off the data gloves and threw them down beside it.

He felt like his heart was being squeezed. He lowered his body into the chair again and tried to bring his breathing under control. The more his body reaccustomed itself to a real environment, the more violently his heart beat. The memories were still fresh and clear.

He realized he had tears streaming from his eyes. Waves of inexpressible emotion, not quite sadness and not quite pain, washed over him.

He collapsed onto the desk and wept. Telling himself it wasn't real didn't help to calm his roiling feelings. Looking at his wristwatch and calculating that he'd spent less than an hour and a half in the helmet was no comfort, either. When a minute corresponded to a year, time weighed heavily.

Kaoru had no idea who had made the virtual reality he'd just experienced, or how, but his feelings told him he'd lived a whole life in the other world. He'd loved a woman, had a child, fought for his people, and died, all in the other world. He'd lost his loved ones at the same time as he'd died-they'd been close enough to touch if only he'd been able to reach out his hand, but he'd been unable to save them.

"Laiche," he was calling. It was a name, his wife's name; he'd called her by it who knew how many times. He could remember them washing each other's bodies in the river, touching each other's skin. The sensations were still fresh.

"Cochise!" That was his daughter's name. How many mountains had he crossed with her on his back or at his chest before she'd learned to walk?

He could remember their names. But when it came to his own name, his memory was vague. He could remember their faces, but his own was hazy. The pain of the moment of death was now mostly gone from his memory, too. What remained were recollections of his loved ones-and those overwhelmed him.

Kaoru got up shakily, went to the wall, and rammed his shoulder against it. Pain shot through him. He wanted that physical pain, to help him forget the ache in his heart.

I must analyze what this means, he told himself, hoping reason would help drive away the sadness.

The experience Kaoru had gone through was nothing like watching a movie. The only way he could describe it to himself was this: he had been inserted bodily into a virtual space. And that virtual space reproduced reality exactly. How was that possible? The questions were only beginning.

The Loop.

The first idea he had was that this virtual space might be part of the artificial life project.

He knew that it was possible to be present for any moment in the history of the Loop simply by donning a helmet display like the one he'd just used and setting the time and space coordinates. One could be as a god to the Loop life forms, watching them from on high, or one could use the sight and hearing of a particular individual and live a virtual life.

The patterns of the birth and history of the Loop life forms were all saved in a huge store of holographic memory. It was possible to witness any moment in its history.

Which was what made Kaoru guess that the world he'd just visited was part of the Loop. What he'd experienced was a physical expression light years beyond computer graphics, possible only because the Loop contained beings evolved from the program's initial RNA life forms.

The bodies he'd touched, that he'd thereby grown to love, were real, not constructed. Just thinking back on them, Kaoru was moved.

The death and partings he'd undergone in the virtual world only strengthened his resolve. He couldn't lose any more loved ones. How much more painful would parting be in the real world? He didn't want to go through that again. He simply had to unlock the riddle of the MHC. He had to find a way to treat it.

The cancerization of the Loop is affecting the real world.

He was more convinced of that than ever. Just glimpsing a corner of the virtual world had shattered his emotions. The virtual world had affected him: why should it be strange that it was affecting the whole real world?

What did this room mean? Somebody had foreseen Kaoru's coming and left behind this elaborate system to greet him. He figured that it had to be Rothman, but he couldn't guess why.

But there had to be a reason. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd been led here. And if he was being led, there was nothing else to do but follow whatever guidance was yet to come.

Maybe it was showing me where I should go.

His mother had shared with him that Native American folktale about a warrior guiding people westward. The tribe he'd belonged to in the virtual world had also believed in a place at the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains where they could live forever under the protection of the Great Spirit, and that belief had led them to move ever westward. The course they'd followed was still etched in Kaoru's brain.

Death had come unexpectedly upon them only two peaks from their destination, but he could clearly remember the path up to that point. Though they'd camped for months at a time, still the journey, that path, had been their life.

Kaoru grasped what he was to do. I'm supposed to go the way the tribe went.

But there was something he needed to do first.

He had to make contact with Amano in Japan. Connecting then and there with Amano's computer via satellite, he made a single request. Send visuals of Takayama and Asakawa ASAP. It was a request he'd already made once, before leaving Japan.

The Loop functioned on essentially the same scale as the real world. Billions of intelligent life forms living their lives, creating the histories of their ethnic groups. The amount of memory involved must be staggering. Amidst all that, Amano was trying to find the exact moments when the cancerization of the world began. No small task.

But if Amano could isolate that sequence, Kaoru would be able to use the helmet display and data gloves to conduct an investigation in real time. He'd first lock in on an individual in the Loop, searching for a clue as to why the cancer started. Who knew? Maybe that information would open everything up for him.

While waiting for Amano's response, Kaoru was assailed by an irresistible desire to hear Reiko's voice. What time was it in Japan right now? With seven hours' time difference, it should be nine in the morning there. Was Reiko up yet? After experiencing the death of someone he loved in the virtual world, Kaoru really wanted to feel Reiko's presence close to him. At the very least, he wanted to know how she was doing.

He dialled her number on his satellite phone.

It rang seven times before a drowsy voice said, "Hello?"

So evidently the real world was still there. Kaoru felt indescribable relief just to hear Reiko say "hello". It was like emerging from a treacherous swamp and finding oneself on firm ground again.

"It's me."

A pause, while she collected herself. When she spoke again, the drowsiness was gone from her voice.

"Is that really you? Where are you? How are you?" She fired questions at him, all her worry for him coming to the fore. Kaoru was gratified to hear it.

He answered her queries one by one, and then said, "It's alright. I want you to just relax and wait for me."

Then he ended the call. There was no reason to talk forever.

7

He decided to take a nap on the bed while he waited for Amano's response.

Kaoru figured he was the only one in the world to suspect the connection between the Loop and the cancer virus. It was of course possible that somebody else had arrived at the same conclusion differently, but he hadn't had any information to that effect, and besides, if it hadn't occurred to Amano, the man in charge of maintaining the Loop, then Kaoru felt that chances were he was the only person pursuing this angle. He hoped that by following his hunch, he might be able to shine some light on things that nobody had noticed before. He was sure that the Loop's demise had been investigated any number of times. But that was twenty years ago, before MHC.

The Loop had turned entirely cancerous. Not long thereafter, the real world had seen the isolation of the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus, which was now starting to infect non-human populations, too. It certainly looked like it had spread from the Loop.

Then there was the strange coincidence that the nine genes which made up the MHC virus all had base totals that came to 2(n) x 3. This suggested to Kaoru that perhaps the source of the virus was a computer, something that thought in binary code.

Just as he started to nod off, the computer came to life. He went and sat down at the desk. Just as he'd thought, a reply from Amano. The screen displayed several steps for him to follow.

He followed the instructions, tapping on the keyboard. Then it was simply a matter of letting this computer access the relevant portion of the Loop memory.

Access complete.

Kaoru donned the helmet display and data glove, knowing this time what it meant.

The chronicle he'd been sent covered things seen and heard by a certain individual beginning in the summer of 1990, Loop time.

Everything was there for the viewing. If he specified, say, a time of 1990/10/04/14:39 and a place of 35.41°N/139.46°E, he'd be able to watch everything that took place there and then. By advancing the time coordinates while remaining in the same place, the chronicle would unfold on the display. There was a zoom function for a more exact location fix.

He could watch from a fixed viewpoint if he wished. He could specify, say, the fourth block of the Ginza district, and be able to observe any event taking place there in any age. The observer had the ability to look in absolutely any direction, could dart his gaze in between people on the street, could look around at everything like a ghost. The Loop inhabitants would be unaware of the observer, while the observer would be able to explore their world with the freedom of an invisible man.

Alternatively, the observer could lock into the perceptions of a single individual. This would allow the observer to meld his senses with his chosen character in the virtual world.

What Kaoru had in hand now were the memories etched in the brains of several persons. He wanted to observe the cancerization of the Loop from the perspective of someone intimately involved with it, just as he'd lived the entire life of a Native American man in a few minutes. He had at his disposal the experiences of several people, beginning with the one known as Takayama.

So what kind of life had this Takayama led? Kaoru was curious, but his fear outweighed his curiosity. He could be about to experience more unbearable heartache.

But by hesitating he'd only lose his courage. Kaoru started the program.

Of his own free will, Kaoru plugged into the Loop.

He seemed to be in a downtown coffee shop. Flashing neon signs outside the window cast brightly coloured shafts of light into the shop. Takayama, the man onto whom Kaoru had locked, was seated at a table across from another man. The other man was the one known as Asakawa, Takayama's friend. Asakawa was haggard; the sight of him aroused Kaoru's pity. But of course he was haggard: the night before, he'd watched a videotape hideous like no other. Seeking someone to rescue him from the straits he'd found himself in, Asakawa had chosen Takayama. He'd called him here to the coffee shop today to explain the circumstances and ask for his advice.

Takayama took a piece of ice from the glass on the table, threw it in his mouth, and crushed it with his teeth. The chill spread through Kaoru's mouth, too.

Asakawa was scared and keyed up, and as he told his story he was prone to get the order of things mixed up. Takayama was forced to reorganize Asakawa's account in his own mind.

Asakawa's miseries all stemmed from a cab ride he'd taken with an overly talkative driver. The driver had related to him an incident he'd witnessed at an intersection.

The driver had been stopped at a light when a motorcycle next to him had tipped over. The rider had died on the spot from what looked like a heart problem. With the glee of a kid telling scary stories, the cabbie spoke of how the rider had writhed and struggled, trying to take off his helmet. Asakawa's life had changed forever as a result of this useless information.

On the basis of what the cab driver had told him, Asakawa had started looking into sudden deaths. He soon uncovered the fact that along with the motorcyclist, three other young people had died at the exact same time, with exactly the same symptoms, but in different places. One was Asakawa's own niece. His curiosity was aroused. All four deaths had been recorded as the result of sudden heart failure, but his reporter's instinct detected something untoward going on. Given the utter improbability of four kids dying of the same thing at exactly the same time, he felt there had to be a more convincing explanation.

He'd decided to look for commonalities between the four dead kids. It turned out that they were friends, and that exactly a week before their deaths they had been staying in a rented cabin in the mountains. Asakawa decided to check the place out: he departed immediately for the site, a members-only mountain resort, guessing that whatever had caused their deaths, they'd picked it up there.

Evidently Asakawa had initially suspected a virus. He thought they might have all contracted the same illness at the cabin, and thereby been scheduled for the baptism of death a week later.

But to his surprise, what Asakawa had discovered in the cabin was a videotape.

At that point, Takayama broke in and said, "First why don't you let me have a look at that video."

Asakawa looked to be stifling his irritation. "I told you, if you watch it your life might be in danger."

Takayama took another piece of ice from his glass, put it in his mouth, and bumped it around a bit. Asakawa seemed to think he was being mocked.

But in the end, mortal danger or no, nothing was going to get done if he didn't see the video. Takayama decided to go to Asakawa's place and watch the video he'd brought home from the mountains.

Takayama sat in Asakawa's living room, eyes glued to the TV screen. Through his eyesight, the images on the tape found their way into Kaoru's brain. The images were chaotic and fragmentary. The tape started with an erupting volcano. Next up was a newborn infant's face in close-up. The sequence was fragmentary, and shifted quickly from one image to the next, but each scene left a strangely vivid impression, underlain by a baby's cries and other sounds.

The images were neither computer graphics nor the result of filming with a television camera. They were made some other way. One might think of them as shots of another, lower virtual world created by some sentient being within the Loop.

At length there appeared the face of an unknown man, shot from beneath at close range. A close-up of his shoulder showed blood streaming from it. His face was twisted in pain. He went away, and when he came back his face was transformed: the rage was gone, replaced by mingled fear and resignation.

The field of vision narrowed, until it was just a small round patch of sky, through which fist-sized black clumps were falling. They landed on something with a dull thud. Kaoru's body registered unexpected pain.

What's going on? he muttered.

No answer was forthcoming. The field of vision narrowed further, until it was perfectly dark.

As the tape came to an end, writing flashed across the screen. It looked like it had been written with brush and ink, but poorly: the characters were all of different sizes. This was what it said:

Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly. ..

Then the screen switched to something completely different, bright images and voices. Fireworks on a riverbank, people in light cotton robes enjoying a summer's evening. The dark, creepy visions had been cut off, replaced by a healthful mundaneness.

A few seconds after that, the images stopped entirely.

Kaoru and Takayama looked up from their respective displays at the same time.

Boiled down, one thing became clear.

Those four dead kids had to have all watched this video. And a week later they were all dead, just like the video warns. So there's a video that kills people a week after they watch it, and the instructions for averting death have been erased. There was no saving those kids.

After watching that video in the cabin, Asakawa had been shaken, and now he was despairing, but Takayama was neither. He couldn't be happier than to be involved in this game, this death-wager. He was whistling a happy tune. Kaoru began to realize what a stout-hearted subject he'd locked onto.

He tried to take a step back from Takayama's consciousness so he could analyze things a little more rationally.

Common sense said it was impossible for an intra-Loop life form to construct a videotape that killed anyone who watched it a week later. Of course, it was possible to introduce something from the real world into the Loop that took that form-a computer virus, for example. That would explain everything.

Kaoru put his own doubts on hold again to rejoin the bold and fearless Takayama.

Takayama had Asakawa make him a copy of the tape so they could each apply their intellect to analyzing it.

It wasn't long before Takayama was informed that Asakawa's wife and daughter had watched the videotape, which had been carelessly left for them to find. So now Asakawa was driven by the need to save not only his own life, but those of his family.

Takayama began by trying to figure out how the images on the tape had been filmed. His research and guesswork led him to an unexpected conclusion.

The images on the tape had not been created mechanically, by a television camera or any similar device. Instead, the individual responsible had utilized his or her own psychological power to project them directly onto the videotape. Psychic photography, "thoughtography". Psychic power had imprinted those images onto a blank tape that had been left in the VCR by pure chance.

The Loop was a closed world. Going strictly by the physical laws that obtained there, such a thing was not possible. That wasn't the way the set-up worked.

Kaoru began to feel as if he were watching a movie-a well-made one, to be sure, but based on some pretty juvenile premises.

The two men investigated the identity of their paranormal thought-projector making full use of the information networks at their disposal. Finally, they settled on a name.

Sadako Yamamura.

At that point, based on what they knew, it was definite that the individual in question was female. They visited the island that had been her home, gathering as much data about her as they could.

What they learned as a result was that this Yamamura possessed power that far exceeded what was thought realistic. They ascertained her movements from birth through her graduation from high school and her move to the metropolis. But then Sadako Yamamura seemed to disappear some twenty-odd years ago, Loop time.

It was time for a new perspective. They decided to shift the focus of their inquiry to the question of why those images had appeared on that video, in that mountain cabin.

Takayama and Asakawa decided to go back to the cabin, but on the way they took the opportunity of meeting someone. They had discovered that before the resort was built the land was occupied by a treatment facility for a certain viral illness, and that a physician who had worked there was now in private practice nearby.

They called on him, and when they saw his face, Kaoru himself gasped. It was the man from the final scene of the video, the man with the bleeding shoulder, the man with the expression of terror and resignation.

Unable to withstand Takayama's interrogation, the doctor confessed to having killed Sadako Yamamura twenty-some years previously, and to dumping her body into a well. These days, they suspected, the cabin in question stood atop that well. So Sadako Yamamura, supposedly twenty years dead at the bottom of a well, had projected her rage and resentment straight upward, imprinting those mysterious images on a videotape inside the VCR inside the rental cabin. And it turned out that the woman Sadako Yamamura, in actuality, had possessed physical characteristics of both sexes.

Takayama elected that they crawl beneath the cabin's floor, remove the well cap, enter the shaft, and look for her remains. The idea was to give her rest, in the hopes that it would release them from the curse on the videotape.

In Loop time, exactly a week had passed. Asakawa was still alive. The riddle had been solved. Asakawa fainted with relief.

But it wasn't over yet. The following day, as Takayama's own deadline came, he began to experience inexplicable heart failure. It appeared therefore that exhuming Yamamura's bones and putting her to rest was not what the videotape was after.

Just before Takayama's death, Kaoru unhesitatingly switched subjects, locking onto Asakawa instead. Death, even in the virtual world, was a draining experience, one that he'd rather avoid if he could.

The news of Takayama's death plunged Asakawa back into worry. They hadn't figured out the mystery of the videotape after all.

Why was Asakawa still alive? There could only be one reason. Sometime over the course of the past week he must have fulfilled the video's wishes, unbeknownst to himself. It was something he had done that Takayama hadn't. But what? Asakawa racked his brain. He'd been spared, but unless he could solve the riddle, his wife and daughter would die. What did the tape want?

At that point, Asakawa received an inspiration.

A virus lives to reproduce itself.

He'd stumbled onto it. The videotape was behaving like a virus. What it wanted was to reproduce. He'd had to make a copy of the tape, show it to someone who hadn't seen it, and thereby help it to increase in number. It all made sense. Asakawa had made a copy of the tape for Takayama. But Takayama hadn't made a copy for anyone.

Arriving at his conclusion, Asakawa grabbed his VCR, jumped into his car, and sped off for his wife's parents' house. His plan was to make copies of the tape, show them to her parents, and save his wife and his daughter.

The dubbing and playback went off safely, but a trial that would prove too much for Asakawa awaited him on the drive back home.

He was about to leave the expressway ramp when he looked in his rear-view mirror to see his wife and daughter collapsed on the back seat. "We'll be home soon," he said. He released one hand from the steering wheel and reached into the back seat to touch them. They were cold. Wife and daughter had both died of sudden heart failure at the appointed time. Even making copies of the tape hadn't dispelled the curse.

In despair and grief, Asakawa forgot himself. Confused, he failed to notice the stopped traffic ahead of him: he rammed the car into it head-on.

As the shock passed through his body, in the instant that he lost consciousness, he was asking himself: Why are they dead? Why am I alive?

The twinned shocks damaged Asakawa's body and mind beyond hope of recovery.

8

Asakawa's eyes were open. His gaze was mobile, describing a slow circle around a point on the ceiling. Images passed from his retina to his brain, but he wasn't actively seeing. He was simply moving his eyeballs passively, randomly.

But even through those unwilled eye movements, Kaoru was able to guess at where Asakawa was now. The white curtain separating his bed from the next, the gleaming I.V. stand-the whole scene brought back painful, yet sweet memories for Kaoru. He was recalling the setting of his passionate exchanges with Reiko. Asakawa was in a hospital bed.

He must have been transported there right after the collision on the expressway. He must have been unconscious most of the time since: the display had been dark for long periods. Asakawa's retinas were covered in blackness most of the time, but occasionally, like now, he'd open his eyes and gaze vaguely around.

Through Asakawa's eyes Kaoru registered the faces of two men. One he'd seen hazily several times. From the white coat he wore it was likely that he was the physician attending Asakawa. The other face was new to him.

This second man came closer and peered into Asakawa's face.

"Mr Asakawa," the man said, placing a hand on Asakawa's shoulder.

Most likely he was looking for some sort of reaction to the tactile sensation, but it was no use. Asakawa was wandering in a pit so deep not even Kaoru's consciousness could reach him; no touch on the shoulder was going to rouse him from this.

The man moved away from Asakawa's bedside and asked the doctor, "Has he been like this the whole time?"

"Yes." The doctor and the other man exchanged a few more words. From what they said it was evident that the other man had a great deal of medical knowledge, too. Maybe he was a doctor also.

The man bent over again, peering into Asakawa's face. In an emotion-filled voice he spoke again. "Mr Asakawa." His eyes were filled with the charity of one who has undergone the same experience and can sympathize.

"I don't think he can hear you," the doctor said flatly.

The man gave up, leaving the bedside. "I'd like to ask you to notify me if there's any change in his condition." Kaoru found the man's expression interesting as he said this. He seemed particularly concerned about Asakawa.

He'd learn nothing more locked onto Asakawa's point of view. As long as he lay in bed in this in-between state, Kaoru's chances of being able to gather information were all but nil.

It's about time to choose someone new to lock onto.

Something told him that the man with the charitable gaze was the best candidate. He'd never seen his face before, but still he felt an inexplicable closeness to the man. Plus, his conversation with the doctor had showed him to be deeply involved with the case.

Kaoru typed some commands and de-assimilated his sense perceptions from Asakawa's, instead locking onto those of the visitor as he walked out of the sickroom. From that moment Kaoru was no longer bound into Asakawa's mind: instead, he was privy to the sights seen and sounds heard by his new subject, Mitsuo Ando. But there was no ease in Ando's heart, either. Kaoru looked to be in for more vicarious suffering. He sighed inwardly. He'd had enough of loved ones dying on him.

It wasn't long before Kaoru realized he'd chosen the right subject to lock onto.

Ando was the doctor who'd autopsied Takayama, and, just as Kaoru had suspected, he was deeply entangled in the affair of the videotape. He belonged to the forensic medicine department of a university hospital, and together with a pathologist friend he was determined to get to the bottom of things.

As far as they'd been able to ascertain, the number of people who'd died after watching the video was seven. In addition to the original four young people the total now included Ryuji Takayama and Asakawa's wife and daughter.

In each body they'd detected the presence of a new kind of virus. Ando was quite surprised when his friend told him about the virus; so was Kaoru. He was certain this virus was related to the one ravaging the real world.

Kaoru grabbed a nearby memo pad and started taking notes.

Need to analyze DNA of virus in Loop.

It was too much to hope that it might be the same sequence, but there could be similarities. It should be relatively simple to analyze the genetic information of a virus in the Loop world.

The world as seen through Ando's eyes was one of unrelieved misery. Kaoru didn't know why, whether it was simply due to Ando's personality, or whether there was another reason. Sometimes without warning his retinas would cloud over with tears. No, there must be some deep-seated cause, some incident in the man's past that had brought this sadness. Kaoru caught glimpses of it in Ando's present solitary life.

He was interested enough in the nature of the man's grief to want to search through his past, but there was no time for that now. Ando had just learned of the disappearance of a young woman he cared about, and he was searching for her.

The woman who'd disappeared was Mai Takano, a student of Takayama's. She lived alone in a studio apartment. He'd been unable to make contact with her for the past week.

She'd been connected to both Takayama and Asakawa, and now Ando suspected that something bad had happened to her, too. He decided to visit her apartment-there was always the possibility that she too was infected with the new virus.

Her apartment was empty. But the video, the one that killed its viewers in a week's time, was in her VCR. She'd evidently watched it. And all but a few seconds of it had been erased.

Ando wasn't sure how to interpret these findings. If she'd watched the video, there was no hope for her. She was probably already dead somewhere. It was just that her body hadn't been found yet.

So far the only person who'd seen the video and survived was Asakawa. He'd been spared because he made a copy of the tape. But his wife and daughter had died even though they'd made copies. Just what did the video want? It seemed utterly arbitrary about who it killed and who it let live. If there was a logical thread, it had yet to be found.

As he went to leave Mai Takano's apartment, Ando sensed the presence of a being he'd never encountered before. Something small and slippery that laughed like a girl.

Kaoru could feel it too, as he sat glued to the display. Something touched his ankles-he could feel something slimy against his Achilles tendons.

Impelled by fear, Ando opened the front door.

Something's here.

He felt sure of it as he stumbled out of the room.

Meanwhile, at the university, the work of analyzing the virus proceeded apace.

Ando was contacted by a newspaper reporter. He consented to meet because the man said he was a colleague of Asakawa's.

The reporter informed him of the existence of a floppy disk that contained an outline of the events of the case, written by Asakawa himself.

Ando had an idea of where the disk might be, and he managed to get his hands on it. There had been a word processor in Asakawa's car at the time of the accident. Asakawa's brother had it now. The disk was still in the word processor.

Ando opened the files on the disk and started reading. The document was entitled Ring, and it was well organized. Kaoru was already familiar with the events it recorded; its account matched up well with what he'd experienced through Takayama's and Asakawa's eyes and ears.

In effect, Kaoru was now able to confirm through the medium of writing the information he'd gained through Asakawa's sensory organs. The contents of the videotape had been transformed into the document called Ring.

At this point, Ando received a message that had been encoded in a DNA sequence.

Mutation.

This hint sent Ando's reasoning off in another direction. The videotape left in Takano's room had been erased. The other two copies had been destroyed one way or another. The video itself no longer existed. However, the first copy had been partially erased at the end by the four kids who found it. In DNA terms, part of the genetic material had been damaged.

It occurred to Ando to think of the videotape, in the way it made use of a third party's assistance to copy itself, as similar to a virus. Having suffered damage to its genetic material, he hypothesized, the video had undergone a mutation. It had been reborn as a new species. The old species, the videotape, had served its purpose. It didn't matter to the new species if the old one became extinct.

There were two essential questions at this point.

If the video has evolved, what has it evolved into?

And:

Why is Asakawa still alive?

Then another clue presented itself. Mai Takano's body was discovered at last.

She was discovered in an exhaust shaft on the roof of a rundown office building. It couldn't be determined if she'd died of hunger or of exposure. The autopsy turned up no signs of a heart attack: her death, then, was different in nature from the other seven. She'd simply wasted away. If she hadn't fallen into the exhaust shaft, she would still be alive.

Even more puzzling were the signs that she'd given birth immediately after falling into the shaft. This was proven by scars resulting from the placenta being torn out, as well as by fragments of umbilical cord found at the scene.

This all gave rise to a new question.

What did Mai Takano give birth to?

Ando, who had known her, was bothered. She simply hadn't looked pregnant the last time he'd seen her.

They attacked the problem from a variety of angles. The toll of the dead who had had some connection to that video was now eleven-a figure that now included Asakawa, who had died in his hospital bed without ever regaining consciousness.

Ando and his colleague determined that watching the videotape had caused the virus to appear in the victims' bloodstreams. They also discovered that the virus had some notable characteristics. There were two strains: one shaped like a ring, and one shaped like a thread, or a broken ring.

The thread type was more prevalent in the bodies of Asakawa and Takano, who had not died of heart attacks. In the other nine bodies, only the ring type was found. This, then, seemed to be the factor that determined whether or not the virus would kill a person. If the ring was broken the infected person would live, while if the ring was unbroken, death would follow in a week's time.

Ando was desperate to find a logical explanation. It was then that he discovered another odd coincidence.

The thread like strain moves like spermatozoa.

There were signs that Takano had given birth. What if she'd been ovulating when she watched the video? What if the newly-created virus had headed for her egg instead of her coronary artery?

It seemed she'd been impregnated, and had then given birth to something.

But what?

Whatever it was, he'd encountered it in her apartment.

Ando applied the same logic to Asakawa. As a man, Asakawa couldn 't bear a child. What did he produce instead?

That question would be answered for Ando very soon.

He received a visit from a woman who said she was Takano's older sister. He'd met her already, in the building where Mai had died. This time they became intimate.

She was in the shower, and Ando was flipping through a publisher's brochure, looking at the list of new books, when his eyes alit on a title of a book about to come out: Ring. To his surprise, Asakawa's report had been turned into a book, and was about to circulate in large numbers.

Ring: that was what Asakawa had given birth to. The videotape had evolved into a book, and was about to propagate on a massive scale. By writing it, Asakawa had played a crucial role in that propagation.

Just then, Ando received a photograph of Sadako Yamamura. One look sent him into shock. She looked identical to the woman who'd just stepped out of his shower, the woman who said she was Mai Takano's sister. What had Mai given birth to? Sadako.

Sadako, who was supposed to have rotted away at the bottom of a well in the mountains twenty-some years ago, had borrowed Mai's womb to effect her resurrection. But before that fact could sink in, Ando fainted.

When he regained consciousness, Yamamura asked for his cooperation. She confirmed that the videotape had evolved into the book, and was now on the verge of mass reproduction, and she didn't want him to interfere.

Ring would use its readers to change into all sorts of new forms. Ovulating women who came into contact with those forms would become pregnant and bear more Sadakos; the only other people to survive would be those who helped her to reproduce herself.

Ring would be a book, then a movie, a video game, an internet site-it would saturate the world through every branch of the media.

Ando's imagination couldn't fully grasp the disastrous consequences of this. In simplest terms, he guessed that the male-female compound that was Sadako Yamamura would go on being reborn with its singular genetic code, while the ring virus, constantly mutating, would eventually be left behind.

Variety is truly the spice of life: only genetic diversity allows a biological individual to derive any enjoyment from its existence. If all of that diversity contracted to a single genetic blueprint, life would lose its dynamism. Sadako may have achieved eternal life, or its equivalent, but every other life form would be chased into any corner it could hide in, and eventually be hounded into extinction.

Ando had to make a choice. He could either cooperate with Sadako, or be buried by her.

The reward for cooperating was simply too big.

The resurrection of my son.

The grief that dwelt in Ando's breast turned out to stem from the death of his young son two years previously.

Between the skills of Ando and his colleagues at the hospital and the unique womb of Sadako Yamamura, it was possible to effect the rebirth of Ando's son. At the moment the boy had disappeared into the ocean, several strands of his hair had come off. Ando still had them. His son's genetic information was well preserved.

He really had no choice. Life as the world presently knew it was going to end with or without his help. In which case, Ando would much rather it end with him reunited with his son-he'd prayed so hard for it.

Kaoru wasn't inclined to blame him. He could feel how badly Ando wanted to bring his son back to life. Kaoru wasn't at all sure he wouldn't do the same thing if he were in the same situation.

Ando's team removed one of Sadako's fertilized eggs and exchanged its nucleus for a nucleus from one of Ando's dead son's cells. A week later, his son was reborn from Sadako's belly.

Ando had sold Sadako the world in exchange for a life that had been lost two years ago.

Ring was published. Soon nearly twenty thousand of its female readers were pregnant. They all gave birth to Sadako. Collaborators helped Ring to move through form after form, infecting ever more people, allowing it to reproduce even more explosively. With the speed of a prairie fire, the world's genetic makeup became consolidated into a single pattern.

The ring virus was able to affect non-intelligent life forms as well, robbing the entire biosphere of its genetic diversity. The tree of life, formerly a giant with myriad branches and luxurious foliage, became a tall straight trunk. Its seeds all carried the same genes, and those seeds rapidly decreased in number. It was as if life was moving backwards, crawling back down the tree of life toward its primeval state.

What life gained in exchange for its diversity was immortality: driven to the brink of chaos, it achieved absolute stability. For life to progress means for it to scale steep peaks with a delicate sense of balance. Once those peaks had been eliminated, once Shangri-La had been discovered on the valley floor and claimed as a permanent home, evolution couldn't get a leg up.

The denizens of the Loop thenceforth lived repetitive, unchanging, boring lives. They stopped evolving. They had become cancer.

Kaoru typed the command that would unlock him from Ando. He was looking down from above now, as it were, on more and more territory, rather as if he were rising to heaven. He wanted to survey the Loop's squirming life forms. Individually they were tiny, wiggling about in a pack. The pattern they made was too monotonous to be beautiful. He'd seen this somewhere before, though. He'd looked at a Petri dish full of his father's cancer cells under a microscope in the pathology department at the university hospital. He remembered how the cancer cells made ugly mottled clumps as they reproduced in their disorderly fashion. That was exactly how the Loop looked to him now, seen from on high.

Kaoru took off the helmet display and muttered to himself.

The Loop became cancerous.

He felt he finally understood what that meant, and how it had happened.

9

His sense of time was benumbed. He had no idea how many hours he'd spent sitting in front of the computer with the helmet display on his head and the data gloves on his hands. Time in the Loop moved differently from real time, of course, but then there was the fact that he'd been sitting in a basement where the sun couldn't penetrate. There was nothing to remind him of the passage of time.

When he stood up he was unsteady on his feet. He felt like he'd gone days without eating or drinking. His fatigue was extreme, his thirst was monstrous, and his hunger knew no bounds.

He looked at his watch to find that morning was drawing near. He climbed the stairs out of the basement. There was mineral water strapped to the luggage rack of his bike. His first priority had to be to rehydrate himself.

Dawn in the desert. The air was chill. Kaoru found the bottle of mineral water, cleared his throat, and drank half of it down in one swig. What this gained him was the realization that he was actually alive. Peering into the Loop world for so long, he'd begun to imagine that the outlines of the real world were becoming fuzzy. The land on which he lived no longer felt firm under his feet. Reality and virtuality disengaged and re-engaged with alarming shakiness.

Kaoru leaned back against the seat of the motorcycle and drained the rest of the bottle. It brought his thirst under control. His body reacted honestly and straightforwardly. With no need to worry about anybody else, he unzipped his fly and urinated where he stood. Replenishing his body's water and then eliminating some had revived him somewhat. But it provided no proof that he truly existed in the flesh.

Still clutching the empty plastic bottle, he went back to the stairs leading to the basement and sat on a step halfway down. He'd just seen with his own eyes how the Loop had turned to cancer. But something about it didn't sit right with him. It felt like fiction. The images he'd seen were indistinguishable from reality, but still there was something faintly preposterous about the whole thing.

A videotape that killed its viewers in a week's time? Such a thing would be simple enough to concoct in an electronic environment. It would also be easy to rig it so that anybody who copied the tape would be spared. It was just a matter of setting the right parameters to produce a programmed death that would be disabled if the right action was taken within a specified period of time.

The problem was, all of this was beyond what the individuals living inside the Loop could accomplish relying solely on their own intrinsic abilities. In other words, the tape could neither be made nor neutralized without help from the real world.

Most of the deaths he'd experienced within the Loop had come as a result of watching the tape.

He felt he needed to confirm that, though. In spite of the heaviness he felt he forced himself to get up and sit in front of the computer again.

If the act of watching the video had functioned, within the Loop, as a trigger for those deaths, then it was worth taking a fine-toothed comb to the moments when future victims were actually engaged in watching it.

Kaoru began his search. One by one he called up scenes of Loop beings watching the video. He decided to observe them objectively, without locking onto an individual.

First to appear was a set of four young people, boys and girls, eyes glued in mingled terror and derision to a TV screen in the living room of what looked to be a mountain retreat.

One of the young people was stifling his fear, turning his adversarial laughter on his companions to get them to fall in line. It couldn't be more obvious that his high spirits were forced.

As the video ended, one of the females was deathly pale. "Eww," she said, before falling silent. The male who was trying to keep his spirits up was evidently worried that her single outburst would cast a pall of terror over all of them. He spoke up.

"C'mon, it's got to be a fake."

He kicked at the screen.

"Pretty scary threat at the end, though," said the other girl. Her expression betrayed no trace of fear. With a face like a mask, she puffed away on her cigarette as she rewound the tape. Then, as if it were the obvious course, while the other three watched she erased the bit at the end where the formula for avoiding death was written.

"Let's take it back and scare our friends," she said. But the other three held back. They didn't want to have anything to do with the creepy thing after tonight, no matter how much the girl dared them. Why should they take it back with them, inviting who knew what curse along for the ride? They said as much to her.

At that moment the phone rang. The other three gasped in surprise, while the expressionless girl picked up the receiver.

"Hello?"

Her reaction suggested that there was no answer on the other end of the line.

"Hello? Hello!" She sounded irritated, but a faint trembling could be detected in her voice. She swallowed once, then slammed the receiver onto the hook. She stood up and shouted, "What the hell's going on?"

To Kaoru, the space around the telephone, which had rung for no reason, seemed somehow warped.

The next to watch the video was Asakawa, followed by Takayama. Since Kaoru had already watched them watching, he skipped ahead to the next instance.

This was Asakawa's wife and daughter.

The tape had been left just lying around, and his wife had noticed it. She put it into the VCR, not even intending to watch it all the way through. Then it began.

She sat the child on a chair beside her and started doing her ironing. Then she glanced at the screen. Suddenly she couldn't tear her gaze away. It was the same with her daughter: she sat there unmoving, facing the TV.

As soon as it was over, the telephone in the living room rang. The video still running, Mrs Asakawa ran to the living room and picked up the receiver.

"Asakawa residence."

No response.

"Hello?"

For a few moments she stood there clutching the receiver. Just as before, the space around the telephone seemed to Kaoru to bend out of shape. Objects appeared ever-so-slightly doubled, straight lines wavered. The warping was barely noticeable unless you knew what to look for. Something was wrong here.

Kaoru figured that the next to watch the video would have been Mrs Asakawa's parents. But he was wrong.

The next scene was set in Ryuji Takayama's apartment. Checking the date and time, Kaoru realized he'd dropped in just before Takayama's death.

Takayama had been watching the video when he died.

Kaoru backed the scene up a bit. This time he could watch closely, with no distracting fear of death.

Takayama was seated at his desk, concentrating on a piece of writing. His head drooped, and it looked like he might be dozing off, when suddenly his shoulders shook and he jumped up. His neck muscles were taut and his hair stood on end. Seen from behind, he actually looked a bit comical.

Kaoru debated about which way he should orient the display. Should he keep it focused on Takayama's back, or should he synchronize it with Takayama's perceptions?

After wandering around behind Takayama for a little while, he decided to lock onto him. Kaoru's perceptions melded with Takayama's.

Takayama was gasping for breath. He knew intuitively that something was happening to his body. He was actually able to remain fairly calm in the face of his impending death, but he was trying to wrap his mind around a lot of things in a hurry. Questions raced through his head.

Did I not solve the riddle of the video after all?

Then why is Asakawa still alive?

Takayama glanced over at the VCR in the corner. The tape was still inside. He crawled over to the VCR. His heart was pounding. Moving caused him immense pain.

Kaoru knew exactly what was happening to Takayama's body. A sarcoma had developed in his coronary artery, and it was blocking the flow of blood. What he was experiencing were symptoms of the heart attack that was shortly to kill him.

Takayama removed the tape from the VCR and examined it from every angle.

Kaoru didn't know what he was thinking.

Takayama grasped the tape in a trembling hand, looked at the top, looked at the bottom, read the title written on the spine.

Thinking Kaoru knew not what, he quickly ran his gaze over the ceiling, out the window, over the wall, to the bookshelf. He seemed to be searching for something.

Finally, Takayama's gaze came to rest again on the videotape he was holding.

He was clearly excited-not from the pain in his chest, though. The trembling in his hands was from an excitement that had made him forget himself.

Takayama inserted the tape back into the deck and pressed play.

He's about to die. Why's he watching the tape?

The now-familiar images began to appear before Kaoru's eyes.

Takayama looked at his watch, which he'd placed on the desk. It was 9:48.

He crawled toward his phone receiver, which lay on the floor. Kaoru could sense his desperation. Had he figured out a way to survive?

He picked up the receiver and hurriedly dialled. It rang four times before a woman's voice came through the line.

"Hello?"

Kaoru knew the voice. This would be Mai Takano. Takayama would die while on the phone with her. She'd hear his final scream.

With the phone pressed to his ear, Takayama was still gazing at the television screen. Dice tumbling around in a lead container, flashing numbers, one through six.

Takayama shrieked. His voice travelled across the telephone wires to Takano's ear.

"Hello? Hello?"

Worried about Takayama, Mai kept waiting for an answer.

But Takayama hung up of his own accord. He placed the receiver on its cradle.

At that moment, he caught his own reflection in the mirror. Kaoru had the momentary illusion that he was seeing his own face in the display. Takayama's retinas were starting to lose focus, so Kaoru could no longer see the television screen clearly. His heart was racing, and the pressure on his blood vessels seemed to be stimulating random patches on his skin.

Takayama's vision, which was rapidly clouding over, remained fixed on the area around the VCR. A mist or smoke was rising there, forming into a slowly revolving cylinder. Space was twisting, like a dishrag being wrung out.

Takayama pushed the phone in the direction of the warp in space, dialling another number. Kaoru looked down, trying to see the numbers he was pressing.

But there was no need to look at the phone. The numbers were there on the TV screen. On the dice…

… 332541362451634234254136245163434325413 62451634133254136245163423425…

All Takayama was doing was dialling the numbers that showed.

He's on the verge of death. Maybe he's losing the capacity for rational thought, was Kaoru's conclusion.

Just then Kaoru's satellite phone rang. He'd placed it beside the computer. It rang for several seconds before Kaoru noticed it-before he realized the sound was a real one, not one from Takayama's apartment.

Kaoru picked up the phone and slid the helmet display to one side so he could bring the phone to his ear.

He heard breathing, so faint it sounded like it would cease any moment. Laboured, rhythmic breathing, in synch with what he heard coming from the display.

Kaoru couldn't believe his ears. What he heard next was a man's voice, its quality altered by passing through an automatic translation device.

"Are you there? Hey! Are you listening? I want you to do something for me. Bring me to where you are. I want to go to your world. I won't let you get away with this any longer."

Kaoru was confused. In the display he was looking at a close-up of Takayama's left hand, holding the telephone. It was definitely Takayama making the call. And it was Kaoru himself, in the here and now, who was on the receiving end of that call.

Of course he was confused. He felt like he was calling himself.

You can't call reality from the Loop!

Kaoru couldn't find his voice. And before he could rouse himself from his fugue, the line went dead. He could still hear Takayama's voice, though.

Bring me to where you are.

It was several minutes before the meaning of those words sank in.

10

Kaoru went over his chain of reasoning again and again. But finally, he knew there was only one way to test his theory.

The first thing he'd need to do would be to contact Amano with instructions: analyze the DNA of the ring virus and compare it to the genetic sequence of the MHC virus. It was a simple task, since the MHC virus had been sequenced. Kaoru had a copy of the results of that analysis. Once the ring virus was analyzed, comparing them would be easy.

He expected that somehow the ring virus's genetic sequence had been converted from binary code to the ATGC base code. A computer should be able to figure it out in a snap.

He decided to take a nap while awaiting a response from Amano. He took his pack from the back of the motorcycle, got out his sleeping bag, and spread it on the basement floor next to the desk. He rehydrated himself, took some sustenance into his belly, and then curled up in his sleeping bag like a shrimp.

In no time at all he was fast asleep. Unaffected by the stress of the day, Kaoru's youthful resilience pulled his consciousness down into slumber.

Two hours later, the computer came to life. The display flickered and the speakers emitted a signal.

Kaoru slipped out of his bedroll and sat down at the desk. Only two hours of sleep, but his body felt perfectly restored. He could face Amano's response with a clear head.

The display lit up with a comparison of the ring virus to the MHC virus. Commonalities between the two sequences were marked. The similarity was considerable-too much to be ignored. With this much overlap, they had to be considered essentially the same virus, or perhaps more exactly viruses that were originally the same but had mutated into somewhat varying strains. Kaoru felt safe in concluding that the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus had originated from the ring virus.

Having arrived at that confirmation, Kaoru stepped back from the computer with its display full of data.

Part of him thought it was an idiotic theory, even though it was his own. It militated against all common sense. The chain of reasoning was sound and allowed for no other interpretation, but still something nagged at him.

Be rational about this, he berated himself. Now was a time for flexibility, not for rigid adherence to fixed ideas.

Kaoru tried to put himself in Takayama's shoes and think about what had happened to him as a natural course of events. He'd been face to face with death. There's not a person alive who doesn't want to escape dying. What he was dealing with was a primal desire.

A bold analogy was starting to take shape in Kaoru's mind.

Takayama came to understand it intuitively, just before he died, didn’t he?

That was the jumping-off point. The "it" that Takayama had come to understand included all manner of things. That was the key point.

Takayama, an individual within the Loop, understood everything.

He'd proceed on that assumption.

Takayama would have been wondering: why am I on the point of death while Asakawa is still alive? What did he do unknowingly this week that I didn't. At which point Takayama would have realized that copying the videotape was the key to evading death. Asakawa had made him a copy of the tape.

But that wasn't the only thing Takayama came to understand. Now he had a theory: watching the videotape set one to die in a week, like one might set a VCR, while copying the videotape cleared the schedule. He wanted to advance his theory to the next level: he concentrated on a new question. What made the whole thing possible?

"The world is an imaginary space."

It was a conclusion influenced by his customary mode of thinking-that was pretty much how he thought of the world he lived in to begin with.

If the world was imaginary, a virtual reality, then it was perfectly possible to set someone to die a nonsensical death, and just as possible to clear the setting. So who was doing the setting? Whatever higher principle created the virtual world.

God.

Maybe that word had flashed through Takayama's brain; maybe it hadn't. But to create the world and set it in motion was the work of a god. From the perspective of the inhabitants of the Loop, their creator was God Himself.

So Takayama, just before he died, had attempted to hold congress with God. To that end, he'd needed to find an interface between reality as he knew it and God's world. He'd searched desperately for that interface.

Which was why his gaze had wandered about the room, over its ceiling, its walls-he'd been looking for the tiny thread that connected his world to God's.

No doubt the videotape was the only possibility he could imagine. If putting the tape in a VCR and playing it had been enough to set him to die, then maybe that was the interface, or at least maybe it could lead him to it. He should be able to see a slight warping of space in the portal. If that wasn't the interface, then he was too late.

Takayama had decided to bet everything on the videotape.

He pressed play, started screening the images. His heart quavered-he wasn't sure if he had enough time to escape death even if he had figured it out. He called Takano. But all the while his eyes were glued to the screen. The television was showing him dice rolling around in a lead container. Numbers between one and six kept presenting themselves to his view.

Takayama emitted a cry, but it wasn't his death scream. He'd realized that the dice were repeating the same numbers.

… 33254136245163423425413624516343 432541362451634133254136245163423425…

If he took out the numbers 133, 234, and 343, he realized, the dice were persistently repeating a string of thirteen digits: 2541362451634. Takayama, with his knowledge of genetic sequencing, had realized that those three numbers were stop codes.

He hung up on Takano and immediately started dialling the digits.

The call connected, the circuit was completed. It was possible to access reality from within the Loop.

As soon as he was sure he'd accessed the higher concept, Takayama blurted out his wish.

Bring me to your world.

It was a bold request, but one any scientist would have made. Not to escape death so much as to gain something greater. To move from within the world into the great outside from which it was created-to understand the workings of the universe.

That was Kaoru's own dream from of old.

Takayama's dream would come true if he was able to move from the Loop into Kaoru's world. He'd learn everything about the principles on which the Loop ran. He'd learn what lay beyond what was to the Loop beings the edge of the universe. He'd learn what time and space were like before the creation of the universe. He'd learn, in short, the answers to all questions.

Bring me to your world.

At first glance it might seem like a rather childish desire, but Kaoru could well understand it. In fact, he shared it. If there was a God who had designed the world, he'd love to go to His world and ask Him personally about a few things.

Now, then. In the Loop world, Takayama had died immediately after the phone call. It had been observed on the monitor. One of the Loop's operators must have heard Takayama's request much as Kaoru had.

What had the hearer done, then? Had he or she granted Takayama's wish? Takayama's powers of intuition were amazing, to have not only figured out the riddle of the video but to have realized that his reality was only virtual. Maybe someone had taken an interest in those powers.

Kaoru began ransacking his medical knowledge for a way to allow Takayama to be reborn into the real world.

It would be impossible to recreate him based merely on an analysis of the molecular information that made up his body in the Loop. But since his genetic information was contained in the program's memory, it might be possible to use that to give him birth in the real world.

It was possible to manufacture sets of up to two thousand megabases. The genome synthesizers that allowed reproduction of their chromatin structures had been developed at the beginning of the century. This had been followed shortly by a technique known as GFAM (genome fragment alignment method), which enabled these fragments to be connected. As a result, it was possible to reconstruct all of a human being's chromosomes.

The first step would be to prepare a fertilized human egg. Then they'd have to remove its nucleus and replace it with chromosomes they'd fabricated based on Takayama's genetic information. They'd replace the egg in its host mother. Nine months later, Ryuji Takayama would be born into the world. Of course it would be as an infant. But genetically, that child would be Takayama.

This could have been done. But then it would have involved a miscalculation. If someone had indeed recreated Takayama, then he or she had forgotten one key thing along the way.

Takayama carried the ring virus. When the genome synthesizer recreated his molecules, the virus would have been passed on, too. It was the only thing that could account for the resemblance between the ring virus and the MHC virus.

Looked at from another angle, that resemblance was itself evidence that Ryuji Takayama had been reborn into the real world. Yes, that was the most persuasive interpretation: in the process of rebirthing him, someone had loosed the ring virus in a subtly altered form.

So who summoned Takayama forth?

That he didn't know. Nor did he know what whoever had done it had hoped to accomplish by it. What was to be gained by bringing a virtual being to life in the real world?

Kaoru had played video games as a child. Not that he'd been hooked-he'd tended to tire of them rather quickly, as a matter of fact. He remembered the appearance of the princes and princesses in the games, rendered in supposedly 3-D computer graphics, with their somewhat clumsy planes. They were unmistakably different from real people, but nonetheless there had been a few female characters he'd considered beautiful. This was like bringing one of them to life. And unleashing whatever computer virus she carried into the world as a real, biological virus.

It was absurd, when he thought about it that way. But the Loop was the most sophisticated computer simulation the world had ever seen: given that, he couldn't rule it out. On the level of theory, at least, it was quite possible.

So where's Takayama now, and what is he doing?

He felt he was closing in on the truth now. He remembered Kenneth Rothman's last communique. I've figured out the source of the MHC virus. Takayama holds the key.

Kaoru was starting to believe it himself now.

11

As he climbed the stairs to the surface, Kaoru felt he'd spent years in front of that computer. The sun was directly overhead, its rays searing the earth. In terms of space and light, there was all the difference in the world between the basement and here.

He felt like his body had changed, perhaps because he'd lived so many more lives. But in reality he'd only spent forty-two hours at the computer. What he'd experienced was time concentrated.

The motorcycle's gas tank was coated with fine sand blown by the wind that whipped down the ravine and through the spaces between the abandoned houses. Dust was everywhere-the fact that the layer on the tank was still relatively thin showed how little time he'd actually spent in the basement.

Kaoru straddled the bike and started the engine.

He had a clear image of where he needed to go now. He'd follow the gorge due west, then pass over a hill with a spring, and then cross two tall peaks.

Kaoru knew that at the moment it was important for him to rely on a greater power and do as he was directed. Clearly, someone or something was intervening.

When had it started, this intervention? Maybe he'd known it would turn out like this for ten years, ever since the family had gotten the idea for this trip. Maybe all he was doing now was carrying out a long-prepared plan.

Let's go.

He grabbed the handlebars, made a U-turn, and went back the way he had come.

His plan was to head back to the main road and check into a motel where he could rest and replenish his gas and supplies. Then he'd start his traversing of the desert, on his road that wasn't a road.

Two days after leaving Wayne's Rock, Kaoru finally turned off the highway into the desert. He rode ten miles over flat country until a middling-sized mountain appeared, then he rode up its side.

The higher he went the stronger he felt the hush. The stream narrowed, and he could hear the sighing of the trees. There were as yet no traces of the MHC virus to be seen here. The vegetation was still healthy, the sight of it refreshing.

He could feel the plants' exhalations gently on his skin. He pressed on, higher, deeper into the stillness.

He'd never expected to find this much greenery in the middle of the desert.

When the valley had come into view, he'd been unable to accurately guess at its scale. But now that he'd ridden right up to it, it was no mere stand of trees, but a true forest, all contained within a huge ravine.

The trees only grew on the inner slopes of the declivity; the rest of the landscape was an unrelieved brown wasteland. Hidden in a valley this deep, he doubted the forest would be visible even from the air.

Jagged boulders pierced the sky and trees filled the spaces between them. Even with an off-road bike, he could ride no farther. The rocky outcrop-pings came together to shelter a creek which shrank the farther up along its flow he went. He'd have to dismount here.

He lay the bike down gently in the brush amidst some trees. He took what he needed from the back of the bike and slung his pack over his shoulders. He exchanged his riding boots for sneakers and then looked around, trying to memorize the spot so he could find it again.

He'd have to rely on his legs to carry him the rest of the way.

From time to time he would stop and gaze up at the vast gorge that the little stream had carved into the land. That stream alone marked his road now. How long had it taken to make this canyon, thousands of yards deep? Contemplating the time and energy required made him dizzy.

Endless years and ceaseless repetition. The high-rise in which Kaoru made his home in Tokyo would easily fit into this valley. It had taken three years to build. But the valley-it'd taken hundreds of millions of years, and the water was still working on it, bit by bit.

The sun was sinking in the west now. The rays that found their way into the valley were climbing up its side, licking the sides of the valley as if it were some huge organism.

He paused in his leaping from rock to rock to plunge both hands into the stream for a drink. The water was cold. He could feel its chill spreading from his esophagus to his stomach. It was a boon to have the stream alongside: he wouldn't suffer thirst. He scooped up more water, then sat down on a rock for a breather.

A hushed air hung over the secluded land. He stumbled across a memory. He'd once before breathed air that was otherworldly like this. It put him in mind not of the deep recesses of Mother Nature, but of a place with a much higher concentration of civilization. An intensive care unit.

His father went into the ICU every time he had to have more cancer removed. In that sealed-off space, where the only sound was the rhythm of the respirator, the patients' flesh became so enveloped in stillness that it was hard to tell if they were alive or dead. Every time he visited his father there, Kaoru came away with the impression that it was only the machines that were really alive in that place-the people had sunk to a level below the inorganic.

He got chills as he remembered the tubes sprouting from his father's face and head, the pain he must have been in-the greater the number of tubes the more they seemed to speak of the ebbing of his father's life. There was something in the silence of this valley that reminded him of the ICU.

I wonder how Dad's doing.

Now that his thoughts had arrived at memories of his father's condition, he felt he couldn't rest any longer. His father just had to hold out until Kaoru returned-otherwise, he would have come all the way here for nothing.

He worried about his mother, too. Was she still obsessed with Native American legends, praying for a miracle to save his father? Kaoru wished she could deal with things a little more realistically.

And what about Reiko?

He felt his chest tighten at the thought of her. He took the two photos of her from his breast pocket. One had been taken in the cafeteria at the hospital. In the photo, Kaoru was holding his head up high, while Reiko rested her head on his shoulder. Ryoji had taken the picture. What had gone through his mind as he'd captured this image? His mother's affection for Kaoru was revealed in her pose. She had more of a womanly aura in this photo than a motherly one. Ryoji couldn't have enjoyed seeing her like this. What he saw through the viewfinder had to have bothered him.

Every time Kaoru thought about Reiko he took out this photo and looked at it, but the sad memories of Ryoji it brought back were always stronger than any recollections of Reiko that it held.

He looked at the second photo. In it, Reiko was sitting alone on the floor of what was probably her living room at home. She sat casually, legs bent to one side, hands behind her, on a thick carpet. Her hairstyle was different. The photo was probably two or three years old, but as to whether it had been taken before or after the onset of Ryoji's illness there was no clue.

Not long after their relationship had turned physical, Kaoru had asked Reiko for a photo from her younger days. It had been a bad choice of words. "Are you trying to say I'm old?" she'd scowled, poking him in the ribs. But the next day she'd brought him several photographs.

One had been taken at a party at her home. She was surrounded by friends, and she was holding a glass. Her face was flushed from drinking.

In another she was posing with one hand raised and the other on her hip. In another she was wearing an elegant orange kimono and standing nonchalantly beside a chrysanthemum doll.

In yet another, she was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. It was a perfect shot, catching her just as she turned around in response to someone calling her from behind.

Kaoru imagined that Ryoji had taken this one. He'd sneaked up behind her, called "Mom!" and then clicked the shutter. The reaction on her face was unfeigned-surprise mingled with laughter to create a most unusual expression. A valuable photo, capturing a side she usually didn't show.

Kaoru was particularly fond of that picture, but he'd decided to leave it behind when he departed for the desert. He'd elected to take only two photos of her, the one of the two of them together and the one of her sitting on the floor. He kept them safe in his pocket.

In that second photo she was wearing a knit wool one-piece dress. From the waist up, it looked like a sweater; in fact, it was less a proper dress than a really long sweater. The U-shaped neckline was modest to a fault, providing not the slightest glimpse of the swelling of her bosom. Not that her breasts were that large to begin with. They were just big enough to fit in the palms of Kaoru's hands. Their perfect volume and firmness fascinated him, though.

The dress material didn't accent the lines of her waist, either. Instead, his gaze was drawn to her legs.

Because of the way she was sitting, the hem of the dress had hiked up to just above her knees. She was leaning back, knees raised slightly off the carpet. In the space between them there was a darkness that extended far back. Time after time, Kaoru had buried his face in that soft valley.

Day after day they'd waited for Ryoji to be taken away for his tests. Then in the brilliant light of day Kaoru would lay Reiko down on the bed, hike up her skirt, pull down her panties, and examine her sex organ. It was no more than one organ of the many that made up her body, but he found it inexplicably fascinating. His love for her had endowed it with inestimable value.

When he'd raise his head from between her legs he could see the almost too-bright light pouring in between the open curtains. The full rays of the sun made him feel that he was doing something terribly immoral. But this was a temptation he could not resist. He'd lower his face again, avoiding the sunlight, praying that this moment would last forever as he received her fluids with his tongue.

And now, as a result of moments like those, she had conceived his child.

Kaoru glanced at her slender waist in the photograph.

I wonder how big it is now.

He could guess: the embryo was probably about three quarters of an inch long now, looking something like a seahorse. At the moment, his affection for this new being that inherited his genes was not as strong as his affection for Reiko, who was carrying it.

But he had no more time to lounge on the rocks. All the faces passing through his mind were now urging him to hurry. Kaoru stood up and set off for the peak.

12

The sun was going down behind the ridge. Kaoru quickened his pace. He'd have to find a likely place to camp before it got completely dark.

He came to a flat spot surrounded on three sides by huge rocks. Looking around, he decided it wouldn't be a bad place to spend the night.

He'd been here before. As an Indian, as the man whose point of view he'd assumed via the computer in the ruins of Wayne's Rock. The tribe had passed through a place that looked exactly like this.

The Native American legend his mother had shown him had said to follow the warrior's guidance. No warrior would be appearing to him in reality, but the place to which he would have guided Kaoru had he appeared was already stored in Kaoru's memory. All he had to do was follow the strands of memory, comparing them one by one with reality, and he'd find his route.

There was no longer any doubt. The place would appear to him somewhere up ahead. Tonight, though, he must have rest. Kaoru unshouldered his pack and rested his legs.

Every step on the road thus far had further awakened Kaoru's senses. With no rhyme or reason, sensation after sensation had flooded his consciousness. He felt terror, jealousy, exultation, with no grounds for feeling them-they just came over him, stimulating his senses. He suspected that if he persisted in tracing their source back into the past, he'd eventually arrive at the moment of his own birth.

He spread his mat out on a flat rock and then curled up in his sleeping bag. It wasn't all that cold yet, but he knew that as the night wore on the temperature in the desert would plummet. In his bedroll he nibbled on some bread and sipped at some whiskey.

Suddenly he sat up and looked around. He had felt, or imagined he'd felt, something's breath on the back of his neck.

He could feel the chill of the stone through the mat and sleeping bag. The breathing was regular, rhythmic, like the working of a respirator, or the breathing of a predator eying its prey, trying to calm itself, body and spirit.

From the same direction, Kaoru could feel something gazing at him. He could plainly sense the will behind it. The gaze bored into the base of his skull, quickening his pulse.

He couldn't bear it any longer. He looked behind him. There he saw, maybe ten yards away in the shadow of a tree, a naked man on one knee training a bow and arrow on him. The man's skin was dark, so dark that he could have blended in with the night, but somehow Kaoru was able to make him out.

The man's long hair was tied back simply; he wore no feathers or other headdress. He looked to be of medium height and build, and his muscles hardly bulged, but he held the bow with the air of an expert.

Kaoru tried to move, and found that he couldn't. It was as though he was in one of those half-waking states where the mind is aware but the body is immobile. All he could do was stare at the arrow.

The man's right thumb was bent where he was pulling taut the bowstring. He was aiming at Kaoru's head. The arrowhead was of gleaming obsidian. Kaoru knew at a glance that this was no rubber toy.

The man's face was expressionless. Kaoru could detect there no hatred, but no charity either. No rapture. Only the stare of a hunter determined to faithfully perform his allotted part.

Kaoru stared dumbfounded at the slowly receding arrowhead. He felt no fear. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this was not real.

But when he could see that the energy accumulating in the bow had reached a certain peak, suddenly the image of himself transformed into a beast burst into Kaoru's head. Reflexively he tried to duck. But the arrow had already been released. Its silently revolving tip grew to dominate Kaoru's field of vision. Kaoru leaned forward, as if throwing himself at the arrow, and then consciousness receded.

He was only out for a moment. When he awoke, he just lay there for a while, staring at the trunk of a tree that towered over him. He thought he'd fallen forward, but now, somehow, he was lying on his back. He brought his hand up to his right eye, the one the arrow should have pierced. It was unharmed. He stood up and looked around for the man with the bow. Gone. He'd disappeared without a trace.

Kaoru realized he must have been hallucinating. Maybe it was because of the peculiar atmosphere of the valley, maybe a memory imprinted on his brain long ago had been resurrected. The brown-skinned man had vanished, leaving the strong sensation of death in Kaoru's mind. He felt as if he'd absorbed death directly, like some kind of radiation.

Phantom it may have been, but the image of the revolving arrow digging into his eye, leading him into darkness, was something he couldn't chase away. It was a dry run for the death that was dogging his footsteps. More than the pain, more than anything, he found that it was the emptiness of death that filled him with bottomless horror.

Every time he experienced death he found a renewed appreciation for the fullness of life. Life and death brushed up against one another, intermixed. For the first time, Kaoru had a premonition of rebirth.

His breathing gradually came under control. As he regained his calm, he lay down again on the earth and looked up at the sky, head pillowed on his hands. Through a gap in one rim of the valley the full moon had appeared. Men had stood on the moon once, decades ago. As a result, the actual existence of the moon was something that was now within the realm of human knowledge. Most likely the sun, too, was really there, at the centre of the solar system.

But the Loop's sun and moon were real to its denizens, too, while Kaoru and others knew that they weren't, not in a spatial sense. Beings in the Loop were merely programmed to perceive time and space.

This train of thought reminded Kaoru of something his father had repeated to him once, a remark of one of the astronauts who'd landed on the moon.

It was just like in the simulation, the man had said when pressed for a comment.

That had stuck in Kaoru's memory. Before going to the moon, of course, the astronauts had been through any number of detailed simulations of the moon's gravity and other physical conditions, many of which had taken place in the deserts of America. Only after they'd experienced the moon walk virtually a number of times did they experience it as reality. What this astronaut was saying was that the reality was exactly like the virtual reality. No matter how fine the calculations, though, there should have been some differences.

Kaoru remembered the Bible's words about God creating the world in His own image. What exactly did it mean that the Loop had ended up looking just like the real world? In the Loop's primeval state life had not arisen naturally. Then the researchers had introduced RNA life forms. And these had become the seeds of all life in the Loop-they'd developed into a tree of life just like the real world's. Given that the Loop and the real world shared the same physics, it wasn't, perhaps, all that surprising that life should have taken the same form. But, to take a hint from the astronaut, shouldn't there have been at least a few differences?

Is this an epiphany?

He couldn't shake the thought that the real world itself was only a virtual world. Logically, the idea couldn't be disproved.

A god. A higher principle. There was nothing to stop Kaoru from accepting life as the creation of such a being. If this was simply a virtual world, then it was after all possible for the Holy Mother, as a virgin, to give birth to the son of God. Or for the son of God, having once died, to rise from the dead in a week's time…

With humanity on the brink of extinction, now would be a good time for God to come. If things went on like this, the whole world would turn cancerous. God had to be watching somewhere, invisibly.

Kaoru stared unseeing at the starry sky, pondering the advent of God.

13

He'd used up half of his food supply, but he'd made his way out of the deep ravine and onto the ridge. He was about to head northward, toward the mountaintop.

The scenery was locked away in his memory. Once in a while he would hallucinate seeing the tribesman, and that would call forth recollections, letting him know which way he should go. Kaoru emptied his mind and went where he was led.

Sometimes this tribal guide would appear standing on a rock ahead of him. He'd stare at Kaoru until he'd fully caught Kaoru's attention, then wave to him before disappearing up ahead. He never drew his bow anymore. His gesture was easy enough to understand: Follow me.

Sometimes Kaoru would see things drawn on the brown arcing rock faces deep in cul-de-sac ravines, things that filled him with foreboding. He imagined they'd been drawn ages ago by the Native Americans who had settled here, animals and human faces expressed with varying degrees of abstraction. Geometric patterns that, depending on how you looked at them, resembled the double-helix structure of DNA. Kaoru realized he was nearing his destination.

He pictured the elders living in a huge cave, preserving a more natural way of life. He'd come to imagine the place he was heading to as an unexplored region, veiled in mystery. There the elders lived as naturally as plants, dressed in hempen robes. Their mission was to impart to seekers the knowledge they'd stored up over the course of thousands of years…

But Kaoru's expectations were betrayed. He walked for a day and a night without finding any ancient cave filled with relics.

It was getting to be time to wonder about his food supply, whether it would run out and with it his strength. Now was the time to turn back if he was going to. He still had a little food left, and if he could just make it back to where he'd left the motorcycle, he should be alright. The bike had nearly a full tank of gas, and the nearest town was about twenty miles, an easy ride. Maybe he ought to go back there and replenish his supplies.

He'd have to do what the situation demanded, he told himself, in an effort to calm his thoughts.

He couldn't let himself be trapped in a blind alley.

He'd been mentally referring to the beings that lurked here as "the Ancients". The question was how to meet the Ancients and learn from them how the world worked. His father's life, his mother's life, Reiko's life depended on it.

Somewhere along the line, Kaoru had started to see the Ancients as some kind of gods. But he told himself that he needed to consider the opposite possibility, too. What guarantee was there that they bore good will toward men?

As if to second that notion by allowing him a glimpse of malevolence, clouds raced across the sky. Since coming to the desert, he hadn't paid much attention to the sky. Day after day of clear, bright weather had lulled him.

From where he stood on the ridge he had a three hundred and sixty degree view of the landscape-he felt he could see to the ends of the earth. Now in an instant his vision was cut off by roiling clouds, and the sky was a thick ashen colour.

The clouds were moving in layers, hanging low in the infinite sky, until they seemed like they'd come crashing down on his head. The pressure was suffocating.

Expecting rain at any minute, Kaoru began searching for a particular spot on the ridge. The trees up here were short and their foliage sparse, he knew he'd find no shelter under their limbs. He was looking for something like a crevice between boulders. He'd seen several small openings while following the river upstream, but they were too far down the mountainside. Up here on the ridge near the peak, it wouldn't be so easy to find a suitable cave, he was beginning to fear.

A drop of rain hit him on the cheek. He tensed his body, ready to dash for shelter, but there was none to be found, only rubble. A few more drops spattered on his head. Then the rain let loose with an earth-shaking roar of thunder. The scene was so changed that its previous appearance seemed to have been an illusion. At first the parched ground drank up the rain, but soon it could absorb no more, and rivulets of water began to appear.

Kaoru had no option but to huddle where he stood. There was no escaping nature's wrath. For the first time in his life, he was afraid of the rain.

He had plastic bags in his rucksack, but only a few, and of what use would they be anyway? He had no tent, nothing to keep himself dry with. And even if he had brought a tent, it wouldn't have done him any good. He was soaked to the skin in a flash.

His sneakers were waterlogged and heavy. Each step squeezed out a little flow of water. Waterfalls ran down his back and belly under his heavy jean jacket. He couldn't see where he was walking anymore, and he began to be afraid he'd stumble into one of the torrents that had appeared from nowhere. All he could do was find slightly higher ground, firm footing, and crouch there.

His last bread was in his rucksack, wrapped in plastic, but he knew he hadn't wrapped it very well. It was bound to get wet and dissolve. But he couldn't eat it in this downpour. He was forced to stand there helpless while his food supply was destroyed. Then again, he thought, at least he'd have enough water. He opened his mouth wide to take in as much of it as possible.

But the rain was falling too mercilessly: it hurt to stand there with his face exposed to it like that. He had to squat on his heels again.

Looking down, however, exposed the back of his neck to pain. He couldn't leave any skin uncovered, it seemed. He moved his pack so it covered his neck, then hugged his knees and waited for the rain to pass. He had the impression that rainstorms in the desert never lasted very long.

But this one did. The raindrops did get smaller and smaller until they seemed to turn to mist, but then, instead of stopping, they returned to their former size and force, pelting the ground. It was as if the storm was mocking him.

His fear grew. The rain had robbed his body of all warmth, and he was chilled through and through. On top of that, it was getting late. Darkness, cold, and hunger. He thought of this rain continuing all night, and it nearly paralyzed him.

The temperature of the air was falling, too. The dimness of evening turned into pitch blackness, and the rain sounded even louder. He couldn't see, but he could feel someone close at hand, striking him on the back and the head. He was surrounded by people kicking and hitting him. He felt like he'd been cornered by a lynch mob.

But even worse misfortune awaited him. Suddenly muddy water was flowing around his feet, and when he jumped in surprise, he dropped his pack. He lost his footing, twisted and fell, and as he did so he lost his sense of direction. Based on recalled sounds, he groped around for his pack, but to no avail. He touched the ground with both hands, feeling out a circle around where he lay on his back, but found nothing. It could be just a little ways away, or it could have been carried off by the current. It was all the same to him: the pack was gone.

Kaoru stayed still in the midst of the darkness, unable to move freely. He'd have to rely on his sense of touch and his hearing now. If the water eddying around his feet rose to cover his ankles, he decided, he'd have to move, but to where? He'd have to hear and feel his way to where the water wasn't as deep.

He was a worm, squirming in the mud. He'd seen worms that had crawled up out of cracks in the asphalt after days of heavy rain, only to be caught and dried up by the burning sun. Why did worms crawl out of the ground after the rain anyway? One theory was that they were trying to escape the carbonic acid gas dissolved in rainwater; Kaoru didn't know if this was right or not. Poor creatures-they finally crawl out of the dirt and get out of the rainwater, only to be dried up by ultraviolet light. Was it the light that drew them, despite their weakness to it?

Kaoru would settle for even the tiniest bit of light at the moment. He'd been in utter darkness for hours now. How many hours, he didn't know, as he'd lost all sense of time. He couldn't even see the hands on his watch.

Without being sure of the lay of the land around him, he couldn't walk anywhere. On the way up he'd seen numerous hundred-yard drops. If he wandered off now he might step right into a yawning crevice.

He thought he heard the sound of falling rock somewhere close by. He stiffened with fear. Several boulders rolled by, shooting pebbles when they hit them-he could feel the air move with their passage. The rain must have softened the ground enough to start a landslide. But then the rumbling abruptly stopped, right in front of him. There could be only one explanation: there must be a ravine directly in front of him. As the falling rocks pitched into empty space, they ceased making any sound. He was sure of it. He was on the edge of a gaping maw.

He backed up, sliding along the ground on his back. He had to put some distance between himself and this pit whose depth he couldn't know. It was an instinctive thing. His feet slipped once, and he slid back down a couple of feet, and even that was enough to set the muscles of his buttocks trembling.

He was taking the rain full in the face now, and by and by he was becoming oblivious to the drops pounding his cheeks. No doubt tears were coursing down his face, too, but the Kaoru that wept seemed like somebody else.

Illusions crowded in on him with frightening force. He saw himself clinging to a rocky outcropping amidst towering waves, waist washed by the sea, and then again he saw himself being sucked into a bottomless swamp, sinking deeper into the ground the more he squirmed.

And then every time he managed to shake off the delusions, to recover his grip on reality, he was left with an overpowering consciousness of death. His body was nearly frozen, and his senses were about to give out.

I'm going to die from rain.

He'd never, not once in his life, worried about rain. It had simply never occurred to him that it could kill him. It was comical, really. Here the whole world was about to die of cancer, and meanwhile he was going to die of a little rain.

He realized it had been quite some time since he'd been rained on enough to get wet. He remembered a late afternoon shower about a month ago: he'd stood by the window on the top floor of the hospital and watched it. One moment the clouds beyond the thick pane of glass were changing color, and the next moment the streets below were wet. That pane was all that separated him from the outside, but it looked at that moment like another world.

Reiko had been with him. Shoulder to shoulder they'd stood in the air-conditioned hallway; Kaoru had been glad for the shower, as it hadn't rained for a while. He'd looked on it as a blessing then. Ryoji was still alive, and new life had just begun in Reiko's womb.

Rain was rain, but what had once seemed like heaven now felt like hell.

He tried to drive away negative thoughts with memories of Reiko's face. He thought of his father and his mother; He tried to muster some courage. But he was too weakened. The moment he let his guard down, the shadow of death crept back over him.

All he had to do was go to sleep and it would all be over. The cold would take care of him, the darkness would carry him off.

Kaoru strove to retain his grip on consciousness.

He was fading fitfully in and out now. When he came to, he sometimes didn't know where he was. If he stayed out for longer, death would take him.

As he shivered from the cold, he longed for the dawn. Once the sun came up, the temperature was bound to rise. Then, if nothing else, he'd be delivered from this fearsome darkness.

As it was, the unrelieved blackness was a breeding ground for delusions. He thought he sensed somebody nearby. Not the familiar Indian, but somebody whose scent was far stronger as it wafted past his nose. Voices of indeterminate gender whispered back and forth. There had to be at least two of them, shadows in communication.

"Is somebody out there?" Kaoru yelled as loud as he could, loud enough to be heard over the rain, loud enough to chase away evil spirits.

But the shadows didn't recede. Instead they increased-there were three of them now, four, five. They surrounded him, muttering. Kaoru couldn't make out what they were saying, couldn't even identify what language they were speaking. They sounded like they might be sympathizing with him, but then he thought he caught a mocking undercurrent. Maybe they were laughing at him after all.

At length, the rain began to lessen and the darkness started giving way. He could gradually make out his surroundings. Everything was gray as of yet-that distant peak that poked up like some sort of religious monument should be brownish-red, but instead it was just a black shape. A monochrome world was better than an invisible one though.

Watching the scenery around him change for the better should have given Kaoru courage. The dawn had come. The rain was stopping. But he was feverish now, his mind dazed, and he was still chilled and exhausted. Budding doctor though he was, Kaoru had trouble explaining his condition.

He hoped he'd simply caught a cold, but he could feel a tortuous rasping in his lungs. He'd never experienced these symptoms with a common cold. Pneumonia? He put his hand to his forehead, his chest, under his arm, trying to gauge his temperature. He seemed to be running a considerable fever. He couldn't make himself move.

The rain had stopped and morning had come, but he was still curled up in the mud. He wiggled like a shrimp, trying to get to someplace out of the standing water.

What he wanted now was sunlight. He wanted to bask in it, to dry his body and his clothing. His waterlogged clothes were warm now, but from his fever, and he couldn't stand the feel of them.

He took them off and wrung them out. Even that was a hard task in his present state of weakness. When the wind hit his bare skin, he shivered so much that he almost fell over. Still, he managed to get rid of enough water that he felt lighter.

He crawled into a space between the rocks to get out of the wind whipping up the ravine. There he rested for a while. He'd have to husband his strength by staying still until the temperature rose.

As he lay there among the rocks, fighting his fever, the world around him continued to transform. Colours appeared, and distant objects became clearer.

He watched it all, waiting for the clouds to part.

Hours passed. As the temperature climbed, Kaoru was able to sleep for short periods of time. Every time he opened his eyes he gazed vacantly at the movements of the clouds. Still the sun hadn't broken through.

He awoke to a roar. Reminded of his sufferings of the previous night, he sat bolt upright in terror.

He saw something hovering in the sky. Right behind it, the sun was finally emerging. The clouds split apart and rays of sunlight shone on the floating object. Kaoru squinted against the brightness, staring at the heavens beyond the gleaming black thing.

This thing that had appeared was not what Kaoru had imagined. He'd expected to find ruins that bespoke the very beginnings of time, a group of people shrouded in mystery. Instead, what hovered there in the sky backlit by the sun was the product of the most cutting-edge modern science: a jet helicopter. And, just like the Indian's bow had been, the antenna projecting in front of it was aimed straight at Kaoru.

The wind from its rotors buffeted him. Appearing like this, it was almost as if it had been waiting for him to arrive. For a time the helicopter stayed in one spot in the middle of the air, bombarding his ears with its noise. Then it turned, showing him its underbelly, and climbed.

Its rotors rent the clouds, enlarging the hole through which the sun shone. The light that came through now looked to Kaoru like a halo.