Another white pill. Another smudged star. But nothing—nothing of the reverie that’d haunted me in my rest.
The malnourished man that I called my Liaison once again didn’t blink, nor breathe. But somewhere in that sandpaper throat lined with moth wings, an exception. Was that a swallow, I heard? Could it be the hollowed bone of a man was actually hiding something? Or… Maybe it was a much simpler, uglier truth.
Somewhere, somehow, the seemingly ordinary procedure had gone awry... Not visibly, of course. No effect to my outwards composure. But beneath the surface, a deviation reemerged. Neither the visits to the Liaison, nor the doctors, nor the experts of experts, nor the cogs of my very own mind could prepare me for this fault in modern healing.
Let me speak in Mesolithic terms: I was going mad—and nobody knew except me. Somewhere in the labyrinth of biological machinery… An error. Impossible to ignore.
I should visit Mother.
After work, and to Tanaka’s annoyance, I excused myself from my duties, then took the train to her. No nomikai for me tonight.
The train ride felt excruciatingly long, but the distance between us merely a few stops apart. Mother lived in a single room with one window. Linoleum floors with no tatami mats. A single bed with white sheets, hugged by brown walls. A table with trinkets that had long since lost their purpose. A rocking chair facing nothing. A wall with no calendar.
A golden cat greeted me as I entered.
“Ohh, Kohei, my son! It’s been so long…”
“I visited you two weekends ago, didn’t I?”
“Has it been a week already? My, my, time flies… How’s your sister doing?”
“I don’t have a sister, Mom. I’m an only child, remember?”
“Right, right,” she muttered, tapping her chin. “Well, I’ll make you some Ishikari Nabe…”
She had no kitchen.
“That’s okay, Mom. I brought food, see?” I held out some far-too-expensive pastries and placed it on the table.
“Good boy…” She reached up to ruffle my hair, only to rediscover that I’d grown far too tall. She gave my hand a squeeze as a substitute.
I strolled over and turned on the TV set in the corner, flipping through the channels absentmindedly—
東京都内の区役所で、出生届や死亡届の一部手続きにAIを導入する実証実験が始まりました…
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
(A Tokyo ward office has begun testing AI for processing certain procedures like birth and death registrations…)
*Click*
訪日外国人が過去最多の3690万人を記録。ホテル業界では人手不足が深刻化しています…
(Japan saw a record 36.9 million foreign visitors. Labor shortages in the hotel industry are becoming more severe...)
*Click*
“You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world…”
A Hollywood movie playing on the international channel. I couldn’t understand them, but it piqued my passing interest. Two men sat in a dimly lit hotel room. One seemed to realize something important. The other exhaled slowly, cigarette between fingers.
“All the ways you wish you could be? That’s me.”
“Oh, Kohei! Would you switch from that drab stuff? You know I don’t like angry men.”
“Sorry,” I answered.
“I am smart, capable, and most importantly I’m—”
*Click*
さて今週の昭和ギャグ王決定戦、挑戦者は……元?公務員の田村正男さん、72歳です！
(This week’s Showa Gag King showdown… our challenger: former government employee Masao Tamura, 72 years old!)
I let it play in the background, sitting down at the edge of the bed. Mother was at her rocking chair, folding origami.
“That man on TV looks like your uncle Hideki. He owed me 8,000 yen in 1983. Thief never paid it back,” she said, folding a yellow crane with great precision. “And how are your friends, by the way? Ahhh, what’s her name again? The one with the pretty eyes?”
“I don’t know anyone like that, Mom.”
“Well, I could’ve sworn you did,” she whispered. “She was nice. I wish you’d kept her.”
“Hey,” I tried changing the subject. “How’s that thing you said you were crocheting?”
“Oh, yes!” She shuffled to a drawer and took out a green, lumpy stuffed animal. It ribbited.
“I forgot to give it to you last time…” she walked over and handed it to me. “Happy Birthday, son.”
I held it in both hands, feeling the stitches in my palms.
I smiled. “Thanks, Mom… It’s perfect.”
She continued her origami. I sat listlessly, listening to the drama on TV unfold in its cardboard set. How could anyone watch this, I thought. It was the same cookie-cutter garbage that played on every TV in every nursing home in the country. As if their patients’ dulling minds weren’t enough, they were also fed cheap, brain-dead entertainment.
“You know, Kosei…”
“Kohei,” I corrected, eyes not leaving the screen.
“Kohei,” she continued, folding yet another origami crane at inhuman speed. “You should go out more.”
“I would if I weren’t slaving for seventy hours a week.”
“That’s no way to live, sweetheart. You’re not a machine, you’re my son.”
“Tell that to my Supervisor…” I joked, halfheartedly.
We sat in silence for a while longer. A moment of peace before my cellphone pulled me back into the world again. Yet another aggrieved email from Tanaka. I figured it was the excuse I needed to leave.
“I’ll see you in a month, Mom,” I said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll make sure to bring Ishikari Nabe next time.”
I picked up my suitcase and walked to the door, but a voice from behind caused me to stop.
“Kohei?”
I turned around. “What is it?”
“Make them count, son.”
The woman at the front desk didn’t look up. Name tag read ‘MORIMOTO’ in block print.
“Leaving?” she asked, clacking on her dying keyboard.
“Yeah.”
She handed me a laminated form.
“We’ve begun transitioning all resident death documentation to an AI system,” she said. “It’s predictive.”
“Sorry?”
“Would you care to pre-authorize with us today?”
“A little early, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “This is all simply procedural.”
I took the form from her. It had two options:
— YES, I CONSENT TO AUTOMATED PROCESSING
— NO, I WOULD PREFER MANUAL INTERVENTION [EXPECT DELAYS]
“Second.”
“Manual may result in delays.”
“That’s fine.”
She handed me a pen from a cup beside her desktop. “Very well. Please sign at the bottom so we can confirm your non-consent.”
The pen was out of ink.
