Chapter 6

Resurrection

Breaking through the snow and the thicket, the sun made a faint appearance. I was instantly wide awake. My roost was in the back of a cave dug into the side of the slope. Near the mouth grew thick trees, making it largely invisible from the outside, but I had taken the precaution of gathering an additional cover of dead leaves and branches. Now having quietly removed it, shaking off the accumulated snow, I peered out to assure myself that there was no sign of human presence and then emerged, crawling on all fours. I raised myself slowly but nonetheless felt dizzy, wavering as I stood. From my bag I pinched and licked some salt, then put fresh snow in my mouth for sustenance. Today, if I did not find some proper food, it seemed that further searching would itself become impossible.

I didn’t remember how many days had gone by since I had eaten. In any case, my last meal had consisted of a dead sparrow. Before that I had consumed a river crab and a small fish. In desperation I had also resorted to leaf buds—most of them had already been consumed, and obtaining more would require climbing up into the higher branches, which was unfeasible given the condition of my legs.

I had had no idea that the hills of Takao would be so deeply covered with snow. Was this normal, or simply an unusual weather pattern? I did not know. But even if it had not snowed, I would still have gone hungry. And in that I was not alone: all of us who had holed up in these mountain recesses were starving. The MEs were roaming about, zombie-like, and that meant being forever on guard.

Snow had fallen the previous evening, and I was now walking through knee-deep drifts, wet and heavy. Fatigued, and wearing only thin layers of shirts and a windbreaker, I was chilled to the bone. I made my way east, attempting to remain on a sunny path.

I was soon hiking along the ridge. Crossing it, I went down the slope toward a mountain stream. The wind subsided a bit, though in the shade I felt even colder. The snow here was thick and heavy, and though I had tied several layers of cord around my shoes I kept slipping, crouching most of the way as I descended the icy surface of the hill.

The stream would offer water and the promise of food. I remained cautious, well aware that MEs might gather here. Before the first snow I had camped out in a cave here, but after coming under attack I’d been forced to move to my present abode.

The MEs dwelling in the vicinity would engage in battles for mutual deletion with those who came here at daybreak. From time to time I would find their shell-like remains lying on the ground. It was thanks to them that I now wore multiple layers of shirts.

The more stalwart MEs had hunted prizes such as wild boars, raccoon dogs, and monkeys, the latter from Monkey Park. I was unable to catch so much as a tree squirrel or a flying squirrel, and was relegated to a diet of bugs, fish, snakes, nuts, berries, and weeds. It was dangerous to eat wild herbs and grass without knowing whether they were nontoxic. At one point I had suffered terrible diarrhea and nearly died without ever knowing which plant was the cause. I even saw a guy who had been felled by mushrooms. But once it began to snow and my hunger pangs increased, it did not matter to me whether I was munching the foliage of cedars or chestnut oaks. And yet I was nauseated by the raw smell of it all, as though I were gnawing on a plastic bag.

Arriving at the stream, I scooped up water in my palms and drank. It was ice-cold and refreshing. I looked for minnows in the slow current but could not find any.

When I first came to the mountains, they were crawling with MEs, as if I had entered a bustling shopping area in the capital. They were prowling about, both along the hiking trails and in the deep thicket all around. But perhaps their sheer number had a restraining influence: as long as no one set off a panic, a deletion war would not commence. But now that their numbers had greatly diminished, their invisibility proved to be an even greater strain.

In less than an hour I reached Kiyotaki, the first station on what had been the funicular railway. The cable cars were no longer running; I couldn’t remember when they had been abandoned. Judging from their dilapidated condition, clearly some time had passed. Takaosanguchi Station on the Keiō Line had also been reduced to ruins. I vaguely recalled arriving in a packed train, as if it were the evening rush. A deletion battle had broken out on board, so that as soon as the doors opened, surviving MEs came bursting out. At the head of the mad dash was the conductor. There was no sign of any station personnel, who had no doubt abandoned their posts some time before when the horde escaped from the urban center. Soon the trains ceased to run altogether.

And it was not just Mount Takao that was filled with ME refugees: well-informed MEs spoke of similar scenes across the country. Trains and buses stopped running. Transport and distribution of goods slowed, supermarkets and convenience stores closed their doors, electricity and gas were soon cut off, radio and television broadcasts terminated, newspapers were no longer published, communication systems ceased to function, and those in the know fell silent. Society had gone into cardiac arrest. Deletion followed deletion, and soon it became apparent that the number of MEs had dramatically thinned out; though I might glimpse footprints or remnants of meals, days would go by without me seeing a soul.

As soon as I arrived, I hastened to secure a supply of food. I gave little thought to the long run; simply getting something for the evening meal was enough of a struggle. I had naively assumed that because I had money in my pocket I would be able to buy whatever I needed. Neither the station nor the restaurants around it were in operation, so in the middle of the night I broke into a store and stole some food. I must say in praise of myself that at least I had the foresight to take salt and a lighter as well.

As supplies were exhausted, the real bloodbath began. Plundering was at fever pitch, as the struggle for resources became further motivation for mutual eradication. Every day, in quite a literal sense, it came down to eat or be eaten. Still, I had no intention of leaving the mountain, since I imagined that everywhere else would be the same. If I went back to central Tokyo with the expectation of abundant food, I would merely find a worse hell awaiting me.

I couldn’t say whether or not I survived amid the storm of carnage. I remember stabbing someone, but on the other hand I myself had the feeling of being stabbed, of being pushed down and my head cracking open under a hard and heavy object, of being pinned and crushed by a mass of feet. I had utterly no memory of engaging in reciprocal deletion: the time, the people, the particular circumstances . . . Concerning those events, all that was engraved in my memory—and periodically revived—was the pain, sharp and cold, in my hands, in my chest, in my head, a sense of weightlessness, an explosive impact, labored breathing, the weight and tepid warmth of flesh on my arm. If all that was true, I had been deleted at least three times. And yet I was now here, hungry and scrounging for food. I was not at all confident that I was then the same me. And if not, what was I? I did not know. Perhaps because all MEs were the same, our collective consciousness would remain as long as at least one of US still lived.

When not foraging, I remained brooding in my cave, and, it would appear, slowly going mad. And then I stopped thinking about MEs: I was quite incapable of seeing the whole picture. All I could do was cope with the immediate problem before me, and that consisted of finding food.

I would painstakingly sift through every empty store. Even though I knew that all the provisions had long since been plundered, I would go looking nonetheless, thinking that this did not mean that I might not turn up some new supply. The result was always the same, bringing me to my knees in despair. The situation had grown quite impossible, I thought; I had not the strength to go on.

I finally spotted what appeared to be a buckwheat noodle restaurant: once inside, I collapsed. I thought that here I might as well meet my end, and at that my despair was eased, as my tense and cold body softened and consciousness dissolved. I yielded to a most agreeable sandman and began to doze. I knew the danger: to fall asleep here, a place likely to draw others, made me ripe for deletion. But if this was where I was to meet my end, so be it. And I knew that such would not really be the end. Sarà quel che sarà.

* * *

There was a loud noise at the door, followed by the sound of clawing. I leaped up, instinctively gripping my knife, and cautiously went to the source. A ME I did not recognize was lying there, already silent and motionless. I picked up a nearby chair and hit him over the head with one of the legs.

There was no reaction. He did not appear to be playing possum. Not letting down my guard, I bent over his body and pricked him on one side of his neck with the point of my knife, even as I checked for his pulse with my other hand. There was none. I put the blade of my knife under his nose, but it did not cloud over. He appeared indeed to have expired.

I dragged the body inside and closed the door, smearing a trail of blood across the floor. Turning him faceup, I could see his gory abdomen. He had clearly been attacked by another ME.

I took several deep breaths in an effort to calm myself. Tears came to my eyes. Heaven’s grace was upon me; I sensed I had been favored by fate, that some sort of higher purpose was at work. I felt the urge to offer up a prayer of thanks or some such. And so I closed the eyes of the ME lying there, bowed my head toward the body, brought my palms together, and silently paid tribute.

“Shall I begin with the femora?” I mumbled aloud to myself, as I took off his trousers. The body had grown colder since I’d checked for a pulse. From the cupboard I took a large plate, gathered kindling to place on top of the stove, and lit them with my lighter.

It was finally time to cut away the flesh, when again I heard a noise at the door. I clicked my tongue, thinking that someone had detected the scent of food. I had been aware of the possibility that someone might have followed our tracks at the entrance, so I had hastened to complete my task.

With the chair in one hand and my knife in the other, I carefully left the kitchen. As I feared, there was a ME standing inside the threshold, clutching his own knife. Both his hand and his weapon were covered in blood.

Seeing me, he trembled slightly. He glanced over at the kitchen. The smell of burning wood and paper drifted toward us.

“Is he dead?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I replied.

He continued to stare at me, his eyes insistently informing me: The prey is mine; I brought it down.

I replied with my own look: That’s got nothing to do with me.

We were constraining each other, even as we made the same calculation. In the end we would inevitably go at it, with one deleting the other, the winner winding up with a second carcass and thereby doubling his supply of meat. With careful rationing, that would get him through an entire month, by which time the snow might well have melted.

Among the MEs there was now no other food source. That is how all those roaming the hills had surely survived. In any case, one would eat what one could. That was the only operative life principle. Anyone who thought otherwise would wind up starving, becoming sustenance for the remaining MEs.

“Get lost!” I challenged.

“If you return to me what’s mine,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen, “I’ll let you go unharmed.”

“No. You can leave empty-handed.”

“Sorry, but you don’t have a chance against me. I was an aikidō instructor at the police academy.

To test his claim I threw the chair at him. He shifted his body reflexively, dodging the object and in the same instant closing the distance between us. Anticipating his move, I had turned as I made my throw, and was now running back into the kitchen to pick up a burning stick from the pile of kindling. And yet I knew I was still no match for him and was bound to become his dinner.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it this way: we’ll share it. If I simply give it to you, I’ll remain your would-be prey, and so we’ll still have to fight. If we share, neither one of us will die.”

I was speaking off the top of my head, the words simply spilling out. And yet I found myself believing them.

Share. Why not? Why had I not thought of that before? Why had I convinced myself of the necessity of bringing the other down? Share. Was that not a splendid idea?

He stared at me as though searching for something. Perhaps he thought that my real intentions might be reflected in my expression. “Fine,” he said after a while. He put his knife into his pocket, and so did I.

Gaining his trust filled me with simple happiness. Seeking to reciprocate, I dropped all defenses, turning my back on him as I bent over the remains of the ME and set to work. He followed me into the kitchen. “Will that fire do the job?” he asked.

I turned around, looked up at him, and handed him a piece of the meat. “Go ahead and cook it according to your preference.”

By the time I had cut away as much as the two of us intended to eat, the smell of roasting flesh and smoke had filled the kitchen.

“Don’t you think we should get some ventilation going?” I said. “I’ll poke some holes in the door.”

“That’s likely to draw others,” he replied.

“But otherwise we’ll suffocate.”

“All right then. But make them small holes.”

I took several steps toward the entrance, then suddenly turned and thrust the knife at his neck from behind. In the same moment, however, he seized my wrist and knocked the weapon from my hand.

“So you thought you could con me!” he hissed. Pushing me onto the countertop, he seized my throat and blocked my windpipe with his viselike grip. I soundlessly gasped, unable to breathe.

I had experienced it all before: brought down by a throng of MEs, crushed, prevented from breathing, dying as though sucking on my own throat. And now that same agony was returning, joined to my present suffering, as I sadly went through it all again, lessons unlearned. Full of self-contempt and realizing it was my own doing, then and now, I laughed in scorn at my well-deserved folly and so once more perished.

* * *

When awareness returned, I saw that I was being consumed—cut up, roasted, and devoured.

Hey! I thought. The bastard’s not even waiting until I’ve been completely deleted before diving in? Am I being eaten alive? But in fact such was not the case: I was indeed quite dead. Whatever was done to me, I would feel nothing.

How’s the taste? I might have asked him, but I had no voice, and he could not hear me. All I had was my consciousness floating in space.

Despite knowing that he could not hear me, I nonetheless addressed myself to him, saying: I am sorry. I thought that if I could persuade him to forgive me, I might be trusted just one more time. But I knew that this could not be. And that was why he was now eating me—as a form of revenge for my betrayal. He had already roasted the flesh from the other ME, but it was me he had dissected and was now chewing up. He was devouring me out of spite, even in death.

Ah, that was ultimately it. I now understood why I too had gone on eating MEs. I had been able to eat MEs because I scorned them, because I thought of them as different from me, because I regarded them as inferior. But, in fact, what I was eating was my own flesh, and that made me the inferior. I, who had come to devour MEs, was all the more wretched for devouring myself, and the more I did so, the more worthless I became. I was no better than scum, but the more I despised that scum, the more intent I was on proving that I was different. Every time I engaged in self-deletion, I wound up eating once again . . .

It was a vicious circle, one that would not end as long as I looked down on myself. And yet I continued to engage in despicable acts that could only encourage me to view myself in that way. I had grievously betrayed someone who had put his trust in me.

Go ahead and eat me, I thought. Every bit of me. Give my bones to the beasts to gnaw on. See to it that there is not a trace of me remaining. And if my carcass has any nutritional value, I should be grateful. Eat me, live long, and prosper! It is enough if I can contribute to your welfare.

But wait! I felt an uneasy stirring. Had I ever before proved this useful to anyone? Here I was, earnestly in demand—and fully living up to it. Had I ever sparkled so brilliantly? Suddenly I was bursting with pride. I felt wonderfully, wildly fulfilled.

Yes indeed, I had finally become useful! Whatever revenge and retaliation might be involved, I was still providing nutrition necessary for his survival. I was genuinely needed! My existence had meaning!

I had already died, but for the first time I felt that it was good that I had lived. It appeared to me that my life had had value. There was something quite delightful in being eaten.

Joy flowed through the body I had lost. Blood was bubbling up and dancing. Though I was dead, the heartbeat, the brain waves, the blinking of the eyes . . . all the rhythms that make for the ticking of the body were creating music.

I felt gratitude to the guy: Thank you for eating me! I am happy now! I called out, shedding sweet tears.

A grim expression on his face, he sank his teeth into my flesh, slowly chewed, then swallowed. Once more he took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. At intervals he produced a loud burp. His stomach, long neglected, was responding with strange sounds to the sudden task it had now been given.

“Mustn’t eat too fast,” he muttered to himself. Then he stopped eating and looked at the remains of the two MEs. “Nothing to do but dry it,” he said, and began cutting the meat into strips.

I was again euphoric—I would go on being useful!

Oh, how I had longed for this feeling! What I’d been hungering for was not so much food as the sense of being needed. It was true that the one needing me was himself a ME, but I didn’t care. In fact, it was important that he was such, for in this way I could confirm my own value. I could now see myself as crucial.

After hitting bottom I was now recovering. The vicious circle was breaking. Things were beginning to go well for me.

And yet . . . I remembered that I was already dead. I had been living in a fool’s paradise, for it was all too late—and would have been even if I had come to my senses when I was first deleted. How clueless I was!

The many MEs I had devoured must have felt the same way when they were being eaten. For the first time in their lives they must have felt satisfaction in serving a function, and thus wished to convey their joy to the ME who was eating them. But upon realizing their inability to do so, had they simply vanished after being consumed?

And if that were true, it would mean that I had already ingested all of that emotion. Bitterness was being stored in my flesh.

Hey, ME, you who are eating me! Beware of the taste of concentrated bitterness! Before you yourself are eaten, recognize that MEs are meaningful forms of existence, capable of serving a useful function for others!

* * *

Even after cutting the meat into strips, I embraced that bitterness and wept. Was it due to the intensity of my emotions? I was filled with regret, painfully aware that there was no going back, that it was all the result of my betrayal. Wrapping up the flesh in the shirts of dead MEs, I wiped my knife with a rag and in a daze sat down in the chair. And now I became aware of discomfort, first in my hips and then in every joint.

Oh, I was experiencing pain. Pain, something I had no reason to feel. I tried saying that aloud: “I am in pain.” I could hear my voice faintly reverberating throughout the kitchen. I banged the table and heard a thumping sound. I blew on the dust, and it billowed upward.

It all meant that I was alive. I felt both joy and sorrow—sorrow at not being able to communicate my joy. And that was not all. The hand with which I had today successively deleted two MEs vividly remembered the sensation of committing those deeds.

A miracle seemed to have occurred, something that had not happened before in all my experience of eating MEs. Though seemingly the consumer, I had become the consumed. No, it might have been the opposite, with the consumed becoming the consumer.

It didn’t matter which was which. I could no longer distinguish between the two. I had neither acquired a dual personality nor felt more inclined toward one or the other of us. In any case, the devourer knew in physical terms both the joy and the regret of the devoured. All hatred prior to my having become the devourer, imbued as I had been with the spirit of revenge, had simply dissolved.

Little by little, a sense of bliss seeped through me as the sorrow eased. Every nook and cranny of my being was filled with happiness—my hands and legs, my ears and head—together with a pleasurable, gently tingling feeling. In my state of tranquility, it was as though I were looking out from a slightly elevated vantage point at myself and the entire landscape. There the sun was shining, and a breeze was blowing—soft, warm, and southerly. The surface of the snow was melting, the light reflecting off a long and narrow strip of land.

I had already lost my inclination to delete MEs. Any more such acts would not be likely to come from me.

In my imagination I again had a bird’s-eye view of the mountain, now free of snow. On the slope numerous MEs were puttering about in the soil. They were no doubt able to grow their own food; they now trusted one another and were engaged in communal work.

Mutual deletion had stemmed from a lack of trust in oneself, and that was why any sort of cooperative endeavor had been impossible. Even the most superficial sort of cooperation invariably led back to betrayal, making MEs all the more inclined to avoid one another.

But now I sensed that things had changed. I now liked myself and thought of myself as useful.

I gathered the remaining bones, put them on the kitchen counter, and ignited them. I then left, having spread the fire throughout the ruins of the shop. Gradually making my way into the hills, I hid my belongings and sat down in the shade of a tree to watch the burning building.

My plan was to lure MEs down from the mountains with the flames and the smoke, distribute the meat, and convey to them the sense of satisfaction I was feeling. It was a gamble. I knew that my true intention might not be understood; in that case the stock of food would be seized, and I would be deleted and eaten. And yet my sense was that I would somehow succeed. The MEs had all grown weary of deleting and eating each other. They were surely waiting for someone to call a halt to it all.

Once they had eaten the meat that I would divide among them, I would propose—assuming that no one had been deleted—that we all sleep in the crumbling Keiō Line station. If we got through the night without incident, that would surely be proof that life together was possible. From there we could move on to cooperative food production.

I had devised a plan for raising spinach and pigs on the southern slope of Mount Takao. Floating up in my mind was a vision of MEs gathered there, plowing the ridges and weeding. With the power of that image I elevated my self-confidence to ward off fear.

A shadow fell upon my mood, however, as I saw the flames abating. My guess was that two hours had passed. The sun too was waning, the light taking on an orange tinge. And still not a single ME had appeared. I continued to keep my eyes focused on the area, but there was no sign of anyone at all in the dark and shadowy places where they might be lurking.

A glowing band of red was spreading across the western sky. The fire was nearly out. In the smoldering remains coal-like embers glowed, crimson and black. I left the shade of the tree and moved back toward the burning building. There was a satisfying hissing and crackling as I threw snow on the burning wreckage. Steam and smoke rose into the air, turning to pink mist in the evening light. The sun goes down early in the mountains, and if I did not leave quickly I would be stranded in the darkness.

At the place where the kitchen counter had been were the scattered remains of the bones. They had not been reduced to the fine ashes of a crematorium but rather had preserved their shape, appearing as though they had been coated with powder. Cooling them with snow, I spread out a shirt, gathered the bones, and wrapped them up. Then, having found a wooden post that wasn’t burned up, I began digging a hole in the ash-covered ground, hoping as I set about my task that someone would see me and come. I sang in a loud voice all the songs that I could remember. Yet still no one appeared. A few crows had flown down, but there was nothing more.

When the hole was complete, I deposited the bones, still wrapped in the shirt, and then covered everything with dirt, which I stamped into a hard cover to prevent any animal from digging them up. I then piled small shards of broken porcelain next to the hole before planting the post deep into the ground.

It was now twilight. It was so dark that even if a ME were to come, I would not see him. Bowing my head before my humble monument of porcelain shards, I closed my eyes and in my heart of hearts murmured to myself: Because I will remember; because I will not forget.

I looked around me. Without any illumination, the base of the mountain appeared to have sunk into an indigo swamp. My integrated self was losing control and disintegrating. I sensed that the various components were flying off in their own directions.

In fact, my mouth was emitting screams, quite by itself. Wordless screams. It was howling, roaring. Again and again. To do otherwise was to lose all sanity. With even greater speed than the nightly chill, fear was bearing down on me.

I was here alone. Alone. Alone. Everyone else had been deleted. The two I had deleted today were the last! Like an undulating assault came the absolute realization that I was the only one left. Though I tried to think of other possibilities, I had been flung into the face of a grim reality. Were they simply hiding? They were too weak to move. Perhaps they were waiting for me to go to sleep and would then launch a new attack. No. They had abandoned the hills and gone back to town.

And yet I knew that not to be so. I knew it. After all, all of the MEs were me; I knew like no other the nature of MEs. MEs were bound to react to each other, and if they did not react, it was because they were not there.

Though they were capable of foreseeing that they would be impacted by reality, the MEs had turned their eyes away. Hemmed in by myriad fears, they had engrossed themselves in the single-minded hunt for whatever food there was at hand, endeavoring to find refuge within their own shells. Without thinking of the eventual consequences, they had gone on devouring their own. Moreover, they had forgotten it all.

I wanted to immediately erase the fact that I was the only one remaining; I wanted to delete and then eat myself. And if that was not possible, it would do just as well if my brain was destroyed by the sheer excess of my fear.

The sun had now sunk behind the row of hills, and a fierce chill crept up from my feet. Hampering my desire to end it all by simply remaining where I stood was the lingering sense of joy that I had known. Despite having been thoroughly battered about, I was surprised to realize that I had not completely given up. And so, lugging the heavy bundle of meat, I trudged back to my cave.

* * *

I thought that I would be plagued by wakefulness, but no sooner had I curled up than I fell into slumber. Though I endured a series of gruesome nightmares, I awoke to the morning light having forgotten them all.

The sun appeared over the mountain ridgeline. Yesterday’s terror had somewhat dissipated. But when I faced the matter squarely, I knew that it might well once again have me in its grip.

I checked the meat that I had salted and hung up on a branch the night before. It had a good, freeze-dried feel to it. Shade-drying it for the day would yield some decent jerky. There was nothing to be done about the birds pecking at it. I took three slices, chewed them well, and swallowed.

I then walked the hills to look for MEs. I let my voice reverberate as I shouted out: “Anyone out there? I have food!” And yet despite my thorough search, there was no response. I found not so much as a corpse. All that I occasionally found lying on the ground was a broken shoe, a torn shirt, or a bone.

The sun had crossed the meridian when I returned to my cave. The meat was still there, unplundered. Lying in the sun, I resolved to leave Mount Takao. The next day I would head into the town, taking the food with me. Perhaps there would be no one there. Still, it hardly seemed likely that I was the only soul left on earth.

I had no idea how long I had been living here. Though I knew that the town might be largely deserted, the prospect of leaving the hills and descending into human habitation was frightening. And so I planned my departure in order to arrive in the obscurity of the predawn hours.

The half-moon was illuminating the pale shadows as I walked along the tracks from Takaosanguchi Station. I was resolved not to commit any more deletions, but I still kept my knife concealed in my pocket.

I was loath to enter the tunnel and so left the tracks and walked along the highway. After an hour the residential area opened up before me. The snow was sparse compared to the mountain drifts, amounting to little more than traces on the northern side of the buildings. As there was no electricity, neither the streets nor the houses were illuminated. Holding the flame of my lighter against a utility pole, I was able to make out the street sign: Takao-chō. I soon turned left onto a side street.

There was no sign of life. By way of experiment I tried to open seven doors. Of these, six were unlocked. The entrances were in disarray, with signs of forced entry. Elsewhere there were houses that had been partially destroyed, their broken windows making them look as if they had been bombed.

Some time later I came to a small stream, which I crossed over a bridge. Here was another residential neighborhood, but directly behind it loomed a low-lying hill. For no particular reason I headed in that direction.

As I rambled there, night began to wane. Feeling weary, I sat down at the entrance of a building. Sleep immediately overcame me. The only sound was the echoing cry of an occasional bird.

* * *

When I awoke from my doze, the day was advancing. I looked up at the sun and saw in the distance a wisp of smoke rising into the sky. Beyond the road was another hill; the smoke appeared to be coming from there, and so I pursued it.

I passed through the trees and suddenly came out on a bare, stump-covered slope. The stumps were new, their fresh surfaces jagged, indicating that the woodcutters were recent arrivals. The soil had been turned up, and in the frozen ground the water had turned to veins of frost, glittering in the sun.

I took a deep breath to contain my excitement; the smoke was near. I walked slowly, so as not to disturb the air.

Again I entered an area filled with stumps; beyond, where the copse was less dense, I could see the source of the smoke—it was rising from the chimney of a hut. Outside were three female MEs, engaged in exercise.

I felt like an outlaw, certain that if I went to them I would instantly be seized. I threw my knife away and then lowered my load of dried meat, sensing that it would be taken as evidence of criminality. Holding my hands up, I started to move forward.

But then I stopped, altering my plan. I mustn’t be so self-disparaging, I thought. I sensed that throwing away the jerky would likewise be wrong, that this too would show an attitude of denial, dismissal, consignment to oblivion. I was now sure that I should treasure and eat it to the last morsel. And so I again picked up my burden and called out in a loud voice, as I resumed my steps, “Good morning!”

The startled women paused in their exercises and looked toward me. One of them called to someone else, and then two men and a woman came running out of the hut from which the smoke was rising.

I walked slowly. “Hello there. Ah . . . I’ve had quite a time of it, getting here.” I moved closer. “How do you do? I am . . .” I started to say, only to realize that I didn’t know my name and so said nothing more.

The two men stepped toward me.

Flustered, feeling that I should say something, I went on: “I . . . I’ve been living for a long time on Mount Takao. But there’s no one left there.” My head and body were hollowed out. It seemed as though no words were coming out, that my mouth was merely flapping open and shut.

All six people now approached. I immediately felt a wave of terror sweep over me. I made an about-face and started to run, when the sound of a voice assailed me from behind: “Good morning!”

Turning around, I tripped over my own feet and fell to the ground. When the MEs reached out their hands to me, I took one of them and felt its softness and warmth. Like a time bomb exploding without warning, I suddenly broke down, wailing wildly. Unable to hold back, I moaned and sobbed with all the power my voice could muster.

* * *

I was welcomed to live as a member of a small collective, fourteen of us in all. We work together to produce our own food, but that’s another story.

The hamlet was founded at the grave of a very famous person, but of this I did not know—and had I known, I might well have forgotten. Those like me who had run off and wandered about as despairing loners had gradually come together. Every ME who had experienced the extreme solipsistic vision, the sense of being the only creature in the universe, had become incapable of deletion. When they were confronted with that situation, their bodies did not move.

Though ignorant of most of the practical ways of life, the MEs had set about earnestly producing food, building homes, and assembling other survivors. Such hamlets proliferated here and there, and as they came to consort with one another, the reconstruction endeavor gained unrelenting momentum. With a grand leap, a society was restored in which electricity, gas, and water flow, transportation systems run, communications circulate, and food is distributed. With astounding alacrity, town life returned to normal, though the crowds passing through the streets were much thinner than before.

And so, as it dawned on us, the MEs had vanished. They were no longer ME but rather simply themselves—people distinct from one another.

Becoming aware of this, I felt a vague sort of sadness, sentimentally regretting that an intuitive insight into the other as oneself was gone. But then I revised my thought: if one constantly endeavored to comprehend the other as oneself, there would indeed be occasional understanding. And that was enough, for it was precisely because we had all been the same—with the dissolution of oneself—that there had been such terror. In this way, we had been resurrected and so are able to relate our story to you.

Why speak of it? It’s because I want the nightmare that was the time of the MEs to be remembered. I am now an old man, grown weak in the head, with only a hazy memory. Yet even now my body remembers the deeds committed. And what it recalls I wish for all of you to keep in your own minds as living sensations.

You must not think that because this is a different era you are irrelevant to us. What happened then is not something that happened to others. No sooner will you forget than you will become MEs yourselves, for they are lurking, waiting for you to lose sight of the present and of the past. Here then is my plea: remember! And this above all: remember who you are.

 

END