 
Nippon 2357: A Utopian Ecological Tale

By Alex Shishin

Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Alex Shishin

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Chapter One: Abduction and Apologies

When they said I'd live to a hundred, those Japanese socialists, I scoffed.

I'm the kind of person who ages quickly and not gracefully. By the time I was thirty-five there were patches of gray on my head and in my beard. At forty-eight I had a leftover beer gut from the days when I was hitting the bottle pretty badly. Even my subsequent addiction to cycling couldn't reduce it. The weird thing is I feel I'm growing younger. You know, I might just turn into a dashing young thing yet. Look, I had a bald spot in the center of my dome. It's almost gone.

I mean, hey, I'm growing hair back!

This isn't where I wanted to start. Let me start from the beginning. I'm Thomas Redburn, American. Born and raised in San Francisco, California. A resident foreigner--gaijin--in Japan for 25 odd years. Married to Yuriko Tanigawa. Second time for me, first time for her. Our kids are Mari and Ken, ages 9 and 7. Our life was about as normal as a so-called international family could have in a small provincial town. We were running a portrait studio in Shirokuso City, located in the outback between Kobe and Osaka, when I was kidnapped--or "rescued"--on Awaji Island...

Okay, let's start from the real beginning.

On March 13, 2006, I had to go to Megumi City on Awaji Island. The city fathers were holding a small awards ceremony for a number of local photographers that, by chance, included me. I'm basically a street photographer, and I'd been shooting around Osaka of late. But I'd done some panoramic photography in Awaji on one of my bicycle trips and had taken some shots of Megumi, which Asahi Camera liked and published. The Megumi town officials were so happy that they invited me to their annual Camera Arts Award banquet where they would give me a plaque and some cash for one of the panoramas. I had to go alone since Yuriko needed to see to our business. I decided to go off by bicycle. Bicycling cleared my head. Any time I felt like I might want to hit the bottle again, I'd take off.

This worried Yuriko in the early days of our marriage. Her brother Sadao, a pro mountain bike racer, convinced her this habit of mine was good for my physical as well as mental health. She took up the spot and became a pretty strong cyclist herself. Since Sadao, who ran a pro shop, lived near Megumi City, I decided to see him after the ceremony.

I estimated I would need at least a day at my non-competitive pace to get to Megumi City, which is on the Shikoku side of Awaji. It was cold on March 12 when I set out at 5 in the morning. I bundled up well and stuck some extra warm clothing into my bags. Then I rolled down to the train station, took the bicycle apart, stuck it a bike bag, and took the express to Akashi City where I caught the Awaji ferry.

You know, when I say that cycling cleared my head I think I'm crazy. It meant fighting with cars on narrow roads and breathing their exhaust. It meant riding through these small towns with old cars abandoned on the side of the road and ugly noisy pachinko parlors and gas stations. It meant putting your aesthetic enjoyment through a mental strainer. To appreciate a Japanese seashore you had to block out the plastic bottles and metal cans and old bento boxes strewn all over the place. I guess I'd been a sleepwalker of sorts, being stupidly grateful for what I had.

Back in the States, before I came to Japan, I was piss poor. I was applying for welfare and telling them I was illiterate though I had a college degree in Art. I was that desperate. By sheer luck an English language in Nagoya hired me as conversation teacher. A lot of bad luck followed. Job problems, failed marriage, booze problems, visa problems. I'd have ended up homeless back in the States if Yuriko hadn't come along.

Anyway, the farther you got away from the Kobe-Osaka side of Awaji the nicer it was. Less traffic. Towns with rivers that didn't stink like the river running through Shirokuso. I got to Megumi City in a good mood and the awards banquet was great. Only I did something really stupid. I let those nice people get me drunk. That night, after the taxi deposited my alcohol-reeking person in front of my hotel, I did something else really stupid. I got this idea of riding my bicycle. I changed into my cycling duds, put on my helmet (thank goodness) and rode off into the night. Drunk on a bicycle.

I don't know where I rolled. I do remember singing dirty songs I'd learned in college as I pedaled out of Megumi City and into the hilly countryside. How long did I ride? I have no idea. I do know that I'd started before eleven because the beverage machine I stopped by was still dispensing beer. I bought as many cans as my handlebar bag would hold. What time was it when I fell off my bike? I only recall that I bent the front wheel rather artistically. I also remember thinking that I had to save the Nikon F5 camera in the rear bag. (Yeah, in that digital age I was a reactionary, maniacally stuck on film--black and white developed in my own special soup and cheerfully printed in a real darkroom, not on a computer.) I took that out and hung it around my neck. From the front bag I took out the beer I hadn't finished when riding. I finished it. Then I started walking in the direction that I thought would lead to Megumi City. Somewhere, looking for the main road, I passed out.

I had a dream. In this dream I saw a bright wheel turning in the sky and I was saying, "A UFO! Not swamp gas, not a mirage but the real thing! No one will be able to say my shots are faked." Then I dreamt I was back at this photo class I taught privately once a month. I was talking about street photography: "Just act as if you and the camera are a lamp post or part of the shrubbery, you would-be Cartier-Bressons and Eugene Smiths. It's a bit like hypnosis. If you seem ordinary enough, dull enough, you simply disappear. As artists we all assume we are always the center of attention, but it's not usually so. Once you understand that, you can move about more easily in a world of decisive moments without being self-conscious and, therefore, without attracting attention." Then one of the students stood up and pointed at me and said, "We did it! He's definitely the one!"

Then I woke up.

I was lying on a white bed, actually a Japanese futon, which was neither too soft nor too hard and which seemed to fit the shape of my body perfectly. I opened my eyes and saw something like a Japanese paper lantern hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling itself was blue. The flooring looked like tatami, except that it felt warm, as if alive, when I touched it with my bare foot.

I was still wearing the jeans and wool shirt and jacket I'd changed into at the hotel. My head hurt like hell when I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

The room was the size of a regular hotel suite, except it was round. The walls were yellow. Not a bright yellow but a subdued warm fleshy yellow that seemed as if it was breathing.

"A hospital," I thought. Someone found me and hospitalized me.

I needed a painkiller and wondered how to buzz for help.

There was a low round wooden table with a Japanese teapot and a cup on a wooden saucer at one end of the room. "Better than nothing," I thought and drank. I suddenly felt a hell of a lot better. I mean my headache just went away! Then this very good feeling came over me. Not a stupidly euphoric feeling like you get from drugs. Just a good feeling on top of a few bad feelings about what I'd done the other night.

"May I come in?" said a woman's voice.

I looked around and saw no one.

"So come in, already!" I called out.

A panel slid open. A young woman entered. She wore a light-blue single piece garment like a jump suit and her beautiful oval face was enclosed in a transparent helmet like a reversed fish bowl.

"Don't be alarmed," she said in Japanese. "I am wearing this for our mutual protection against any contagious diseases."

"What have I got?" I cried in English. "Is this covered by my National Insurance?" I asked in Japanese.

"A doctor will examine you presently. I am a historian and an artist--a painter. I'll be your guide. I can imagine your confusion."

"I'm not confused. To be confused you've got to have a notion of what's going on, and I don't. Do you mind filling me in?"

"We've abducted you." The historian blushed. "Not for any bad reasons; for very good ones--besides our curiosity, which may be a bad reason. Believe me, we had quite a debate about doing this--even at the last moment."

"Okay, I give up. What is this place?"

"A time machine. We are Japanese from the year 2357, Common Era."

I burst out laughing.

"Yes, I know this sounds absurd--"

"Nice joke," I laughed. "Now I'd better go. People are probably worrying about me. Unless this is some elaborate plot to stop me from drinking. Hey, is this a psycho ward?"

"This is a time machine, Mr. Redburn," she said.

"I may be the biggest idiot on Awaji after what I pulled last night, but I'm not that stupid," I replied. "You are speaking twenty-first century nihongo. The standard Japanese my kids learn to read and write in school. I also know language change over the centuries."

"Then it would sound like this--"

She spoke to me in a language sounding like a weird distant dialect of Japanese--with a few words sounding as if they were derived from Russian, Korean and English.

"I learned my ancient Japanese from a Japanese man from your time," she said. "He joined us a few years ago."

"That's clever," I said and smirked.

She sighed.

Something about that sigh, which sounded like a slow leak from a bicycle tire, suddenly convinced me that whatever was happening was on the level.

Every night in Japan millions of men fall down dead drunk. I'd never heard of any finding themselves in a place like this.

I saw myself faintly reflected in her helmet. The smirk was leaving my face.

The expression on her face was meditative. "We won't hurt you," she said. "We only wish to talk with you."

"Talk all you want. As long as I can get home in reasonable time."

The woman's head inside that reversed fish bowl turned away. The back of her neck flushed pink. Like my wife's when she got embarrassed.

"Hey, talking is part of my work," I said. "In my studio I chat to make my customers relax, particularly children. I'm also a real good listener. How about telling me why you picked me of all people for your so-called time machine."

She turned to me again. Her face was flushed.

"I'd should explain a few things first," she said. "Within the last fifty years we have perfected time travel, which seemed like a daydream to our grandparents. We can go back nearly a million years now, but we cannot go to the future from our time, which we call Real Time."

"Real Time. I have a camera which automatically exposes for real time."

"We have much information about what were once called prehistoric people, but very little first hand information on literate times. It's our policy to be as unobtrusive as possible. We believe that we must at all costs avoid time imperialism."

"That's very politically correct, I'm sure. What does this have to do with me?"

"We chose to rescue you. Surviving records show that shortly after your return from Awaji you were killed in a freak accident in Osaka. Apparently a piece of masonry fell on you in Umeda. You were a fairly well known photographer, but not an important enough of a historical personage to disrupt history by your premature disappearance. Or if were we to return you to your age--"

"If! Am I a prisoner?"

"Absolutely not! You'll be free to live among us as you wish."

"I've got a family," I let the woman know. "You are separating a man from his family. Look, if this is a time machine, I've got a great solution for your needs and mine. Talk to me to your heart's content and then bring me back to the day after I am supposed to die."

"We cannot simply do that, Mr. Redburn. Time travel is very difficult. It takes months of preparation. It's not like in the movies you saw in your time. It's very dangerous. Quite a few of us were lost in the time warp."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I too am sorry. They were my friends." She sighed inside her helmet and said nothing for a moment. "Rest now. Time travel is physically exhausting. Do not worry about anything. Our world is much happier than yours. You will like it, I promise."

"I was happy in my world! I love my wife and kids, lady! This is like death. Hey, it is death! I mean, in your time they'll have been dead for three and a half centuries. Can't you just turn around, drop me off at home now, and let me take my chances?"

"At this stage that would be suicide, I'm afraid."

"Listen to me! It's difficult enough to be separated from my family for a few days. I mean the moment I'm out the door on one of my therapeutic cycling journeys I start to miss them. Think about what you're doing to me!"

"I know. Please understand, Mr. Redburn, we would not have done this if it were not your fate to be separated from them in the worst possible way! Grief is something we all share, no matter from which age we come. When your grief hits you hard you'll be among friends. Excuse me, I must go." She turned.

A notion hit me. If I could learn how this time machine operated, maybe I could take it over.

"Wait! Tell me something about time travel. Like how you do it?"

She turned back to and said eagerly: "By breaking the light barrier. Mr. Redburn! It's incredible! We're now traveling about twenty times the speed of light! I only vaguely understand how we do it since I'm not a scientist. And not even our scientists are certain about exactly what happens to us when we do this. We seem to pass through a time warp. Navigation is very difficult for us--even with our most advanced instruments!"

"How long will it take to travel back to your Real Time?"

"About two bio-days, as we say. Conventional clocks go out of control when we are beyond the light barrier. So we measure time through body rhythms. See this wrist watch." She held out her hand and showed me a fleshy pink thing with numbers. "This measures my body rhythms. All the watches and clocks on board are synchronized to our body rhythms so that there are no disparities."

"Amazing."

"Yes, it is, isn't it? But save your energy. Sleep. Time travel, I repeat, is extremely exhausting. I must go."

"Wait! Don't go yet. Tell me this. How do you know where you are going when you're inside this time warp?"

"No one really knows, except the brain of this craft that carries us by an instinct that it itself seems to have created."

"You mean a super computer?"

"I mean a living brain."

"A flesh and blood brain?"

"Yes, only synthetic flesh and blood. Almost every object around you is alive. This whole craft is a living organism."

"What will your time machine do if I grab you and threaten to strangle you if you don't take me home?"

"You're not that sort of person, Mr. Redburn. We wouldn't have taken you if you were."

I knew, damn it, that she was right. I couldn't even be mean to my ex-wife after she dumped me for a richer man. I never even considered beating up the teachers who hit my kids at school. I guess I'm sort of a pacifist. The influence of my older brother, wounded in Vietnam. The older brother who was now organizing protests against President Bush's evil little wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A better man than I...

The door slid open.

"Hey, wait! One more thing," I said. "What makes you think I'll be happy with you people? What's this society you're running?"

"In your time it was called 'democratic socialism, or 'libertarian socialism,' or even 'anarchism.' You'll see. I must go."

I made a rush for the opening. It shut in my face.

"Damn it!" I cried. "I'm going to some jolly 'workers' paradise.' Where Big Brother probably tells you when to take a shit and how to fold your toilet paper."

I'd traveled in China and the Soviet Union as a young man. And States-side, I was a magnet for proselytizers of every stripe. Burned out old hippies and yippies, tree-huggers, utopian dreamers, Trotskyites, decrepit commies. All had preached to me about how they were going to change the world into a communal flower garden.

"Come to Japan, assholes," I'd tell those people when I'd go back to the States. "That's a 'workers' paradise' that really works. You want an all-powerful State run by Wellsian 'samurai'? We've got that. The 'samurai,' of course, are a bunch of corrupt hicks. That's what all workers' states turn into. You want to see Edward Bellamy's industrial paradise? Come to Japan. We've got the Industrial Army right here. Everyone wears a uniform and sings their organization's song. You hate individualism and love communalism? Everything in Japan is group oriented and if you object to being exploited you're called 'selfish.' Yup, this is the place where everyone lives beyond freedom and dignity. The reality is that a few bosses take credit for the group's work, and the workers all drink themselves silly to forget it. That's what all utopias are ultimately about."

"Well, what we propose is different," the hippies, yippies, utopians or whatever would whine.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

I knew, I just knew, that when I started arguing, the people who held me captive would say, "Ooooh, this is different." Then comes you know what: "We have ways of making you happy." Oh yes! Be happy or else! Ho, ho, ho--

Bother! I put my head down and the twenty-fourth century pillow cradled it. The bed conformed to the contours of my body. After I got used to it, I actually started to feel good. The woman with the fishbowl over her head was right. This nonsense was exhausting. But I couldn't sleep. My brain was going. Suddenly I was thinking about how much I hated super-patriotism, company loyalty, group loyalty no matter what forms they took. Hari Krishnas, Christian fundamentalists, Children of God, AUM-goons, Islamic suicide bombers, Zionist fanatics--those nut cases were no different from the average flag-waving Joe Blow. I'd listened patiently to them all. In Russia and China I indulged the Communists as they lectured me about how great their paradise was. In the U.S. I did not argue with the patriots who were constantly telling me how wonderful the Land of the Fee was and that I was missing out on the American dream by living in Japan. (The patriots went berserk after 9/11--like that horror was more of an excuse than a reason--to the eternal glee of George W. Bush and his band sociopaths.) What was the point of arguing with any of them? They only listen to themselves anyway.

Once, back in the 1985, I almost got into a fight with a drunken sailor in Russia who was planning to jump ship in New York and become a millionaire.

"I like Ronald Reagan," this would-be U.S. patriot told me.

I told him that Ronald Reagan was an immense glob of shit. Then I said what I really thought of the U.S., which shocked him. He never expected to hear an American say, "You jump ship in the Land of the Fee and you'll starve, brother. There's only high unemployment, homelessness and poverty to forward to. I know."

"So what are you talking about?" rejoined the sailor. Anyone can dig a ditch. I'll dig a ditch, save money and go into business and become like an American capitalist. Like Mister Trump."

"To do that you have to be lucky, and also a creep," I said.

"Good. So I'll be a creep!"

Who knows, maybe he did jump ship and made a fortune selling junk bonds or something.

There was an old sailor listening to us. He just smiled and shook his head. "There's no paradise," he mused. I was with him then and with him now on March 13, 2006, or whatever the time was at that point.

My paradise was simple. My family. My work. I've got mine and tough nuts if you ain't got yours. I'd ventured out of my paradise to receive some miserable little award for some panoramic landscapes that I did with a rotation lens camera in a dipstick town on Awaji Island, and look what happened! The proselytizing nut cases had finally gotten me. And in a big way.

Fine, I thought. "I'll fight; I'll be one bad gaijin in their world just as I was one bad gaijin in my Japan when I was fighting language schools that were trying to rip me off."

I found myself suddenly laughing over a trivial memory from my European journey in 1994 with Yuriko, when we didn't have kids. We had just gotten into London's Victoria station when, sure enough, some proselytizer had to pick on us out the thousands of other potential victims. He was a Trotskyite who was canvassing for some splinter of a splinter group. He tagged along after us and wouldn't leave us alone. Finally, thinking I could make some use of him, I asked him if he knew where William Morris's house was in Hammersmith. I'd studied a lot of English Literature in college and liked some of Morris's poetry. I loved all of his artwork.

"Who's William Morris?" the Trot asked.

"One of the greatest socialist writers in your literature, shithead!"

He left us alone after that. If only shaking the time machine clowns could be that easy to ditch.

Stretching out on that bed and feeling, so help me, like an unborn child in the womb, I felt uncomfortably comfortable.

Chapter Two: The Best Is Yet to Come

"I'm a physician," the man said in slightly accented Japanese.

I looked up from my bed into a round and friendly tan face with a thick mustache. He was not wearing a clear bubble helmet.

"I learned Old Japanese from the same person as the lady you met earlier. He's an immigrant to California. We'll introduce you after we get home. Now for your diagnosis." From a pocket in his white smock, he took out a gray machine that looked like a big caterpillar.

I realized I was naked.

"Just hold on a moment, pal," I said. "Where are my clothes? How did you get them off?"

"When you were under sedation, thanks to the green tea you drank."

"So you spiked it! That's why I was euphoric when I had nothing to be euphoric about. Now I feel the way I should--mad!"

"Your clothes stank. You barfed on them. We washed them. Okay? They're in that basket. We also washed you, an aesthetic as well as a medical necessity. Now we don't have to insult you by wearing those ungainly helmets."

"Did you change the bedding?"

"Absolutely. You made a mess of it in your sleep. Want details?"

"No."

"Would you like to know about your health?"

"All right," I said.

The physician squeezed the caterpillar and something resembling ticker tape came out of its mouth. He inspected it. "A slight cold. Allergy to dust. Typical history of childhood diseases, except you never had measles. No history of venereal diseases and, of course, no Acquired Immune Deficiency, a major health problem in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

"You found a cure for AIDS?"

"Oh yes. That's ancient history."

"Amazing!"

"Back to your condition. You have slight liver and intestinal damage due to your alcohol problems. You have a genetic addiction to alcohol, so we won't serve you any."

"Fine with me."

"Take these powders and your cold will go away. And these other powders will cure your allergy and make you immune to measles." The physician handed me several small packets. "Unfortunately, I can't do anything about your genetic propensity for alcohol addiction here."

"After over three centuries years Japanese doctors are still giving medicine in packets," I mused. "Hey, how did that machine get all this information?"

"It crawled all over you and took samples."

"Yuk!"

"Here, swallow these medicines with your green tea. Effects are rapid. And the tea isn't spiked this time."

"I feel better already," I said in English. "I can see, Lord, I can hear!"

"Didn't catch that, for better or worse," he said. "The medicine takes a few hours to work. Meanwhile, if you don't mind, I'm going to let my little friend crawl on you again."

Before I could stop him, he set his caterpillar dashing over me like a cockroach in heat. Finished, the thing hopped into his hand.

"Don't do that again!" I shouted

"I won't," the physician said, reading the tape reeling out of the thing's mouth. "I would, however, like to inject you with a drug which will arrest the alcohol damage to your guts, unless you object."

"You're the doctor," I said.

He took a hypodermic needle from a square blue container and then stuck me in the arm.

"Ouch!" I said.

"Sorry," he said and then left.

I hastily put on my clothes.

The historian entered minutes later. Also helmetless, she wore the same pale blue jump suit. She had put on makeup and curled her hair so that it circled her face like a frizzy halo. Her nails were lacquered red. She read my thoughts and smiled.

"This is your era's style, I presume."

"Late 80s, early 90s to be exact."

"I'm interested in the history of fashion," she said. "As an artist and historian. How accurate am I?"

"If you dyed your hair blonde you could blend in with all the young people in Kobe. Wish I had my camera. Where is my camera?"

"You can have it any time. It's caused quite a sensation. We've never had anything ancient so well preserved."

"Ancient?"

"Sorry. From our provincial perspective."

"Do you people have cameras?"

"Indeed we do. You'll be using them before long."

"Okay, now I am interested. Do you still use film or is it all digital or what?"

"It's organic, like everything else. Okay, it's time to exchange languages. I'll give you mine and you'll give me yours."

"Where do we begin? I'm sure it will take long."

"In your time, yes, it would have; in our time no. In your time people wasted their talents and lives teaching foreign languages, usually under degrading working conditions, and with only pitiful results."

"I could tell you stories."

"I want to hear them," she said. "These days we do it by taking a language pill and then exchanging bodily fluids. The pill contains millions of language absorbing organisms, which, in layman's terms, are both language learners and teachers. They enter our bloodstreams and pass through our brains. We let them do that for a few hours and then we exchange bodily fluids. There are several other methods."

"The most delightful being by making love, I suppose."

"It would take too long. A month of hard physical effort."

"Unless we did double time."

"I would have to discuss it with my husband first," she laughed.

"Listen, I better tell you I've never cheated on my wife and never will! I was only joking."

"I was too. We are exactly alike in our view of monogamy. Other people have other views, of course, which we must respect," she said. "Now if you are ready, let's take our pills. Then our resident physician will extract our blood, process it to make it mutually compatible, and then exchange it. It's perfectly safe. And joking aside, this technique is actually a variation on that delightful ancient method. We learned long before this process was developed that the best way to learn foreign languages was through love making, as I think you already know. You learned your Japanese through a love relationship with a young woman who was a student at the Osaka College of Art. Akemi Ogata."

"How did you learn that? I haven't even told my wife about Akemi. I mean it never occurred to me. Yuriko isn't the jealous type."

"Jealousy. I must study more about it. Anyway, Ogata-san became a famous photographer and mentioned you in her autobiography. She wrote that you were a promising artist whose life was cut short in the accident I told you of. That's how we got the idea of rescuing you."

"Do you suppose it would still be saying that?"

"What do you mean?"

"It may surprise you, but we primitive people in my time did have dreams about time travel. I saw this science fiction movie about people going back in time and changing events. And this caused things like faces in photographs to appear and disappear."

"I know your era was highly imaginative--much more than our sedate times in many respects. Also, please understand we do not regard you as primitive. We consider 'primitive' a time imperialist concept. You might not believe this; I've had some very profound conversations with so-called Neolithic cave people. They took great pride in their storytelling--indeed, I've met a few people who were in every way equal to Homer and Lady Murasaki. They weren't terribly good warriors, though. Too cerebral. That's why our more agile ancestors destroyed them. To answer your question: no. Why, no one can explain--the theory of time travel as journeys to separate universes being discarded long ago. Logically it should happen. In reality, anything taken out of its time doesn't change in Real Time. In our copy of Ogata-san's book, your outcome will be the same. As it might be if we return you, Mr. Redburn!"

"Score one point, madam," I said. "Now explain: when you say 'Real Time' do you mean everything else is unreal? I've heard of the separate universes stuff, by the way. I'm not entirely thick-headed."

"I know," you're an intelligent man," she replied, giving a slightly exasperated sigh. "What we call 'Real Time' is only an artificial construct: a necessary model when traveling beyond space and time. Real Time also has a philosophical dimension. Common ownership of things used in common, classlessness, and mutual aid were what people had for thousands of years before civilization changed everything. We believe we humans have returned to our natural state."

"So civilization as I've known was unreal, a mere aberration in human development. I'll buy that. Though I'd like to see some proof that your workers' paradise isn't just a variation on the same old garbage in a fresh bag."

"You will," she said. "After our physician has done his job, we'll sleep for about five hours. When we wake up you'll be able to communicate with us in our language and I'll be able to speak yours. I mean your first language, English. This only works for first languages, though your Old Japanese is excellent. According to Ogata-san you also know Russian. That's fascinating!"

"I learned it at home. My folks were Russian immigrants. My father changed our family name to 'Redburn' from 'Krasnoff.' You know, to, Americanize it. He was fond of Herman Melville. Redburn, the novel--ever read it?"

"No, I haven't," she said.

"Neither have I. If you take me back to 2006, I'll get you a copy."

"Our twenty-fourth century libraries should have it," she said. "See you in a bit."

Knowing the language will help me escape this Land of Oz soon, I told myself after she had left.

*****

"A complete success!" proclaimed the jovial physician after I had slept eight bio-hours.

"What is?" I said in a Japanese I'd never spoken or heard before. It sounded both new and familiar. I opened my eyes. The physician's round face and the historian's oval face were peering down at me and smiling.

"Wonderful!" the historian cried in English. "Come, friend, and join us!" the physician said. "Meet the others."

Feeling groggy, I put on a pair of slippers. They gently hugged my feet as I followed the two into the pale yellow corridor and into a circular elevator that noiselessly rose three flights and then stopped. To my amazement, I found that I could also read "Observation Dome" which appeared in glowing blue letters on the white wall as if out of nowhere. Was it possible to learn all the arts and sciences by simply being injected with the correct chemicals? I wondered.

Stepping inside the observation dome, I exclaimed, "It's like being inside an eyeball!"

The dome was white and crisscrossed by many red and blue veins leading to the top where a dark liquidy blue mass pulsated.

"Good analogy," the historian said. "This is where the craft sees. Visual apparatus is scattered throughout the craft. This is where everything meets."

The dome was bare of furnishings except for a green carpet and about a dozen long curved seats and some low tables. Six people were sitting with their chairs turned to each other and discussing something intently.

"Friends," the physician called. "Our guest is here!"

The six immediately broke off their conversation and rushed toward us with a cry of delight. Like a bunch of school kids.

There were three men and three women, all who I thought were in their twenties. All were dressed in form-fitting jump suits. There was an awkward moment when they stood before me with shy smiles and didn't speak. Then, before I could say a word the six were suddenly talking at once.

"Have you ever been in a war?"

"Did you have to work for wages?"

"What was pollution like in Japan then?"

"How do you say, 'I love you,' in ancient Japanese?"

"What was poverty like in your era?"

"Have you ever been unemployed?"

"A few times," I said.

A cheerful woman asked, "Can you guess my age?"

"Twenty-five?" I ventured.

"Fifty!" she exclaimed. "We live to an average of one hundred and fifty years. That's how long you'll live!"

Suddenly I felt withered and old. It would not be the last time.

"Are you a capitalist or a worker?" a young man asked.

"I'm not sure. Self-employed but--"

"Did you have a boss? What's it like to have to take orders against your will? I read about it in a history book."

"I've been independent for over a decade," I said. "When I was working for companies I had to do it. I hated it, of course. Everyone does. Hey, isn't it natural to take orders?"

"Why?" several people asked.

Before I could speak, a man asked, "Were you a revolutionary?"

"Hardly," I said.

"Well, did you know any revolutionaries in Japan?" he persisted.

"That was before his time, silly," a woman said.

"What was racial prejudice like?" a man asked.

"Bad," I said.

"Well, what about class prejudice?" someone else demanded.

"Oh, yes, I know about that. Many people looked down on me when I left my last company."

"Even if you became a capitalist?"

"My portrait studio doesn't exactly make me a millionaire--"

"Have you ever been up in a skyscraper?"

"I worked in one. Don't you have skyscrapers?"

"No. They're environmentally unsound. Say, what about pollution? Did you see pollution?"

"Every day--"

"What about yakuza? Did you know any yakuza?"

"Our local politician--"

"Really?"

"Why did people allow him to represent them then?"

I was half-joking--"

"Did you ever see the Emperor of Japan?"

"No," I answered, "except on TV."

"Were you afraid of nuclear war?"

"Yes, all the time--"

"Well, what about--"

"Friends, friends, friends," the historian called out, laughing. "Take it easy on our friend! We'll have enough time for questions. He is very tired now. Let's introduce ourselves. I'm Svetlana Suzuki."

"I'm Mandela Goto," the physician said.

The others introduced themselves.

"Ichiko Smith."

"Kropotkin Tsuda."

"Zillanius Kawata."

"Corretta Shaposhnikoff."

"Harumatsu Ben-Ezra."

"William Faulkner Nakashima."

I was dumfounded. The people surrounding me "looked Japanese," but their names didn't sound it.

"Are you pulling my leg with those names?" I asked.

Everyone was suddenly silent.

Svetlana Suzuki said: "In your time, Mr. Redburn, Japanese law decreed that all Japanese citizens had to have well, traditional Japanese names. It is not the case with us--"

"Would I have to change my name if I wanted to become a citizen of old Japan?" William Faulkner Nakashima butted in.

"Better believe it!" I said. "A Korean family next door changed their names officially from Kim to Kanemaki when they were granted citizenship. Then guess what? After that, all the neighbors ostracized them. Before, they hid being Korean and 'passed.' When they got citizenship, the word spread. The local brats bullied their kids by calling them gaijin!" My kids had to go through that too. We really bonded with the Kanemaki family."

"What a horrid time you lived in," said William Faulkner Nakashima shaking his head.

"Time imperialism--remember--" Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"He's absolutely right!" I said. "The Japanese government encouraged racism through things like fingerprinting and job discrimination. The Kanemaki family went through bureaucratic hell to become Japanese and they were born in Japan! Their grandparents were forced laborers!"

"That's awful," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Is it any different in your Japan?" I asked.

"Like night and day," said Harumatsu Ben-Ezra.

"I'll believe it when I see it," I said. "Japan and discrimination are like sushi and rice."

"For us nations are like clubs. Which nation you choose to join is a matter of taste. Our Japan is quite diverse," Svetlana Suzuki said.

Corretta Shaposhnikoff turned to me and asked, "Is it true the Japanese once prided themselves on being a single race or something?"

"Oh yes," I said. "That's why people like the Ainu were discriminated against, though legally they were as Japanese as the emperor."

"Couldn't you introduce yourself now, Mr. Redburn?" Svetlana Suzuki said.

I reached for the business cards in my wallet, and then realized they were useless.

I talked about myself and my love of photography. When I got to my family, a picture of them seated around the kotatsu in our cramped little flat above the studio appeared in my brain. I fought back the tears like a man is supposed to and went on. "My wife, Yuriko, is also a photographer. We met through a photography club. She's really better than I am. She's also a haiku poet. Well known locally. My brother-in-law, Sadao, owns a pro bicycle shop. We often go cycling together. Every Sunday he's off racing somewhere-- Will I never see them again?"

The tears came. The whole lot of them embraced me, the last thing you'd expect from Japanese. I felt better. Or uncomfortably comforted.

"How about dinner, Mr. Redburn?" Mandela Goto said quietly, "We've had ours while you slept."

"Okay," I said. I had tears all over my face. I hurriedly wiped them.

Men don't cry was another dictum I was brought up with. Maybe if I'd learned to have a good cry when I needed it, my life would have been a whole lot happier.

The group escorted me to the circle of form-fitting chairs. I sat down and felt the panic you get when sitting on something alive. Then I felt my muscles relax as the chair cushions rippled.

On the round light blue table there stood a tray that looked as if made from silver. Its design was elegant and yet functional. The rim was decorated with gold inlay and aquamarine in a complex abstract pattern. When I lifted what looked like a teak bento box from it, he saw that the center was graced with a beautiful etching of cranes standing in a marsh.

"I'm something of a silversmith," Zillanius Kawata said. "I took it along for good luck, I guess."

"This would be valuable in my time," I said. "You could be rich."

"Keep it if you like it," Zillanius Kawata said.

"Oh, I couldn't! Not something this--valuable." I wanted to say "expensive," but could not think of the word in this new language.

"Value is only to be gained through appreciation. Take it. We have lots of trays," Zillanius Kawata said.

"Svetlana-san," I said, "I've got a question for you in my language, if you know it. I cannot yet express it in yours."

"Of course."

"Do you use money?"

"No we don't. We have no use for it. We produce things for use and not for profit."

"Then how do people get paid for their labor?"

"No one is 'paid.' We put in what we must and take what we need."

"Well, what if someone won't work?"

"Then a person is denying him or herself pleasure!"

"People get lazy without the profit motive. I saw that in the old Soviet Union."

"You just finished telling us about your passion for street photography and of your wife writing haiku poems. Where was the profit motive? And your brother-in-law. Did he do what he did because of a 'profit motive' or because of his love of cycling?"

"Our family is unusual because we do work we like. We sacrificed a lot of security and wealth for that life. But look, not everyone can be an artist or a pro cyclist. What about unpleasant jobs? And what if people want to take more than their fair share?"

"First, there are no 'unpleasant' jobs--I mean the degrading jobs the bosses of old forced you to do. Second--"

"Wait a minute! Hold it! Who digs the coal out of the mines? Who totes the garbage? Who digs the ditches?"

"No one digs coal out of the mines. Power from solar energy has made coal of little value. Garbage? Professionals in many fields pick up garbage (as you call it) and use it for scientific or social analysis. And there are people who concentrate entirely on recycling. You'll see it for yourself."

"Professional garbage scientists?" I asked sarcastically.

"That's what archaeologists were in your time."

"Okay, you still haven't answered my question about good old simple human greed. I say it is human nature!"

"What we use in common we own in common," Svetlana Suzuki said. "There really isn't any problem of someone wanting more. What's more? 'More' is really more than you need. And who would want to take more than they need? It's absurd. Would you want another dinner after eating this one? Of what use would 'more' be if you were not hungry? 'More' would be hell if you were forced to consume it!"

"Okay, wait at minute. Suppose we are talking about, say, cameras. Suppose I took a truckload of cameras away with me from--well--whatever you have now which is like our stores. Suppose I did that?"

"What ever for?"

"To sell, of course! If it's so easy to procure stuff in your workers' paradise, why can't I just rip off the system and sell this stuff at a nice fat profit. The old Soviet Union, the quintessential workers' paradise, had a whopping black market."

"To whom does a black market sell?"

"Well, people who want to pay a lower price. Or who are willing to pay dearly for something scarce."

"We know no prices. Anyone who wants cameras can have all the cameras he or she needs. I suppose a deranged person might want a house full of cameras, but I've never heard of such a case."

"I'm confused," I said.

"I find capitalist culture very difficult to comprehend," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I've only read about it and not experienced it like Ice Age culture."

"Your English is great, Svetlana!" exclaimed Kropotkin Tsuda.

"It's still difficult," she said, "My proto-Basque is better."

"Why don't you eat, Mr. Redburn?" Mandela Goto said.

"I still say you people are telling me bullshit," I said as I opened my bento box. I found rice, carrots, melon and something that looked like a cabbage roll. In a separate section there were two chopsticks inlaid with mother of pearl.

I held up the chopsticks and admired them.

"My work too," Zillanius Kawata said.

I tried the cabbage roll first. "At least the food is decent," I said. "What do your masses eat? In Russia the elites and foreign tourists ate goodies. The common people ate slop. Except those with ins to the black market. What's this? It tastes like spicy chicken."

"To your first question," Mandela Goto said, "everyone eats equally well. Too your second, it's what we call cloned meat in layman's slang. It's grown like a vegetable. One thing we haven't told you is that domesticated animals are generally not slaughtered for food. Though we have hunting clans in Kyushu."

"So what do you do with domestic animals then?"

"Let them alone mostly, or keep them as pets."

"That's nice. My family loves animals."

"I think you'll feel very much at home with us," Mandela Goto said.

"Or you'll make sure that I will--right? I have another question." I said as he ate. "I can only ask it in my language."

"Go ahead," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"Who is in charge here? Who is the commander of this ship?"

"We all are."

"So who is the captain?"

"We all have our special jobs. One of mine is taking care of you. So I suppose I'm a 'captain' in regard to my duties. There is no hierarchy of responsibilities. You see, there are no bosses. Everything is administered democratically, as you say in English."

"But who gives the orders? How can you get anything done?"

"I am mystified," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Why do you need rulers to get anything done? It sounds highly inefficient."

"Come on!" I threw down my chopsticks. "Even in a total democracy you elect a leader! --right?"

"We have something like that--but not 'leaders.'"

"Bull!"

"How about letting us in on this," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

Svetlana Suzuki translated.

"Our dictator is Doug," Kropotkin Tsuda said and everyone laughed.

"That's a joke among us," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Doug is the nickname we gave our ship. Doug has a mind of its own. For instance we all wanted to do a fly-by of Saturn and Jupiter, but Doug objected. It would put too much of a strain on the solar energizers."

"Solar energizers?"

"Most of the ship is a honeycomb of solar batteries which propel the anti-gravitational engines. Kropotkin Tsuda can tell you more about that as she is our technical expert."

"Not to let you off the hook regarding our other discussions, why you call the ship 'Doug?'" I asked.

"You know the ancient commander Douglas McArthur?" Ichiko Smith said. "He once said, 'I shall return.' Our Doug is determined that we shall return to Awaji safe and sound. We lost a number of earlier probes in the time warp. They may be safe somewhere. We fear the worst."

"Is there a danger that we might get lost in the time warp?" I asked.

"Yes," Ichiko Smith said. "There is always that chance."

"And now back to my original question," I said. "Who governs? I say you need leaders. There has to be a commander of this time machine. So which one of you is the captain? A ship cannot work without a captain. That is a fact."

"Consider this ship as a metaphor for our society," Kropotkin Tsuda said. Though managing a society's needs is easier than time travel. We are here because of our crucial areas of expertise, so there is a stricter division of labor than you'll find in our society. Nonetheless, the general principles apply to us. I helped design Doug and I have to deal with many technical details. But I am no more important than Ichiko-san who is our dietitian or Mandela-san, our physician. None of us has special privileges because of who we are. There is no 'captain's quarters' as in your time. I cannot change course without collective approval. And if something happens to me, others here are trained to guide Doug home with help of the ground crew. Now look, Mr. Redburn, social responsibility is an art. It is not an art that was cultivated in the mass of people by your ruling classes--for very obvious reasons. We are classless. Each and every one of us has been educated in the art and craft of the collective care of society. I mean from one's immediate locality to the nation, and indeed to the world."

"A world state? Did H. G. Wells finally get his wish?"

"No. Because there is no State."

"What--?"

"Doug is signaling that we are approaching Real Time," Svetlana Suzuki said. A large message in red letters glowed on the dome: "Get into re-entry positions."

"Just lean back and relax," Svetlana Suzuki said. "The seat will hold on to you. There is a visual device in the consul to your left that will let you see the re-entry. I'll explain what is happening."

I opened the consul and took out what appeared to be a pair of extra-large green goggles. I put them on and saw only a milky whiteness.

"How do I turn these things on?" I asked.

"They are working," Svetlana Suzuki said. "This is what timelessness looks like."

"Where is the light source? To have white you need a light source!"

"This is another dimension. Probably ordinary natural laws do not work here. We are re-entering Real Time now."

The ship trembled slightly and the whiteness turned into long thin streaks of white against black. These became individual dashes and blotches. A jolt shook the time machine for a good two minutes. Then came blackness punctuated by stars elongated like comets. Everyone cheered.

"We made it," Svetlana Suzuki said and sighed with relief. "We are now in Real Time, traveling at around twice the speed of light. That's why the stars look malformed."

"Break out the champagne!" Harumatsu Ben-Ezra called.

Then everyone was up on their feet and embracing.

"Thank you Doug!" Kropotkin Tsuda cried.

"I hope Doug knows the way home," Ichiko Smith said.

"We are all going to get very drunk!"

"I see some things don't change," I said to Svetlana Suzuki. "I'm not getting drunk with you. You better know that."

Svetlana Suzuki hugged me. "Welcome to Real Time, our good, good friend! Welcome to 2357."

I was depressed. If this was 2357 my family was dead.

The crew opened a compartment in the floor and put four bottles of champagne and a tray of beautifully wrought silver goblets on a round table. More work by Zillanius Kawata no doubt.

"I'll drink with you guys," I said suddenly after they had offered a toast. Mandela Goto shook his head. I filled my glass and said, "Here's to your wonderful--I mean superb--technology!" I drained the goblet. I've never seen anything like it!"

"The best is yet to come!" Corretta Shaposhnikoff said.

"Indeed, indeed," I said. "With my family beastly dead!" I refilled my glass and drank again.

Mandela Goto gave me a look of resignation. It reminded me of the look friends and lovers would give me before Yuriko came along.

I drank until I collapsed into a chair and passed out.

*****

I don't know how much time passed before I was awakened by voices. I heard my name mentioned and feigned sleep.

Someone, probably William Faulkner Nakashima, was saying. "I really like this chap. He's intelligent and sensitive. We should be happy that we rescued him, I'd say."

"All right, all of you," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We meant well. We probably did the right thing. Only look at him. He's suffering. That's what happens to people you hold against their will. Say what you want; he is our prisoner. What wonderful socialists we all are!"

"Svetlana-san" interrupted Mandela Goto. "We've been through this before. In a perfect world, yes, we could have brought his whole family. We had no time. And we saved his life!"

"Funny about time travelers having no time," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Are we prepared to deal with the emotional trauma he is going to continue to experience? We may well kill this poor man with our good intentions!"

Here I thought I'd open my eyes. Everyone stopped talking.

"Did you hear our discussion?" Svetlana Suzuki asked.

"Some."

"I wish you'd heard all of it! It's not good to keep secrets," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We are concerned about the alcohol. The champagne was a mistake."

"Look, let me say something," I said, rubbing my face. My head felt as if it was on fire. "Look, here's what I want to say. This isn't easy-- Whatever your socialism is like, I'll deal with whatever I have to deal with. I'm no parasite. I can do honest work. All I ask in return is that you take me back when you make another run to 2006."

"Mr. Redburn," Kropotkin Tsuda said, "You will eventually be happy among us. Think of how free you are to create!"

"Off the point," I groaned. "What about what I just said?"

"We honestly don't know," Svetlana Suzuki sighed. "There have only been five time journeys that were successful. Three weren't."

"I table the discussion for another time," I said. "Are there any records of what became of my family?"

"We have searched in vain," Svetlana Suzuki said. "A lot has happened in three and a half centuries. It is a fluke that we came across references to you in an ancient book."

"In a sense my family is still alive back in my time."

"Yes," said Svetlana Suzuki.

"It's some cause for celebration," I said.

"I feel profoundly responsible for you," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I will take care of you for the rest of my life if I have to. Bringing you here is not a trivial matter!"

"How about starting by telling me where the rest room is," I said.

"Down the hall and to your right," Svetlana Suzuki said pointing.

"Is there anything I should know about your toilets?"

"They are quite conventional," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"I went to the toilet and puked. I didn't feel better. When I returned, there was a message in red letters appeared on the side of the dome: "Cruising fine. Mars within telescope distance."

A map showing Mars, Earth and the Moon and the ship appeared on the wall next to the message. A dotted line showed the suggested trajectory--a loop around Mars of 2 million kilometers, a fly-by of the Moon by a quarter of a million kilometers and then landing at the Awaji Island Time Collective. Since we were gradually reducing speed so as not to over-tax the solar engines, the journey would take about two Earth days.

"That sounds fine with me, Doug," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "How about the rest of you?"

Everyone agreed it was a good idea.

"How about you, Mr. Redburn?" Kropotkin Tsuda asked.

"Me--?"

"Sure, you're one of us now."

"This is a planetarium show to me. But thanks for asking for my opinion when everything is already decided. It's so Japanese. I'm really beginning to feel at home now."

"If you have ideas, say them!" Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"You know what I want," I said.

"If I could take you back right now, I'd do it and I think everyone else would too. Unfortunately we can't!" Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Other ideas, Mr. Redburn?"

"The prisoner chooses to remain silent."

"If at any time you have something to say, say it!" she replied.

"Dr. Goto," I said. "Get me some medicine. I feel really lousy!"

He gave me something that mercifully put me to sleep.

*****

I woke up feeling refreshed.

"What a journey," Kropotkin Tsuda was saying. "I feel like going to an orgy or something when we get home."

"Did you have orgies in your era?" Zillanius Kawata asked me in the middle of a yawn.

"Yeah, but I was never invited to one," I said. "Anyway, I prefer my sex in private."

"As I do," Corretta Shaposhnikoff said wearily. "I'm taking a long bicycling tour through the Tokyo forest with my lover."

"Svetlana-san," I whispered in English. "Orgies. Is that sort of stuff common?"

"Among people who enjoy orgies."

"Is that--well--allowed?"

"Who's there to not allow it if it hurt's no one?"

"What about concerned parents like me who would worry about the influence this orgy stuff would have on their children?"

"We are very tolerant of one another," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Do you know the slogan, 'it is forbidden to forbid?'"

"The French worker-student revolt of 1968."

"That is our Golden Rule. You'd be surprised how many problems tolerance can solve. Where there is no condemnation there is no morbid mystery, and therefore no morbid curiosity. Our children learn about the functions of their bodies and what is good and not good for them. Their decisions on how to use their bodies are usually wise. The worst thing we can do to children is to manufacture ugly secrets about human feelings."

"Very tidy," I said. "I wouldn't let my children associate with people who had orgies. They could be perverts!"

"And if I had children I would protect them from intolerant people!" she said angrily.

"So you don't have children? Then you have nothing to say."

"I was a child once! I know the benefits of an open family. Do you?"

"My family sucked. Lot's of rules and lots of abuse, and too much God. But, hey, what kind of a father would I have been had they raised me to go to orgies?"

"Mr. Redburn, you are a sophist!" she said sharply. Then gently: "You've been a liberal father, in spite of yourself, haven't you?"

"Left alone, I'd spoil the kids. Yuriko-san is the one with the smarts about raising kids. Yeah, we're a pretty liberal family. Mari and Ken always knew where babies came from. Fortunately we didn't know people who threw orgies or sold drugs."

"Is it possible, Thomas Redburn, that somewhere deep in your heart you have concluded that pure tolerance is only possible in a tolerable world?" Svetlana Suzuki asked. "I don't mean ideal. I mean tolerable--"

"That was some discussion," Corretta Shaposhnikoff said.

"I exceeded my bounds," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Sorry, Mr. Redburn."

"How about calling me Tom-chan," I said. "That's what folks call me back home."

"How about Tom-san for now," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"Mars," flashed the message on the wall.

One day I am drunk on a bicycle; the next day I'm sitting around in a time machine with a bunch of crazy Japanese socialists--or anarchists--and flying by Mars! I saw the ice caps and a dust storm along the equator. And craters. And mountains. No canals. No little green men. Mars was no big deal. Photographers and cyclists like being close to the thing itself: the pebbles on the road, the model's sweat.

"Is there life on Mars?" I asked.

"No." Zillanius Kawata said. "Not even Earthlings. We treat Mars as a natural preserve and leave it alone."

"We've done little space exploration," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "The last centuries have been Earth-centered. We've had too much to rejuvenate. The Time Collective is an oddity--a toy of prosperity. We would only be a knot of space dreamers if we'd not broken the light barrier unexpectedly--ending up in the Ice Age!"

"Is there life on other worlds, then?" I asked.

"Good question," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "I devoted a good part of my life to searching for extraterrestrial life and gave up in despair. So far as I can gather, we are a fluke of nature--alone in the universe. I feel profoundly lonely when I think of it--especially when I consider that the human race nearly died out."

"You think too deeply, Kro-chan," William Faulkner Nakashima teased.

"Intensity runs in our family. Which is probably why we are so cursed with longevity. My grandfather is nearly two hundred years old."

"How did the human race almost die?" I asked.

"Pollution," said Mandela Goto. "Perhaps you recall the depletion of the ozone layer in your time. Or the suffocation of the oceans by industrial wastes. Or global warming. It became progressively worse. And given what was then called 'market forces,' little was accomplished to end the destruction. There was a perverse race toward ruin between capitalism and the Earth's ecology. Fortunately capitalism collapsed first. This saved humanity, though the price was over a century of misery."

"Okay, give me the gory details," I said.

"Natural disasters, plagues, wars ravaged the planet," Mandela Goto said. "Nations collapsed. Oceans drowned lands. Rivers caught fire and the air itself cut the lungs like a razor. Vast farmlands became deserts. Great cities died. Nuclear reactors exploded."

"Judgment Day," I said. "Did the Anti-Christ appear?"

"There were many strange religions and movements in the era of chaos," Mandela Goto said. "In the midst of the worst, the human mind had an epiphany. The poet Emily Dickinson wrote, 'After great pain, a formal feeling comes.' Almost at once, the ancients tell us, a great stillness came over the last remnants of the human race. Soldiers threw away their weapons, capitalists their wealth, rulers their power, and a great peace came over the once agonized faces of the dying. It was as if a voice spoke to us, though it spoke many seemingly contradictory ways--ways in which the planet's diverse people could understand. 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' 'Workers of the world unite! ' 'Land to the peasants.' 'Mutual aid.' 'Utopia.' 'Earthly paradise.' 'Socialism.' 'Anarchy.' It came as what might be called a revelation. Cooperate or die. Share or starve. What could even the richest and most powerful people do in the end? Every foundation supporting civilization was crumbling in the unnatural heat of winter and the unnatural frost of summer. With this crumbled every lie supporting every oppressive system since Neolithic times. The ancients say that opposing armies spontaneously rushed toward each other and embraced and wept."

"No shit," I said.

Svetlana Suzuki gave me a dirty look.

"Mandela-chan is a poet," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "I memorized his epic poem, End and Beginning, as a child. The truth, Tom-chan, is that we know little of what happened between the end of the twenty-first century and the middle of the twenty-second. Communication networks were broken. Paper production virtually ceased. As did petroleum production. The materials holding records had to be recycled. So much lost history! The human race would have died were it not for the development of the self-contained solar cell. It was also the first organically grown technological unit. This allowed small communities considerable autonomy as centralized power ceased to be. Personal computers, lights, small-scale workshops, factories and farms survived. That began our modern era."

*****

Presently the lights in Doug's eye dimmed and the crew slept. I was alone, sleepless. The prisoner could walk among his captors and murder them if he wished. Svetlana Suzuki was right: I wasn't the type. Yet I felt a certain power over the sleeping socialists.

I had said earlier it was natural to take orders. "It's also natural to give orders," I said to myself.

"Hey Doug!" I said in my newly learned language. "This is your captain's voice. Give me a sign that you hear me."

A red blotch appeared on the dome and disappeared.

"Very good, Doug. Now do as I say. Take us back to March 13, 2006. To Awaji Island. You hear me? Home, James," I said in English.

"Need mutual consent," appeared in glowing red letters.

"Do you hear any objections? All who object say 'Aye' or forever hold your peace. There, you see Doug. Go to it!"

In blazing letters, green this time, Doug's response appeared.

"NO WAY, REDBURN."

Svetlana Suzuki's overhead light came on.

"Are you entertaining Doug, Tom-san?" she asked. "Ask him to play you a symphony or show you a movie."

She switched off her light and closed her eyes.

Before her light had gone off, I'd seen something that startled me.

Svetlana Suzuki's features were that of traditionally beautiful Japanese woman, the sort I always saw in ads on train and TV. Oval face, thin nose, and fine black hair. Yet for the first time I'd noticed that her eyes were blue-green, not dark brown. Were the sleeping people assembled here really the "typical Japanese" faces I had first thought I saw? As a street photographer who often shot "blind"--from the waist--I'd gotten out of the habit of studying faces closely in the field and let my contact prints tell me what my camera saw. The sleepers were a living contact print.

"Doug, do me a favor," I said. "Shine a soft light on each of these people. I just want to look at them."

Mandela Goto, round in face and body, was snoring and his mouth was twisted so it looked like a baby's. I now noticed that his short hair was reddish brown.

Ichiko Smith had jet-black hair like Svetlana Suzuki. Yet I wondered if her face's squarish features were Scandinavian or Slavic. Her long legs jutted out like the prongs of a wishbone.

Kropotkin Tsuda's frizzy hair was also reddish. Her forehead was high and her brow was frozen in a furl. I looked at her a long time. I had seen someone like her somewhere before. Where?

Zillanius Kawata's angular face looked as if he were smiling at some kind of invisible joke. Was there an African influence?

Harumatsu Ben-Ezra, his curly black hair disheveled and a five o'clock shadow on his chin and upper lip, talked in his sleep, revealing his teeth. A Semitic or Mediterranean influence? Yet hadn't I seen many other Japanese like him, particularly in Kyushu?

Corretta Shaposhnikoff's face made me think of an apple. She was gripping the sides of her seat as she slept, making the muscles stand out in her arms. Was she dreaming of her cycling journey?

William Faulkner Nakashima's curly hair had touches of gray. His face was angular face with high cheekbones and his skin was dark. Was he the oldest of the lot? Or was he prematurely aged like me?

Kropotkin Tsuda was mumbling, engaged in dialogue with herself: "I can see the end when our machines take over. Artificial intelligence will conquer the world. We'll become slaves-- No, artificial intelligence, even in advanced organic forms, can never match our inventiveness..."

"Hey Doug," I said, "May I have a look around?"

"This is not a prison," came the illuminated writing on the wall.

"There must be restricted areas."

Doug responded: "It's forbidden to forbid."

A moment later another message came on: "I will let you know, Redburn."

Chapter Three: What About Central Government?

Svetlana Suzuki came to my new quarters.

"We went through sensitivity workshops and other-time awareness training and still they went berserk when they saw you," she said. "I was shocked!"

"If it's any consolation, I'm used to weird reactions from Japanese. I've had grown-up salarymen come up to me and say, 'This is a pen.' Your people at least asked reasonable questions."

"I'm glad you are taking it more liberally than I did. We had a mutual aid meeting and I shared my distress. Mandela-san and Corretta-san are sensible people who understood me. The young people took more time. They are the first generation to grow up after our struggles had largely been won. They lack of the urgency of purpose of their parents and grandparents. They know only others' glories. They get restless and can go to extremes and be frivolous and insensitive."

"What do you mean by young people? I asked. "I have the impression that it's a relative term. What are your ages anyway?"

"I myself am seventy-five," she said.

"No kidding!"

"Mandela-san is eighty-three. Corretta-san is sixty-five. Kropotkin-san is the baby of our group. She's only thirty-three. She is also a genius. At eleven she had made important contributions to time travel mathematical theory. Ichiko-san is fifty. Zillanius-san and Harumatsu-san are in their forties. William-san is fifty-five. We celebrated his birthday before take off. The latter are the 'young people' I referred to. Something wrong, Tom-san?"

"You're seventy-five and look young enough to be my daughter! Am I going to have to be an old gray beard going around a world of perpetually young people? That will be hell."

"Tom-san, living a hundred and fifty years is natural for the human body. You can start a rejuvenation program. We can remake you!"

"Ah ha! I knew it, I knew it! Big Brother!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Big Brother! You've read Orwell, haven't you."

"Nineteen Eighty-Four? Certainly. But we don't have Big Brother."

"Yes you do! Your whole society is one Big Brother. What is Orwell's Big Brother? Not a real person--but a society's good intentions. Big Brother is the spirit of the good intentions of Ingsoc, don't you see? Big Brother watches you because the guardians of Oceania love you. They know what your best interests are better than you. They are like the Grand Inquisitors of old who wept as they thumbscrewed you for your soul's salvation. What are you going to do with your genetic engineering? Lobotomize me?"

Svetlana Suzuki sighed. "What you do with yourself is up to you. If you want help, it's available."

We didn't speak for a moment.

Then she said, "Tom san, if we are going to argue, let's do it in our library. It's lovely and I'd like you to see it. Since we both need exercise we could take the stairs. The stairs are designed like a spiral that descends through all the levels of the craft. It was Kropotkin-san's inspiration."

"You're the boss," I said.

"The guide. And only because I know where things are in this craft. After you do, you won't need me. Want a tour later? You can see our untidy bedrooms and our disorganized workrooms."

"Was that the control center we were in last night?" I said as I followed her. "I didn't see dials and things."

"We communicate orally with Doug most of the time," she said. "As I believe you already discovered, Tom-san."

"Yeah, yeah, you found me out."

I had resolved not to be impressed with the library, but I liked it immediately. There were overstuffed leather chairs, footrests, polished walnut tables and shelves of leather-bound books. A stained glass window looked out on to a small well-kept garden. I couldn't resist plopping into one overstuffed chair. It rearranged itself slightly to contain me. The thing was alive!

Svetlana Suzuki settled her beautiful form into the chair next to me. "Kropotkin-san and Mandela-san designed this together. It has something of a nineteenth century feeling."

"Right out of William Morris."

"Much of our history is deposited here," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We have ordinary books and virtual reality disks. You feel the experience of being in the time period you want to see. It can be unnerving at first. You'll find books for and against socialism here. Read them. When you see our society, decide for yourself if you like it."

"Right. All complements of Big Brother."

"May I tell you a story?"

"Sure," I said settling back. "Tell me a story."

"As a young woman my grandmother stood in front of workers arguing for socialism, sometimes under threat of assassination. Battle is in my blood. That why I am often fierce when I argue."

"Lay on," I said.

"First, I disagree with your interpretation of Big Brother. He doesn't symbolize good intentions gone badly. He is the face of ruling class power. He does no work, just watches you."

"Ingsoc. English Socialism--right?"

"Orwell himself was a socialist to the end. In Nineteen Eighty-Four he wrote that Ingsoc was a corruption of real socialism."

"I'm no Orwell scholar," I sighed.

"Second," said Svetlana Suzuki, "We don't rejuvenate anyone through genetic engineering. We don't need to. People live as long as they do because they do not breathe polluted air or eat food with dangerous chemicals. Nor do they suffer the psychological anxieties people suffered from the beginning of class-ruled society. Yes, we have advanced medicines. We have ways to repair the human body and to slow the aging process. But all these medicines would be of little use were our society was not fundamentally healthy. The rejuvenation program Ichiko Smith and Mandela Goto are working out for you is centered around diet and exercise."

"I'll think about it," I said. "Meanwhile, instead of me suffering through your official histories, tell me some more stories. Tell me about this Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained saga I've heard. The ubiquitous euphoria preceded by ubiquitous grief."

"It is not easy to sum up three and a half centuries."

"Give it a try," I said. "How exactly did capitalism collapse?"

"Everything was falling apart from overproduction and declining consumption. The Chinese despotism was the healthiest, but it too was in trouble," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Only people denied the truth that the ancient system of money, private property and profit had run its course. Who knows how long it would have continued if not for the Great Kanto Earthquake of 2050?"

"I want to hear about that. We survived the Great Kobe Earthquake of 1995. Not that we had that much damage in our town."

"You probably know that there are three faults running through what was once metropolitan Tokyo--"

"I also know that many scientists were predicting monstrous earthquakes toward the end of the century-- Wait a minute! Tokyo no longer exists?"

"Tokyo hasn't existed since 2050. The earthquake and fire completely destroyed it. The destruction was made worse by the extreme centralization of industry and people around the former capital."

"I had friends in Tokyo. At least their grandchildren would have been living in 2050. Was the destruction total?"

"Do you really want me to go on? It's horrifying."

"Go ahead."

"Millions died. It was the worst earthquake disaster in history. The gas tanks around the city ruptured. Cars caught in the evening traffic jams exploded. Heavy advertising materials fell from buildings. Commuter trains jammed with people became death traps."

"Does this mean Hibiya Park and the Ginza were destroyed? And Shinjuku and Roppongi and Harajuku?"

"Yes, all of it."

"And the Imperial Palace?"

"That too."

I was about to ask what happened to the Imperial Palace and the emperor and his family, but automatically stopped myself. I didn't know these people. Yuriko had warned me: "No matter how friendly people are, and no matter how drunk you are, never, never, never discuss anything to do with the Imperial family."

"Also, the Diet was destroyed. All the politicians, good and bad, perished."

"There were crooks and racists among that number. I feel sorry for the few sincere ones. Tell me more."

"A second earthquake, following on the heals of the first, caused a nuclear disaster in what was once Fukui Prefecture. In a town once called Tsuruga. Cracks in the core caused a meltdown and an explosion. Millions died. To this day much of the old Fukui Prefecture remains uninhabitable, though modern science has found ways to neutralize some types of radiation. So much still needs to be done! Why do young people think that there are no longer causes to struggle for?"

"What became of Japan after the quake?"

"The world economy, already in decline, crashed. You see, Japan was the world's financial center. I agree with Mandela-san. Capitalism couldn't have collapsed at a better time. Yet, studying that history makes me so sad. Couldn't there have been a less painful alternative? The transition could have even been completely peaceful! If only people had been wiser. Explain it to me Tom-san. Why didn't you twentieth and twenty-first century people do anything? The truth was under your noses. Did you not see the destruction your old system was causing? Weren't you, at least, choked by the spew of factories and the exhaust from cars? Why didn't people see where all this was leading?"

"We assumed nothing could be changed. You know the old Japanese expression, shikata ga nai? 'It can't be helped.' I felt that way. Tell me more stories."

"There is so much to tell, friend. After the Great Kanto Earthquake, Japan quickly went from a wealth to poverty in a short time. The Russians invaded Hokkaido. China invaded Kyushu. Their economies, however, dependent upon Japan, were fatally hurt."

"What sort of governments did Russia and China have?"

"Russia had an authoritarian capitalist system very much akin to fascism. The Chinese had a system of pure state capitalism that they continued to call Communism. The Russians were the first to revolt. The Chinese revolted after the United States fell apart and broke into civil war. That collapse was brought on by revolts in its Third World industrial satellite states."

"Oh--?"

"In the late twentieth century the United States began shifting its industries to poor countries where labor was cheaper. All other advanced industrialized nations did the same. This meant that the value of labor in the home countries declined and they stratified into societies where a few were rich and the many were poor. The Americans thought that as the military center of the world they could put down any Third World revolts. They were wrong. The vast military machine necessary for such repression ultimately drained what profits the capitalists got from cheap labor. Revolts in Latin America in particular helped crack the system. Also, the American rulers did not realize what creating a Third World situation in the midst of their own country meant. To make a long story short, it meant revolution. Does hearing this upset you as an American patriot, Tom-san?"

"My affections for the States has always been mixed, but in the end I am a native son. I feel sad and lonely hearing about the demise of my nation" I said. "But hey, I saw the handwriting on the wall when I split for Japan. The U.S. made trouble all over the world and couldn't take proper care of its own people. Many educated people saw it too. Like a lot of disaffected intellectuals, I got out to go teach English conversation in a foreign clime. Anyway, go on."

"When the U.S. fell apart, much like the old Soviet Union, there was confusion and war. It was also the beginning of the liberation of the world. When the power of the U.S. fell, revolts intensified throughout its former client states. Some of the revolutions only brought in new dictators, but others brought in progressive democratic governments. At the end of the civil wars in the former United States, the North Americans established the first socialist society--I mean one based on economic democracy."

"The Americans of all people!" I said. "Did you know the U.S. never had a major labor or socialist party? Hey, I admit it, I've got the American anti-socialist phobia. And I'm not apologizing for it either."

"At least you admit you've got the 'phobia.' That's a start," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"The start of bigger and better phobias perhaps," I said. "Go on."

"The rest you pretty much know. A great revolution swept over the world. I say 'swept,' but actually over a century passed before anything resembling a unified world began to emerge. Before that, environmental destruction and social collapse spread starvation and disease. Much of the world's medical and scientific centers went down as this was happening, which, of course, made things worse. The world's population dropped to an eighth of its size between 2050 and the end of the century. Yet, the fortunate thing was that production dropped. This reduced and then reversed the progression of environmental destruction. Mandela-san gave you a rather poetic version of how the human race discovered--or I should say rediscovered--mutual aid. Some scientists believe that human intelligence actually grew then, that the average human brain expanded its capabilities. During the centuries of struggle we think that on the average people's brains were functioning at close to full capacity. Do you know what that means?"

"Everybody became an Einstein?"

"Something close to that. Faced with probable destruction, the human race united and sacrificed so that it might survive. We tend to romanticize those centuries of struggle in our day. We see it as a time when people lived only for others, when greed was unknown, and all energy was directed toward earthly salvation. There were those who were greedy and violent. In general, it became an unusually peaceful time. It is something you yourself might have seen in human behavior right after great natural disasters like earthquakes and floods."

"Yeah, I guess so," I said. "People were all volunteering and stuff after the 1995 Kobe quake. My whole family pitched in."

My "guide" was only half-listening to me. Her face looked as if it was in a trance. "It is remarkable what was achieved!" she said. "Anti-ozone-destroying bacteria! Underground and even underwater farming communities. Alternative fuels. Anti-ultraviolet foods and clothing. And those ideas that the ancients scoffed at as utopian, unworkable, subversive, against human nature--all those ideas were put to work by the collective will of the human race. Within the twenty-second century private property, the class system, and the bureaucratic state had died out. How, Tom-san, could your people stand the oppression?"

"We had our amusements, our moments of happiness," I said. "We were up some' as the saying goes. I had my family." I paused. "Enough people were up some' to be complacent. I sure was looking out for me and mine."

"Forgive me," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I got carried away. When you wish to study it all, you have the library. And you have all of us. We have our biases; challenge us all you want. It occurs to me how much of the revolutionary passion is still within us. The near-death of the human race isn't something that is forgotten so quickly."

"I'll check it out," I said. "I want to hear more about Tokyo."

"There isn't much to tell. All that is left of the city itself is ruins. Over the centuries the waters have reclaimed the landfills. These become marshlands where many birds and other animals now live. A forest has grown where once great buildings stood. There have been earthquakes in the area over the years, but Tokyo forest is a peaceful place."

"I'd like to see the total reality version of what happened to Tokyo," I said.

"All right. Warning--it is frightening."

"I can take it," I said. "I saw what happened in Kobe."

"Very well," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Remember you can get out any time."

She opened a panel next to my chair and took out what looked like an old pilot's leather helmet with goggles.

"Put this on," she said.

It fitted itself gently around my head.

"I'm switching on the Great Kanto Earthquake," Svetlana Suzuki said.

I was in Minato Ward, Tokyo, standing amid choking smoke. I could feel the heat of the flaming tall buildings and cars around me. Cars caught in a traffic jam were exploding like firecrackers on a string. Dismembered bodies were everywhere. Other people lay asphyxiating from smoke as I moved through the destruction. The elevated tracks of Japan Rail's circle line had collapsed and shattered blue train cars were scattered and twisted like toys smashed by an angry child. All of them were packed with corpses. Another shock. Skyscrapers swayed and then toppled. Screaming people fell out of them like old newspapers.

"I've seen enough," I said and took off the contraption.

Thinking I was going to puke, I stepped into the garden outside the library. I sat on a wooden bench (not alive, thank goodness) and just watched the bright flowers and inhaled their fragrances. The nausea passed. I returned to a concerned Svetlana Suzuki.

"I'm okay," I said, sitting down in the same comfortable chair. "God, it's worse than what hit Kobe! What happened to Kansai?"

"The nuclear accident at Tsuruga killed almost one in ten people in the area. Do you really want to hear about this, Tom-san?"

"Yeah. Go on."

"A new government was established in Fukuoka but it couldn't control the country. There was widespread disease and radiation poisoning. It would have been worse had not the Russians airlifted food and medicine. The Chinese and Koreans helped. For the Russians and Chinese this was an excuse to invade Korea and Japan. A little more than half a century later, the Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Korean workers revolted and formed a bond. The Great Renunciation of Nationalism rally in Seoul was held in June, 2108. Do you wish to see it?"

"Actually, I'm beginning to feel tired again," I said standing. "I'll see you later."

*****

Hours later, after a long sleep, I went back to the library. I found Kropotkin Tsuda wearing one of those total reality things. She was waving her arms around and reciting cornball slogans. Her face was tear-stained. She removed her headset. Seeing me she exclaimed, "Oh! Mr. Redburn! I was celebrating The Great Renunciation of Nationalism rally. I must run. Doug needs me."

"Kro-chan is an old-fashioned socialist, though she is the youngest of our group," Svetlana Suzuki told me an hour later after the communal meal that she and Zillanius Kawata had helped prepare. "She's something of a lost soul. Long line of activists in her family. A hard act to follow, if you know what I mean."

"I don't," I said.

"The way she sees things. She frets about 'selfish love' as opposed to 'communal love.' That sort of thing. I'd better explain that during the era of struggle there were many differing approaches to human relationships. Many people formed communes which stressed celibacy because they believed that bringing children into the world, or even seeking the pleasure of love was immoral with so much suffering."

"Sounds like some stupid religious movement--yuk! Were there nutty cults like Aum Shinrikyo?"

"There were those, yes. There were others. Some were truly 'nutty' as you say and there were others. In many cases religious and secular communities often held similar beliefs. They only expressed them differently. There was a massive turning away from traditional religious institutions. The celibacy people were one group. Others believed that people had to create more children for humankind's survival. Some advocated marriage committed to society, not to the nuclear family. These groups forbade feelings of affection to pass between married people and made it law that all marriages were terminal so that everyone would periodically change partners."

"That's awful."

"I agree. And so did most people, even in those extreme times. There were debates, nonetheless, about whether romantic love violated social responsibility. There were many other experiments in living. You can imagine the earnestness of it all."

"Ms Tsuda frets over stuff like that?"

"Yes. When it's no longer necessary. She tortures herself and any lover she might have with questions about what is selfish and unselfish love. I think she's self-indulgent and I have told her so. So have her friends whenever she's requested a mutual aid meeting. Oh Tom-san! If you ever saw Kro-chan's little house at the Time Collective you'd cry. It's bare. All she has besides books are a few extra clothes. She frets so much! I doubt she even allows herself the luxury of a good night's sleep."

"You want to know what I think?" I said. "I think she is bored silly. Anyway, what's a mutual aid session? Group therapy?"

"It's a small ad hoc meeting which tries to solve an immediate problem, public or personal. It's something we learned from traditional tribal and peasant societies. In your time you would have found this practice among many African tribes and among the Russians, who called it mir. Didn't you see something like that in your travels?"

"I did," I said. "I Russia. People would suddenly come together and argue. That shit was a mir?"

"Yes, Tom-san, that's probably what it was," she said with a not small show of annoyance. "With the breakdown in central authority, this system, that shit as you call it, came into dominance naturally. There was something like the mir in the old village han in Japan before it became corrupted by authoritarianism. In the present time, a person or a group announces the need for immediate mutual aid. Any people present who are interested convene together. Sometimes someone agrees to moderate. Most of the time it is a free discussion. If the matter is something that requires an immediate solution, the discussion ends quickly and various approaches are tried until one works. Work groups and other community groups use it all the time. I imagine this system must be much better than your old way of relying on rulers or bosses--who might not even be qualified to judge your problems intelligently."

"Don't think you people discovered anything new. In the companies I worked in we just got stuff done and didn't tell the bosses."

*****

I later encountered Kropotkin Tsuda in the library alone. She was curled up in a chair and pressing her temples with her fingers.

"Are you in pain?" I asked.

"Just thinking. There are functions of this ship that I have to work out for our re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and landing."

"You're a workaholic. Many people died from overwork in our day."

"That's because they were forced to work at things they did not like for the profits of bosses." she snapped. "You've been talking to Svetlana-san, I'll bet. She means well, but sometimes she acts as if she's my mother. I'm having fun every minute of my life. And it's not true that I'm an old fashioned socialist. I'm not as pure as all that."

"I didn't come here to get barked at." I rose to leave.

"Don't go, Tom-chan. Please. You are also a primary concern of mine. Can I call you Tom-chan as you asked us to?"

"Okay," I said sitting. "I suppose I should call you Kro-chan."

"I'd like that," she said and smiled.

I didn't smile back. "So, Kro-chan, when do we land?"

"Doug says that we'll need 25 hours. We are at present making a wide arc around Earth. It's somewhat problematic to slow down sufficiently for re-entry. We cannot slow down too quickly or there might be structural damage. If we enter the Earth's atmosphere too fast we'll burn up."

"People watching us will think we're a shooting star and make a wish on us."

"I like your humor," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "How about some music? Do you like Mozart?"

"I love Mozart."

"Put on your total reality head piece and we'll go to a wonderful concert together in Kobe. Music is good to calculate by for me."

I found myself sitting with Kropotkin Tsuda in an open-air concert hall. The fresh air was like what you'd find way out at sea. We sat on a seat that looked wooden but felt more like a hard cushion. Around us sat people dressed in glowing jump suits. Lovers sat together with arms around each other. Families sat quietly listening. It was a warm spring evening. The sun was setting. The trees around the concert hall were already turning into dark shadowy entities and the first evening stars were appearing. I'd forgotten the evening sky could have so many stars.

"This sure beats the Tokyo earthquake," I whispered to Kropotkin Tsuda as orchestra played the first bars of Fantasy in B minor.

For the first time since my abduction I smiled.

*****

"A question just occurred to me," I said as I was about to leave the library after our concert. "Where is the capital city in your Japan?"

"There isn't any," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Let me ask that question again," I said.

"I know what you mean, Tom-chan," she replied. "Under your old system there were big cities which served as central seats of power. We don't have that anymore."

"Then how is everything governed?"

"By all of us."

"I've heard that before. In a country you need central control."

"We have regional coordinating councils. We also have a main council that coordinates things nation wide and is the primary coordinator for international matters. Its location rotates from one region to another every five years so that no region feels it is above or below any other region. You know that over-centralization discriminated against the provincial regions in capitalist Japan. Ultimately it was fatal to the system."

"Your system sounds confusing," I said.

"Not if you know how it works. We have no competing power groups, classes or factions. Nor do we make war. So there really is no need for a strong central authority."

"I still don't understand."

"Look at the role of the ancient state--that is the central government. Karl Marx called it the executive committee of the ruling class. Its main purpose was to oppress. It had to suppress ruling class factions so that their greed and ambition for power wouldn't wreck the system. More importantly, it oppressed the working classes. If it was strong enough it oppressed other nations. I know there were fairly enlightened democratic states, which allowed people considerable freedom as long as the ruling class's power wasn't threatened. Even the most democratic state was there to protect the interests of the ruling class."

"Well, it was something like that, I guess. Japanese people older than I could tell you that living under any democracy were infinitely better than living under a dictatorship. So what you are talking about isn't all that simple."

"I know, Tom-chan. Do you have any illusions about democracy in your time? About the real power of common people?"

"Absolutely none!" I said. "Look, I understand that part about autonomous councils or whatever. You still need some central place to keep national records."

"We have several. Duplication is easy. It is nothing to put information on the world wide Internet. You had that in your time, right?"

"Yes, even we savages had the Net."

"I was not implying-- Cut it out Tom-chan--! The worldwide Internet went down after the collapse of capitalism. It took a long, long time to get it going again. Anyway, even with your advanced communications you still had trouble getting to a lot of crucial information because it was secret. All our communal information is completely open. That simplifies governance."

"So am I correct in saying that there is no central anything."

"That's right. It all works well because we have total equality."

"Including between men and women?"

"Yes, haven't you seen it with your own eyes?" she said.

"Good," I said. "We had so many problems because of sexual discrimination, my wife and I."

"Because you were a male chauvinist?"

"If I was I tried hard not to be-- No, we had bad problems outside the family. Yuriko-san was an English teacher in a public high school. She was more intelligent than the predominantly male teachers and they bullied her. This included her psychopathic principal. Finally, she dropped out after the principal gave her a vindictive transfer to an isolated mountain technical high school. It would've forced her to live apart from the kids and me. We started the portrait studio together. What lots of Japanese working men couldn't see was that sexual discrimination hurts families, which means them."

"Well put, Tom-chan."

"You know, I am sure you have more important things to do than talking to me," I said.

"Name one," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Your duties for controlling this ship--"

"Tom-chan, listen to me," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Do you know why we risked our necks to go back to the twenty-first century? It was to get you. You're important to me, my friend! Talk to me. I can talk and deal with Doug at the same time."

"You're intense," I said.

"So I've been told," she said. "Let's talk! You know, we're the brats of the voyage!" She made a high-pitched laugh.

Her laugh reminded me of my bright daughter, Mari.

"You are a math whiz, I hear," I said.

"Was. Past tense. Over with at fifteen. I was precocious. I was scribbling mathematical formulas while I was still in diapers. At eleven I was playing a space travelers games with my friends. In the middle of one I somehow expanded on existing theories and proved mathematically that it was possible to travel backwards in time. We giggled a lot about my formulas and coined the expression 'Real Time' as a kind of joke. At fourteen I finished my university studies in Kobe. At fifteen I joined the Time Collective, but my major math work was over by then. About that time I discovered sex. I was quite the little sex maniac until age twenty. Then I calmed down and stuck to one boyfriend at a time. I had a happy adolescence, though I was frustrated mentally. No boy I knew could keep up with me. Multiple relationships didn't help."

"I've been there," I said. "I screwed around a lot before my second marriage. Tell me more about yourself."

"Not much to tell. I live at the Time Collective all year. I helped design Doug. I also think some of our conclusions about time travel, so-called, are erroneous."

"So-called?"

"I'll tell you about it later."

"This concerns me. I want to hear it," I said.

"It's a very complex theory of time and space and I may be absolutely wrong. If you are worried that you'll turn into a pumpkin or vanish suddenly in a puff of blue smoke don't worry. Now I'd like to talk about something less complicated, like why you are still unconvinced that a society with no central government cannot function well."

The wheels in my head were turning around. Somehow this Kro-chan, I felt, would be the key to my release back to my own time. Back into the arms of my family.

Chapter Four: Entering Real Time

That living leather chair was so comfortable that I ended up sleeping in it. How can I describe the sensuality of organic furniture? It's not erotic. It's more like relaxing in the company of someone you like.

I had fallen asleep while talking to Kropotkin Tsuda. We were talking about how people could work efficiently without being forced. She couldn't imagine efficiency when folks were forced to do work they hated. She said now people worked at their own paces--some a few hours a day and others almost without rest. I was going to ask about leisure time but dropped off into dreamland.

"Good morning, Tom-san!"

I opened my eyes and saw Svetlana Suzuki and Mandela Goto.

"We're in the Earth's atmosphere and orbiting," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We thought about waking you but you were sleeping so peacefully we decide to let you be. The chair held you during re-entry, which was a little bumpy. Do you want to see what the Earth of 2357 looks like from the air?"

I rubbed my eyes.

"I need a shower," I said.

"Enjoy," Mandela Goto said. "How are you feeling?"

"Rested. I should feel drained after all the talking with Kro-chan. We were talking about work," I said as I went out with them and up the stairs. "I got confused about how many hours you work per day."

"Understandably," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Kro-chan is a dear person and bright. Her problem is that she has lived a rarefied existence in research collectives. She doesn't know how ordinary people live and work. I assure you that people do work regular hours. About four hours on the average. Of course, we are involved in so much. Community work. Study. Creative projects. How can I explain it?"

"You are coming back toward Kropotkin-san's explanation," I said.

"Maybe I am!" Svetlana Suzuki laughed. "Here's your floor. We have left some of our clothing for you. Try them on. They're comfortable. See you in the dome."

One thing I had to admit: Doug gave good showers. I'd just say how I wanted my water and not one but five nozzles sprayed me. The fragrant soap left my body feeling as if I had been massaged. I trimmed my beard with an organic razor (very efficient) and then put on the jumpsuit given me. It felt like silk pajamas. I ate a simple breakfast of cereal and fruit left for me, then went to the dome.

I blinked, unable to guess where we were. Everyone was gazing at a panoramic view of ocean and land encircling the entire dome. Kropotkin Tsuda sat in her chair in a full lotus position. Her face was pink with excitement. "This is fun!" she exclaimed when she saw me.

"Lucky you were asleep, Tom-san," Ichiko Smith said. "Re-entry was a little scary."

"Yes, Doug needs a little work here and there," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Look, Tom-chan. We're passing over the Caribbean now."

"I think you'll be shocked," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"It has changed since your time," said William Faulkner Nakashima.

The others were silent, watching the shifting panorama.

"What happened to Florida?" I exclaimed. "It's gone!"

"I'm afraid so," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Much of the Earth was inundated by oceans after the greenhouse effect melted a substantial amount of the ice caps. The effects of fossil fuels are still with us. Doug, could you scan Greenland for us? That's too close. Wider."

What I saw startled me. The shores were studded with pines. Only the central mountains and valleys were covered in sheets of bluish ice. In places the black peaks of mountains showed through. The sapphire blue Arctic Sea was strangely free of ice flows. Just over the horizon was the North Pole. The ice sheets seemed somehow like snow on a lake when thawing--squashy, not solid.

"What happened to Japan?" I asked.

"Reclamation of submerged land was a major project after the revolution," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We have a system of locks and dams which hold the level of the Inland Sea. We were lucky, though much of our coast has been lost. Some island countries went under completely. On the other hand, much of Greenland is now more hospitable, as are Northern Canada and Siberia."

"There!" I cried. "That's Louisiana. New Orleans hasn't gone under!"

"It had but it was reclaimed," said Harumatsu Ben-Ezra. "Fascinating archaeological finds from the submerged city. Many oil deposits. I believe there was a disaster of some kind."

"I wouldn't know," I said. "Is New York City underwater?" I asked.

"Much of it," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Manhattan doesn't have skyscrapers any more. Wait. I'm trying to remember my history. There was a terrible catastrophe involving skyscrapers there centuries ago. A terrible attack."

"In 2001?" I said. "September 11, 2001."

"That must be it. Much history has been lost."

"I can tell you about it. I was living in Japan then, of course. But I had friends and family in New York..." Thinking of them made me sad. I only added, "That swine of a president George W. Bush used the ensuing national hysteria to start his useless wars. I'll tell you about it later..."

"We cannot whip around the world as I had planned," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Doug is tired, poor creature. We've got some overheating of the engines. Grand tour of the planet some other time, Tom-chan. I suggest a slow balloon."

"Balloon?" I said, tying to shake my melancholy. "You have balloons?"

"Yes, great transport, balloons," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Just drift along. One big party--or one big orgy. The Group Marriage Collective had a fine flight once, I hear. If only our revolutionary grandmothers and grandfathers could see us now--silly, self-satisfied."

"They'd know we had won!" Ichiko Smith said.

"Sure," Kropotkin Tsuda said ruefully.

*****

I dozed off for what seemed only minutes before Svetlana Suzuki awoke me.

"Awaji Island!"

"Awaji?" I said. "I cannot see anything. Just a few stars."

"They are lights from the ground," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"There are so few!" I said. "This is how I remember the night sky as being--just a few stars up there that somehow managed not to get blotted out by city lights."

"Well, here you will see the exact opposite!" Svetlana Suzuki said. "The sky is full of bright lights. When you look down on the ground from the sky, it's like this."

"How long did it take after I fell asleep?"

"One hour, fifteen minutes," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Need landing assistance, Doug?"

"Considering," flashed the response.

"We're landing in a big field," Kropotkin Tsuda said to me. "For your historical information, back in 2040 they sliced off the top of a mountain. When the water level was rising and they thought they would need more land."

"Kro-chan! Welcome home, old friend!" came a voice out of nowhere.

"Koda-chan!" Kropotkin Tsuda said. "That's Koda Rohan, my dear friend and sometimes lover. Koda-chan, how are you?"

"As usual. You're the one with the stories. Do you feel like landing? Your hovering is causing some collective worry."

"Showing Mr. Thomas Redburn the sights. You'll love Tom-chan," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Let's go down, Doug."

"The last step is the most dangerous--ancient proverb," Mandela Goto said.

"A wise thought," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Keep it in mind Doug."

"No Problem," flashed across the wall and we began our descent.

Everyone was silent.

We started floating down, lightly, delicately. The lights on the ground grew bigger and brighter. I made out clusters of luminous domed buildings. "This is it," I said to myself. Now you'll look this workers' paradise in the face. Maybe Big Brother's or Big Sister's. Maybe a soft cage with living walls--"

"You're trembling, Tom-san," Svetlana Suzuki whispered. "The worst is over."

Thud! Doug shuttered and shook like jelly. EMERGENCY" flashed across the dome. A luminous blue line with a flashing gold EMERGENCY EXIT sign shot across the floor.

Svetlana Suzuki seized my arm and pulled me from my comfortable chair. "Quickly! Doug is unstable!" she cried. "Kro-chan! Come!"

"Doug is okay!" Kropotkin Tsuda shouted back. "Careful or you'll hurt yourselves! I'm staying."

"Kro-chan! Please!" Svetlana Suzuki pleaded as she pulled me by the arm toward the emergency chute.

Sliding down, I practically landed on top of Mandela Goto. I stood, realizing I was standing on something that felt like a lawn. Before I could look back, two people had run up, picked me up, and put me in a transparent mini-van.

Next to me sat Svetlana Suzuki. Two men sat in front. The machine took off across the field. Three similar but larger transparent vans raced ahead of us, headlights cutting through the darkness. Inside them were the other members of the crew. I turned around and looked back. Lights reflected off what seemed like a gigantic silvery whale. Before I could get a good look, we entered a wooded area.

"Doug made a belly landing," came Kropotkin Tsuda's voice over the intercom. "Legs didn't extend. All okay. Coming out."

Svetlana Suzuki's face was stained with tears. The man not driving, a tall black man with a heavy full beard, turned around and said comforting things to her like, "Darling, it's over. Kro-chan is fine. She's being picked up now. Brave lady; she did all right."

Damn it! I thought. If the ship was wrecked I was stranded even if I could persuade my captors to take me home. Then I thought of Kro- chan and realized I cared about her.

"For heaven's sake, is there any news on the intercom, Katsuro-kun?" Svetlana Suzuki said to the man who had comforted her.

"Hang on," he said and spoke into the intercom, "Hello? Any word from Kro-chan? Over."

A crackly voice replied: "Tsuda here. Calmed Doug. Being transported. I love you for caring. Over."

Everyone in the van let out a sigh of relief.

"So there is individual heroism under socialism," I said. "You aren't like H. G. Wells' sheep people." I tried to laugh but could not. I was trembling.

No one said anything. I took a deep breath. The air was moist and warm and a heavy scent of flowers filled the air. I looked up at the night full of stars.

"My husband, Katsuro," Svetlana Suzuki said. "And our driver is our neighbor, Conway Ito."

Katsuro Suzuki turned around and said, "Welcome to our crazy collective. Except for the landing did you have a good flight?"

"The crew is a friendly bunch," I said. Too friendly, I thought.

Katsuro Suzuki laughed. "The entire Time Collective is a friendly bunch. You'll be flooded with gifts and propositions for lovemaking! When you want time to yourself we'll sneak you off to Kobe."

I knew what I was saying was stupid and insensitive as the words left my mouth: "Are you really Japanese, Katsuro-san?"

"Last time I looked I was," he said merrily. "Why do you ask? Because I'm a Black guy?"

"Look, I'm sorry--"

"Things have changed over the centuries," Svetlana Suzuki said to me quickly. "You don't have to be sorry. You're used to another Japan. Our Japan is multi-racial and multicultural."

"Good!" I said. "Good!"

The driver said, "I was reading up on old Japan in anticipation of your arrival. How could you stand the discrimination as a resident foreigner, Tom-san? Guess what? Part of my own ancestry goes back to Nigeria. Another part is Ainu. We'll visit Ainu collectives up in Hokkaido. They're made a point of reviving the old Ainu tongue. "

"I really am glad Japan has finally got internationalized," I said.

"Internationalized--?" Conway Ito asked. "I'm confused. We are all Japanese--"

"Let Tom-san get his bearings," Svetlana Suzuki interrupted, "Everything's new for him."

"Hey, don't baby me!" I said. "I meant what I said! Look, I'm glad, I mean really glad that Japan has become this multicultural. I'm glad Japan isn't the racist shit hole it once was. Okay?"

"There is a difference from your times and ours," Conway Ito said. "In the old days different cultures came together because of tragedy. Invasion. Slavery. Immigration--the result of tragedy elsewhere. Now choosing where to live is like falling in love."

"I heard this stuff before," I said.

"Tom-san," Katsuro Suzuki said. "Are you aware that you are not a guest here? You are a citizen as long as you're in Japan."

"You're putting me on. I just got here!" I said.

"It's true, Tom-san," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I thought you already understood that. I would have told you but it seemed too obvious."

"Obvious! Come on! You mean there is no waiting period, no papers to fill out, no insulting interviews with officials?"

"No, of course not!" Katsuro Suzuki laughed. "We have nothing like that. Why should we?"

"Don't I get a ceremony at least?"

"We're having a banquet in your honor." Katsuro Suzuki said. "That will be your welcoming ceremony."

"I'll need an identity card to show I belong here," I said. "If I'm going to be stuck in this time zone I don't want any hassles. And I insist you issue me a passport so I can travel abroad if I choose."

"Good heavens! We have nothing like that!" Katsuro Suzuki said.

"You mean for prisoners?" I shouted.

"You are not a prisoner!" he shouted back. "Are you crazy?"

We would have had quite a row if Svetlana Suzuki had not intervened.

"I understand Tom-san feelings," she said. "Tom-san, show them that card in your wallet. We found it during decontamination. Show them your gaikokujin torokusho, your foreigner identification card."

I took out my wallet and removed the card that all foreigners over age sixteen had to carry. It listed my name, address, occupation, my passport number, and my residency status number. I had a spouse visa, which had required considerable hassling--particularly with one official, an old racist woman, at Kobe Immigration who called me a liar at one point for some reason. Things had changed, however, after this asshole had left. It had gotten considerably better after the earthquake in 1995. I had actually been invited by Kobe Immigration to apply for permanent residency! I was an official permanent resident at the time of my abduction. The card had my photograph It used to carry fingerprint. Japan had received considerable international criticism over the fingerprinting of foreign residents and so covered the fingerprint as a gesture of official embarrassment before abolishing it altogether. Before that, I was issued a card without a fingerprint after I had gotten permanent residency.

I handed my Alien Registration Card to Katsuro Suzuki who held it up and peered at it in the dim light. Then he passed it over to Conway Ito, who glanced at it as he drove. He handed it back to Katsuro Suzuki.

"I always had to carry this with me," I said. "Any policeman or official could demand to see it any time. Once I forgot it and had to sign a letter of apology at the local police station."

"That's awful!" Conway Ito said. "You can toss this thing out the window right now."

"Hey give it back to me!" I said. "I need that!"

Katsuro Suzuki returned it to me promptly and said, "I've never seen anyone get into such panic over a little piece of paper." Then he added, "I'm sorry, Tom-san. You still have to get used to our ways."

I almost said I'd need it when I returned if that time machine was ever fixed. My suspicions kept me silent.

Katsuro Suzuki said, "Now listen, good friend, do you know what happens when people are simply left alone to go and live and work and love wherever they wish? You get a happy pluralism inside a distinct culture. I mean there are unique cultural differences between a Japanese and Russian. But when you look inside each culture you'll find as much cultural and racial diversity as singularity. Japan is still pretty much of Mongolian stock and I am sure you'll find many customs that you knew in old Japan. Then here I am, a black Japanese, and no one looks twice, as I suppose they would have in the old Japan. How can I explain it?"

"Anything like what we Americans called the Melting Pot?"

"No, people don't have to melt and give up their own cultural identity," Katsuro Suzuki said. "No one is excluded because he or she is different. Exclusion, like exploitation, is against our laws. I see your culture shock, Tom-san. Let me reassure you. I lived in Russia for many years working as an engineer. I never needed any passports or identity cards showing I was an engineer with the Waste Reclamation Collective. In Russia I was a citizen and even learned Russian--you know Russian, I've heard. Anyway, when I visited home I was still a participating citizen of Japan. I experienced no prejudice--none."

"I guess I've always imagined that prejudice a part of human nature," I said. "Even the most democratically spirited people I knew wanted to be part of some exclusive group."

"Our first impulse is to share our happiness!" Katsuro Suzuki replied. "Imagine a world with no government forcing you to fear and hate some nationality or race. Left alone, people are naturally gregarious. They mix freely."

"My husband tends to overwhelm people with his enthusiasm," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Darling, Tom-san will find out what we are about soon enough. Tom-san, I hope you are relieved from some of your worries."

I was far from relieved, but switched to making small talk. I've found that is best when dealing with people who have power over you.

"I don't hear the engine and I can smell flowers," I said. "Why?"

"That's because the engine uses hydrogen," Katsuro Suzuki said. "The engine is alive like the rest of this vehicle. You can smell flowers because this van is porous like skin. It is somewhat old-fashioned. But it gets us from point A to point B."

I looked out into the headlight beams, hoping to see some familiar landmark. "This machine is a wonder," I said.

"It's hardly that," Katsuro Suzuki said, "You had the technology back in your time to make pollution-free machines. The big capitalist enterprises that sold oil and nuclear power got in the way."

"And another thing," Conway Ito said. "Even early in your previous century you had the technology to make machinery that could last hundreds of years. But it would have destroyed profits. So the capitalists developed planned obsolescence."

"I know," I said. "Cameras built up to around 1980 were tough. The later ones became obsolete very quickly."

"There you go," Conway Ito said. "I too am a photographer. We must talk about our craft. You'll be happy to know we still have the old processes using silver emulsion. In my opinion, you can talk about how wonderful the bio-digital filmless processes are, but they will never match the luminosity of the old processes."

"There is something you ought to know, Tom-san," Katsuro Suzuki said. "We are still catching up with scientific and cultural development which was interrupted by the chaotic period after the collapse of capitalism. We are only now rediscovering the joys of arts like photography and painting. It is also true of our literature, our music, our architecture! I shake my head with wonderment when our young people, like dear Kro-chan, say there is nothing more to be done! Why we haven't even started! Culture is one thing! Science more so! Our researchers haven't found the right processes to gradually reverse many of the bad influences of the greenhouse effect. It is an extremely complex ecological process, complicated by the millions of people who have adjusted to the climactic changes."

"How?" I asked.

"The population shifts northward, for example. Greenland, Siberia and northern Canada are thriving. We have, thank heavens, replenished the ozone that your era's pollution depleted. We have arrested the melting of glaciers so the ocean level is no longer rising. Only now how do we, say, revitalize the Midwestern Desert in the former United States into the lush farmland that it was in your time without disrupting the temperate climate of Moose Jaw in Canada? So much to be done yet. This island mentality here! Continental youth are much more serious, I tell you."

"Katsuro-kun, you're lucky to have such a patient audience," his wife said. "Tom-san, I should tell you that my husband and Kro-chan have wonderful debates every night. They are like father and daughter."

"I wish she was our daughter," Katsuro Suzuki sighed. He glanced at the lights of the vehicles following and said, "That brave young woman. She probably averted a disaster with Doug."

"What's the worst that could have happened?" I ventured.

"We don't know. That's the frightening part. I'd better tell you our evaluation from the ground, Svetlana, my love. When we didn't see the landing gears go down we feared we were going to lose you."

He paused. I knew he was holding back tears.

"I still cannot accept that you might have died," he said.

Svetlana Suzuki reached over and put her arms around her husband's neck. Conway Ito and I were silent.

"Dear Kro-chan," Svetlana Suzuki said. "She saved our lives."

"We'll soon be back at the homestead," Katsuro Suzuki said trying to sound jovial. "I hope you're hungry, Tom-san. The Time Collective is famous for its feasts."

"May I ask you something, Katsuro-san?" I said. "You spoke of having so much to do. Yet, here you are with the Time Collective, which strikes me as socially unnecessary. I mean--"

"I understand you exactly!" Katsuro Suzuki said. "Absolutely! That was my feeling when I was invited to come here. I'm eighty now and I spent most of my life rebuilding sewage and waste reprocessing systems so that they could be converted into energy supply systems. I worked in the field, Tom-san. In construction as well as design. See this hand? Three broken fingers I managed to get at various times in Siberia. I worked there for a good twenty years after the Russians invited me. We built wonderful systems. Now Russian shit doesn't pollute the Sea of Japan, or the Sea of Peace as it's now called. It's quickly and painlessly converted into energy!"

"I brought him to the Time Collective," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"Yes, you convinced me of the important work you were doing. So much information we need on climactic conditions in earlier centuries, plus concentration of pollutants, population shifts-- It does facilitate our complete understanding of the global ecosystem. And here is what else! We hope to revitalize many species of plants and animals that became extinct in the last mad days of capitalism. Do you know that so many rain forests were destroyed then? And with that whole ecosystems, which were the basis of so much medicine. Not to mention so much beauty!"

"I've been to Russia," I said.

"Ah!" exclaimed Katsuro Suzuki with genuine pleasure. "Where? Siberia? Have you seen Vladivostok and Khabarovsk?"

"I couldn't get into Vladivostok because of the restrictions then. I saw Khabarovsk."

"And the beautiful Amur River! Oh how I loved to fish there! The trout were as big as whales!"

"It's nice to talk about something other than politics," I said. "My grandfather told me fishing stories in Russian. I wanted to fish on the Amur but Soviet authorities wouldn't let me."

"That's something! How is your Russian?" He spoke a few words.

"Rather different from the tongue I know," I said.

"Listen, good friend, someday we will go to Siberia together. I've been dying to go back!"

"If we go, we'll go in summer," Svetlana Suzuki said, smiling and obviously pleased that her husband and I had hit it off. "I hate cold weather."

"What about dinosaurs?" I asked impulsively. "Will the Time Collective be bringing back some dinosaurs?"

The others laughed.

"Forgive us for laughing, Tom-san," Katsuro Suzuki said. "I'm afraid we needed a good laugh after all this tension. We do not need dinosaurs at present, and we've not been able to go back that far. Anyway, recreating the climatic conditions of those days would be virtually impossible. I must tell you, we've brought back a few interesting species. The soft-shelled turtle that Bartram wrote of in his memoirs of 18th Century Florida. Also, the dodo. That was Kro-chan's inspiration. Ugly stupid birds, in my opinion. We've brought back several species of tiger and many birds. Our friends in the Kenyan Zoological Collective are the naturalists. Amazing what they're doing!"

"What was Africa like in your time?" Conway Ito asked.

"Terribly exploited and poor," I said.

"That's what I've read," Conway Ito said. " I cannot believe it. Africa is the most incredibly beautiful place on Earth. The people are prosperous all over the continent. They have a special relationship with nature that we don't. Their major project there is desert management. How to preserve the vanishing deserts."

"In my time it was the other way around," I said. "People were worried about desertification."

"That was reversed a long time ago. Now it's the deserts and their unique ecosystems that might be lost under much creeping vegetation. I have a special love of Africa, and not just because of my background. Much primal socialism managed to survive there in spite of colonialism. You know, for thousands of years people lived in societies where everything was owned in common and where armies and wars were virtually unknown! Funny, the terrible ages of class rule, of slavery and racism and sexism--it all seems like a brief bad dream."

A thought struck me. "Are there other time collectives with time machines in other parts of the world?"

"No, we are the one and only," Katsuro Suzuki said.

My heart sank. I was stuck with these socialists, like it or not, until they could fix Doug and I could persuade them to return me.

"Home!" Svetlana Suzuki exclaimed. "There's our helicopter!"

The van's lights shone on the luminous and translucent helicopter as the van passed by it. The van passed over a hill and there were lighted buildings all arranged in rough semi circles around a tree-studded valley. The Van entered the valley and passed through a forest. Conway Ito parked it in front of a large long building glowing with white lights. It consisted of a series of co-joined geodesic domes. In the center was the largest dome. Panoramic windows spiraled around it.

"Will you take a hot Japanese bath together with us before the banquet, Tom-san?" Svetlana Suzuki said. "We have mixed bathing like in the ancient times. Don't be embarrassed. None of us is."

Chapter Five: Banquet in Utopia

The bath was in the hollow of a single huge stone. I was not happy about exposing my bare beer gut next to these folks' beautiful bodies. I wondered if this nude dip was designed to make me feel inferior and weak. I said nothing. The hot spring water soothed my joints, aching from my sudden tumble out of Doug.

The banquet was in the central hall, the one with the spiraling panoramic windows. The dome was paneled with a light unpolished wood. The long and low wooden tables, traditionally Japanese, were laden with food and drink. Perhaps a hundred people were sitting on the floor and talking cheerfully together. What appeared to be red and white sashimi was built up into elaborate designs. There were replicas of Doug and stars and half-moons. This is the first time I got an idea of what Doug looked like: a 1950's grade-B movie flying saucer.

It looked like a typical Japanese crowd at first. Looking closer, I saw black and dark brown skins and heads with red and blond hair. At first I presumed these were gaijin. But gaijin interacting with Japanese always stuck out, no matter how well they knew the language and culture. Either they were squirmy, loud, or trying too hard to be Japanese. I saw nothing of the sort before me.

We took off our sandals. My feet first touched wood and then what I thought should be tatami. It felt alive and warm. I drew back.

"It's natural living tatami," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"It doesn't bite," her husband added.

I followed the Suzukis and Conway Ito. The sensation under my feet was not unlike walking barefoot in a meadow.

"This reminds me of a company end of the year party!" I muttered. What if this socialism was like my old Osaka trading company?

After that criminal language school where I first worked, the company was utopia. In the beginning I had appreciated the interest colleagues took in my personal life and development. Later I realized they just wanted to meddle, and some of them were slandering me for their own personal advantage. Looking about the banquet hall, I remembered the dreadful end of the year and New Year's parties I was forced to attend. I could hardly stand the stupid and long before-dinner speeches by the managers. Worse, I recalled how people forced alcohol upon me though they knew I was trying to dry out. One drunken supervisor had taken offense because I had refused to drink the sake he'd splashed into my empty water glass. He called me a "filthy gaijin" and threatened to ruin my chances for promotion. A few weeks afterward, another manager accused me of being "selfish," "insincere" and "untrustworthy." People who I thought were my friends wouldn't speak to me. Others began to find fault with my work. Then I was shifted from Graphic Design to Personnel where I spent my days filling out forms. The Personnel Department was known in the company as a "dumping ground" for non-essential employees, many of them women who had passed the understood age of female retirement: twenty five. One day I left for my lunch break and never returned. Had I not been married and possessing a spouse visa I would have been kicked out of Japan.

I looked for the separate tables where the bosses sat. I saw none. Were this utopia's bosses just keeping their heads low?

Instead of men in stiff business suits and "OL's" (office ladies) in dark and uncomfortable dresses, the men and women wore bright and loose clothes. Men wore flowing multi-patterned shirts. Women were in brilliant pink, blue, green and orange diaphanous gowns. Other people were wearing the same kind of body suits as the time machine crew and me. Apparently it did not matter what you wore. I also noticed children sitting with the adults and talking to them. None were obnoxious or looked discontent. They seemed integrated into the adults' conversations.

This isn't the place to boast, but I feel like saying it. My wife and I always treated our children as intelligent people rather than cute house pets to be alternately spoiled and scolded. The self-contained quality of our children both impressed and nonplused their teachers. The kids were always at the top of their classes. I was brooding about my youngsters when Svetlana Suzuki spoke to me.

"Let's sit somewhere," she said. "There's Kro-chan! Oi! Kro-chan!"

"Don't we have assigned places to sit?" I asked Katsuro Suzuki.

"No," he laughed. "Why should we?"

"Japanese custom. "We did it everywhere I've worked."

"They really regimented you, the capitalists, didn't they?"

"I hated it, friend."

"You can truly enjoy yourself here," Katsuro Suzuki said. "Absolutely the best people I've ever worked with, except the Russians."

Svetlana Suzuki was embracing Kropotkin Tsuda and weeping. Kro-chan was patting her on the back. Glancing up, she saw us and waved us over.

At first I thought everyone was squatting, as was Japanese custom in my day. They weren't. Their legs disappeared into holes under the tables. This reminded me of the traditional farmhouses where the kotatsu table was placed over a hole in the floor in which there was a charcoal stove.

"Is whatever is in this hole also alive?" I asked as I sat.

"Well yes, but it is just the continuation of the tatami," Katsuro Suzuki said. "I was unnerved by this at first too. There is nothing like it on the continent. There people sit in chairs."

People were walking up to Kropotkin Tsuda and Svetlana Suzuki and embracing them. Meanwhile Kropotkin Tsuda was speaking rapidly in a high-pitched squeaky voice.

"Darlings, its no big deal. Doug's designed to belly flop! Doug's chances of exploding were one in ten million. Less likely than getting hit by a blade flying accidentally off a solar wind generator. As likely as all the dikes bursting at once around the Inland Sea and drowning Kobe. Doug has a tough old belly."

"Who's in charge?" someone called.

A woman stood. "I guess I am," she said and made a bow like a swan dive--which would be considered improper in my Japan. "Thank you food artists. We thank you so very much for the designs you have worked so hard on. We will be demolishing them in a few minutes."

The assembled cheered and applauded.

"I'll say no more," the woman said. "Kro-chan, you're sitting closest to him. Please introduce Thomas Redburn-san to us." She did her swan dive bow again and sat.

After Kropotkin Tsuda had introduced me, I stood and looked at the smiling faces eagerly waiting for my twenty-first century gaijin mouth to utter something. I'd done hundreds of self-introductions but this time my mouth went dry and words failed. I gave a stiff formal bow, bending low, and said: "Yoroshiku onegai shimasu. Redburn Thomas-desu." Then I sat down.

The people cheered and cried, "Welcome!"

"That is an interesting bow, I say," Katsuro Suzuki said. "I feel so much of our ancient culture in it. Citizen Redburn!"

My informal citizenship ceremony. I was now Japanese. So why did I still feel like a gaijin? Because if I went to America tomorrow I'd be a citizen there. If I returned, the minute my foot touched Japanese soil I'd be Japanese again. If I traveled around the world I'd develop multiple personalities. It was absurd.

My parents, though they still spoke Russian at home, when they were on speaking terms, were proud to be American citizens. I now understood why. They had to learn English, pass citizenship tests, and swear allegiance before a judge. If these socialists had put me through something like that--something fair and not the rubbish our Korean friends went through--I would have appreciated being called "Citizen Redburn." As it was, I felt I put on.

"You're silent suddenly, Tom-san," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Anything else you want to share with us?"

"No," I said. "Yeah. There is." I stood. "Now that I'm as Japanese as the rest of you I promise to honor and protect this place as sincerely as I would any other country I happened to touch down in."

I sat down thinking that my sarcastic mouth was going to get me into trouble. Instead everyone applauded.

"What in hell are they applauding?" I asked Svetlana Suzuki in English. "I just said the rudest thing I have ever said to a group of Japanese, and that's saying a lot. Don't they understand simple irony?"

"Were you being ironic? I thought you were expressing noble thoughts in an awkward fashion--our language being new to you. I imagined this was something you picked up watching the Great Renunciation of Nationalism rally. People said similar things in abandoning selfish nationalism for the good of all humankind."

What a pack of ninnies! I thought. Or was I the ninny?

The people at the banquet called each of the time travelers to stand up and say something. Then I was more or less left alone, which was fine with me. After that, they greeted the food. It sounded close to the old Japanese Itadakimasu.

"The speeches were too damn long," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "I'm famished!"

"Compared to the before-dinner speeches I had to sit through, this is nothing," I said.

I was hungry too and tore into the food sculptures with my chopsticks (plainer than those made Zillanius Kawata.) I drank large quantities of the best orange juice I had ever tasted and was surprised to learn that it had come from oranges grown on Awaji Island. There was plenty of alcohol at this banquet. It took a lot of will power, but I didn't touch a drop. Thankfully, no one was forced it on me.

"Time travel makes for good appetites," Svetlana Suzuki said, wistfully looking at the collapsed food sculptures of bears, sunflowers and Doug. "My belly is sticking out."

I remembered that belly, along with her other parts, in the bath. She was the sexiest seventy-five-year-old woman I'd ever seen.

I took a piece of sushi from a sculpture resembling a pinwheel and popped it in my mouth. "This is really wonderful sea bream," I said. "I've never tasted anything so fresh."

"Home grown," Katsuro Suzuki said. "Not from a fish as you might think. From a clone of a fish. Like a meaty--fishy--aquatic vegetable. We prune it and this is the result. Cleaner, fresher, better tasting than the fish. And no need for fishermen to risk death catching the fish it tastes like."

"You fish?"

"Only for sport. A big difference between that and ancient commercial fishing with factory ships."

"Wait," I said. "I see lobster, shrimp, tuna, bass and I'm not sure what else. Is all this grown? Like vegetables?"

"Not the lobsters and shrimp. Let's visit an aquatic farm together."

People sat in small groups. They talked, sang songs, laughed. It was not like what you saw at a company party. If this were my former trading company the men would be drunk, boisterous and rude to the women. Then they would go out and drink more until they puked all over themselves or someone else.

"Tom-san," Katsuro Suzuki said. "I must help put away the food and wash up. Svetlana-san will take you to your apartment. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

Svetlana Suzuki led me outside and we walked along a grassy path to a row of semi-detached geodesic cabins. I couldn't tell what they were made from in the darkness.

"Please come to our place first," she said.

She opened a door, which, I noticed with some surprise, had not been locked. She took her shoes off at the genkan and I did the same.

"If you need us, just call. We have a communication network between all the cabins. Use this." She showed me something that looked like an old telephone receiver.

"Man! That's Dark Ages stuff!" I said. "Did you see my little mobile telephone, or did I leave it behind?"

"No, you brought it. We saw it. It's very impressive."

"That's why I was a bit sarcastic. Sorry. Don't you have technology like that?"

"Yes, sort of. Not as compact as yours. Perhaps you now understand the sort of technological crash the collapse of capitalism created. We have ways of communicating with each other with mobile units, but they are quite as handy as your devise. We will have them someday soon. We have not had the time to reinstitute many of the complex luxuries you had."

"Luxuries! My mobile phone was a lifeline to my family when I was cycling," I said.

"We have things like it--as you saw today. We get along."

"Man, what a strange world you have! Time travel and nothing like my cute compact mobile phone with its e-mail mode."

"We have something like what you call e-mail. It's a little different. Can I get you something? Some more of that orange juice you liked so much?"

"Please. I'm parched."

"Time travel does that. I'll get some juice from the kitchen."

I went into the living room. Unlike the Japanese houses I'd known, the ceiling was high. The geodesic roof was made of sweet smelling red cedar. The bluish white walls appeared to be some kind of primitive plaster--something like the whitewashed adobe. I touched the wall and quickly drew my hand back. Wouldn't you know it--it felt like skin! The couch felt like skin too. Touching it gave me a kind of erotic thrill. I imagined the great fun the Suzukis had making love on it.

Then I thought of my wife and felt lousy.

To distract myself I got up and looked about the living room. It was small and modestly furnished. Besides the couch, the only other furniture consisted of two blue armchairs, a wooden table, and shelves filled with books covering one wall. The other walls held Svetlana Suzuki's geometric abstract paintings. They vaguely reminded me of Jean Miro's work. The dim lighting reminded me of a hotel room.

Svetlana Suzuki returned with my orange juice and then sat on the couch on which I'd been sitting. I sat in one of the blue armchairs, which, fortunately, did not give me any erotic tingles.

"There is something that I need to tell you," she said. "Mandela-san has been giving you drugs to forestall grief. He says it's not good to give you any more. You will probably be feeling sad and lonely soon. Don't hide it. Call to us. Night or day."

"So, you people have been doping me up! Damn it, Svetlana, this isn't fair! You call me Citizen Redburn, but you treat me like some kind of moron who can't take care of himself! And you say there is no Big Brother here! I can handle my feelings without your wonder drugs!"

Svetlana Suzuki's face went into that meditative state I'd seen on our first encounter.

"May I say something, Tom-san," she said. "First, Katsuro-kun likes you a lot. That's why he called you 'Citizen Redburn'--not because he was being patronizing. When he offers his friendship, he gives all of himself."

"Look," I said. "I didn't mean to put Katsuro-san down. I like him. I want to go fishing with him. I like Conway too. And Kro-chan."

"Thank you," Svetlana Suzuki said and smiled. "Second, Mandela-san only gave you those drugs when you cried out to him for help. Remember? After you got drunk. He just kept giving them to you. I apologize that we didn't tell you. It certainly went against our usual medical principals. The drug isn't addictive. It isn't mind altering. It is more like a vitamin than a drug--"

"Okay, okay," I said. "Enough. I understand. It's like shooting tranquilizing darts into a wild animal."

"Tom-san--"

"Enough!" I held up my hand. "I appreciate what the situation was. Only I can't be nannied forever. I want to earn my keep. What am I supposed to do in your brave new world?"

"I've figured something out about you, Tom-san," Svetlana Suzuki said. "You don't appreciate anything you haven't struggled for. The meat of the mastodon does not satisfy your hunger unless it's your spear that has pierced its heart. Kro-chan is a lot like you. All right, I'll make it hard for you. You decide what you want to do."

"Do you still need portrait photographers? Or are we outdated?"

"Look around at my paintings," she answered gently. "Are painters outdated? No artist is ever outdated. Certainly not you."

"Fine, stick me in a studio and I'm a productive member of society," I said. "If you don't like my work you can ship me back."

"I think you need some time to relax," she answered. "If it makes you feel any better, we time travelers are all going to take long holidays. Meanwhile, Tom-san, let me show you how your little machine works. Press this button and that activates the intercom. We all have these. You only need to tell it whom you want to talk to. It may seem primitive to you, but it is a living thing," she said with a tone of voice that I found a bit defensive.

"Why do I think this place is like a hospital?" I said.

"It is not," she said. "This is temporary housing when we need to be right at the Time Collective. Our real home is up the hill. About twenty minutes by bicycle."

"Bicycle--?"

"Oh yes, we cycle everywhere. I imagine this is something that you'll find attractive about our brave new world."

Svetlana Suzuki took me to my place. It was little different from hers, except that it was barer. No paintings on the wall, just a few odd books on the shelves.

"Be patient with this place awhile," she said. "The house we're building for you is almost finished."

"A house? For me?"

"If you want it. In the morning you'll find a beautiful view of the Inland Sea from the back window here."

"I want my camera equipment," I said.

"You'll have it tomorrow, I promise."

She said good night and left.

I found the bedroom. Without changing into the pajamas they'd put out on the organic Western-style bed I lay down and slept.

In my dream I returned to my old apartment over the portrait studio. I was sitting in the cramped kitchen-dining room at the rickety metal table. My wife was preparing miso soup and singing to herself. In the tiny living room, which doubled as the children's bedroom, the children were watching cartoons on TV.

I woke up screaming.

"Tom-chan, I'm here," said Kropotkin Tsuda. She was sitting cross- legged in a corner of the bedroom. She was wearing blue jeans and a blue work shirt.

"What are you doing here?"

"Tom-chan," she said sitting down next to me, "put your head on my shoulder and have a good cry. If that doesn't help, I'll find Mandela-san's drugs and bring them to you."

"I am not a child!" I said.

I let my face fall on her shoulder and had a good cry. She rocked me gently and did not speak. Presently I drew back. Wiping away tears with my sleeve, I said. "This is not how a man acts--"

"I've seen men cry before," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "I think it is beautiful. Only I don't understand why Mandela-san cut off your anti- grief drug. I mean it's only frog sweat."

"Frog sweat?" I stared at her.

"Yes of course. Ancient anti-depressant. Used in the Amazon among other places. Of course what you got was refined frog sweat."

"Refined frog sweat!" I laughed hysterically. "Refined frog sweat! Here I am in utopia and they are giving me refined frog sweat!"

Kropotkin Tsuda drew back. "Tom-san, you're scaring me! Stop it!"

I drew a deep breath. If I lost my mind now I'd never escape.

The frightened expression left Kropotkin Tsuda's face. She looked at me now with a puzzled, innocent look, not speaking. Was her innocence in the presence of anguish symptomatic of the age or simply a reflection of Kro-chan's sheltered life?

"Tom-chan, guess what--?" Kropotkin Tsuda said, giving me a twisted secretive smile. "I've got popcorn! Yes! Liberated from the communal kitchen! I figured you'd be hungry by now. I eat barrels of popcorn after a time journey."

"Yeah, nothing like it after a hard day in the old time machine."

Kropotkin Tsuda hopped off the bed, got a bag from the floor and sat back down next to me. "Enjoy."

I put a few kernels into my mouth and chewed. Kropotkin Tsuda sat cross-legged on the bed watching. She took a handful of popcorn and put it into her mouth, letting her cheeks balloon as she chewed.

"It's like college," I said. "We used to sit in someone's dormitory room and eat and drink and talk into the night."

"I guess that's how life has always been for me," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "For us education never ends. I've read about the old Japanese education system. It seemed sad."

"That's putting it mildly."

"Teachers beating pupils to make them study. People not learning for the sake of being wise but to get wealth and power. I feel cold when I think of it."

"So what are universities like now?" I asked absently, chewing.

"Well, for one thing, we don't distinguish between levels as much as people did in your time. I began learning when I was three. Mostly on my own. Children actually help administer schools. We children taught each other as much as adults taught us. We learned that when someone we have helped succeeds we too have succeeded."

"You have no examination system?"

"Like what? Do we ask our learners to show that they have mastered some kind of knowledge? Yes, by having them apply their knowledge in solving a community problem."

"I mean competitive examinations. In my time a person's life could be ruined by failing examinations to high schools and universities."

"How could anyone live under such a system?"

"I don't know. Somehow my kids survived it." Tears rolled down my cheeks.

"Hey guess what else we have?" Kropotkin Tsuda said. "I also pilfered some beer. Non-alcoholic beer. You want some?"

"I really would."

"Be right back. I put it in your cooler."

She returned with two dark brown bottles. "I couldn't find any glasses," she said. "Let's be uncouth and drink from the bottle."

"Fine with me."

"Cheers!"

"Hey! Excellent! Are you sure this is non-alcoholic?"

"Yes. And brewed here on Awaji Island. We have people with alcohol troubles in our 'utopia.' I've known a few." She paused. "Tom-chan, sorry I freaked out. Want to talk about your feelings?"

"No. I really don't."

"Look, tell you what. If things don't work out I'll steal Doug after repairs and take you back."

Some of my gloom dissipated. I presumed I'd need to use chicanery on Kro-chan to get me back. "You mean it?" I asked.

"Sure, I mean it. I'll argue with the Time Collective first, but if that doesn't work, I'll steal Doug. Then after taking you back, I'll go fight the revolution in the age of chaos."

"The second part sounds crazy," I said.

"Yeah, I know. I had a hard night too. My sometimes lover and I talked heart to heart. He'll be leaving the Time Collective."

"Can't you see each other on holidays?"

"A bit complicated. You see, he wants to live in the Group Marriage Collective. That's fine with me. I could easily live in a collective like that. I think the concept is beautiful, but I cannot leave the Time Collective and the Group Marriage Collective doesn't allow its members outside romances. They are very strict on that point."

"That setup sounds kinky," I said.

"That's what a lot of people say. I mean they say that it's just everyone sleeping with everyone else--so why not just do it without building a collective around it? There's more to it. Like all the children in the collective call every adult Mother or Father. I've visited the collective and you cannot believe how wonderful the children are. In our schools the first things we teach children in language they can understand, as Robert Owen wrote long ago, is that they must use all their power to make their schoolmates happy. Sometimes making them act that way is like changing the moon's orbit. The children from the group marriage communes are so gentle and aware. The collective has made mistakes. So have monogamous collectives. I know a few that failed and had to reorganize."

I still say it's kinky. But if you like that sort of life, why don't you go with him?"

"I'm married to the Time Collective. I'd be lost anywhere else. What could I do? The Group Marriage Collective is built around the education of children. They specialize in general education design. They train teachers or publish books on educational theory. That's not for me. I like scientific research and adventure."

"Tell me this," I said. "Are people in your society more promiscuous or monogamous?"

"The preferred word is 'polyamorous,' not 'promiscuous.' I like 'promiscuous' because it just sounds more fun!" She giggled. "Anyway, sexual lives vary. Everyone at the Time Collective has had lovers outside their primary relationships. Except the Suzukis."

"They're an attractive couple. Why eat hamburger outside when you can have steak at home?"

"They are beautiful, aren't they? And totally unaware of it! Though Svetlana is an artist. Listen, I've got to tell you something. Svetlana-chan made me promise that I wouldn't seduce you."

"She knows where my fidelity is. You go around seducing people?"

Kropotkin Tsuda giggled. "No, Tom-chan, I don't. No any more. Though she'll never admit it, she's afraid that if we fall in love she won't be able to adopt you as her son."

"Cripes! This isn't Brave New World. It's the Mad Hatter's tea party! Are you joking?"

"No joke! The Suzukis tried to adopt me once!"

"I look old enough to be Svetlana-san's father!"

"You're young enough to be her grandson. Adoption is easy in our society. I came from a big family and so mom and dad didn't mind the Suzukis' offer to adopt me. They have remained very close to them."

"What would Freud say about all this? Anyway, at my age I don't need parenting. And I presume you are in love with Koda-san, not me."

"Yes, damn it. I wish it were otherwise."

*****

As Kropotkin Tsuda and I talked into the night, we said less about ourselves and more about society.

"We have collectives built around work and we have collectives built around living," she said. "The people in the living collectives usually work in different working collectives and just happen to live together. Of the living collectives a few are designed around experimental living. Neighboring work and living collectives supports some, which are not attached to working collectives. The Time Collective is a live-in working collective, which isn't unusual. But we are one of the few pure research collectives supported by local collectives. Our sponsor is the Autonomous Cooperative Kobe Region. We produce nothing directly, though our discoveries have benefited society. Therefore, we don't have to worry about how many toothbrushes Japan will need for the next five years or how typhoons might affect the growth of aquatic lemons. We just do what we feel like doing and report our activities every year to the General Council of Kobe."

"I'm lost. You have work collectives and you have living collectives. And all these collectives have a voice in your government. So that means some people might vote twice. How do you keep things fair?"

"I don't catch your meaning."

"Well, in deciding policy some people might be voting more than once, in which case one person will count for two or more people."

"I think I see your point," she said. "A person votes once at work and once at home regarding a regional or national issue. Firstly, we live in a cooperative not a competitive society. In your work collective, if you don't live there, your primary concern will be the number of toothbrushes we'll need for the next five years. In your living collective you decide ecologically safe ways of recycling the same toothbrushes. You've 'voted' twice but in different capacities. If you become your work collective's representative at the local council, you probably wouldn't be representing your living collective. That's because of your human limitations, not because of conflict of interest. Now we do have laws on the books about how many representative positions an individual can hold so that no person or group can seize power. Fortunately, that's not been a problem for centuries."

"Suppose there is a conflict of interest? What if your work collective wants to build a very necessary waste disposal plant near your living collective, and you know it's smelly and dirty? Aren't you going to have a conflict between your work and living collectives?"

"Remember what we learn the first day in school--that we must use all our power to make others happy. That is practical. People know that a smelly and dirty waste disposal plant is going to affect them in some way no matter wherever they live--and some work collectives are half way around the world. Many people stay home and do their work via personal computers."

"You mean you can live in Japan and work in Greenland? We getting to something like this going in my time."

"Sure. Our computer networks are pretty sophisticated--even in your day they were. Anyway, we know that if we put a bad waste disposal plant in your community, our food, water and air will be affected wherever we are. I can tell you, nothing is built that hurts the environment or people. This is international law. If any collective were self-destructive enough to build anything environmentally unfriendly, the rest of the nation, indeed the world, would mobilize against it. I'm not sure how. Maybe by having a squad of psychotherapists invades it. Only a group of demented people would be anti-ecological."

"Yeah, but you've still got mining, I'll bet. I bet you still have jobs that suck. Hey, Katsuro-san had to wash dishes tonight!"

"Washing dishes is a temporary unpleasantness. (Ugh, I hate it!) That's different from a life in a mine. We have replaced all terrible labor by attractive labor. Yes, we shut down the coalmines and other mines. We discovered how to generate tremendous power from the wind and the sun. We 'mine' metals that are used up, and you've seen our biotechnology. In deconstructing industry there were hardships, but not hideous suffering. The technology you see was created to make life attractive and for no other reason."

Then Kropotkin Tsuda told me a story from her childhood.

"Taking this popcorn and beer from the communal storage reminds me of something that happened to me as a child. I had an aunt whose name was Hiroko Bakunin-Marx whom I adored. She was nearly two hundred years old at the time. She had been in the great struggles and had known many of the great women and men of our revolution. That name of hers! She chose 'Bakunin-Marx' herself. It's funny, Tom-chan. It was Charles Fourier's writing that most affected her as a girl. 'Why should women have bothered about the banal glory of writing books, of adding a few volumes to the millions of useless ones already in existence?' Fourier wrote. 'What women should have produced was not writers but liberators, a political Spartacus, a genius who would devise means of raising their sex from degradation.' That's what my dear aunt became, a woman Spartacus."

"And yet she took only the names of men."

"Someone told her she should take women's names and she rebelled. She was like that. She was the most sincere socialist I have ever known, so very, very strict in her attitudes. She was severe with me if I became selfish or insensitive to the needs of others. But I admired her so much that I would beg my parents let me stay with her at her collective in Yamanashi. No, I was not a slave to discipline. I was a very rebellious child and argued with everyone--except her. I loved her stories. I still remember all of them! I could tolerate the worst of her moods in exchange for stories. Did you ever know anyone like that?"

"No--not quite. My mother and father told stories. They both drank and prayed too much. Go on with your story. Why does popcorn and beer remind you of your aunt?"

"Stealing. You see, I admired my aunt so much that I would do anything to make her happy. She suffered pains. I don't know what kind exactly. She never talked about them because she believed that would be selfish and unrevolutionary. Anyway, one morning I decided that I wanted to do something nice for her. I went into the communal garden and picked a basket of grapes for her. I could not have been more than nine then. I had no idea of how many grapes an adult could eat. So I just filled the basket full. And with my basket overflowing and so heavy that I needed all my strength to carry it, I went to my aunt in her bedroom and said: 'See the lovely grapes that I have picked for you.' Instead of being pleased she became annoyed. She said, 'Kro- chan, shame on you! Those were not your grapes to pick. They belong to the people. Do you realize that you robbed the people for the sake of a whim? How I will teach you to rob the people. You will go into our communal sun room and you will not come out again until you have eaten every last grape.' I was so ashamed that without a word I dragged the heavy basket into the sun room and started eating."

"That was a terrible thing for your aunt to have done," I said. "No one in my family would have ever thought of being so cruel. And they weren't the most stable of people."

"Well, I'll tell you something. My aunt had another lesson in mind having nothing to do with punishment. As soon as I was in the sunroom, my aunt told a comrade about what had happened. He went to the sun room and said, 'Kro-chan, do you realize that if you eat too many grapes you will become sick?' I nodded and said that I had to eat all the grapes because I had stolen from the people. He became very upset and called another comrade, a young woman who was a doctor. She too became upset. They decided to have a mir and asked my aunt to attend. We all sat in the sunroom--with me and the basket of grapes in the center. All of the comrades were angry with my auntie and took my side. They debated with her for a long time, arguing it was wrong for her to punish me for taking the communal grapes.

"I have forgotten exactly how the debate went. The others said something like this to my aunt: 'Kro-chan did not take the grapes for herself but for another person, which means she acted in the spirit of unselfishness even if she did not observe the letter. Nor did she take an excessive amount of grapes. There are still plenty for everyone else. Furthermore, you are compounding the offense you say Kro-chan committed by wasting the people's grapes in forcing Kro-chan to eat them. They ought to be stored in the communal cooler where they would be kept fresh and where more people could partake of them. More importantly, cruel punishment should not be how real socialists teach children to be more socially sensitive. Children especially must be reasoned with in a humane way if we want them to uphold the spirit of kindness.' They made impassioned arguments to my aunt. She listened silently, a blank expression on her face."

"What a mean old lady," I said.

"Don't judge yet. When everyone had finished, she said: 'Kro-chan is a citizen like all of us. Let us hear what she has to say.' So I said, 'Auntie, you may hate me forever but I have to say the truth. I think the comrades are right and you are wrong.' Then I burst into tears because I would have rather suffered the worst stomachache in the world than have my dear auntie hate me. Well, she said: 'You're right, Kro-chan. And you should not apologize for being right. You must never allow anyone to force you to do something unreasonable, no matter how much you love or admire that person. It is better to lose a person's love than to do something unreasonable. This is a truth I have wanted to share with you all summer. I tried to explain it to you through my stories but you were so caught up in the excitement that you missed the point. Awe of authority is the beginning of all evil. The power of the rulers of old came about not just through fear but also through love. Yes, love. A perverse love of personalities in authority. It is difficult now to imagine that once people looked upon capitalists and even the most brutal dictators as parent figures, but it was indeed so. This terrible obedience went on for thousands of years before we created a world without rulers and ruled. It can only continue as long as we insist it continue. Every generation has the responsibility to continue our precious freedoms. Do you understand, Kro-chan?' I nodded. And she then said, 'This morning you gave me the opportunity to teach that lesson to you. You didn't steal from the people. There are more than enough grapes for everyone. If there weren't enough grapes we would have told you. Can you forgive an old lady for her crude lesson about the dangers of authority worship?' I hugged my old auntie and cried. And everyone there hugged us too."

"As a father I would never do anything like that!" I said.

"Auntie feared the return of authoritarianism and class rule. I think she saw the authoritarianism in herself and feared it. The world revolution was nearly over when she was a young woman, but she was a propagandist in Latin America and in China. She was nearly killed several times. And in Japan she fought to destroy centuries of sexist traditions and attitudes. She used to say that life in Japan was too placid, that our bio-machines would eventually take over if we didn't watch out."

"Could I ask you something?" I said abruptly. "Will people be angry with you for taking the beer and popcorn?"

"Of course not! It's there for everyone. I was exaggerating. I tend to have a flair for the dramatic, as you might have noticed."

"So even in Real Time the sweetest fruits are the ones that are forbidden," I said.

"What a poetic way of saying it, Tom-chan! But no one would want to take anything to hurt someone."

"'In Adam's fall we fell all'," I said and took a handful of popcorn out of the bag. "My banquet in utopia!"

"Utopia? 'Utopia' means 'nowhere' and we're somewhere."

"And my family is somewhere because time is also a place."

"Yes. I hope so..." Kropotkin Tsuda said and then fell into a contemplative silence. "Look Tom-chan," she said presently, "I'll sleep on the couch in the living room. I cannot leave you alone tonight."

"What will people think?"

"What do you mean what will people think?"

"I mean won't people talk? You know--gossip about us."

"You mean figure that we're lovers. If so, so what? Svetlana might be disappointed that she couldn't adopt you if we moved in together, but she'd never be mean."

"Ruining people's characters with gossip about their sexual lives was a national pastime in the Japan I knew," I said.

Kropotkin Tsuda shook her head. "I suppose that's what people do if they are afraid of each other."

"Or bored, or jealous. I'm sure this happens in your society."

"It might happen in collectives that aren't working right. People would argue a lot, say mean things to each other. Still, we have nothing to fear as long as we're doing right. And I believe I am doing right by being with you. Unless you want to be alone."

"Please stay. Take the bed. I'll take the couch."

"You're a sweet man, Tom-chan. I insist you take the bed. It will be wasted on me. I sleep sitting up."

Kropotkin Tsuda went into the living room, and went into a full lotus squat on the couch. Before I could say anything else, she was in dreamland, mumbling to herself.

Chapter Six: Off to Kobe

Frog sweat notwithstanding, I woke up in a cranky mood. Was Ms Tsuda serious about getting me back home or was she simply blabbing nonsense because she'd had a bad night with her boyfriend? What did I know about any of these people or their system anyway? My joints ached, despite the previous night's bath and the organic bed.

"Let's see what the morning's like before I empty my bladder," I muttered to myself.

I got up and pushed open the bedroom window's organic curtains. Their faint odor reminded me of seaweed. The Inland Sea was shrouded in heavy fog as was the horseshoe shaped valley surrounding us. Squinting, I could barely discern a few Geodesic houses with blue, yellow, red, orange, pink and green domes dotting the hillsides. (What was behind that shroud of fog? Watchtowers and barbed wire? The leering, accusative face of Big Brother?) A few lights were on. I thought of colored cotton candy and felt homesick--for America as well as my family in Japan.

The clock, growing out of the wall like a luminous fungus, said 5 a.m. I wasn't sleepy. I visited the bathroom and then went to the living room where a note and a hand-drawn map were waiting for me: "Tom- chan: Off in bicycle shed #2--Kro-chan."

I went outside and drew a deep breath. The morning air running through my lungs dissipated my residual drowsiness. Inhaling, I felt for a moment as if my lungs would never stop expanding. Never had breathing been such a sensual experience. Despite my aching joints and crankiness, I caught myself whistling as I went looking for Kropotkin Tsuda. Except for my whistling and the counterpoint of a few early birds, the Time Collective was still. Yet lights were coming one after another in the various geodesic buildings. Then the main hall was suddenly illuminated. What compels these people to wake so early in this utopia? I wondered. I expected to hear loudspeakers blaring morning exercise music. The factories and schools did that back in my town. Nothing interrupted the peace.

The bicycle shed, also a workshop, was a long wood framed building with a conventional triangular roof and sliding wooden doors. About two-dozen bicycles stood in one area. Kropotkin Tsuda had a bicycle up on a work stand and was adjusting the brakes. She was wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit and her face and hair were smeared with brown oil that gave off a strong sticky odor like a combination of bananas and roses.

"Damn these brakes!" she said and threw down a silvery wrench.

"Good morning," I said.

She turned. "Hello. Hope you slept well. I'm not in a good mood."

"That makes two of us, pal," I said.

"I wanted to take you out cycling and thought to put this old thing in order. Damn these brakes! I don't know who designed them. They are impossible to adjust!"

"Give me that wrench," I said.

"Here," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Be my guest." I took the wrench, which was incredibly light. "I see bicycle technology hasn't changed much in over three centuries. This looks like one of our all terrain or mountain bikes. Is this thing metal?"

"Fiber. We use metal sometimes, but this happens to be living fiber. If you're going to fix that damn brake, fix it! I cannot stand things being half-finished!"

"A hydraulic cantilever brake. These aren't metal wires though. Fiber? Interesting. You were having trouble toeing-in, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"I can see why. Nice set-up, except for brake shoe adjustments."

I cussed the thing out before adjusting it to my liking. I got some of that grease on my hands. It made them feel softer.

"You can use the oil as a lotion." Kropotkin Tsuda said. "How did you ever do that?"

"With my primitive brain you mean?"

"That's not what I meant, damn it! I meant you're a good mechanic."

"Thanks to my brother-in-law," I replied. "He taught me. Never made much money but loved his job. Every morning he would be up at five and would cycle a good seventy kilometers over a few steep hills to the neighboring town. He'd open his shop at eleven, work until seven and then go to the local gymnasium to work out. On weekends he raced. He won a lot of trophies."

"Attractive labor," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"You still have races, like bicycle races?"

"Maybe not quite like yours. We'll watch a group of people cycle, or ride horses, or sailboats and we comment on the individual styles of each person or group. Winning does not necessarily mean coming in first. One's style is more important. We rather enjoy the process of the race and not the outcome."

"If the object of the race isn't to come in first, what's the point of racing in the first place?"

"The joy of doing it. I'm sure your brother would have understood. Maybe you too. Did you take photographs just to win prizes?"

"No, of course not. Art is different. It aims for eternal recognition."

"Then we are all artists. That's pretty much why we design something, or race, or make love. Sorry for my temper. I love bicycles but I am mechanically disinclined."

"You? You who designed Doug!"

"I can design things, but I am useless with my hands. I cannot even pound a nail in straight. You cannot imagine how frustrating that is. I've designed bicycles. Conventional machines. Recumbents. I redesigned Kobe's cycle skyway. That's a cycling highway that circles the city. Why can I not toe-in a damned brake shoe! It's frustrating! Svetlana-san is as genius at working on these bicycles. Those artistic fingers of hers. Ah well, let's go for our ride, if you're up for it. I'll take you down to the sea. We can have breakfast at the Kelp Collective. I have friends there."

"You don't have work to do?"

"Like fixing Doug?"

"Well, yeah."

"Other people are having a go at it now. We need a few days to recover from time travel. And I'm going to cycle. I might as well tell you that most of our short distance transport is leg and arm powered, though we have special machines for people who are physically disabled."

She put on a helmet, then tossed me one. We were off.

We rode down a tree-lined road. It was a pretty brisk ride with me trying to catch up with Kropotkin Tsuda. She rode like a pro, back straight, butt out. She barely slowed down for corners and hardly braked on descents. I found my machine a great climber, but I could not keep up with her. She waited for me at the top of the hill overlooking the Inland Sea. I rode up to her and braked.

The fog was lifting. I beheld the city of Kobe, across the narrow waters, for the first time since my arrival. Having come to Awaji many times, I expected to see what I'd always seen of the Honshu coast from there. Factories with billowing smoke stacks and high-rise apartment complexes and office buildings and beyond them the Rokko Mountains. I also imagined the Inland Sea would be filled with freighters and container ships. And I expected to see the Akashi-Awaji suspension bridge. It was another sight that greeted my eyes.

Judging by the landscape, I guessed we were near the town of Iwaya, where you caught the ferry for Akashi City. Yet, there was nothing else that was really familiar. Looking across the waters, I saw neither the smokestacks of Kakogawa nor the dense concentration of high rises where Kobe should be.

Straining my eyes, I saw the shining rooftops of houses. There seemed to be no buildings that were over three stories tall. Where the smokestacks should have been there were giant bronze geodesic buildings. Dotting the coastline were windmills with bright multi-colored blades. I figured they must be solar generators. The Inland sea itself was filled with ships. Instead of the old dirty freighters trailing filthy diesel fumes, there were ships looking more like airplanes skipping along the waves.

I looked in the direction of Maiko and saw only the rusting pillars of what I surmised was once the Akashi-Awaji suspension bridge.

Poor old bridge, I thought. It was a beauty once. Then I remembered how the developers had bulldozed the landscapes I'd loved--the beautiful living body of Awaji's natural beauty--to build tacky suburbs when construction of the bridge had started.

How angry this had made my brother-in-law.

I had to admit that the view was much improved. But what good was all this beauty if I couldn't share it with the people I loved?

We had not exchanged a word looking at the view. We remounted and rolled down to the beach. The sea barrier was made from cut granite and filled in with mosaics depicting sailing ships. Though I was sweating I didn't feel a bit of fatigue. The fresh sea air was like some kind of high-octane fuel for my body. Funny that I should use such a metaphor. The air wasn't laced with the lingering smells of gasoline and diesel as in my time. I remembered how the narrow road stretching along the coast would be clogged with cars and trucks. The lovely road, still narrow, was empty of traffic. The ships did not emit smoke.

I was full of energy but Kropotkin Tsuda was more so. She removed her cycling shoes, peeled off her yellow suit, ran stark naked across the rocky beach, and, whooping, dove into the water. I averted my gaze from naked Kro-chan and looked at the coast.

The low but rough cliffs were as I remembered Awaji cliffs to be. Then looking at some rocks jutting out of the water I got another surprise.

Big sassy yellow, indigo and amber starfish and black-shelled mussels clung to them. Then something else hit me--no garbage anywhere! No soft drink cans. No plastic disposable bento boxes. No rotting fruits and vegetables washed up on the shore.

I turned and looked closer at the Awaji landscape. I couldn't believe what I saw. Several deer crossing the blue road. The deer walked toward me, then stopped, bowed their heads and were perfectly still. I held my breath. Kropotkin Tsuda let out a joyous whoop from the water. The deer sprinted. They did not run toward the woods covering the mountains, but toward a village in the distance. It seemed much like a traditional Japanese farming village with farmhouses clustered close together and terraced fields cut into the mountainside. Yet it was different. The wooden houses seemed bright and actually growing out of the ground. The deer ran toward the village and then into the village! Were they wild or tame?

"Hey--shy one!" Kropotkin Tsuda called. "I have a towel in my bicycle bag. Please get it."

I got it and walked down to the beach. I was not so shy about looking at her body now. It was almost as if I was watching my little daughter splash in the tub. She was skinny like a boy but her arms and legs had taut muscles. Kropotkin Tsuda shook like a dog, splashing me. She took the towel and rubbed herself.

"You do this often?" I asked. "I mean no bathing suit."

"Sure. Why not?"

"What about, you know, bad men? I'm talking about rape."

"It almost never happens," she replied. "I don't know of a single case on Awaji. Look, I've known almost everyone on this island since adolescence. We have little to conceal. Oh, you should have gone in! It was great! What fun after being cooped up!"

Remembering how polluted the Inland Sea had been, I asked, "This water--it's clean with all those ships?"

"Of course it's clean!" She put on her yellow jump suit. "You're disoriented, I'll bet! This doesn't look like your old home, does it?"

I shook my head. "What have they done to Kobe? And how many people live on Awaji Island? This place looks deserted."

"When we took you, Japan had approximately 121 million people. Today we have about forty million people, or roughly the level of the early twentieth century. Awaji should look deserted compared to what you knew."

"They were building up Awaji thanks to what used to be that bridge over there."

"Yes, the poor old bridge. It was getting old and impossible to maintain, so we had to tear it down. It was torn down long before I was born but I've seen it in pictures. Nowadays we use living synthetic materials for bridges. The sort that are invigorated by salt air. We need to do little actual maintenance on them. The Time Collective has proposed rebuilding this bridge but the Kobe collectives and councils are not enthusiastic. They fear ecological damage."

"As did many of us when it was being built."

"Sometimes we take that ecological damage argument too far. I've been a representative to local and national councils where people have had furious debates about where to hold our informal picnics. How a picnic can cause ecological damage I don't know!"

"Maybe it would frighten the little animals and birds."

"I've heard that a few times," Kropotkin Tsuda huffed.

"Anyway, I like the marine life I see here," I said. "In my time if you saw marine life it was probably dead."

She nodded. "It was a terrible time, I imagine. I sometimes forget that it was just a blip in the course of human evolution. Look! There's a quadracycle coming this way. The Suzukis. What are they up to?"

A sleek silvery bullet-shaped vehicle with a transparent cowl stopped along side us. Katsuro Suzuki opened the cowl and said, "Put your bicycles in that shed over there and come with us. We are off to Kobe. Conway Ito is meeting us at the ferry. Today's Sunday and there are concerts all over town!"

"This is Friday," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"It's Sunday. All day!"

"It cannot be Sunday. I set our return for Thursday. So today has to be Friday!"

"Don't worry, Kro-chan," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Doug just miscalculated."

"Doug couldn't have miscalculated! Damn it! Damn it! This shouldn't be Sunday!" Kropotkin Tsuda turned and started walking up the road with her hands in her pockets.

I stood still, bewildered.

"Leave her alone," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Kro-chan is like that. Usually just before a major discovery."

"Or after a bad night," Katsuro laughed. "I saw Koda-chan just before we took off. He looked miserable. Ah, young people!"

"I'd better put the bicycles away," I said.

"I'll help you," Katsuro Suzuki said hopping out of the quadracycle.

"What's with Kro-chan?" I asked as we rolled the bicycles into the simple geodesic shelter.

"She'll be all right. Kro-chan is our temperamental genius in residence. But she has a good heart."

"Say, by the way, shouldn't we lock up these bicycles?" I asked.

"Why?" Katsuro Suzuki laughed. "They won't run away."

"Someone might steal them."

"What for? These bicycles belong to the community already. Say--you gave me an idea! We've had problems with too many bicycles ending up at one collective or another. I'll leave a note for whoever might want to use these machines to return them to the Time Collective or at least let us know where they are. It's a hassle redistributing them back and forth!"

"And do you really expect people to be that responsible?" I asked as we walked back toward the quadracycle.

"Why not? Someone will return the bicycles to our collective."

"Are people really so good?"

"That good? Because they condescend to return a few bicycles! Oh my friend! No offense, but what a time you must have lived in! The Japanese return bicycles--but does that make them especially good? Go to the continent. China, Korea, Russia--there the people have real magnanimity."

"There he goes again," laughed Svetlana Suzuki. "I much prefer the climate here in Japan. The continent has hideous winters. I know they were even harsher in your time, Tom-san."

"What shall we do about Kro-chan?" I asked.

"Pick her up," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I think she is out of her funk now. Tom-san, do you need some explanation about how to operate this machine? It has room for five people, though only four people do the legwork. You get in and recline. This is an amalgam of two recumbent bicycles. Put your feet there. That's right. The pedals will grip your feet but they will also let go when you need to get out."

"I've already experienced that riding the bicycle down the mountain. It was unnerving at first," I said.

"Here we go. Pedal at your own cadence. This machine is designed to accommodate different cadences."

"Tell me something," I said. "Kro-chan said much of your transport is human-powered. Is this for ecological reasons?"

"Yes," Svetlana Suzuki said. "It is also for fun. We would not all have such wonderful physiques were it not for the constant exercise. Human-powered transport I am sure adds to our longevity."

"Let's see if Kro-chan wants to come with us," Katsuro Suzuki said.

We stopped by Kropotkin Tsuda and she got in without a word.

"I cannot believe you have equality!" I suddenly said. "Who makes the roads? This beautiful road needs constant care, I'm sure. You cannot tell me that people would actually want to do work like that."

"I've done it," Katsuro Suzuki said. "So has everyone in this quadracycle. There are roving collectives whose jobs are to fix roads, cables and foundations of buildings, clean ditches and the like. I worked with such a group in my twenties."

"I did one summer," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Just before my mathematical nonsense got me into the Time Collective."

"You were quite young," I said. "Don't you have child labor laws?"

"I perfected the existing road materials chemistry," Kropotkin Tsuda retorted. "Why shouldn't I have done road work?"

"What was road work like in your day, Tom-san?" Svetlana Suzuki asked.

"Filthy. Difficult. In my day," I said, "we had a saying in Japanese. We wanted to avoid work which began with three Ks: kitanai, kitsui, kiken, or dirty, hard, and dangerous. People who were not educated did that sort of work and they were looked down upon by society."

"That's disgusting," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Road work is fun."

"How?" I asked.

"How can it not be?" Kropotkin Tsuda replied. "It's something like gardening. We plant the road. It is actually living material--"

"You had workers in your day who came home from work tired and then labored happily in their gardens, I'm told," Katsuro Suzuki said.

"I'll tell you what it is," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "We've destroyed old style individualism. You know the sort. The architect who designs the building is a hero, the person who pays for it gets to have the building named after him or her, but the people who built the building are forgotten. This does not go on with us. Someday I am going to quit the Time Collective and join a roving collective and fix things all over this country. That's when my real life will begin."

"What's troubling you Kro-chan?" Katsuro Suzuki asked.

"I cannot explain why this should be Sunday," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "This should be Friday."

"It's nothing, Kro-chan," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Doug just made an error. I am sure that once you work on Doug you'll find the problem."

"And suppose there is no problem?" Kropotkin Tsuda asked. "Suppose Doug did everything right. Suppose we left and returned three days ago."

"It's been over a week, Kro-chan," Katsuro Suzuki said.

"This should be the eleventh of June."

"It's the nineteenth," he said.

"It's nice to be among the people I really love." she answered.

"Thank you, Kro-chan," Svetlana Suzuki said. "Why are you suddenly in tears, my dear?"

"Could I talk about it some other time? Why don't you ask some more questions, Tom-chan. How about asking how we do really unpleasant things without coercion? Like cleaning up after our selves. Tom-chan!"

"I wasn't listening," I said. "Is that really Kobe over there? I see a few tall buildings and no skyscrapers. I don't believe this!"

"There is no need to believe anything," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Something is on your mind, Kro-chan," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"You've gone back how many times, Svetlana?" Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Three times."

"And did bio-time square with Real Time when you returned? If you were gone a bio-week, did you return a week later in Real Time?"

"Always."

"This time we didn't," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "I gave two orders. Real Time and June 8 for re-entry. Doug followed one but not the other. The Time Collective cannot go on as before. One thing changes everything. You know why angels cannot be as they were traditionally portrayed?"

"Because if they had wings their entire bodily structures would have to be recreated and they would cease to be humans as we know them," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We learned that on the first day of school."

"And this holds for everything. You can't change one thing. That's why capitalism simply could not be reformed away with socialistic reforms. You needed revolution. It's the same with physics. When one thing doesn't fit the whole theoretical structure falls down."

"I'm sure it's just Doug's simple error," Svetlana Suzuki said.

Kropotkin Tsuda did not respond. Everyone was silent now. This was beyond me. I shut up but wondered if what they had talked about would affect my return home.

We were now in fairly heavy traffic, but nothing like what I'd been used to in my Japan. Bicycles and quadracycles were silently running parallel to us, or going in the other direction. People waved and my friends waved back. Back home I invariably tensed up in traffic. The typical Japanese road was built to village proportions, to accommodate walkers and a few oxcarts, not two-way automobile traffic, plus motorcycles bicycles and pedestrians. I remembered my old overcrowded neighborhood at rush hour. The narrow street, without sidewalks, jammed with vehicles and people rushing for the commuter train. Old beat up bicycles piled on top of each other. Cars honking all over the place. And that stinking air! I realized I wasn't tense. It wasn't simply because the traffic was lighter. It occurred to me that no one seemed in a hurry. I don't mean people were slow. We were all pedaling briskly. I mean no one was competing with anyone else to getting ahead. No one seemed worried about get somewhere exactly on time. It felt as if a feeling of mutual aid was guiding us. Pleasant, I thought. Did a hidden Big Brother direct all this pleasantness? Japanese could be nice in my time when they knew someone was watching them.

"If people had to still use tar for the roads, would road work still be attractive labor?" I asked to break the silence.

"Yes," Katsuro Suzuki said in a distracted sort of way.

"Friends," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We can't solve the problems of the universe right now. It's Sunday and Tom san needs some fun."

"Svetlana-san," I said, "are there slackers in this socialist paradise? I mean real bona fide good for nothing lazy slobs?"

"All of us at one time or another," Katsuro Suzuki laughed. "We have all kinds of people, Tom-san. There are people with high energy and low energy. Few people are lazy all the time. If they are, usually something's wrong. Either they are ill or they just haven't figured out what it is they want to do. Kindness usually helps. In your time weren't the rich, properly speaking, slackers?"

"They could play a mean game of golf," I said.

"There it is, the ferry," Katsuro Suzuki said.

"It doesn't look much different from the ferries we had running between Akashi and Awaji," I said. "I suppose this one is alive, runs on sunlight and does back strokes or something."

"It's alive in a manner of speaking," Katsuro said.

"There is something else I forgot to mention," Svetlana Suzuki said. "In the last century or so the collectives have evolved so that everyone can find his or her own comfortable place in life. The closer society understands human motivations and accommodates them rather than trying to change them, the happier and more peaceful people are."

"I've always thought the reverse," I said. "That discipline means suppressing the bad elements in one's self--that human nature must be tamed."

"In repressive societies maybe that was the only way out," Svetlana Suzuki said. "All the people I've ever known work for the common good naturally--in spite of themselves at times."

"If we're so perfect, we wouldn't need laws" Kropotkin Tsuda interrupted as we rolled the quadracycle into the ferry terminal entrance and parked. "We do have laws. We have laws against murder, against exploitation and against unjustifiable exclusion. The latter make sure that no collective excludes people for any reason whatsoever, including mental ability, except in cases where the collective demands certain specializations. Don't tell me society doesn't repress people!"

Svetlana Suzuki sighed. "Kro-chan, we have no discrimination against people because of race, sex, sexual orientation, family origins, physical disabilities, age, or nationality--which is mostly ceremonial these days. That's not just because we have laws. That's because it would never occur to people to behave that way! When was the last time one of our anti-discrimination laws had to be used? It was over a century ago! Laws complement human nature, not oppose it!"

"We do have regional prejudices," Kropotkin Tsuda countered. "That's one of the problems of non-centralized social organization. In some cities you even have strong neighborhood loyalties that can get out of hand."

"You are exaggerating," Svetlana Suzuki said.

"In this case I think not," Katsuro Suzuki answered. "That is a problem in some places. Even in Kobe, unfortunately."

"So what do you do about it?" I asked. "Sue the jerks, I suppose."

"Education mostly," Kropotkin Tsuda answered. "Though I know of at least one collective we had to reorganize--but that was long ago."

"Did you send the police?" I asked.

"Yes--though 'police' is not the word we use at present. You see, we do vest certain power in the regional councils and even the national council. If there is a problem, the nation's collectives have to reach agreement. There is a lot of debate and the national council acts like a clearinghouse for various opinions. It makes sure all the collectives' voices are heard. If there is a national emergency, then collectives hold continuous discussions."

"So what happened to that collective?" I asked. "And why did it create a national emergency?"

Svetlana Suzuki laughed. "What Kro-chan is talking about happened over a century and a half ago and it was the last big national crisis we had. This collective, which specialized in making electronic motors, got the idea that it was going to restore capitalism by selling them for a profit. In those days, goods were not as abundant as now and they could have disrupted the rebuilding of the ecological system. And even then no blood was spilled. What everyone did was to boycott his or her electric motors. We were already developing bioelectricity and those motors soon became obsolete. Of course, during the great chaos, when we were reconstructing ourselves, there were many serious problems."

"The group marriage collective is getting some pressure," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"It's friendly pressure!" Svetlana Suzuki said. "You know the proverb, 'A good friend will argue with you,' don't you?"

"I hate to interrupt you intellectuals, but the ferry is about to take off without us," Katsuro Suzuki said.

We got out of the quadracycle.

"There's really no need to lock it up?" I asked.

"In your time you people must have had keys bulging out of your pockets," Katsuro Suzuki said. "What did you do if you lost them?"

"A constant source of anxiety," I said. "Some day I'll tell you about the time I locked myself out of the house."

"Let's find Conway-san," Svetlana Suzuki said. "He is waiting for us on board with your camera, Tom-san."

The parking lot was a large semi-circular area paved with the same translucent bluish material as the road. (It felt somewhat like hard rubber under my feet.) Mosaics depicting sailing ships of old were planted into it. These looked bright and new, though they must have gotten constant wear. There was a neat blue and green geodesic ferry building with murals of sailing ships on its walls. We bypassed it and went directly on board the ferry.

"Excuse me, don't we need to buy tickets?" I asked.

"Tickets--?" Kropotkin Tsuda exclaimed. "The Maritime Collective is supported by our Kobe region. Why do we need tickets?"

"So anyone can just board the ferry? Just like that?"

"As long as there is room. The Maritime Collective is very strict about capacity. There cannot be more people than life jackets and there has to be more lifeboat space than there are people. Sailing across the Inland Sea is safe, but accidents do happen."

The ferry had a large open aft deck. Kropotkin Tsuda, the Suzukis and I went there. It was nearly empty, most of the passengers preferring to stay on deck as the ferry left port. I was startled by the Awaji landscape as the ferry sailed off. It was beautiful! In my time it did not have the forests that I saw on the mountains.

"What are those--villages, collectives?" I asked. "The painted houses, the piers, the sail boats. Awaji looks like a resort now."

"Well it is, sort of," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Much of the land has been restored to nature. I'll tell you something. Awaji has a reputation of being somewhat offbeat. There are collectives that engage in traditional rice planting. They are using methods that were used before agriculture became more diversified and scientific. They are interested in the archeopoetics of old agriculture. They have revived many old festivals and arts and crafts."

"Are Bunraku puppets still made on Awaji?"

"Yes. And the Bunraku collective has revived the old puppet theater. There are some wonderful new writers writing Bunraku plays in the manner of Chikamatsu. Most of them deal with our revolution. The stories that came out of that period are the stuff of tragedy. And tragicomedy."

I tempered my enthusiasm. What if I was somehow being lied to? What if this was only a playground for the elite followers of Big Brother? The rich and powerful create paradises for themselves. Careful what you say--you still don't know these people, I told myself. Being an ornery gaijin in abstract was one thing; doing it in real life was another.

"Here's Conway-san," Svetlana Suzuki said.

Conway Ito, a camera bag slung over each shoulder walked up to us and shook my hand. "This bag is yours, I believe," he said.

I hadn't seen my old leather camera bag since I had taken it along on that memorable drunken bicycle ride. Funny, though--I got an eerie uncomfortable feeling holding it. It was dead skin.

"I put one of our new cameras in it for you to try. I have to confess that I tried your Nikon F5. What a wonderful experience! Using something that old which is also so new! It was exhilarating! And the photographs I got were excellent! You know, I'm not entirely happy with our cameras. There's something about the photos they take which makes you think that you are looking at life through the eye of a fish. But these are shot through glass! Real old fashioned optical glass! Nothing we have developed in our time is quite like your old optical glass. I want to show this camera to the Optics Collective in Kobe."

"Be my guest," I said. "Don't tell me you are still using film. It was going out in my day. Digital was boss. Is that what you are using?

"We use a variation of what you call digital. It is bio-electronic. But we do use film. It is simple. And it lasts. Much of your digital images are lost to us, I'm afraid."

"I'm not surprised. I want to see what you are using now." I reached into the bag. Next to my big camera was a small gray cylindrical one. It was light and fitted nicely in my hands. My fingers instinctively sought the controls as I put the camera to my eye and saw a bright panoramic view of Awaji's shores. Buttons controlled the zoom, which had a range between 24 and 200 millimeters. "Impressive," I said.

"Look at the lens," Conway Ito said. I turned the front of the camera toward myself.

"Wait a moment--" I held it away at arm's length and made a series of arcs. "This is like an eye watching me!"

"It has a 140 degree angle of vision like the human eye. It's great for night photography. It has better night vision than our eyes. Of course, for the very best resolution and color fidelity, nothing beats good old optical glass. The big heavy and simple view camera is still tops to my mind. Some things do not change."

After we started off, I wandered about the ferry with the camera. I made friends with a group of people who were sharing some of the local sake. Okay, I know I was stupid to drink with them, but I did. It was potent stuff. I was plastered when the ferry blew its whistle and slowed to a crawl after shouts of, "Dolphins! Starboard! Dolphins!"

A school of dolphins swam alongside the ferry. They leaped out of the water and circled the ferry, leaping and cavorting as if playing an aquatic ring-around-the-rosy. The ship was now dead still in the water and I could feel the turbulence of the Inland Sea's currents.

"Go ahead, photograph them!" one of my new drinking buddies said.

I found that I could not steady the camera.

The dolphins leaped out of the water in a long chorus line and then disappeared into the deep.

The people on the desk clapped and whistled.

The ferry blew its horn and quickly started picking up speed. I could no longer feel the pitch and rolling of the ship. Only the wind in my face told me that the ferry was moving.

"This is a lucky day!" Katsuro Suzuki exclaimed as he walked up to me. "It's not often that dolphins put on such a show."

"Tell me something," I asked. "Can you people communicate with dolphins in this workers' paradise of yours?"

Svetlana Suzuki, a golden scarf over her flowing hair, hurried over to us.

"Tom-san, are you all right?"

"I don't think he's all right," Katsuro Suzuki said. "Seasick? Wait a minute, were you drinking with those guys over there?"

"Do you people talk to cats and dogs? How about birds? How about crickets? How about monkeys and parrots--?"

"Take it easy, Tom-chan!" That was Kropotkin Tsuda's voice.

The three gathered around me and held me. I was loaded and babbling.

Shut up, I told myself. Just shut up.

"Is this Kobe? Or Akashi? Or what?" I babbled.

"Kobe," Svetlana Suzuki said. "This is Motomachi. Just take it easy, Tom-san."

"Everything is different! I can see Mount Rokko so clearly!" I shouted

Then I passed out.
Chapter Seven: The Kobe Historical Society

I came to in a bed by an octagonal bay window, the sun shining in my face. Except for a lingering sense of shame, I was okay. No headache; not even a hangover.

That window, the floral wallpaper, the oak four-poster bed in which I lay told me that I was in one of Kobe's 19th century Western-style houses at the base of Mount Rokko. I sat up. Looking out, I saw narrow cobblestones streets winding in between mansions with turrets and weathercocks and carved balconies and brick chimneys. I ran my hand over the silk sheets and the bed cover. They were not alive.

The dark oak door opened. Mandela Goto entered.

"Mandela-san!"

"Yes, it's me. Good morning! How are you?"

"Okay. Just pissed off with myself. Damn me for losing it! I want to crawl under a rock and die."

"Why are you so hard on yourself?" Mandela Goto asked. "These things happen. You didn't do any harm and the ferry's resident physician took good care of you."

"A doctor who works on the ferry? I mean who just spends his time going back and forth between Awaji and Kobe?"

"There is always a doctor on every ferry and long distance train."

"No doctor in my time would stand for that kind of job," I said.

"Well, when we doctors were studying medicine, which is not easy, society provided for all our needs. So we are only too happy to return the favor. I did ferry work years ago. It was great fun. Anyway, let me examine you."

He took out an old-fashioned stethoscope from a black bag and listened to my heart.

"No strange machines this time?"

"I thought it best to use something you're familiar with. I recommended that you be brought here to the Kobe Historical Society Guest House rather than a hospital. Do you like the view? Kobe people are very fond of old things. They keep these old Victorian houses in tip-top condition. This neighborhood was designed around an antique motif."

"You're acting like nothing's wrong. I hate a phony bedside manner!"

"Nothing is as wrong as you might think. You stopped drinking when you knew you were drunk. That's a good sign. What really hit you was fatigue. But you've got an alcohol problem, Tom-san. It can be cured with medical help. I know a fine therapeutic retreat in Nagano."

"Those places are for crazies. I'll work on my self-discipline."

"You know best," Mandela Goto said. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes. Strangely enough."

"Good! You can have breakfast in here or in the dining room, if you feel up to it."

"In the dining room," I said. "I'm no invalid."

"Svetlana-san and Kropotkin-san will be here with you. Katsuro-san and Conway-san unfortunately had a sudden meeting to attend. I'd better prepare you. Our local historical society is here to see you."

"If I must play the missing link, at least let me bathe." I said.

"No problem. Take your time. This used to be some rich person's mansion. There's a great bathroom through that other door."

"What you said just now," I said to Mandela Goto as he was about leave. "Is it possible that I might be cured?"

"Yes. Very possible. Meanwhile, like yourself, Tom-san. I think one of the worst effects of the old order was that working people didn't like themselves."

"Yeah, sounds familiar," I said. "See you downstairs."

*****

The parlor where I met the Kobe Historical Society was Victorian and everything in it was at least three hundred years old. The overstuffed chairs, the oak table, the bone china, the vases, the grandfather clock ticking away all represented the awful Western kitsch that was so popular in Japan from the Meiji Era on. At least this stuff wasn't alive, staring at me or squirming around. There were seven earthenware plates covered with earthenware bowls--our breakfast, I presumed. There were also seven empty earthenware glasses and two large pitchers. I was curious about their contents but I said nothing.

Mandela Goto sat down next to me. Svetlana Suzuki came in and sat down on my other side. When Kropotkin Tsuda came in she cried with delight, hugged me, and sat down next to Svetlana Suzuki.

Presently the representatives of the Kobe Historical Society entered: Mr. Aldous Huxley Aoki, Ms. Juliana Tachibana and Mr. Toshiyasu Blithedale. They cheerfully told me they were all over hundred.

We ate breakfast with virtually no conversation. Our food consisted of some fruits and a strange sort of grain cake that we ate with our chopsticks. This cake was filled with nuts and raisins and reminded me vaguely of the so-called energy bars I would take on long cycling trips. Only it was moist and tasted marginally better.

The clock struck 10 a.m. and the Kobe Historical Society put down their chopsticks in unison and turned their century-plus eyes on me.

"The meeting had begun. Who's in charge?" Aldous Huxley Aoki asked.

"I guess you are," Juliana Tachibana said.

Toshiyasu Blithedale took out his gold pocket watch, looked at the clock and set the correct time.

Kropotkin Tsuda giggled. Svetlana Suzuki gently poked her arm.

"Thomas Redburn-san, the Kobe Historical Society bids you welcome," Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "We trust you are quite recovered from Sunday."

"I was feeling fine until you brought it up," I said. There went my mouth! I added, "Kobe looks nice, little that I saw of it."

"Well, thank you, thank you," Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "I do wish we had preserved a few of the skyscrapers, hard to maintain as they are. I've proposed to rebuild the New Otani Hotel--"

"Aldous-san, you're digressing," Juliana Tachibana said gently.

"Indeed, indeed. Well, yes. I suppose before we proceed we'd better ask Mandela-san about the state of Redburn-san's health."

"Ask Tom-san," Mandela Goto said.

"I'm eager to do stuff," I said. "I'm no parasite."

"First, Redburn-san," Aldous Huxley Aoki said, "we'd like to acquaint you with the Kobe of today. We'll do that by showing you slides of Kobe as you knew it and how it's been transformed. Do you mind? Will it be too painful right now?"

"Just do it," I said.

"All right, Redburn-san. Here we go. Toshiyasu-san, please pull down the screen. This is our one compromise with keeping this room as ancient as possible. The screen is a modern invention."

Toshiyasu Blithedale took a black device from his pocket and pushed a button. A screen unfurled from the ceiling. He pushed another button and the slide show began.

"Here is an overview of Kobe from Mount Rokko as you would have known it," Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "This is taken from a photo circa 2000, after the earthquake of 1995. Now here is the Kobe of today. What differences do you see?"

"No tall buildings," I said. "More green space. Kobe was hot on building parks in my day, but it had nothing like this. Also there are fewer buildings. The buildings' designs are quite different. I see lots of geodesic domes. Near the water the buildings are built close together, like buildings in San Francisco. Hey, I have a question. We used to call the Kobe city government ''Kobe Incorporated.' They ran it like a big dirty corporation out for profits, damn all else. One thing they were ramming through was this underground freeway construction project. They were going to have ventilation stacks jutting out of Suma Beach. I had friends who were fighting that. The damned Kobe city government actually called their bosses to intimidate them. Another person got death threats. So tell me, did they ever build that monstrosity?"

"I find the passion with which you speak fascinating," said Toshiyasu Blithedale. "As if it were only yesterday."

"It was only yesterday for him!" Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Yes, I see. Thank you," Toshiyasu Blithedale said. "To answer your question, yes. There once was an underground highway running under Shioya and Suma. Much of it has since collapsed or been filled in. A section was preserved in Shioya. We grow mushrooms there."

"Mushrooms!" I laughed.

"Shall we continue?" Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "Could you zoom in there, Toshiyasu-san? Good. Notice the design of these buildings. Different colors, but the same kind of buildings constructed close together. This is to form protection against the wind from the sea. Notice the gentle concentric designs of the streets. The buildings shield each other and protect our parks, gardens and fields. Much of the area's agricultural produce comes from right here in town, grown by local part time farmers."

"We had that in my day." I said.

"Yes, but not quite. In your day people planted rice on little plots of land they owned until they could sell them for a good price. Our local gardens are diversified. We grow every sort of vegetable you can imagine, and fruits too. Oranges, lemons, apples. And rice. There are great rice growing regions, Akita to the north, Kyushu to the south. Even there agriculture is diversified. Much is grown under the sea. I'm digressing, however. Next slide, please. Thank you. Here is a view of Flower Road in Sannomiya, central Kobe, as you knew it."

"There is the Japan Rail station," I said. "God, it's ugly. All those buildings are ugly. And the advertisements; all that neon. Yuk!"

"Of historical interest nevertheless," Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "So much labor consumed to induce people to consume. The old world wore its heart on its sleeve in a way."

"That's an interesting way of putting it," I said.

"Well, here is present day Sannomiya. Notice there are no cars, and no skyscrapers. (Alas, couldn't we have saved just one?) Flower Road is still there. The trees have grown and spread their branches."

"Flower Road seems wider," I said.

"It's not. The presence of foot driven vehicles and fewer people and smaller buildings--that's what makes the street look wider. Next. Here is Tor Road. Notice any big change?"

"Nice architecture," I said. "This area seems more traditionally Japanese. Wooden buildings. Traditional gardens."

"The same scene, again about 2000."

"Oh, the shopping arcade under the railroad tracks!" I said. "I met a lot of weird foreign sailors there."

"And this next one?"

"Ah! Chinatown, Nanjing-machi. The stone animals from Nanjing, China. The people lined up at the famous sweets shop. The roasted chickens hanging in restaurant windows. What did you do to Chinatown?"

"Please move to present Nanjing-machi. Good. The stone animals are in a museum now. You'll notice that the buildings are different, though a few original structures are standing. Nanjing-machi has an open-air emporium. You can find anything here. Many things from the continent and overseas. Quite incredible this neighborhood."

"Let me ask you this," I said. "I understand you go to places like this and just take what you want. Is that how it works?"

"That's right. You take what you need. There is at least one emporium in every neighborhood. Some big, some small. This one happens to be small. Specializes in specialties that not so many people need. Tools for geology buffs and nets for butterfly collectors. Antiques for antique collectors like myself."

"Hold it," I said. "Can you just walk off with a valuable antique?"

"Well yes-- Ah, you are used to the capitalist system!"

The Historical Society looked at me and smiled.

"I feel like an antique," I said. "And you did walk off with me."

"Sorry, Redburn-san," Juliana Tachibana said. "I am afraid our beloved colleagues are sometimes beside themselves."

"Okay, okay. Just enlighten me," I said. "What about something like a Monet? Can I take a Monet painting like I would an apple?"

"I'd better explain this fully. With most things, yes, you can just go and take what you need," Juliana Tachibana said. "At one time, when there was scarcity, we did have strict rules about how much everyone got. We would give out labor vouchers. They represented labor hours and you would receive goods and services equal to the number of labor hours you put in. It was not a bad system, though it required more bookkeeping and regulating than our present system. And it wasn't entirely fair because people's needs varied, though it was infinitely better than the wage system under which people only received a fraction of the full value of their labors. And this was at a time when there were still shortages. Often we would have to distribute non-essentials by lottery. Abundance has abolished the need for vouchers and lotteries--except in rare exceptions as in the case of antiques and artworks. If you collect antiques, say, the Antiquities Collective will give you a set amount of vouchers and you must take part in a lottery. Something as rare, like a Monet painting, would belong to the people and be in a museum. We do, however, make lovely reproductions. Outside of these exceptions, we take what we need. Why not? It'll just go to waste."

"I find it hard to swallow that people aren't acquisitive," I asked.

"I do wish they were," Toshiyasu Blithedale said. "The national disease these days is generosity. Every time I go to someone's home I'm handed something I could never possibly use. I have accumulated lots of extraneous things that way. I'd pass this stuff off on other people faster were I no so reclusive. It's terrible, all this generosity. I cannot say to people, 'No thank you! ' It would be unkind. The other day I was visiting a friend's home and I saw this antique camera. 'Oh, a Leica,' I said. I should have known better. 'Oh take it, take it! ' he said. I myself specialize in restoring old smoking pipes for museums. Glues, oils, amber stems, old catalogues--these I could use. Instead I get this useless camera."

"I'll take a Leica any day," I said.

"An M-3 to be precise and it is all yours, Redburn-san. I mentioned it because you are a photographer." He opened his briefcase, took out the camera and put it on the oak table. "Enjoy."

"It's beautiful," I said. "It looks brand new! And this fifty millimeter lens. A lovely Summicron! Hey look, I was joking. I can't take this. It's too valuable."

"To you as an artist but not to me," Toshiyasu Blithedale said. "It just takes up my valuable space."

"Hey, I won't take something for nothing," I said.

"You've given me more space," Toshiyasu Blithedale said. "That is all I desire."

"Fascinating!" Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "I hope you're all noting the intensity of Redburn-san's gratitude."

"Tom-san is not an antique!" Kropotkin Tsuda said sharply.

"Indeed, Aldous-san," Juliana Tachibana said. "Redburn san, this is socialism in action. We give each other what we need. Toshiyasu-san has absolutely no need of cameras. As a restorer of antiques he is without peer. As a photographer--I must not be impolite."

"Why does this camera look so brand new?" I asked.

"There is a woman whom you should meet some day," Juliana Tachibana said. "She lives in Nagoya, and belongs to an arts and crafts collective. Her passion is ancient Leicas. She might be the greatest living Leica expert. A few years ago she formed a small collective within her arts and crafts collective to build Leicas. This is one of them."

"It's light," I said. "The body feels like titanium. It is titanium!" I put the camera to my eye. "Meterless, thank heavens! Just the way an M3 should be. If there is a clip-on light meter I don't need it. I can meter by instinct with a meterless camera."

"Enjoy yourself," Juliana Tachibana said. "I know the creators would feel their creation is in the right hands."

"This is one of the facile aspects of prosperity," Toshiyasu Blithedale said. "People can go and form collectives which manufacture things that are of little use to society. Imitation antique cameras! What is Japan coming to?"

"As if life depends on restored pipes," Juliana Tachibana laughed.

"They are a part of history!"

"If something makes people happy and society can accommodate it, why not have it?" Juliana Tachibana said.

"You never know what the future may bring, Juliana-san," Toshiyasu Blithedale said severely. "There are still natural disasters!"

"If people went back to smoking tobacco," Juliana Tachibana teased, "you would have to create briar pipes by the thousands."

"Dear friends, we are getting far off the track!" Aldous Huxley Aoki said. "We are here for Redburn-san's sake. Redburn-san, we have many, many questions we have been wanting to ask you. One has perplexed us for years. Can you explain the game of golf to us?"

"Golf? You don't play golf?"

"Oh no. It died centuries ago. Once golf courses robbed so much land from the Japanese people. A terrible waste of resources and a terrible source of pollution! All so a few rich men could push little balls into holes. Now virtually all our knowledge of the game has been lost. As historians we are curious how it was played."

"I've never played golf," I said. "I hated it. For the reasons you stated. Even if I knew anything about golf, I wouldn't tell you."

"Ah, and it started as a humble Scottish shepherds' game," Juliana Tachibana said.

"Don't you have old rule books or something?" I asked.

"All destroyed, I fear. We've searched," she said.

"I'm not sorry," I said.

"Well, never mind. I know you will be quite useful to us in other ways," Aldous Huxley Aoki said.

"Tom-san is not a thing!" snapped Kropotkin Tsuda. "He is not a human computer, an artifact, or a library book! He's a person, a citizen! What he chooses to do is entirely up to him, not you! And may I remind you there are laws against exploitation!"

"That's enough, Kropotkin-san," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I would have used different words, but I agree with Tsuda-san's sentiments."

"I don't understand this fuss--" Aldous Huxley Aoki began.

"Dear Aldous-san, please contain your enthusiasm for the present," Juliana Tachibana said. "Dear Time Collective friends, please understand that our intentions are honorable. We do not wish to pressure him!"

"May I remind you that he needs much more rest," Mandela Goto said.

I slammed my fist on the table and upset their little teacups.

"Wait a minute!" I shouted.

They all shut up and stared at me.

"First of all, about me being a citizen?" I demanded. "Do you mean it literally or is it just a figure of speech?"

"You're a citizen like all of us," Juliana Tachibana said quietly.

I tried fighting the tears back, but they came out anyway. I wiped my face with my sleeve and said, "Look, maybe citizenship doesn't mean much to you but it means a lot to me. "As a poor self-employed photographer, I was treated like dirt by the Immigration authorities for years."

"I'd love to get into our time machine and give those people a talking to!" Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Okay friends, as a citizen, I accuse all of you of treating me as an exhibit, a fossil," I said. "That's why I'm here in the first place! And if all this socialism stuff you've been feeding me is a lie and you have concentration camps for noisy guys like me, then take me away!"

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Toshiyasu Blithedale spoke.

"We owe you a profound apology," he said.

He stood up and gave me a deep bow. The rest of them did the same.

"Citizen Redburn," Svetlana Suzuki said, "there is a law regarding vacation time for those of us who engage in difficult or dangerous work. Sailors, flight crews, and members of transportation and maintenance collectives have the right to a minimum of six months vacation time per year or twelve months every three years. You qualify for a six-month vacation like all of us who flew Doug. I suggest you take it and travel. See for yourself if we are governed by a 'Big Brother' or by ourselves."

"Well said," Toshiyasu Blithedale said. "Could I suggest a working vacation that would be interesting to you and of great use to society?"

"All right," I said.

"The Historical Society and the Time Collective have been guilty of short-sightedness," he said. "We assumed that Redburn-san's profession would be--outside his photographic endeavors--that of a storyteller who would tell us endless anecdotes about the past. Has any of us considered what he might tell us about ourselves? You are a cyclist, I hear. Would you enjoy cycling around Japan, stopping by various collectives, taking photographs and perhaps noting down what you see? You might be like an Alexis De Tocqueville to us. And if nothing comes of it, well, you would have done what you enjoy anyway."

I had to admit that Toshiyasu-san had hit one of my pleasure buttons.

"When do I start?" I said.

"Any time you feel ready," Mandela Goto said. "I would rest at least a week if I were you. We medical people believe it is the individual who is his or her own best doctor."

"I'll start in a few days," I said.

"There are a few things we would like to do for Tom-san," Svetlana Suzuki said. "One is that we'd like him to meet Ichiro Sato-san through virtual reality communication. The Kobe region's facilities are, as you know, at the Time Collective. Would any of you historians care to come with us to Awaji?"

Aldous Huxley Aoki and Juliana Tachibana had lectures to prepare and Toshiyasu Blithedale had a box of briar pipes to restore. The historians and we embraced and said farewell.

When we were walking down the cobbled street leading to Motomachi and the old Western mansion was far behind us, Kropotkin Tsuda said: "I felt mummified in that creepy old house with those weird people!"

Svetlana Suzuki laughed. "Yes, but they are very kind. And they've always supported the work of the Time Collective."

"Toshiyasu-san's idea was brilliant," Mandela Goto said.

"That I'll admit," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Say, do you think Toshiyasu-san smokes tobacco in his pipes?"

"Now where would he get tobacco?" Svetlana Suzuki asked.

"He could grow his own. Or ask someone to grow it for him. I'll bet all sorts of exotic things grow in the gardens of Kobe."

"I rather like what they've done to this area," I said. "It's still pseudo-European like in the old days--but minus the tacky commercial crud."

"Many people in this quarter belong to arts and crafts collectives," Svetlana Suzuki said. "I love this area! Now there are things we need to get for you, Tom-san, at the Motomachi emporium before we head back. We can take a mini-shuttle. Or we can borrow some bicycles from that cycling center across the street. Or we can walk."

"I'd like to walk," I said.

"The best medicine there is!" Mandela Goto said.
Chapter Eight: Thomas Redburn Meets Ichiro Sato

The Motomachi emporium's calmness unnerved me. There was neither advertising music, nor cries of Irasshai! No glaring advertisements. There were signs telling you where various supplies and services were available. Where once stood crowded buildings and the old Motomachi Arcade with its eateries and discount shops there were circles of geodesic pavilions, each with a particular specialty. There were few trees here. There were circular mini-parks with benches and play areas with sandboxes and swings. Food smells, some spicy, some sweet, emanated from restaurants, bakeries, noodle places and the like. The crowds were thinner from what I had known and their movements seemed different. No one was wandering from shop to shop looking for bargains, or simply looking at things he or she could not afford. People came for specific purposes, I gathered, and if they stayed it was to talk to friends.

Kropotkin Tsuda said, "Tom-chan, you need a few more shirts for your journey, a good rucksack, panniers, and a lotion against sunburn. Also a new pairs of shoes. And film for your cameras."

"Are there trains around here?" I asked.

"We still have trains," Svetlana Suzuki said. "They have been rerouted. The subway system is quite extensive. We also have a skyway for quadracycles and bicycles. There, you can see it in the distance. No doubt Kro-chan told you that she designed it. Our train system runs on solar engines. Trains are silent and pollution free. I know noise pollution was a major problem in your time."

"That's true," I said.

"We are very much an era of rest," Mandela Goto said. "There are not the great daily movements of people and things as there was in your time. All that energy was wasted on frantic buying and selling."

"So I've heard ad infinitum," I said.

"Something occurred to me at the Historical Society," Mandela Goto said. "We need to remind ourselves of what we have. There is no guarantee that the old system won't come back."

"Even so," I said. "I can't help but miss the noise and chaos of the old system. I liked bargain hunting for camera equipment. All this here has the tranquility I longed for once, but it makes me a little sad. Compared to our department stores, your emporium looks a bit pathetic. There was a poetry in all that commercial crassness the fake marble and polished chrome and the piped in music."

"I can imagine it," Svetlana Suzuki said. "There is a homey sort of beauty to our emporiums, but not the lavish magnificence of old."

"Why should an emporium be like a palace?" Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"Because it is fun," I said.

"That is a good point! We should consider it," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Anyway, Tom-chan, here is where you get shoes. Beautiful work. I got my hiking boots here."

"I should tell you that I'm not picky about clothes," I said. "The first thing that fits I'll wear."

"Same with me," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "And almost everyone else. Look at what the people around you are wearing."

People wore loose garments, some with bright and some subdued colors. I also saw variations on the one-piece jumpsuit.

"We wear what we like," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "It's natural. Now friends, if you could run down to the rucksack section, I'll take care of Tom-chan's shoes and clothes."

"I know just what you need, Tom-san," Mandela Goto said. "We'll meet you here in fifteen minutes."

"Fine with me," I said.

"Now I have you all to myself!" Kropotkin Tsuda giggled. She took my hand and led me to the shoe section.

"Ah Kro-chan!" "How are those boots holding up? I think they'll need resoling soon. Hello, who is your friend?"

She introduced me to Kazu Ichinomiya, whom she called "Ka-chan."

"Hang on, I have just the boots you need," he said after measuring my feet. He went to the stock room.

"Tell me, what is his position here?" I whispered to Kropotkin Tsuda.

"The same as the others," she said. "Foot specialist. Just like these other men and women helping the guests."

"Is 'foot specialist' a euphemism?"

"No. Why?"

"In my time shoe salesmen were looked down on. America even had a mean little situation comedy about a shoe salesman. Isn't your friend too bright for this job?"

"The stupid bigotry capitalism planted in your brain!" she retorted. "A foot specialist knows as much about the human anatomy as a medical doctor like Mandela-san! Too bad your people didn't think what you stood on important enough to treat foot specialists with respect. Incidentally, I've noticed some malformations in your feet and I'm sure Kazu-san has too. He can make special boots for you. As for your intellectual malfunction of looking down on working people who did certain jobs--"

"Hey pal, I was a worker ! I had to sell shoes once! Want to hear about halitosis and rude customers--?"

"Kro-chan, you are too hard on people!" Kazu Ichinomiya said, returning with a pair of boots. "Tom-san is new here, for goodness sake! By the way, you've made national news already, Tom-san."

"I have--?"

"Everyone I know is happy you're here. I noticed you walked with a slight limp. Probably your mass-produced shoes are misfits. Your toes are pinched together and there's pressure here on top. Also your arches need more support. These boots should take care of you. Sit down and try them on. You don't need socks with them."

"They feel great!" I exclaimed. "Are they?--you know--"

"Alive? Yes, after a fashion. Could I see your old shoes?"

"Look all you want."

"Good heavens, ancient cycling shoes! You were walking around in these? Kro-chan, why didn't the Time Collective outfit Tom-san with appropriate footwear immediately?"

"We are the sum of our oversights," she said.

"You came here just in time! These are special therapeutic boots designed to put your bones and muscles in proper order gradually, Tom-san. I'd like you to visit us from time to time. Really, Kro-chan, footwear should have been your first concern for Tom san."

"You're right," Kropotkin Tsuda sighed. "How are his feet?"

"Not too bad. For one thing, I can tell, Tom-san, you are a walker. I guess it's natural for a street photographer. That's helped keep your feet in reasonably healthy shape. Soon you'll find yourself walking faster and longer without less fatigue and less pain. That'll also straighten your posture, which will get rid of your stiff shoulders. I assume you get stiff shoulders quite a bit."

"Yes. Yes I do."

"You'll find yourself relaxing more and reducing your waistline."

"I like these boots, Kazu-san," I said. "But for cycling I need something different."

"I have just the shoes for you!" he exclaimed.

*****

Walking to the clothing section, Kropotkin Tsuda said, "Tom-chan, I'm sorry for what I said back there. Ka-chan is right about me."

"Look," I said, "I know I've accumulated prejudices toward people's occupations. It's not a nice thing to admit to. Your friend's certainly a pro. These boots, man!"

"I admire your honesty, Tom-chan. "You are starting to see what a classless society is. We're all pros."

"Yeah, it's starting to look as if it might fun," I said. "Fun I'd prefer to share with those I love most."

"I know, Tom-chan. Come on, let's get some nice things to hang over your body." She took my hand again.

*****

I got a surprise after we had finished at the emporium. We walked to a wide grassy place and the Time Collective's weird transparent helicopter flew overhead and levitated us up into its belly. I mean it sent out an air current that acted like an invisible elevator. Rising, I felt no strong sensation of speed. I looked down and saw that the emporium's geodesic pavilions were constructed around two merging ellipses. The geodesic domes sparkled in the bright sunlight. I felt a wonderful inner peace suddenly. A funny thought passed through my head. This is what going to Heaven is like!

One after another, we entered through an opening in the helicopter's belly. It closed after we were all in. We sat down in this transparent lounge that made me feel as if I were sitting on air.

"How was it?" Mandela Goto asked.

"Fine," I said. "And I'm usually afraid of heights."

"We need to talk about Ichiro Sato," Svetlana Suzuki said. "We got him on November 17, 2007 . That's one year and seven months after you were taken."

"He's been taken both before and after I was!"

"Think of it in terms of Real Time and it won't feel as strange."

"You say you rescued this Ichiro Sato. Was he also doomed?"

"Yes. He was a fairly well known scholar who lived in Sapporo. He would have had an automobile accident had we not intervened. Sato-san was an anthropologist by training and he was working with the Ainu when we took him. He was helping them fight for their civil rights. We learned from an old obituary that he was traveling around Lake Panketo in central Hokkaido prior to his road accident. It might have been an assassination by right-wing elements--we are not sure. At any rate, he was perfect for us. He was unmarried, had no important emotional attachments, and was not important enough to alter history by his absence. We rescued him two days before he would have died."

"I see," I said. "I want to meet him,"

"We'll be home in a few minutes. Enjoy the view."

"Is that Osaka out there?" I said looking out the window.

"Yes, that's Osaka. Not the sprawling city you knew."

"It's really like a lot of villages with green space in between. At least that is what it looks like from a distance."

"That's close. Only there is no isolation. The transportation networks are extensive between communities."

The helicopter dipped lower as it passed over the Inland Sea. Moments later it was passing over Awaji Island and then over the Time Collective. There was Doug, the time machine, looking like an overturned pewter bowl. Little specks, people, were moving around Doug. I squinted and looked closely at them. They seemed to be standing around in little groups talking and not much else. I made a mental note to ask Kropotkin Tsuda about how repairs were getting on. The helicopter landed in a grassy field near the main complex.

"That was quite a ride!" I said. "Amazing!"

"This side show we have cooked up for you is even more amazing," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "We had to contact Sato-san, get him to the Super Virtual Reality Center in Mountain View, California. They had to work overtime setting up there. This is not done every day."

We went into a geodesic building where we met Katsuro Suzuki and Conway Ito. They took me into a round wood-paneled room and had me sit down in a comfortable chair.

"We'll be watching from our monitors," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "This is your show, Tom-chan. Enjoy."

"It'll be fun, but a bit eerie," said Katsuro Suzuki.

The room went dark. When light returned, I was sitting opposite to a suntanned silver-haired man in his sixties. We were in a garden outside of a California ranch-style house. It was an illusion but a good one. I could smell the flowers.

"I'm Ichiro Sato," the man said in English. He stood and bowed.

I stood too and bowed.

"What would happen if we tried to shake hands?" I asked.

"It would be like trying to shake hands with a shadow," Ichiro Sato said. "Oh yes, we happen to be in a facsimile of my home in Palo Alto, though I'm in a bland round studio in Mountain View. How are they treating you at the Time Collective?"

"Can't complain too much," I said.

"Good," Ichiro Sato said sitting down. "The Time Collective people are special. If the whole world was like them it would be paradise."

"I thought it was supposed to be one already," I said.

"How much history have they given you?"

"How much history is there?"

"What a price humanity had to pay for this pleasant world of today," Ichiro Sato said shaking his head. "Revolutions are not nice things, my friend. I don't care what anyone says. Suffice to say that there were atrocities on both sides, Mr. Redburn--"

"Tom. Just plain Tom."

"Tom then. Call me Ichiro."

"I've seen your face somewhere before," I said.

"Maybe in a publication. I've written articles on Japan's indigenous people. I also wrote a book on Hokkaido ecology. I suppose they told you that I am a photographer as well as a writer."

"No! No they didn't!"

"They have a proclivity for rescuing photographers. I guess it's just that we are the guys who go out into the wilderness areas to do our stuff. I use a big view camera for my work, by the way. I've seen some of your work. It's good."

"Thank you! You know something--? I've seen your books! You do great stuff!" I said. "Tell me honestly, Ichiro, are you happy?"

"Sure. After a fashion. I've spent the better part of my life fighting for human rights. Japan's placidity bored me, so I moved to Palo Alto."

"I'm a San Franciscan, but I know Palo Alto pretty well," I said. "Svetlana Suzuki told me about the break up of my country."

"Sad business. Here we are, centuries after the revolution and the country is still very much Balkanized."

"Wait a minute! These people told me there's no more nationalism!"

"A bad choice of words. Everyone is lovey-dovey, all right. But culturally the former U.S. is much divided. I mean when people established socialism, their concerns were regional, not continental. Given the ecological crisis, which happened concurrently with the collapse of the nation, that's not surprising. Oh, did you know California is now an autonomous Spanish, Chinese and English-speaking Mexican republic?"

"I didn't!"

"As is most of the South West. Poetic justice, if I may say so."

"I would say so too," I said.

"Native American cultures and languages have been revived throughout the Americas. Anyway, the former U.S. still has problems. You know the place basically de-industrialized itself by moving major industries to the Third World. Imagine what happened after revolutions swept the globe? When Third World workers seized American and European industries, they got rich. The U.S., with hardly any indigenous industry left, became hideously poor. And the poor got poorer. If that wasn't bad enough, climatic changes brought on by global pollution caused the Midwestern breadbasket to fail. The Balkanized regions of the old U.S. were the first to establish socialism, but it was a very low-tech socialism. California was luckier than most places, but we wouldn't have our present prosperity if we hadn't joined Mexico. Much of the rest of the ex-U.S. has a lower living standard. The Midwest is still fighting desertification, believe it or not. I'm moving to Iowa for this reason. The only way we can overcome desertification is by repopulation! There are other problems. I'd like to see New York City revitalized and at least some of Florida reclaimed from the sea."

Ichiro Sato paused.

"I'll tell you, Tom, living in Palo Alto hasn't been all roses. Frankly, there's still a lot of the old bourgeois snobbery hidden under the socialist gentility of the Anglophone community here. I mean some people who you'd think would know better have actually asked me if in my time Japanese could use forks and knives. I got so fed up with that bullshit that I started telling them that in my time we ate off the floor. I presume someone already told you that the human race's intelligence level rose dramatically in the last three centuries."

"Yes, they did."

"Well a few people I could name were left behind in that area, as far as I'm concerned. I belong to the Collective of Information People which is for some odd reason dominated by the descendants of Palo Alto old money."

"Are you talking about the Silicon Valley dot com millionaires, or the stupid rich who lived in old Palo Alto?"

"A bit of both, actually. I was treated like a pet dog until I chewed the lot of them out. They were rightly ashamed of themselves, but what kind of socialism were they running in the first place? Did you get the pet dog routine yet?"

"Yeah, I have, now that you mentioned it."

"You'll get it more, guaranteed. There is another thing that I have a hard time getting used to in Palo Alto and under socialism in general. There are times I really feel creatively frustrated. Like I can't stand out the way I used to in my old life. It's not that I have no freedom of speech. I can say anything I want. It's exhilarating! I can just say things and I don't have to worry about losing my job or getting beaten up or thrown into prison. But this groupiness that makes me uneasy. And I'm from Japan!"

"Go on," I said. "I'm enjoying this."

"Okay. Suppose I shoot some photos and write a story. In our time I'd be the hero. Now the printer, the proofreader, the layout person, the distributors or the webmasters, and even the critics who advised me get equal billing. It's the way it should be, everyone should be honored equally, but for me it's hard to get used to. Like most people who have lived for others, I've got an ego as big as Jupiter. My colleagues say I'm a genius but they all think they are geniuses too!"

"It's sort of like my old trading company. Except that bosses got the promotions and profits from our work."

"That's out forever, and good riddance I say! I don't dislike the new ways. I like them intellectually, anyway. Nobody falls between the cracks. I mean nobody. The gardeners and custodians at Jacquin Murietta University, formerly Leland Stanford Jr. University, where I'm an adjunct, are as important as the professors. Many of them teach or do local educational council administrative work. The Council of Educational Grounds Maintenance is as important as any other group within the university system. I like that. I'm also glad that anyone can get a university education and that education never stops. You know, sometimes I get a bit depressed in spite of my democratic nature because I have no one to look down on. That's really a hideous admission! Okay I admit it! Bad conditioning is tough to eliminate. Now look, in the old days I didn't look down on working people. I looked down on crooked politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen! You know how corrupt they were."

"Oh yes," I said.

"I also looked down on the arrogant reactionary and incompetent administrators and professors at my university. I looked down on lousy commercial culture. I looked down on lazy Japanese students who talked or slept in my classes. I looked down on the rip-off language schools where I once had to work when I was a poor hijokin fresh out of graduate school. (I did my graduate work at Berkeley by the way.) Do you see what I'm driving at? I looked down on all the garbage that any sensitive and enlightened person would look down on. What I've discovered is that that creates a snobbish habit of mind--which is discriminatory. There is a sense of power on looking down on everything that is obviously idiotic or evil. Well, I can't do that any more. I'm glad. Though I get depressed."

"What a pain. No one to sneer at in this workers' paradise," I said.

"I'm not as open as the people I know. I've still got these natural defenses. I still think that if I reveal too much about myself I'll be attacked somehow."

"You must have gotten it in your human rights work," I said.

"Yeah. A few death threats. I was supposed to have died in an accident on an isolated road. Don't know if someone wanted to kill me. Historical records lost. Anyway, why don't you ask about something other than my personal life?"

"You gave me the impression there are different kinds of socialism."

"Well, yes. There are variations. The movable national coordinating council you have in Japan isn't universal. California has two main coordinating councils, Sacramento and Riverside. The council system is universal, however, regional variations notwithstanding. Here's a kick, my friend. What has happened is that we've actually gone back by going forward. Once all societies were communistic and they more or less organized themselves in the way present societies do."

"Yeah, really?" I said. "The hippies or whoever used to believe that stuff."

"Well, now, with time travel, we are discovering that true ancient societies were all very much alike at their base. People owned everything socially useful in common. They organized councils whose locations could never be stationary-- See, we've gone back to a natural way of living. The way people would choose to live had not authoritarian powers prevented them. Quite fascinating, this life. Though I am not altogether happy here. By the way, how do you feel about the word 'collective,' Tom?"

"Uneasy. I think of Chinese and Soviet collective farms."

"Right, right, right! Same with me! The word used to irritate me to no end for that same reason. I found that the meaning has changed. Today it means simply a voluntary coming together of different people in a common cause. Like a union or mutual aid society. I still wince when I hear 'collective.'"

"Let me ask you something," I said. "Do you ever feel like an outsider-- like a gaijin--over there?"

"As someone from Japan, no. As a person from another time, yes. That's the one thing that always surprises me. I feel more of a gaijin with people who know me than with strangers. Otherwise, I'm just a face in the crowd. A prematurely aged face, but still just one of the people."

"I had an incredible experience," I said. "I was told I'm a citizen! Is that on the level?"

"As a citizen of the old Japan, I know how you must have felt. Yes, it's real. Enjoy it, Tom. Oh, by the way, how is Kropotkin Tsuda?"

"Do you know Kropotkin Tsuda-san?"

"Kro-chan? Sure. Everybody knows Kro-chan. A genuine genius of the old school."

"Hey, listen, Ichiro. She started telling me about education. Something she said really blew me away. That there is no distinction between elementary school and university."

"That's in Japan. You know how hierarchical Japan was in our time. The Japanese revolution produced leveling like we've never seen. Ironically, leveling has always been in the Japanese psyche--the whole emphasis on modesty and so on. Anyway, the universities were the first institutions to get leveled. You know the kanji for daigaku, meaning 'big learning.' Well, they simply removed the dai. So now there is only learning and everything is virtually seamless from childhood to adult education. The same people who teach what was once university also teach what was once junior and senior high school. Only early childhood teachers are special because they require special skills. It's a humane system, though it does have its problems, particularly in the teaching of adolescents, who are neither children nor adults. Compared to those schools faced in our time the problems are minor--insignificant."

"What about America?" I asked.

"There is strictly speaking no America unless you are speaking of North and South America. We in California, Oregon, Washington have a system that's a bit more traditional. Universities are distinct institutions, but minus the hierarchical rubbish. Our education is pretty much self-directed right from elementary school, which tends to take teachers off of pedestals."

"Is it not so much in Japan?"

"Oh sure. Self-direction is most important in Japanese education as well. I think that in childhood education the Japanese tend to be much more coddling and protective. The philosophy out here, for better or worse, is 'sink or swim,' though no one is left to sink."

"I have so many things I need to talk to you about! I am still very confused about how everything works."

"I've been around a while and I'm still surprised."

"May I ask your age?"

"Sixty-five."

"You look young."

"Not for this era. They say that I'll live to be a hundred, which I find amazing. But, man, I look old compared to people my age that I know. I wish the Time Collective had picked me up when I was still a spring chicken! Now I've got to say that a remarkable thing has been happening. I feel like I'm growing younger, though I still look ancient. That's a big problem. People can be so damned insensitive about aging. They all carry their youth into when we would already be senile or dead. People tend to see me as a prematurely aged freak. Man, I hate it. Of course, given the advances in medicine, well--who knows? I let them test new drugs and rejuvenation programs on me. All rather interesting."

"Ah yes, the wonderful rejuvenation programs. I think they want to turn me into a laboratory rat," I said.

"You're wrong, Tom. Preliminary medical testing is done first on biological models. Only after everything is perfected do they test on volunteers. I am crazy about volunteering. I was on a special dietary and exercise program that reversed a lot of my old bad eating and drinking habits. Back in Hokkaido I was a very heavy drinker."

"So these people like alcoholics as well as photographers," I said.

"You too?" Ichiro Sato said. "That's two coincidences. Anyway, Tom, listen: I took lots of super vitamins and started swimming and long distance walking. They've pushed my longevity up a century. I might well live two centuries the way they are working on me. Take the word of an old cynic--go for it. What else do you want to know?"

"More about the fall of the U.S. I mean after the fall."

"Well, California and the Southwest you know about, except that the Southwest is divided in three autonomous regions. Washington, Oregon and Alaska became a separate country. The Mid-West entered the Canadian confederation as an autonomous territory. The Eastern and Southern states formed five separate countries--"

Ichiro Sato turned away, as if consulting with someone, and then turned back to me.

"How about some home movies, Tom? You know they filmed my abduction? Here, have a look."

A square of light appeared in the air before us. The movie began.

"You see them descending down toward Lake Panketo," Ichiro Sato said. "You see that peninsula? That's where I am. Now watch this. There! Me and my camper! Now get this. I was unconscious when they brought me up. There I go; I'm in a trance."

"They didn't put me in a trace," I said. "I was already plastered."

"Okay, straight into the ship. Over. Let's go back. Here's a still of that peninsula. Remember that peninsula, Tom-san."

"Why? Wait!"

Ichiro Sato and his California home vanished.
Chapter Nine: Thomas Redburn's Odyssey Begins

The reason Katsuro Suzuki and Conway Ito were not at the meeting with the Kobe Historical Society was because they were looking for an especially good recumbent bicycle for me. They had a notion that I would at some time want to take a long cycling tour. Their meeting was with a collective of master cycle builders. The recumbent they ordered arrived a few days after my meeting with Ichiro Sato.

"Little did we know!" said Katsuro Suzuki.

It was compact for a recumbent bicycle. A clear teardrop shaped windshield covered the front end of my cockpit. In case of rain, I could raise a flexible clear canopy over the rest of the cockpit. It was constructed in such a way the I could open "door" flaps on either side so that I could exit quickly. Svetlana Suzuki and Mandela Goto had found a set of excellent panniers for clothing, food and my cameras. They also installed a computer showing maps of major and minor roadways. It also explained the particular conditions of those roadways.

Did I want a mobile phone? they asked me.

No, I did not. I wanted to be completely alone, to be totally detached from outside interruptions when I was on the road.

"I had assumed so," Katsuro Suzuki said. "I think it is wise. In this way you can concentrate on your experiences. And if you need to communicate with any of us there are plenty of phones of every sort everywhere."

I decided to take Toshiyasu Blithedale's Leica and the cylindrical camera Conway Ito had given me, but leave my heavy Nikon F5 in Conway-san's care.

He was beside himself with joy and promised to take extra good care of it.

I had never ridden a recumbent before. My first shaky turns around the Time Collective had me wishing for my old touring bike, frozen somewhere in the past with its pretzeled front wheel. I soon got used to it and found it comfortable and much more efficient in power transfer than a regular bicycle. I had read that one weakness of recumbents was climbing. This machine could take the steepest of the surrounding hills with ease.

"There are two friction generated mini-motors in each hub," Kropotkin Tsuda told me the morning of my departure.

"Isn't that cheating?" I mused.

"So who's watching?" she laughed.

"I nearly said, Big Brother." I'm glad I kept my mouth shut. For the first time I found myself caring whether I hurt my abductors' feelings.

All of my fellow time travelers, plus Katsuro Suzuki and Conway Ito hugged me as I was about to take off. Kropotkin Tsuda gave me a bon voyage card from the Kobe Historical Society. As I rolled out, it seemed as if everyone in the Time Collective had stepped out of their workshops or their surrounding geodesic houses to cheer me.

For a moment I wished I could stay. No. There was no turning back.

It was on June 16 when I left the Time Collective.

I rolled down to the harbor at Iwaya and caught the ferry for Motomachi. Fredrick Engels Omori from the Kobe Historical Society greeted me at the Motomachi pier. He suggested I visit the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective. I planed to go straight down to Kyushu, but thought this detour might be interesting. Riding through Kobe I encountered many bicycles and quadracycles. It was a pleasure not to have to fight for space with cars and trucks. The air was always fresh, and I didn't have to worry about becoming road kill.

I rode to the Motomachi bicycle entrance of the Skyway, situated about where the old Shinmei Expressway used to be. I was afraid at first about cycling on the Skyway. I soon found it far easier than driving a car on the old Shinmei. I entered a wide transparent tube with an opaque bottom and top. I saw a tube above me and one below. Because the tube was opaque, I did not experience the panic I often had when walking on grating and looking down. Feeling okay, I headed for my first stop, suggested by Omori-san, which was in Tsuchiyama.

My computer told me the upper tube was reserved for quadracycles, which move faster than bicycles. The lower tube was reserved for a kind of cycle train, an invention I thought comical at first because all the passengers pedaling as it passed under me made me think of a centipede. Later I asked about it and was told that it was run on combination of solar power and an energy return system designed around the friction generated by the wheels and brakes, much like my recumbent.

The flow of bicycle traffic was swift but calm. I recalled the traffic jams, the stink and foul drivers on the old Shinmei Expressway, and then reflected on twenty-first century "progress." What fools we were.

I spent a couple of days at the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective and was impressed with how they clone and refine the various kinds of seafood that we had at our banquet. I even had a tour under the sea in a submarine. To tell the truth, food production, especially farming, leaves me numb. It's a prejudice, I admit.

My grandparents on mother's side were farmers in Central California and I used to dread visiting them because of all the farm work I had to do. Farms depress me. My wife, a farmer's granddaughter, also got depressed around farms, but that's another story.

The Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective was well managed from what I could tell. I got a lot of explanations about how it worked but most of it flew past me, given my thick head for science.

This visit reminded me of something. During harvest time the neighbors in my wife's grandparents' village helped each other. They were no socialists (they were conservatives actually), but without that sort of collective farming finishing harvest on time would have been impossible. I thought that since mutual aid comes naturally when people are desperate, socialism too comes naturally out of desperation. How it continued in the absence of desperation without a powerful authority cracking the whip I could not yet understand.

My grandparents' community had no mutual aid. Everyone was a rugged individualist. Many families lost their farm to the banks. On bad federal government advice they had borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to buy complex equipment they didn't need. They couldn't pay back their loans and went bankrupt. My grandparents were on welfare when they died.

The community built around the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective reminded me of a traditional village, but without the isolation of village life and the deprivations in culture, goods, and services. Something else amazed me: the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective was like a university. There were historians, poets and artists attached to it. There were also engineers, doctors, management experts as well as scientists. What else surprised me was that everyone worked a variety of jobs. Even the artists did not only manual work but also office work. There has been a romanticism surrounding farm work. So I could imagine artists harvesting underwater lemons and pruning the "shrimp trees" and feeling inspired that they were involved in the life force or something like that. But office work! There has never been anything romantic about office work. Yet I saw poets and painters sitting with the engineers and nutritionists to discuss and argue the merits of this form of distribution over that, or the taste of kelp bread. I asked a woman whose specialty was wall sized abstract murals if she found the office work distracting. She said yes, sometimes. Sometimes she felt the same way about her painting--that it took her away from life too much. She said that given the flexibility of work, someone else could take over her office jobs if she felt her major work impeded. I figured I ought to see what went on in the offices. Everything seemed democratic enough. I don't know. Most of what people talked about in council and workshop meetings was like Greek to me.

There is one thing that did impress me: how quickly and efficiently things were taken care of. I remember long and boring meetings in my ex-companies where one man did the talking and we all just listened. Here everyone talked and took charge. Even in their private lives people took immediate charge when something had to be done instead of waiting for someone else's instructions. I remember one time at the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective a group of us wanted to make Mexican food. (I should mention that I was in an apartment house with a lot of young unmarried people.) Suddenly one group was organized to collect meats (cloned), spices and vegetables. Another group set about making tortillas. Within less than an hour, the enchiladas, yellow rice and refried beans were cooking. And no one was in charge. We did it spontaneously. Now that I think of it, every meeting attended started with someone saying, "Who's in charge?"

I've always had a particular distaste for people who delegated responsibilities to someone else. I liked the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective people for their take-charge attitudes. I was also glad they were too busy doing socialism to preach doctrines to me. I would like the road working collective people even better when I got in with them.

*****

Old Kakogawa was ugly. Once, people say, it possessed great natural beauty. It was a polluted and over-urbanized cesspool when I knew it. When I left they were tearing up the old rice paddies and building houses, apartment complexes and shopping centers on them. Back in those days all the provincial cities in Hyogo-ken seemed to be copying Kobe. After Kobe put up bronze statues of naked women, so did Kakogawa and Himeji. When Kobe paved with brick, the other cities followed suit. So Kakogawa built a shopping mall with bricks and nude statues. There were also the factories with their smoke stacks and the highways which were congested with cars and lined by "family restaurants" and used car lots. Old Kakogawa was much like every other place in Japan.

I remember how depressed I'd get on a gray day when I saw all that. You know, one of those days when there's neither sun nor rain. One of those dull days that you wish you could just sleep through. Well, the memory just hit me. Driving through a big provincial city like Kakogawa, stopping maybe at a family restaurant and eating unhealthy food, then going to a department store where they played advertisements non-stop. I mean singing advertisements, two or three at the same time. I hated that, though my wife, who also wrote songs, found the dissonant sounds interesting. Somehow all that on a gray dull day was so depressing. I used to think: "Is this all there is to life?" This was Japanese culture under capitalism.

Everything was loud, flashy and mindless. And on a dull gray day it would just get to me.

Ironically I cycled into Kakogawa, a few kilometers south of the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective, on a dull gray day but felt happy. For one thing, when I left the cycle highway leading out of the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective, I found myself riding through a forest of birch trees. Birch trees in Kansai! There had been none in my time. It was a warm moist day and I passed families hiking through the forest. I later found out they were searching for edible berries, or cooking, or camping out. It was much like something out of my time, except for the presence of bicycles and quadracycles instead of cars. Also, I didn't hear any loud rock music coming from radios or cassette players. I did see groups of people sitting about and singing songs or just talking. People waved to me when I passed and called out things like, "Good day, neighbor!" When I stopped to rest and drink from my water bottle, a group of people invited me to join them.

"You look tired, neighbor!" one person said.

"Please eat with us. We brought more food than we need and it'll just spoil," someone else said. I was reminded of my travels in Russia. People on the trains carried mountains of food and always insisted on sharing it. Country people and especially people in Kyushu also had this habit of wanting to share things in my time. My brother-in-law often went on cycling tours in Okinawa because he loved the people's generosity. He said the Okinawans were the most Japanese people in Japan. He believed that all Japanese people were once like this before being corrupted by civilization.

I joined the group and introduced myself. News travels fast. They all knew me. Soon all the people in the vicinity gathered around me and plied me with questions. The questions were all about life under capitalism and they were the same questions all the people I would meet would ask me, so I'll not repeat them. (Later I took to disguising my identity to blend in better--and avoid the same damn questions.)

Here is what struck me after I talked with them a bit. People of every age and occupation were mingling together. Some were related and some were just friends. I began for the first time to see what "classless society" meant. Here were doctors and construction workers playing together and there was no sense of hierarchy. No one cared what someone's occupation was.

There were about 25 people there. One group was composed of hikers. Another group was camping overnight. Another group was on a cycling tour. Everyone, except the cycling group, was from the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective. They made me a member of the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective! I had a mental picture of a collective as something more or less separate and compact. It was as sprawling as it was interdisciplinary.

In just that small group there were a couple of poets, a historian three teachers, five gardeners and one physician, among others. The gardeners were also herbalists, which connected them to the physician. The gardeners were also experts in botany, forest ecology, and landscape art. They also worked with nutritionists.

As I think of it, it wasn't much different in my day. Only people seldom got credit for all they knew. In Japan there was this fixed idea that you could be proficient at only one thing your whole life. I guess that is why so many professionals were shallow.

"Is today a special holiday?" I asked.

It wasn't. Some of the people, like the cyclists, were on a long vacation. The others were simply taking a diversion from their work. This was the first time I heard of this society's concept of "diversion." Its closest equivalent in my day was the "working holiday," when you took a vacation but actually didn't. "Diversion" is an exercise in lateral thinking by lateral doing. If someone wanted to get a new perspective on one's work one could go off and do something unusual or something not seemingly related to work. The cyclists were all diversionists. The hikers were out herb and berry gathering for fun but also for scientific study. The campers were researching nocturnal animals in the Kakogawa forest.

A young man and a young woman, Hiroshi Itoh and Rie Kato, took me for a walk through the forest. As we gathered berries, they told me how the forest had been planted over a hundred years ago as a "green area" for the protection of the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective. As we were talking, we came upon the seashore! I had never expected the seashore to be this close. I asked about the geography and they showed me a map. I'd thought we were on the outskirts of Kakogawa. Actually, we were not far from the old center of Kakogawa City. The Inland sea had been allowed to spread over former landfill.

This couple told me they had married young and produced two children. When they were in their early 30's Rie fell in love with another man and moved in with him. Hiroshi was sad but accepted it. They decided the children would be happier with Hiroshi and they remained with him. A year later she decided she had made a mistake, parted amicably with her lover and remarried Hiroshi.

"And you didn't go through divorce court? You didn't have hire lawyers? You didn't fight over property? I'm surprised you didn't fight over the custody of the children," I said.

"What's a divorce court?" Hiroshi asked.

I explained about how couples got married and divorced in my time. In America I said there were millions of lawyers who specialized in divorce. In Japan, with fewer lawyers, it was a little simpler. If you and your spouse had agreed on property division and child custody you simply filed at the city office and you were divorced. If you couldn't arrange a settlement, you went before a judge.

I then told them about my divorce.

"My first wife was also Japanese," I said. "When she decided to leave me for this rich guy, we were still under the old law which said that we had to follow the laws of the husband's home country. In the U.S. each state had its own set of divorce laws. Fortunately I was from California, which had liberal divorce laws. It was still messy. She had to be the plaintiff and I the defendant and we separated because of 'irreconcilable differences.' If I wanted to, I could have sued her for adultery, but that would've meant hiring lawyers and maybe even detectives and I had neither the money nor the desire to be vindictive."

They couldn't believe people really did things like that.

"Adultery was a crime in Japan before the Second World War," I said. "It wasn't in my time, but I could have made it uncomfortable for my ex-wife and her lover."

They both thought that was terrible.

"Think that's bad? Would you believe that in the state of Connecticut adultery was a felony in my time? You could be sent to prison. And if you think that's bad, in some countries adultery was an offense punishable by death."

"In your time, did people believe a couple could be made to love each other through fear of punishment?" Rie asked.

"It was believed people could be forced to preserve what was called the 'sanctity of the family.' Marriage was also a matter of property and most of the so-called moral principles on which marriage was based were de facto matters of property rights." I said.

"We don't worry about property rights any more," Hiroshi said. "Why fight over things you can always have if you need them?"

"What about who gets the children?" I asked.

"We respect the feelings as well as the rights of children," Rie said. "No one 'possesses' children. Children are free to live with whom they wish. In our case, we knew the children would be happier with Hiroshi, after we discussed it with them. I saw them every day; I think I was a good mom. Other members of our family helped us."

"And no one condemned you for living with another man?" I asked.

"Our families were concerned," Hiroshi said. "But the idea of condemning someone or making him or her guilty in the eyes of public opinion is alien to us. People know that in matters of love things can never be perfect. This is why we wish to avoid piling degradation on top of confusion and unhappiness. I was sad but not vindictive. It must have been difficult for people to love people in your society."

"It was. Is it different with you?"

"Oh yes!" Rie said. "Hiroshi had many friends who wanted to marry him. He needed time to himself, however. By the time he was considering remarriage, I wanted to be with him again. Not all couples' stories are as happy as ours, of course."

"Hiroshi-san, didn't you at least have a lover?" I asked.

"No. I didn't feel the need."

"I screwed around a lot before I met my second wife," I said. "Part of it was a desire to even the score. I was pretty unhappy. I also drank too much. I would have died if my second wife hadn't come along."

"I didn't feel any need to 'even the score' as you say." Hiroshi said. "I also knew Rie-san would be returning to me before long."

There are things I found hard to explain to them. Like how family and friends told you they hated your spouse---or that something was wrong with you if you hadn't found another partner. People at work gossiped and sneered at you.

Suddenly all this rage boiled up inside of me and I abruptly turned and left, no doubt startling the couple. I ran through the woods muttering, "What a pack of self-satisfied degenerates! What do they know of real hardship? Had they ever been piss-poor with a kid to take care of and another on the way? The luxury of passing from husband to lover to husband! Degenerates!"

Without saying good-by to anyone, I got on my recumbent and sped off. By the time I'd gone a kilometer, I admitted to myself that I was horny and jealous. How could one meet women in this workers' paradise? And if I did, would old-fashioned twenty-first century lust be politically incorrect? I was full of negative thoughts and felt like stopping somewhere, calling Kropotkin Tsuda and whining. Why hadn't I taken a mobile phone with me? Then, all of a sudden, a monastic calm came over me. Anyone who wants to get laid can do so eventually, I thought. Whether it's a business trip or a time journey, if you screw around eventually you'll have to answer for it after you come home. And I was determined to return to my family.

I passed a grassy hill where I saw a group of naked young men and women sitting about. They had been swimming in the ocean, I gathered. They waved to me as I passed, but made no attempts to cover their bodies. That should have driven me crazy, but I was by then settled in my mind about my sexual passions. I waved back, smiled, and rode on.

This made me reflect on clothing. In everyday life I had seen no real distinction made between formal and informal wear. People just put on what felt comfortable. Only on special occasions might people wear something particularly beautiful. I had seen no uniforms.

I now took a bigger interest in the sights. I passed many interesting homes. There were houses with geodesic domes and houses with sloping roofs and traditional houses with blue tiles. What amazed me was how spread out they were. I had been so used to houses built close together. Here were houses with tall trees separating them. Later I would ask someone on the train who was from the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective if people lived in those houses or if they were simply lodges. They were lived in he assured me. Some people preferred being farther away from the main community of the Inland Sea Underwater Food Project Collective. Most were doing work connected to the forest. Either they were ecologists looking after the forest's health or they were workers in medicine and food.

*****

Here's how I got to know the Train Collective, which has no fixed place, except the network of lines which crisscross Japan.

After leaving Kakogawa, I decided to take a train to Kyushu. I rode back to the Skyway, where my computer said I could connect with the main railway line. Because I could simply get on without buying a ticket, I got a bit light-headed. I had notions about taking a few local trains and looking about on my way to Kyushu. I also wanted to stop off in Yamaguchi-ken to look in on Koda-san. The result was that I got mixed up and loaded the bike on an express bound for the Japan Sea (now also called the Sea of Peace). I found myself in Takeno late at night--when the trains had stopped running frequently. I happened to strike up a conversation with Hiro, a conductor. He took me to a café where Train Collective people hung out.

It was a dim and dingy place filled with loud music and smelled of booze. The people were more boisterous than any I had yet encountered. Hiro said that the people here were taking a few days off. All were in transit, having no fixed place to live except on the trains and in Train Collective lodges built around train stations.

"How can you stand this vagabond life?" I asked.

"It is not an easy life but one that folks like me find full of romance," Hiro answered. "You of all people should understand, Tom. You have that vagabond spirit in you too."

Word got around that the famous Tom Redburn was there and dozens of people crowded around me. Everyone talked at once.

These were mostly young people. Most of the men wore black, red, or purple sleeveless shirts and very tight black trousers. Their hair was dyed pink, orange, bright green, purple. The women also had dyed hair, but their current fashion was three-tone dyes, including gold and silver and purple. They wore luminescent multicolored halter-tops that left little to the imagination. No one wore jewelry however, which surprised me. (I learned later it was out of fashion.) Though they looked bizarre, they were gentle people--and intelligent. They were primarily mechanics, drivers, brakemen and brakewomen, and station people.

"What were the railroads like in your day?" a woman asked. "I hear they were noisy."

"Very noisy," I said. "The Shinkansen had to build sound-proof barriers. How come your trains don't make noise."

"Squishy wheels!"

"Hey don't tease the man!" a young conductor said. "Look, there are two kinds of trains. Those that float on air and those with wheels. The ones with wheels have their wheels made out of a synthetic material that cuts noise. They run on tracks made from the same synthetic material. They also use solar power. That's why they're quiet."

"I've seen trains where the passengers supply the power."

The crowed laughed.

"The 'Kiddieland Express' we call it," the conductor said. "You only find it in the Osaka-Kobe area. The Train Collective is only marginally involved with that."

"Hey, Tom," a young woman with solid gold hair said, "I study history. Tell us about JNR and JR."

"Well, JNR was Japan National Railroads and it was public. Then when Nakasone was prime minister it was privatized--sold off to corporate interests--"

"Stolen in other words!" a brakeman interrupted. "Didn't the people protest?"

"The Japanese were a bunch of sheep back then. JNR personnel were famous for their arrogance. It's rotten that the JNR people who were hurt were union people when the national rails went private. They were either fired or given low level jobs like manning the snack counters."

"Why didn't they just overthrow the capitalists?"

"It wasn't that easy--"

"Tom--!" a young man broke in. "What do you think of our railroads? As compared to your railroads."

"Well--"

"Do you know the history of the railroads after the revolution?" a young woman chimed in.

"Don't interrupt him!" several people broke in.

"I've been talking to Hiro," I said. "He tells me that there isn't a single village, no matter how remote, that doesn't have access to the rails. I think this is very good. In my day, the railroad companies were closing down many provincial lines as unprofitable. And the provincial trains were dirty and run-down. Whenever major accidents occurred they invariably happened on the provincial lines as they were badly maintained and not upgraded very much, if at all. I understand that after the revolution you used the Swiss model for rebuilding the railroads. You did a remarkable job."

A young woman with purple and gold hair then broke in: "I wrench for a living and write poetry and make love for a hobby. What do you think of that?"

"I think that is jolly good," I said.

"I am through writing for the night and that leaves only one thing!"

I'm married," I said. "Sorry."

She was sympathetic. "Hey, we should tell those Time Collective people to go back and get this man's wife and kids!"

"Yeah! Right on!" everyone shouted. "Bring the man's family back!" Some of the drunken ones started to cry. One began singing a love song.

"Hey, Tom!" a young man said, "Is it true that railroad people had to wear uniforms in your day?"

"Yes," I said.

"Like soldiers? That can't be! They didn't really make them wear fucking uniforms!" He was drunk.

Here I'd better interject that I was at first confused on trains because no one wore uniforms. Whom was I supposed to ask for schedules and directions? Finally I learned that train people wore special badges.

"They did," I said, "and they were proud to wear them, I think."

"You lie, good friend! I read they were oppressed and degraded!"

"They were that," I said. "I only meant that many saw their uniforms as symbolizing public service or authority."

"Hey, we don't wear uniforms. We dress as we like. We don't have bosses! How do you like living in a world without bosses, friend?"

"I don't mind," I said and they all cheered.

I learned that traditionally the Train Collective never used honorifics, even "san." They said it was also a tradition in Road collectives. It took supreme efforts not to join in drinking with them. I also got to like the lady with the gold and purple hair. Her name was Morgana Lui. Shouting above the noise, we talked about her boyfriend, a sailor, and my family. We ended up holding hands and when we were parting neither of us wanted to let go.

She gave me an address where she could always be reached.

"Look me up, Tom. I dig older guys."

"How old are you?" I asked.

"Forty-nine."

"You've got good taste," I said and smiled sadly.

*****

I found lodgings in a passenger hotel by the station. I met Hiro for breakfast early the next morning.

"Are there many railroad accidents?" I asked him.

"No, not many. The few that we've had were not serious. I cannot think back to the last time lives were lost or people crippled. Why do you ask?" he laughed. "Because of what you saw at the Railroad Workers' Club? Believe me, on the job they are the most responsible of people. And also, fortunately, our trains have brains that help out when ours are missing somewhere. I must tell you, though, that railroading is a high stress job, particularly if you are in maintenance, 'wrench for a living.' There is not much alcohol or drug abuse in our society but railroad workers have more problems with this than the rest of the population. We have ways of taking care of people and most, if not all, are cured."

"Yeah, how?"

"Health spas. We treat substance abuse as a sickness, not a crime. People are given lots of close medical attention and they come out of it pretty well almost all the time."

"Man, I still don't get why folk like you go into such high stress work in a society like this."

"I can only speak for myself," Hiro said. "Like I told you before, it's an exciting life. You travel, you meet many different people, see many different places. I was never the one who was happy about staying in one place very long. We also get a lot of free time."

"I know the law about vacation time for hard jobs."

"We in the Train Collective are legally required to rest one year every three years. If you ever travel abroad you'll find that a high percentage of tourists are connected to either the Train Collective or the Road Collective. It's work for people who love to work with their hands while working with their brains. It's young people's work. I'm only fifty-five now and already I've pretty much retired from wrenching for a living. I'm basically a trouble-shooter. I ride the rails and check the track for cracks, listen for any strange noises, which might be fiber fatigue. Occasionally I help passengers who get stuck in the toilet. It's not as stressful as driving and wrenching. These days I even consider settling down. No home, no permanent lover: sometimes it gets to me."

"Outside your vacations, do you get any special benefits for doing a job like this? I mean more goods, and the like?"

"You're talking about what used to be called 'incentives.' We had 'incentives' in the old days for people who did disagreeable jobs. Nowadays we have few real outward 'incentives.' Most work is fun. I wouldn't have lived any other life than the one I have with the Train Collective--even without the vacation time we get! You know what I like: it's understood that Train Collective people need a lot of leeway. I took four years off to travel around the world and nobody grumbled. Other collectives would have if you did something like that." Interrupting himself, he said, "I hope you weren't offended by my comrades. They can be indelicate at times."

"Oh they were fine," I said. "I sort of liked Morgana Lui."

"She liked you. You ought to contact her. That was her parents' address she gave you. They are anthropologists. They named her after Lewis Henry Morgan. Her family name is Kobayashi."

Hiro's last name was Miyazaki. Miyazaki is in Kyushu. I reminded myself that I was heading there. So I caught an express train for Hakata.

Chapter Ten: The Further Adventures of Thomas Redburn

I got sidetracked again on my way to Kyushu. I called Kropotkin Tsuda from a videophone on the train to Hakata. I wanted to tell her about the Train Collective and whine about almost falling in love with Morgana Lui. Instead, I got a teary-eyed Kro-chan who begged, "Could you see Koda-chan at the Group Marriage Collective in Yamaguchi, Tom chan? I feel lousy asking you for help. He sent me the saddest letter. It's about me and his relationship with his collective. He's also writing a bunraku play about a modern day double love suicide."

What if these two clowns ended up committing love suicide together? I thought. Then I might never get back.

"I was going to see him anyway," I said. "Where do I get off to make the necessary connections? Our next stop is Izumo."

"Get off at Hagi. Then catch a local line to Akiyoshidai. I'll tell Koda-chan to meet you at the station."

I got to Akiyoshidai a 8 p.m. Rolling my machine out of the cycle storage car, I was apprehensive about the welcome I'd get at a collective where people even in this weird workers' paradise considered weird.

Koda-san met me, along with Zillanius Kawata and Ichiko Smith who had been staying at the Group Marriage collective before continuing a journey that would take them to China. (They had fallen in love on the time journey.) I had not met Koda Rohan at the banquet, but he embraced me like an old friend, as did Zillanius Kawata and Ichiko Smith.

Zillanius-san and Ichiko-san were leaving as I was coming. They bid us a quick farewell and rolled their tandem bicycle to the platform.

Koda-san had come on a recumbent like mine. We rode off into the dark countryside where his collective was located, an hour from Akiyoshidai.

A delegation of three men and three women welcomed me to the collective and took me to the guess quarters, a simple but comfortable room next to one of the collective's vegetable gardens. Koda Rohan and I had tea and fruit in my apartment and talked.

"As you know," he said, "the Group Marriage Collective is controversial because of its alleged exclusiveness. The law says no collective can exclude anyone, except in special cases where the collective's specialization puts extraordinary requirements on its people (like the Time Collective). For this reason we have come under severe criticism from neighboring collectives which has caused much debate at the regional council. The Group Marriage Collective has made a good case for itself, saying it's an experiment in living which must require that all its members be married to one another and, therefore, cannot allow anyone not willing to enter into this pact to live at the collective permanently. Since our collective is not causing problems, and since our rules guarantee the rights and dignity of any member wishing to leave the collective, our critics have taken a wait and see attitude. I should add that people are allowed a long trial period before they join or marry into--the collective. That's where I am now. I must confess I came to the Group Marriage Collective not without uneasiness. I found the people exceptionally kind and intelligent. And I loved the children immediately!"

He paused and looked at me for some sort of comment.

"I'm listening," I said. "Go on."

"Okay, I've got to tell you this, Tom-san. The allegedly forced polyamorousness of the Group Marriage Collective is a misrepresentation!" Koda-san said. "Although individual romances are allowed, it is understood that no love relationship can exclude others, except temporarily. This does not mean forced intimacy however. Incest is forbidden and respect for sexual preference stops anyone from harassing anyone else because of whom he or she chooses to be intimate with. Same sex and bisexual marriage is recognized (as it is under Japanese Law). And no one can force you to have sex against your will. There are many fine distinctions between mutual attraction and forced intimacy and these seem to be known instinctively by the people. Though there is conflict between individual desire and group intimacy, it's not as wrenching as I imagined. You see, Tom-san, the temperament of our members naturally tends toward multiplicity rather than monogamy.

In this sense, the Group Marriage Collective is very much in the spirit of our society. It is an institution that complements and enhances people's needs and individual personalities rather than suppressing them. Also, in reality we are more like sisters and brothers than lovers."

"How many people are in the collective?" I asked.

"Actually, the collective is small. Only about sixty people. This makes community management easier. I've found people spending a large part of the working day discussing 'relationships.' There are more spontaneous mutual aid meetings to discuss personal problems than in ordinary collectives. This collective is much like an old-fashioned extended family. I've found the incessant discussions about relationships annoying. But that's my problem."

I hoped he would talk about his problems with Kropotkin Tsuda, but he did not say a word about her.

"Good night," he said abruptly. "I must be up early for recycling."

At the door he turned and said, "By the way, I'd better tell you that the word 'promiscuity' is considered discriminatory in this community."

"Is 'monogamy' an obscenity?" I asked.

"No, not at all. We're very tolerant here."

*****

The good thing I ascertained after a few days was that this community wasn't run by some autocratic sex maniac as I had half expected. Meetings were all started with someone saying, "Who's in charge?"

The Group Marriage Collective specialized in educational research. I had a chance to visit a school for children between the ages of seven and twelve. There were no distinctions between grades, and there were no real classes. The children, however, were not running wild. They had organized themselves into work-study groups and, from what I could tell, were studying peacefully together. One group was studying math and another history; another group was painting pictures. Each group had a teacher within easy reach if they needed him or her. I also found the older children teaching the younger children--and in a few cases younger children teaching older children!

Koda Rohan, who was my guide said, "This is similar to what you'd find in any Japanese school. From an early age children are taught the necessity of kindness in social intercourse. These are better than most. The Time Collective children could be extremely bratty, which is what you'd expect from the off-springs of precocious brats. Here at the Group Marriage Collective the children are especially good because of all the attention shown them. Look, there are less than twenty children here and they have five teachers! And the children call them either mother or father or sister and brother."

All that day I did not see one single fight or one single incident of stronger children bullying weaker children. One incident touched my heart. A little boy fell down and hurt his leg. Immediately five of his comrades stopped what they were doing and rushed over to him and began massaging his leg and offering him encouragement.

I later said to Koda-san, "What will become of these children? Look, they are growing up not fearing anything or really wanting anything beyond the narrow confines of this community. They are totally removed from the rest of society. They face no internal struggles; they are well fed, sufficiently amused and not overworked. It is likely they have never heard a word said to them in anger. They think every living adult is a mother or father or at least an aunt or uncle. Some children actually called me 'father!' And they just met me! As adults, they'll be helpless--even in this peaceful world of yours."

Koda-san thought a little and said, "The Group Marriage Collective has been in existence now for twenty years. It has produced a generation of children who have grown up in it, seen it through its formative crises, and gone off to other collectives. They are an interesting lot. All of them seem immediately at ease with strangers. They are not a creative lot--none has become an artist or a writer. Their sexual drives are rather low on the whole, and a large proportion of them haven't married. They are cheerful folks though. Nothing fazes them. You could tell them, 'A big comet is going to strike Earth tomorrow and wipe out all life,' and they'd say, 'It cannot be as bad as all that. We'll find something to do about it.' In a way, they seem to have decided that since childhood was so happy that they don't want to leave it. They are certainly responsible people, but they have this softness to them. They speak softly, they are modest, and they seldom stand out. I don't know, Tom-san. I suppose any society needs a certain number of saints, but I'm glad this collective is an exception and not the rule."

"Ichiro Sato said something about Time Collective people being especially kind," I said.

"In their own abrasive ways, I guess," he said. "The trouble with the Time Collective is that you have to be a genius to fit in. Here people are not insanely anxious to ram their latest discovery down your throat. They are most concerned with building happy relationships and raising happy children."

One thing I did notice that was different about the Group Marriage people: they seemed passionless. They were always touching each other, but I never saw much exchange of affection. I did not see anyone making out in public; I don't think I saw as much as an erotic kiss. These people were easy to work with, yet they expressed little enthusiasm. The most excited remark I heard--at a ceramics exhibition by another collective's artists--was, "My, that's nice!"

I did not find them exclusive. I was readily accepted as a "passing resident" and put to work. One of my jobs was to teach photography to children. The children were certainly enthusiastic over taking photographs, as children usually are, but they would never take pictures of each other.

One time I took a group of children on a nature walk in the mountains. The eight and nine-year-olds knew more about geology, herbs, insects, birds and lizards than I could ever hope to. We had as our goal the ruins of a house of a rich man who was very powerful in my time. We were supposed to reach the ruins by noon but we were delayed because every few steps the children insisted that we stop to photograph flowers or butterflies. ("After all this is a photographic nature walk," the children argued.) Well, we reached the ruins by 1:30 p.m. and ate our lunches, which we had made the night before. Then I told the children about the man who had owned the big and pretentious house that was now a nesting place for birds and spiders. I explained how he had been in government and had caused many scandals because he was very greedy and very corrupt. I said they were very lucky that this evil man was only a bad memory and that his house, once guarded by private policemen, was now a harmless place where children could picnic on a summer's day. The children listened politely and then gently told me they knew the history of the house but that they were happy a "father" from another time had come to tell them about it.

I said, "Let's all line up in front of the ruins for a photograph. I'll put up the tripod and we'll all be in a group picture."

The children looked bewildered. A few asked, "Why?"

"For your memories," I said.

"We will always have each other," a little girl said.

"Yes, but people change. They grow up," I replied. "Don't you want to look back on this moment and remember your friends as they were?"

The children looked even more bewildered.

"Haven't you had group photographs before?" I asked. "In old Japan children were so used to being photographed in groups that all you had to do was to hold up a camera and they would bunch together."

A girl said, "Please show us how we should do it."

I brought them all together in a group in front of what was once the doorway. The children were delighted with this new experience but they did not know exactly how to pose for the camera. The photograph they are staring intently as me.

Afterwards I asked the children if they would be at all interested in photographing people.

"Why photograph people you already know?" a child asked.

"You might photograph people you don't know," I suggested. "Like say when you go to Shimonoseki. I used to make portraits of people who usually were strangers to me. I was also a street photographer and took pictures of people without them knowing it. In that way I'd catch them at being themselves."

Their collective response was: "Why should you photograph someone you don't know? Why would you do it secretly?"

I gave up at that point.

We were late returning because the children insisted again in running in the fields with their cameras. Using the mobile phone I was given, I called in to say that we would be late. The response: "Oh don't worry. This happens all the time. No harm. If it gets dark, the children all have their lights and they know their way home."

I encountered no resistance to my taking photographs at the Group Marriage Collective. I later showed the community the photographs of themselves. They were curious but not enthusiastic.

"These are the most passionless people I have ever met," I said to Koda-san. "In a place where everyone sleeps with everyone, you'd think passions would heightened, not deadened."

"I know what you're talking about," he said. "These are probably the most sexually satisfied people you'll ever meet, but the blandness is there for a reason."

At this point, Koda-san tried to explain the ramifications of "complex marriage," the basis of the Group Marriage Collective.

"Much of this collective's philosophy is built upon the philosophy of the Perfectionists of old, but stripped of the religious and authoritarian elements. Let's go to our library. I'd like you to read the chapter on the Perfectionists in Charles Nordhoff's The Communistic Societies of the United States, published in 1875. Pay special attention to the part about complex marriage."

After reading it--with Koda-san looking over my shoulder--I asked, "Why did you have me read about some nutty old religious utopian commune when there are so many publications coming out of this collective?"

(Every collective, incidentally, published volumes of newspapers, magazines, audio-visual material, newspapers, etc.)

"It's concise, unlike the stuff you read here. It tells you what complex marriage is and it gives you a critique. The Group Marriage Collective is a utopian community inside--well--a society that is utopian from your point of view. It's what you might have called 'counter-cultural' in your era."

"It's what we used to call 'wife swapping,'" I said. "And as for 'counter culture,' I can tell you about pseudo-hippie communes from personal experience when I was a college kid. You know what I remember most? People flipping out on drugs and tons of dirty dishes in the sink."

Koda-san was patient. "I appreciate your experience," he said. "Remember what Nordhoff wrote. He took the book from my hand and read:

"'Complex marriage' means, in their practice: that, within the limits of the community membership, any man and woman may and do freely cohabit, having first gained each other's consent, not by private conversation or courtship, but through intervention of some third person or persons; that they strongly discourage, as an evidence of sinful selfishness, what they call "exclusive and idolatrous attachment" of two persons for each other, and aim to break up by "criticism" and other means every thing of this kind in the community; that they teach the advisability of pairing persons of different ages, the young of one sex with the aged of the other..."

He handed the book back to me and said, "We do not believe in sin. Nor do we believe in dictating who should live with whom. There is a general agreement that people can and ought to change partners periodically, or have multiple partners within the community. Thus, everyone's home is open to everyone else. I may live with partner A for a week and partner B for another week, then return to partner A."

"Put another way, once you get weary of your domestic responsibilities with partner A you hop off to partner B," I said.

"But as you have seen, all our domestic responsibilities are communal! We have the purest form of socialism every devised! Think of it! We have had socialism for centuries and people still live bourgeois lives by isolating themselves through marriage. We live in collectives and yet we lead private lives."

"So what's wrong with that?" I asked.

"Everything! Everything is wrong with it! The nuclear family is an obstacle to true communalism!" He paused, then said, "Sorry, Tom san, I got carried away. I wanted to explain the blandness you saw in the people here. It is cultivated. I mean since childhood. People changing partners constantly must rid themselves of extreme passions. In the process of complex marriage people have rid themselves of all illusions about each other--and with that all the romanticism it entails, be it jealousy, or nostalgia, or lust, or notions of beauty. That is why the children thought it strange to photograph each other. That's why people were not excited over the photographs you took of them. Now this is something that happens naturally once the correct social scene is set and the correct social agreement is made. We do not coerce--we do not even train. We cultivate. That is, we encourage people's natural communal inclinations in their affections to emerge. This could never have worked under capitalism. The whole of society was against it. Why, look at the Kibbutz movement--look at what the old Israeli government did to destroy that--"

"So is this life what you really want for yourself?"

"What I really want doesn't matter. There are higher purposes."

"You mean you are not happy here?"

"Happiness is not everything, Tom-san," he said. "Once you see that you'll be--well--a lot happier."

The next day Koda-san called for a spontaneous mutual aid meeting after dinner. I was invited to join the meeting. We were ten people who assembled in a small meeting room attached to the main dining hall.

I feared the worst, assuming that "mutual aid" session was really a "criticism" session resembling the vicious one I had read about in Nordhoff. I expected the lot to put Koda-san down. I was wrong. People brought a bottle of very fine Yamanashi non-alcoholic red wine and some excellent cheese. They laughed and joked with each other for a few minutes and then inevitably someone said, "Who's in charge?"

"I guess I am," Koda-san said.

"How can we help you?" a woman asked.

"I feel unworthy of you," Koda-san said.

"You're not unworthy of us," several people said.

A number of people talked about how kind and sensitive he was.

"I feel that I can not love all of you equally," Koda-san said.

"That is not required," a man said. "We are not perfectionists."

The people smiled at each other, sharing an inside joke which, I realized, I'd understood by reading about the Perfectionists.

A woman spoke: "Koda-san, you spent a week with me and my—our daughter last month. Remember? It was when Shinsuke-san was with Yuko san. You cried in your sleep. Do you wish to tell us about it?"

"I had a dream about the Time Collective," Koda-san said.

"Do you miss the Time Collective, Koda-chan?" the same woman asked.

"No, not really. I can always communicate with it."

"Well what was it that made you cry?" the woman asked.

"It was Kro-chan. I miss Kro-chan."

"You've always spoken so highly of Kropotkin Tsuda," a man said.

"Are you in love with her?"

"We both have decided that love is a selfish idea. Our ancestors in the days of chaos eschewed romantic love in favor of the love of humanity. We believe we should be true to those ideals. Many years ago, when we were children, Kro-chan would tell stories that her aunt Hiroko told her about the great struggles. She impressed on Kro-chan that if each new generation did not sustain that idealism of the old, our beautiful socialist society could mutate back to the evil old days of capitalism. We vowed that we would be the greatest of friends but that we would be selfless in our friendship."

"You know, our collective is trying to do something very different from what you presumed when you came here," a woman said. "We see ourselves as the next stage in social evolution. We are not afraid that society will go back to the bad days of the capitalist system."

"I know," Koda-san said.

"Are you in love with Kro-chan?" the man asked again.

"How can I afford to be?" Koda-san said. "There is so much to her. She is a genius. I can never hope to keep up with her. There is no one she can love. She wears men out."

"That doesn't answer my question," the man said.

Then he asked me, "What do you think, Tom-san?"

"I think if he loves Kro-chan, he ought to go back to her."

Everyone was silent.

"Maybe you need some time to think about this," a woman said. "We are always here when you need us."

With that the meeting ended. Koda-san thanked me for my honest thoughts, but after that he went out with a group of people who were talking some children into the mountains for overnight camping. I thought it was a good time to leave the Group Marriage Collective. I left early the next morning.

Though I was there less than a week, it felt longer because of how I'd been drawn in by the people. I must note that this community lived very simply. Much of furniture, such as it was, was made from wood they themselves cut, as were their houses, which were utilitarian geodesic structures. They believed that life could be simplified by making work as easy as possible. In the main dining area they sat at round tables that made it easier to serve food, as I discovered when I worked in the kitchen. We in the kitchen generally cooked simple traditional Japanese food--rice, potatoes, fish, miso, noodles, and the like--and brought it out on big circular dishes which rotated. In this way people could help themselves and we didn't have to serve anyone individually. Everyone brought his or her own dish and chopsticks. All we had to wash in the end were the serving dishes and the tables. I found people out every morning cleaning up around the collective and was surprised to learn that generally there were few assigned cleaning details. People did it spontaneously.

In the Group Marriage Collective's library I read Fourier. He said that in his "Harmony" little boys should take charge of cleaning up because they have a natural affinity with dirt. I don't think Fourier ever had a childhood, at least a normal one. Boys, like girls, go through a stage where they have a super sensitive aversion to dirt and, frankly, to assume otherwise is a mistake. I noticed that the boys and girls at the Group Marriage Collective were always spotless--always well scrubbed and well dressed. Even hiking in the woods they moved with a kind of pristine grace.

The dirty work at the Group Marriage Collective, which everyone did, never felt like dirty work.

I should also mention that the Group Marriage Collective was as multicultural and multi-racial as the Time Collective--and like every collective I would visit in twenty-fourth century Japan.

In the end I felt considerable affection for the Group Marriage Collective, though I disagreed with them. I hoped Kropotkin Tsuda's boyfriend could take care of his problems without me. I had my own.

*****

In my enthusiasm to get to the train station as quickly as possible to catch my connection to Kyushu, I pushed that recumbent to the limits, running it off the road into a ditch. I was unhurt, but the rear wheel rim had a dent. I limped into Akiyoshidai and found that the local transportation collective had a repair shop by the train station. A mechanic told me that I needed a new rim and that one of the little motors in the hub was shot.

"We'll have it fixed in about two hours," he said.

While waiting, I nearly got into a fistfight with a Russian agronomist. I met him in a café. A man with a grizzled beard and powerful arms, Victor Borisovich was a researcher visiting an agronomists' convention in town. When he learned I knew Russian, he was delighted. When I said I knew Katsuro Suzuki, with whom he had worked in Siberia, his eyes filled with tears, he threw his arms around me and kissed on both cheeks.

"Let us talk soul to soul," he said.

Though the Russian each of us spoke was somewhat different, we could communicate. I told him about my journey.

He said: "Sincerely, Thomas, I feel you are spending too much time among the eccentrics. Most collectives, frankly, are not colorful; you should know how the average person lives. People lead quiet but fulfilling lives in Japan--unexciting but extremely happy. They marry, they have children, they live in one place all their lives, and they fill their spare hours among family, friends, pets, their gardens and their hobbies. You need to be among them more. The farming collectives, especially. These are a wonder to behold! What they can do with such little land!"

Like an idiot I told him my feelings about farms.

That's when we nearly had the fistfight. Victor Borisovich stood up, his eyes glaring and calling me things in Russian that defy translation. I too stood, fists ready, weeks of tension ready to explode. Fortunately for us both, Victor Borisovich held up a calming hand.

"Forgive an old man his temper," he said as we both sat down. "Our friend Katsuro and I--do you know what we did together? We worked on recycling, yes. Our Katsuro is modest. He never told you that he discovered a way of growing oranges in our Siberian permafrost?"

"No!"

"Ah, the man nearly died a few times out there. That is why I became so passionate. What could make a man think of farming as boring, Thomas?"

I told him about my grandparents. I also told him about my wife.

"I've always loved cycling in the countryside," I said. "My wife has never wanted to go with me. Every time she goes into a rural place she suffers post-traumatic stress. (If you don't mind I'd rather not use the past tense.) I got soured on the joys of Japanese rural life after listening to what she went through. Once you hear it, Victor Borisovich, you'll understand."

"I'm a good listener, Thomas."

"Both Yuriko's mother and father are from the provinces--the inaka as they used to say in old Japanese. She grew up in a provincial city. All of her relatives were poor rice farmers from the mountains. There was never a year in her childhood when she didn't take part in the harvest in the little mountain village alongside her relatives.

"In my time there were so many lies told about the countryside by city people. On one hand they said that country folk were stupid and boorish. On the other hand, they saw country life as idyllic. Where Yuriko's family came from was not heaven.

"There was no high school up in that mountain village. Her cousins had to go down to the flat lands to study and live in dormitories. High school education cost more for the poor mountain villagers than for the well-heeled people in the flat lands. Most of what Yuriko remembers about her relatives is their complaints about what they didn't have.

"Yuriko's family was envied. They were not rich, but they had opportunities. They could eat curried rice, go to a shopping center, and see a movie any time they wanted to. Yuriko's relatives who were young men were all sexually frustrated. Women did not want to marry farmers. They went off to the cities in search of office jobs. Damned were the first sons who inherited the farms. There was no chance of escape for them. Out of family loyalty they stayed on.

"Those visits were sheer hell for Yuriko because of the jealousy she had to endure. Yet her mother and father went up out of obligation.

"Yuriko said the harvests she experienced were backbreaking slave labor. The bullying she got from her relatives made the work a million times more difficult than it would have been otherwise. She never became as proficient at farm work as her cousins--and believe me, they never let her forget it. She was beaten so many times because she was too slow, or she didn't do something right, or spilled grain on the ground.

"I must tell you that farming was different in the mountains than in the flat lands. The rice fields in the mountains were small and hard to get to. Because of the constant rain, the rice was downgraded. In the flat lands rice harvesting was comparatively easy. There was a machine called a 'binder' that cut the rice and bound the stalks automatically. In the flat lands it was a tractor; in the mountains it was more like an oversized lawnmower that was once very common in America. Mountain farmers had to haul those binders up and down the steep slopes in pickup trucks (if you know what they are), which they did at breakneck speeds. As the binders could not cut the edges of the irregularly shaped fields, you had to go at them with scythes, a job that was usually left to the old women. Then you had to bind the stalks by hand. Cut and bound, the stalks had to be gathered quickly and hung on bamboo racks that were assembled in the fields after cutting.

"Most of those fields were small. Some were only patches stuck in between groves of trees.

"Harvest, Yuriko remembers, was always a race against time. No matter how many people were helping you, no matter how many fields you had harvested the previous day, you inevitably felt you were far behind. You were up before dawn, ate breakfast quickly and were out in the fields. You worked rain or shine. If it rained you got soaked. You were told to move faster not to catch cold. Inevitably Yuriko caught colds.

"She liked my relatives' neighbors, who were far more generous to her than her relatives. When she was helping them they would dote on her. This unfortunately made her cousins all the more jealous.

"There is an incident Yuriko remembers. They were working in the terraced fields. It had just stopped raining and the sun was emerging from the clouds. The mountainsides were hit with this eerie filtered light that intensified all the yellows and greens. It was then that she noticed a new and expensive foreign car parked by the side of the road and a man and a woman watching. The man had a camera with a telephoto lens. He was taking photographs of the harvest. She remembers stopping and watching him, astonished. What aesthetic qualities did he see in her work? She was dirty, tired, aching in every joint and soaked from the rain. From where she stood the world was terrible. Until that moment she could not imagine that anyone else could see it any other way. She wished that stupid man would come down among them and at least muddy his shiny new shoes. She wished he could see the dead field mouse her aunt had crushed that morning under her rubber boot.

"Why did Yuriko's parents drag her up into the mountains year after year? Because her relatives made her parents feel guilty about having left the mountains for a softer life in the flat lands.

"Yuriko's poor relatives! They were great supporters of Kakuei Tanaka, if you remember him--a highly corrupt Prime Minister from Niigata. They loved him because they believed that he had done so much for poor farmers by shifting so much wealth to Niigata. Niigata was the only provincial prefecture on the Sea of Japan to have a Shinkansen going to it, thanks to Tanaka. Her mother and father tried arguing that Tanaka was doing nothing for the poor farmers in Niigata. He was only making himself and his family and friends rich. All to no avail. Tanaka was the peasant Napoleon as far as they were concerned. Her parents, I should tell you, voted only Socialist and Communist. They also were really good to me.

"Anyway, now you know why I feel the way I feel about farming and anything related to it, Victor Borisovich."

The Russian agronomist had tears in his eyes. "It was like that in Russia before the second revolution! Ah, the oppressed taking their pain out on each other! Ah the terrible past! But the present, dear friend! Your bicycle must be fixed and waiting for you. Let me walk with you to the repair shop."

Yes, my recumbent was now good as new. Also the train I needed was coming in a few minutes. Victor Borisovich gave me his card and then embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks. "Come to Russia, good friend! We will fish! We will hunt! We will argue! It is good to argue sometimes--yes?"

"Take care, my friend!" I called from the platform. I wished I could have heard Victor Borisovich's stories, I thought as I relaxed in my train seat.

Ah well--finally I was off to Kyushu!
Chapter Eleven: Thomas Redburn Goes to Miyazaki

The train passed through the Kanmon Tunnel and entered Kyushu. After over three centuries, the landscape still remained infinitely more dramatic than Honshu's. The mountains rose more steeply. The greens of the vegetation were more intense. The sky seemed a purer blue; the sun brighter and hotter.

Kyushu people have the sun inside them. They can be hot-tempered but they are open and spontaneously generous. It was as true now as in my time. My car was filled with Kyushu people. They drew me into their conversations gave me food and offered me flasks of shochu (the Kyushu vodka) which I declined, saying I had an addiction problem.

"Where are you headed, brother?" an old man asked.

"Miyazaki," I answered. "I'm looking for my wife's descendants."

"We're from Miyazaki!" several people from a hunting collective shouted. "Come stay with us. We'll call ahead and say Thomas Redburn is with us!"

We changed trains in Fukuoka, which, from what little I saw of it, reminded me of Kobe. Miyazaki City was different. I discovered this when a festive delegation of local citizens met me at Miyazaki-Minami station, loaded my bike on a solar powered open bed truck, and gave me a tour of the city.

Though Miyazaki City had a mixed urban-rural plan, it was more country-oriented than any other city I'd seen. There was much more green in Miyazaki City than I saw anywhere else, and that is saying a lot. Along the beautiful Oyodo--which in my time was the second-most polluted river in Kyushu--trees helped form a natural levee. There was a vast forest area on either side of the Oyodo. The houses were bigger than the ones I saw on Honshu and spaced farther apart. I noticed fewer geodesic domes and more traditional houses, both Japanese and western. Many houses were made from wood--I mean wood that had been cut. A great deal more time had been spent on decor. The houses had fretwork with filigree patterns whose symbolism I took to have something to do with ecology, revolution, plus hunting and agriculture. Also many streets were paved with lovely flagstones, not the blue stuff I saw in Honshu. There was something I found in Miyazaki that I had missed on Honshu. It was the smell of cut cedar. Also in Miyazaki you ate real fish as sushi, not aquatic clones.

The Miyazaki region, like every other region, was self-sufficient. This was not like in my time when Japan imported most of its food and the rural population was dwindling (The average farmer's age in 2006 was around sixty.)

"There's little world trade because everyone's self-sufficient," one of my companions told me. "Now we trade primarily for fun!"

"Global warming has left its mark on Miyazaki," a woman said. "Much habitable land went under the ocean. Land reclamation has been slow since we do not wish to upset the existing ecological system."

People were slower in Miyazaki than in Honshu. They took more time at meals and in going where they had to go. They were, however, far from lazy.

Here is what I learned about the general state of being in Kyushu. There was a "garden Kyushu" movement started after the revolution. It was largely in reaction to the intense exploitation Kyushu had suffered at the hands of the capitalists, which included an intensive dumping of industrial waste. Photographers, Eugene and Aileen Smith, exposed Minamata disease to the world. The mercury poisoning in Minamata, Kumamoto-ken by Chisso Corporation was just the tip of the iceberg. Toroku suffered from arsenic poisoning thanks to a company taken over by Sumitomo Mining. All of Kyushu suffered terrible pollution--either from agricultural wastes, because the farmers over-used pesticides, or industrial wastes. The countryside was the capitalists' toilet. The mess the capitalists left in Kyushu was especially awful.

"Garden Kyushu" was designed to reverse all that. Every last golf course was ripped to pieces and converted into forest or living space. Many industries were shut down and those allowed to remain were radically reconstituted. Much land was returned to nature. There was also a retro-revolution: a backlash against scientific progress. Not one industry produced artificial food in all of Kyushu. All food was either caught or grown.

In the ensuing days I met with groups from several local collectives. Miyazaki collectives tended to resemble extended families. Actually, Miyazaki City was one big collective that was divided into smaller confederated communes. Here I found people who might fish in the morning, build houses in the afternoon, and be folk musicians in the evening. There was a general loathing of occupational definitions. To the question, "What kind of work do you do?" I got a variety of dismissive answers, ranging from, "Well, you know, lots of stuff," to, "Whatever is necessary today."

From what I could determine, the Miyazaki area was a gigantic arts and crafts colony. People tended to be suspicious of anything not made by hand.

Miyazaki was far from "primitive." The trains were as swift and quiet as any in Honshu. The little self-propelled "centipede bus" which wound its way through the streets of Miyazaki City was not only modern but also unique.

A group of friendly men and women, all dressed in homemade clothes, took me for an extended tour of the Oyodo River in a beautiful sloop painted in red, blue and yellow. The sloop depended entirely on sails! And it was fast!

Sailing up the Oyodo, I saw an occasional wooden tower. I asked what the towers were for. My escorts explained they were to watch for flooding, often occurring during the rainy season between June and July.

We ate fish as we sailed. No matter how good the sea vegetable clones were, they could not, in my estimation, beat the real thing! The community I stayed with by the Oyodo River had special facilities for travelers. Miyazaki was, as in my time, sunny more times throughout the year than any other place in Japan. This attracted many tourists. The communities had adjusted their lives around this. Despite the summer's touristy atmosphere, the region was not only self-sufficient but also culturally self-contained. Tourists were welcomed, treated warmly, but not pandered to--as in the old days.

Many craftspeople befriended me. I visited ceramics factories, leather workers, makers of traditional paper, woodworkers of every sort--from carpenters to makers of furniture and utensils. I also met painters, sculptors and--yes! \--photographers.

Miyazaki people dressed differently than people on Honshu. Their clothes were coarser and the colors were brighter. Their shoes were made from stitched leather and not quite as comfortable as the ones I got in Kobe, though certainly made well and (I think) more rugged than any you'd find in Kobe. Both men and women wore hats with plumes.

I made two purely recreational trips. One was up to Shiiba in mountains above Hyuga City. In Shiiba people spoke of their neighbors as living above or below them. When I viewing the terraced rice fields, I asked my guide, "How do you harvest those?"

He explained that they used the traditional methods, adding that Shiiba was a historical village purposely growing rice along traditional lines as a kind of living museum. People came from all over Kyushu to participate in the harvest. I thought of my wife then and felt sad.

Though remote, the Shiiba Area community had schools from kindergarten to university. A special train let people travel between the mountains and the flatlands in a short time--only about an hour to Miyazaki City and twenty minutes to Hyuga. I note that this swift mountain climbing train was constructed for such a relatively small population: probably less than ten thousand.

The people of Shiiba were not only especially warm and gracious, but also very attractive. The legend explaining this was the same one I had heard in the twentieth century--that they were descended from Heike warriors who escaped from the Genji clan after the Battle of the Seto Inland Sea. I had heard similar stories in other mountain villages.

I also went up to Takachiho, home of the Yokagura. I got invitations from many a farm family to see their kagura in winter. Takachiho formed one farming collective, though farms were highly dispersed among the mountains. Like Shiiba, Takachiho culture was a living national museum.

When I returned to Miyazaki I was invited to a hunt. Many Kyushu men and women earned their living as hunters.

The forests of Miyazaki--like of all of sparsely populated Kyushu--were rich in game. There were millions of pheasants. "They blot out the sun when they rise in a flock," one old hunter said to me. "All you have to do is to point your shotgun at the sky and you cannot miss." There were also wild ducks and geese and bear and wild boar. Tribes of monkeys lived in the mountains and by the ocean. People did not hunt them. They were considered friends. One of the great monkey centers of Kyushu is the city of Nobeoka.

Ironically in Natsume Soseki's novel Botchan, the hero thinks of Nobeoka, where a fellow teacher was transferred, as a place where people and monkeys co-mingle. That was much the case in the Nobeoka that I visited. In my time it had been a drab industrial town. It was now a town famous for both sea and river fish, for its textiles, and for its medical research. Nobeoka because was visited by tribes of monkeys especially in winter when food in the mountains was scarce. I was told you could find hundreds of them fishing on the shores of the Gokase River on winter evenings. I also learned that some people were able to communicate with monkeys. Nothing surprised me anymore.

I must tell you about my hunting trip.

Word had gone out that because the wild boar (inoshishi) population had soared they were not only destroying crops but also threatening people. Inoshishi were not usually hunted in the summer but in the winter when they were meatier and their fur was thickest. This was an emergency. My host collective selected a group of hunters to go into the forest of Kyotake, where a herd had been spotted, and kill no more than fifty beasts. I was asked to join the party.

I must say here that all sport hunting was forbidden in Kyushu. Hunting was for food. The night before we were to depart, the hunters, men and women, gathered in a special hunting lodge. We had a brief ceremony in which a hunter was chosen to recite a poem--I might call it a prayer--which asked the boar tribes to forgive us. It also asked that we all should return without harm. The poem also pledged that no part of the dead boars would be wasted. Then we ate a special inoshishi nabe, thick soup made from wild boar meat, roasted with the hair still on it. We washed it down with a special sake. (Yes, I drank it, but that night I was in control.) Throughout the night we ate, drank and sang songs about hunting, about inoshishi, and about nature. We fell asleep together on the lodge's hardwood floor and used the blankets made from wild boar skins.

At four in the morning we rose and went to the Oyodo River. The mist hung so heavily over the river that you couldn't see the other bank. It was chilly. Yet everyone, men and women, stripped naked and jumped in. They hollered at me to join them. I was shy at first. The sheer novelty of bathing in the Oyodo overwhelmed my residual modesty. The polluted twentieth and twenty-first centuries Oyodo was still sharp in my memory from when my wife and I stayed with one of her uncles whose house was close to the riverbank. Raw sewage mixed with agricultural chemicals: I cannot begin to describe the smell. Seeing naked people splashing about in the once polluted Oyodo overwhelmed me. I had to jump in with them, cold as the water was. The water was so clear that I could see the bottom. There were all these tadpoles and tiny tropical-looking fish flashing golds and blues darting around my ankles. For one sweet moment I felt I had entered a boyhood I had never known. I turned blue and my teeth chattered like castanets. Yet I would have stayed in the water all day were we not committed to hunting wild boars.

We changed into our hunting clothes, made from a fine cloth dyed in many bright colors and decorated with images of the wild boar. A hunter handed me a crossbow. Crossbows were the only hunting weapons, besides knives, the collective used. After a few people instructed me on how to use one, I said squeamishly, "I will only carry my camera." My hunting partners insisted I carry a crossbow. Inoshishi were dangerous and I might have to defend myself or save someone else.

This crossbow was a beautiful thing. Its stock was made from straight-grained walnut and it loaded very easily. You loaded the short arrows into a magazine and then all you had to do was to pull back the draw bolt and an arrow would be automatically strung. As primordial as we looked, this was the twenty-fourth century. Our crossbows were programmed to shoot only wild boar, so there was no danger that we would accidentally kill each other. Also the tip of each arrow contained a bioelectrical charge that would instantly kill the creature no matter where it was hit.

The arrows were also biodegradable, so if they were lost there was no danger of them causing pollution. I was told that all bullet heads and shotgun pellets were made of material which could act as nutrients when released into nature. Ironically, that which did not kill a wild duck could feed it! In my time, I told my companions, many waterfowl died from lead poisoning because they ate the shot that landed in the lakes. They were downright angry to hear this. How, they asked me, could human beings be so thoughtless, so cruel?

Nowhere had I seen people who loved animals as much as the hunters of Miyazaki. I imagined this was because their lives were bound to the killing of animals and in their hearts they felt the hunted creatures' terror and pain. Dogs, cats, birds, and other creatures were treasured not simply as pets but as friends. "In some communes animals outnumber people," someone told me jokingly. I developed an incredible friendship with a family of cats at one place I stayed. That's another story.

We ate a light breakfast and set out in a sloop down the Oyodo River. The early morning mist still hung over the river. Along the banks I could see the shadowy outlines of houses and groves of cedars and pines. The river fish were feeding. As we watched them leaping out of the water, several of our crew said they wished they had time to fish. There were also many water birds: herons, crested ibises, ducks, and species I could not recognize. Several times along the banks pheasants and quail appeared. A few of our band said they wished they had their shotguns. It was just talk: tradition said no one could hunt without performing a ritual of contrition beforehand.

Then I got a real surprise: I saw a pair of giant turtles wade on to the riverbank. I was no turtle expert, but I knew I had never seen turtles like these. (They were a species of soft-shelled turtles I found out later, though I never ascertained how they got into the Oyodo River.) One turtle followed us for half an hour. He was an old friend of the hunters. We tossed him leftover inoshishi meat from a bucket.

We arrived at a pier and transferred to several solar powered jeep-like vehicles awaiting us. We then traveled through Miyazaki City to the Kiyotake forest, where we found a group of people from a forestry collective waiting for us. We were to go into the forest on special tandem bicycles. The captain sat upright behind the stoker who sat in a semi-recumbent seat. I said the tires seemed too skinny to be of use on rough ground, but my companions assured me that they were very strong and allowed the bicycles considerable agility. Their skinniness also left narrower tracks and therefore caused less damage to the forest floor. I took the stoker's position on one of the tandems. My collective had informed our host collective that I would be photographing the hunt and so they had attached a monopod onto my machine. In this way I could have both hands free if necessary. Thus, with a crossbow and the camera that Conway-san had given me, I set off with my captain, a young woman in her twenties named Tamara Kai. (I had left the Leica back in Miyazaki. It was too slow and delicate for this.)

"Is your seat belt fastened?" Tamara-san asked as we started into the cedar forest. "This adventure might get rough. Keep the crossbow handy. Your first priority will be to protect us."

I should mention that my captain had arms and legs like tree trunks and her hair was in braids. She was about two meters tall.

"Is there actually much danger?" I asked.

"You never know. It depends on the inoshishi. They are communal animals like us. Seeing their own killed angers them. They'll charge."

She spoke as she inhaled and exhaled in great bursts with her powerful lungs. It was not yet hot, but her suntanned shoulders and arms were already glistening with sweat.

"You must never hunt the wild boar alone. A few years ago a foolish man from Honshu came here and thought he would be a great hunter. He shot a wild boar and the herd chased him up a tree. You know they clustered around the tree to wait for him to become weak and drop into their midst like an over-ripe fruit. He would have been torn into little pieces by their tusks if some of us had not happened by and scared the boars away."

We were now deep inside the cedar forest. It had become so dark due to the tallness of the trees that we had to turn on our lights.

"I feel sorry for these creatures," Tamara-san said. "They come down to dig for the little red land crabs that bury themselves in the ground here. Unfortunately the crabs bury themselves in the embankments around our farms. This is when they are most nervous and might rampage. We have two goals. One is to thin out the herd and the other is to make them return to the high country in the mountains. We will then drop food for them."

A message came over our intercom: A herd of around two hundred inoshishi was rooting in a clearing by the Kiyotake River.

"Here we go," said my captain. "Pedal hard!"

I pedaled with all my might. We flew through the forest, dodging stumps and bunny hopping over ravines. There was many a time I closed my eyes in terror. Finally we came to the river. We were both dripping with sweat.

"Drink from your water bottle," Tamara-san said. "Drink all you can. Or you'll dehydrate. There! There's the herd! Hang on, here we go! Pedal like crazy, man!"

We rode into a grassy plain. The ground, fortunately, was hard enough that we did not lose traction. We pedaled carefully over the short grass. Our collective was making a semi-circle around the herd. I put my camera on extreme telephoto and looked through it. I saw about thirty tandem-riding hunters from other collectives gathered on the other side of the herd. The idea was to encircle them but give them a line of escape. We approached closer. The herd was poised for battle, grunting and kicking up dirt with their hooves. My captain took a horn from her wide belt and blew. Suddenly our collective let fly with their arrows and around twenty of the beasts fell.

I was photographing in earnest. My captain circled in closer.

"I hope you got enough pictures because we've got to run for it. They're mad!" she said.

For several crucial minutes the herd was confused because we had attacked them from several sides. Then they had broke up into teams. And one team was headed for us.

"Pedal!" she screamed. "We have to make for the woods!"

Our machine rose up on its back wheel and Tamara-san spun it around. Then we leaped forward. I knew exactly what was happening and it scared the shit out of me. The wild boars were trying to cut off our escape and push us into the river.

"Pedal, brother, pedal" she shouted. "Get your crossbow ready!"

We had been separated from the others. Tamara-san called for help over the intercom. Gasping voices answered that help was on the way but for now we were on our own.

The herd was gaining on us. At the back of my mind I recalled from a casual conversation the awful fact that a boar could outrun the fastest tandem. My old legs plunged those pedals like they never plunged pedals in all my life.

Fortunately we had a good lead on them. Yet as the forest neared, the creatures gained on us. Soon they were nearly running along side us, not more than five meters away.

"Tom-san, shoot the lead boar!" Tamara-san called.

I raised my crossbow to my shoulder and aimed. It was difficult to keep a bead on the boar but my arrow found its mark and the giant creature tumbled. Several of the others stumbled over it and fell with angry grunts and shrieks.

"Good! We'll make it into the woods now!" she cried.

We shot into the forest and soon we were enveloped in semi-darkness. We rolled half-blind along a trail between the cedars that Tamara-san seemed to know by instinct.

"We need the light, damn it!" she shouted. "Switch it on. I cannot let go! There, on the right."

I touched a button and our lights came on.

Presently we were aware of the pounding of hooves.

"They're on to us!" my captain shouted. "Get your crossbow ready! There are four of them following us now."

In the shadows I could see a monstrous boar. He was dodging in and out of the trees, making it impossible for me to draw a bead on him. Then suddenly he faced us, paused, and charged into our lights. I aimed and fired. The creature dropped and our machine hit him and we rode over him, the chain wheel cutting into his flesh. Our rear wheel caught and we went over.

Tamara-san fell free from the machine, tumbled, and got to her feet. I was still strapped in. The lights shot crazily in two directions into the tall cedars.

Looking at the scene from the ground up, I saw a boar was heading toward Tamara-san. She pulled a great knife from its scabbard on her belt and stood prepared to meet the boar head on. Without thinking, I shot it with my crossbow and the boar crashed dead at her feet.

There was now an eerie stillness. I unstrapped myself and stood. I was unhurt, except for a dull pain in my shoulder. I looked at Tamara. She was still standing in a fighting pose with her knife.

Then air was fill with the sound of hooves. The sound grew progressively fainter.

Tamara-san relaxed and put her knife away.

"Thank you, Tom-san," she said softly.

"These arrows are programmed to hit the target no matter what, right?" I said.

Tamara-san shook her head. "Not no matter what," she said.

"You mean I could have missed?"

"The deities of the hunt were with us today," Tamara-san said.

I fainted into her arms. She lifted me off my feet and kissed me on the mouth. Then we tumbled on top of the dead wild boar and made love.

Chapter Twelve: Nagasaki

Being chased by wild boars is not fun. I had nightmares for weeks afterward. The hunters were fatalistic. All our party had frightening experiences and lost no sleep over it.

Tamara-san and I were inseparable after the hunt. When we had fully regained our reason, after much daily lovemaking, we redefined our relationship, as the saying goes. We decided that a single event, no matter how intense, was not enough to bind us forever. We admitted that we were very different people and probably would not make a compatible couple. I'm glad we could be honest with each other and remain friends. I also told her about my wife and kids. She had a good cry for me.

Tamara-san's family made a big fuss over me. I stayed in their home for most of my time in Miyazaki and became one of them. Tamara's grandfather loved to tell me revolutionary adventure stories that he had heard from his grandfather when he was a boy. His grandfather had been a guerrilla fighter. He said that Japan has very few descendants of the old corrupt ruling class because of guerrilla fighters from Kyushu. Tamara said that her grandfather was a spinner of tall tales.

Kyushu is an island of volcanoes. During my stay both Unzen and Aso were erupting, and Sakurajima was spewing ash on old Kagoshima City. There was something volcanic in the passions of Miyazaki's people. I went to a local council meeting and it was like nothing I've seen anywhere else. People were shouting at each other and even crying. The issue was something fairly minor--something about extending a road.

People, however, were invariably gentle when not arguing. And they worshipped nature. One day I saw a tribe of monkeys swinging through the trees in Phoenix Park. I followed them and found them feasting at a monkey shrine where people had left food for them. Though the collectives were like tribes, or extended families, they were not "clannish." At first I assumed Tamara-san's family and collective accepted me readily because I had saved her life and because we were intimate. I soon found that Miyazaki's tribal collectives readily adopted people without collectives. Everyone knew Tamara-san and I were sleeping together but no one objected, not even her parents and siblings. After Tamara-san and I became just friends, we would often get up early in the morning, find a boat and fish in the Oyodo River.

The way they treated me and my relationship with Tamara-san was not extraordinary. Nevertheless, Tamara-san's family and her collective felt a strong obligation to me because I had saved her life. I told them I was unworthy of this because if it hadn't been for my photography Tamara-san probably wouldn't have been put into such danger. When I decided it was time for me to leave, I went to the photography collective and had them make a book of my shots of the hunt. I gave it to Tamara-san's collective.

Tamara-san cycled with me to Miyazaki-Minami station where I would catch an express train to Nagasaki. After I loaded my machine in the bicycle storage car, we had ten minutes before I had to board.

"I want you to have something," she said reaching into her waist bag.

It was a boar's tusk. A hole had been drilled through it and a strap made of boar hide had been run through it. Tamara put it around my neck and embraced me.

Until the boarding announcement came, we stood facing each other, holding hands in silence, waiting to see which one of us would cry first. I got a window seat on the platform side and Tamara-san followed the train, holding her hand up in farewell.

I don't know which one of us cried first. Tears ran down my cheeks all the way to Nagasaki.

*****

Nagasaki made me feel as if I were back in Kobe. Like Kobe, it was a port town and quite international and diverse. Built on hills and mountainsides, much like Kobe, it had a distinct Western flavor. The most popular architecture was of Dutch influence. There was a lot of brick--which I understood was alive!

Nagasaki had this unreal fairy-tale quality you got when you visited places like Heidelberg, or Amsterdam, or Zurich. The craftspeople of Nagasaki left not one alley unadorned. Fountains were everywhere. I do not think I stepped or rode over a pavement that wasn't decorated with mosaics.

Nagasaki was a city of cafés and promenades. People loved to sit around for hours talking, or taking long walks with their friends and families. I wondered whether anyone ever worked in this place. Sometimes I felt my head spin as I cycled because of the pervasive smell of flowers on every street. I believe there were more flowering plants than trees in the city parks.

Nagasaki people were friendly and helped me find a pleasant guesthouse located on a hill overlooking the port.

Amidst all this beauty I felt profoundly sad. Not because anyone was unkind to me, but because everyone I saw seemed so happy. So happy in a normal, everyday kind of way. It was then that it started to dawn on me that though I was legally a citizen, had traveled about a lot and had had many unique experiences, had made many friends and had a lover, I would always be an outsider. People would be kind to me. They would honor me as someone with an important purpose in their society; and anywhere I went I would always be an honored guest--but in the final analysis only a guest.

I had gravitated to the extraordinary people of this society--the train and road collectives, hunters, utopian group marriage people--and knew that after I had stopped traveling I would return to the safe confines of the Time Collective. I would forever be around those who were in some way outsiders like myself.

There was an ordinary workaday world here--a world where mothers and fathers were gardeners one day, engineers the next, and street sweepers the day after that. There were people who made the sewage system work and others who saw to it that there was enough light at night. Who were they? I would remain alien to them in ways I had not as a resident gaijin in twenty-first century Japan.

Nagasaki was neighborhood oriented. Each neighborhood was in its own unique way a microcosm of the city. As I wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood all I saw was people sitting about in cafés. Finally, I asked a group in one café, "What do you guys do for real work?"

Well, guess what? They were working--and earnestly. Nagasaki was a giant university populated almost entirely by scholars and researchers. Thus did I fall into something extraordinary again!

Not the entire city was a university, of course. Nagasaki also was a port city and therefore a center of trade. For several days I decided to talk only to sailors. There were thousands of sailors in Nagasaki from Indonesia, The Philippines, Russia, China and Korea. We exchanged many stories, but in the end the people with whom I spent the most of my time were scholars and researchers, artists, and craftspeople.

Nagasaki was famous the world over as a city-university and I was the last to find out! Most of the people I saw in the cafés were actually conducting seminars or holding meetings.

Nagasaki was a city of never-ending meetings. A local joke had it that if you wanted to find friends, a lover, or a wife quickly you went to a meeting or organized one. Each neighborhood had kiosks where meetings for the week were posted. Here is a sample from only one neighborhood for one week in late August:

1. Preserving the Atomic Bomb Memorial--Heiwa Koen.

2. Council on Paper Recycling Improvement.

3. Study Group in Advanced Calculus.

4. The Care and Feeding of Pet Inoshishi. [I skipped that one.]

5. The Committee on Preservation of Historic Buildings.

6. Council on Enhancement of Forest Fungi.

7. Communal Cooking.

8. Utopian Literature and Thought Seminar.

9. Council on Ditches.

10. The Literary Journal of the Street Cleaning Collective.

11. Council on Communications.

12. Local History Collective's Neighborhood Association.

13. The Development of Multi-Talents in Children.

14. Work Group for Growing American Corn in Nagasaki.

15. Brewers' Council.

16. Monkey Biology Council.

17. Council on Herbal Medicine.

18. Ancient Churches Preservation Council.

19. Carpentry Council.

20. Nagasaki Beautification Council.

I attended the utopian literature seminar on a lark. Unfortunately, when the participants found out who I was, the agenda was abandoned and we all had a long talk about the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Finally I said: "If my presence here is going to disturb the natural flow of things I'm dropping out." The next day they got back to the declared agenda and we had a lively seminar.

Still I stood out. My fellow seminarians asked that I give a brief presentation on my feelings about utopian literature.

"I think it is interesting once you get into it. I guess my biggest complaint is that most of it is authoritarian." I began.

People smiled at this point and nodded their heads in agreement.

"Another thing that bothers me is that the characters who go to these utopian societies know everything about them when they come. Look, I cannot say that I even know my own society that well; your society will always be a mystery to me no matter how long I live here. How can anyone explain a totality? I speak as a photographer. I think of life in terms of captured moments. That is all I presume to know."

Those Nagasaki people were nice, but they also love to debate. We chewed a lot of fat (so to speak) over an excellent macrobiotic lunch in an outdoor eatery.

After the seminar, I shared a non-alcoholic beer in a waterfront café with the most down to earth member of our seminar, a sailor named Kim-san. He loved the sea, dangerous as his work could be.

"And do you know what I do with all the vacation time the Maritime Collective gives me?" he said. "I stay home on dry land with my family and I grow vegetables in my garden. My pumpkins have won prizes!"

Nagasaki, being a giant living university, and, therefore, a city of conferences and visiting scholars, had a large transient population. When the first of September rolled around, I thought it was time for me to get on my trusty recumbent and roll out. Riding along the coast, with vague plans to visit the Goto Islands, I started feeling sorry for myself. Could I have started a new family in Kyushu? In the end the breakup with Tamara-san was mostly my doing. I could not let go of the past. I could not let go of it because I could not think of it as the past but a continuous present in another dimension. I knew nothing about advanced theories of physics and how the universe operated. I only knew my feelings.

I remembered Morgana Lui's telephone number. Using the mobile phone I had installed in Miyazaki, I called Morgana Lui's parents in Kochi, Shikoku. Shikoku was far the hell away, but I'd decided I'd go there if she invited me.

Her father answered and said: "Oh, Thomas Redburn! Morgana often speaks of you! You are where--near Nagasaki? Good. She is staying at the Train Collective lodge in Sasebo. Let me give you the number. I know she'd love to see you."

I called the number and got Morgana Lui.

"Tom! Put your bicycle on the nearest train and come to Sasebo as quickly as you can. Please!"

I did so and arrived in Sasebo in less than half an hour. Morgana Lui was waiting for me at the station. She had dyed her hair gold, purple, orange and silver. She was wearing a bright single piece dress with prints of tropical birds. With a shriek of delight, she embraced me.

"My lodge is by the station. Leave your bike here," she said.

We said little after that. The moment we walked into her room and closed the door, we ripped off our clothes and made love.

About midnight, we got hungry and went to a quiet restaurant where night workers from the Sasebo Maintenance Collective hung out.

"Tom, you're quiet," Morgana Lui said. "What are you thinking?"

"The usual twenty-first century guilt, plus my usual confusions."

"Tom, I've got to tell you something. My boyfriend, Lex, is sailing into Sasebo the day after tomorrow."

"This was nice timing," I said. "I'd better clear out of town."

"Oh no, no, Tom! I want you to meet him. Look, Tom, Lex has lovers in every port. Just like I have lovers--"

"At every train station?"

"Well not quite," she laughed. "Given our temperaments and because we sometimes have to be separated for years, the kind of sexual lifestyles we have developed are best suited to our relationship. We love each other very much, Tom. As much as I know you love your family, though they are over three centuries away."

"In the past I'd be jealous as hell. Now I don't feel any jealousy at all. I'd like to meet your Lex, if it's comfortable for him and you."

"There is a special reason I want you to meet him. He's a good and kind man, but when he drinks he goes crazy. I thought you with your strength could help him see that he needs help."

"Sure. But I don't know what I can do," I said.

*****

When we got to the port, we got the bad news at the Maritime Collective office: Sailor Lex Shin had gone on a drunken binge as his freighter was docking. He was wrecking the ship's lounge and had stabbed a comrade in the arm. Several members of the collective were ready to shoot him with tranquilizing guns.

"No, damn it, don't!" cried Morgana Lui. "He's got allergies and you'll kill him! Let me go talk to him!"

"I'm coming with you," I said.

Accompanied by five sailors, we boarded the cargo ship, which from the outside looked to me more like a floating jumbo jet. We went down to the lounge, where, amidst shattered mirrors and overturned furniture, we found Lex with a bottle of gin in one hand and a knife in the other. He was slashing at the air with the knife and shouting, "Away! Away you snakes and rats! Away!"

"D.T.'s," I said. "This is bad."

"Tom and I will handle this," Morgana Lui told the sailors. "Hey Lex! It's me! M-chan. Tom Redburn is also here. Knock it off!"

Lex stopped slashing the air, and stared. "Hey, M-chan," he said weakly. "I've screwed up again, darling."

Morgana Lui walked over to him and took the knife from his hand.

Just then the sailors rushed in and grabbed him.

There was an official hearing, which I had to attend, along with Morgana Lui, the injured sailor (his arm in a sling), the ship's crew, and representatives from the Maritime Collective. Lex Shin, head hung down in shame, sat with his defense attorney. When the judge and grand jury entered, the Sergeant at Arms said, "Who's in charge?"

"I guess I am," the judge said and the hearing began. Since Lex pleaded guilty, the bulk of the hearing concerned what should be done with him. After testimony from Lex's Maritime Collective comrades, the injured sailor, several doctors, Morgana Lui and myself, the judge asked the injured sailor and Lex what each though ought to be done.

"Lex is still my good friend," the injured sailor said. "I say send him to a sanitarium to get cured. Everyone who knows him has been saying that to him for years!"

"Shin-san?" the judge asked.

"Put me away. I'm trash," Shin-san said.

"Do you jury people wish to deliberate or would you agree to sending this man to a sanitarium for a cure?"

Each member of the jury agreed with the curative plan.

"Shin-san," said the judge. "We are not putting you in a sanatorium but a sanitarium. Understand the difference. Sanatoriums are for extreme and often hopeless cases. Your case is far from hopeless. Everyone, including your victim, hopes for your recovery. Does anyone wish to make a statement now?"

Suddenly I was on my feet. "Your honor, I too am an alcoholic. I have heard of a great place in Nagano. I will go with Lex-san."

"I am moved by your advice. If the jury doesn't object, Lex Shin will go to the Nagano Health Collective immediately. Thank you, Redburn-san. And please call me 'Judge-san.' 'Your Honor' is archaic."

That is how I ended up going to the place in Nagano that Mandela Goto had recommended to me.
Chapter Thirteen: Nagano

I was in Nagano for over a month before I sat down on October 21, 2357 to write the following letter to Kropotkin Tsuda:

Dear Kro-chan,

I am now writing from the famous Health Care Collective in Nagano where so much research is being done on longevity. It is a place where people may go any time they feel they need a short rest or a long vacation from regular work. I am being well taken care of. I've taken a lot of landscape photos. I've also worked on my alcohol problem, the main reason I came here. As I guess you know, Mandela-san was up here shortly after I arrived in September. He and I and some of the staff arranged a program for my alcohol problem. They concluded I've had a chemical imbalance but it was relatively easy to cure. Since my brain could naturally rectify this imbalance, we decided that we'd work on stimulating it rather than simply stick me with medicines. This involved a combination of bio-medical and psychological therapy. I spent several days being tested and consulting with physicians. By the end, the staff had a log of over 300 pages. There was nothing like this in my time and if there had been, I would not have been able to afford it. They say I'm cured! My big test was a drinking party. I drank a fair amount of booze but I didn't get drunk! It was like I was drinking water. So when I had enough I simply stopped. I've had no desire to start again. I mean I've lost interest in booze. They did something to my enzymes. The staff gave me a thorough explanation of what they did to me, but, given my awful ignorance of biology, it all went into one ear and out the other. All I know is that I'm pretty happy. I wish I could share my joy with my family.

It has been an exciting week. I have been mountain climbing and camping. What is really amazing is that I spent this time with people who would be called criminals in my old world. Here they are simply treated as sick people. I am of course speaking about people with addictions, people who came here because they could not care for themselves and even those who had committed violent acts.

I love the natural beauty of Nagano. I was told how centuries ago, under capitalism, greedy land speculators had despoiled this area, building resorts and golf courses and other things. I was told about what an ecological disaster this new world of yours inherited after the collapse of capitalism. I must say that we lived a pretty rugged life out there. We slept in tents or just under the stars in our living sleeping bags. We cooked over an open fire. We even gathered much of our food. I was surprised by some of the strange edible things growing in the mountains. I was told that they were hybrids planted by travelers long ago for future travelers. Our only social amenities, besides communication equipment for emergencies, were the portable toilets that my comrades called (if you'll pardon me) "shit-eaters" because they are living creatures that consumed excrement and converted it into healthy loam.

Today is the first day that I had a proper bath and could put my beard into proper order. I'm sending you a photograph of myself out there. I wish I could send you photos of my comrades but I've been asked not to as they wish to remain anonymous--not so much for the sake of their privacy but because they wish to put the whole experience of their illnesses behind them once they have recovered. They do not wish for any possible nostalgic reminders. This, I should add, is not official policy. The decision was made ad hoc. I cannot even reveal who my companions were.

I can say that the people there came from all walks of life and all professions. I must say that I had to confront my prejudices toward addicted people--many prejudices that I did not know that I had. (Even though I had problems with booze.) One such prejudice--I think my main prejudice--was that drug addicts were criminal types or in some way social and psychological losers.

This is how I was taught to think in my previous life. In old Japan heavy drinkers were tolerated and even indulged, but there were severe penalties for people using "stimulant drugs." I had always thought it quite natural to treat "drug offenders" roughly and to put them into prison. I thought the way the system wanted me to think. I see now how wrong I was and how insane my society was. Addiction is a medical problem and everyone is susceptible. Most of the people I talked to didn't quite understand how or why they became addicted at first. Typically, most said that they suddenly developed insatiable craving for booze or intoxicating drugs. They began carrying alcohol or drugs with them wherever they went and suddenly found that they could never have enough. A number had trouble in their lives like an unexpected death or an unhappy love relationship. Most I would say were normal people who were leading normal happy lives when they became addicted. The Health Care Collective people told me that the group I camped with represented "hard cases," that is people who had difficulty responding to ordinary medical therapies.

I had assumed your drugs and medicines could take care of everything. I mean I figured that if you could cure the common cold surely you had medicines to cure addictions.

Yes, the Health Care Collective people said, these things exist, but not everyone can benefit from them. They said I was lucky that I responded as well as I did to the stuff they gave me.

Anyway, therapy is custom tailored to each individual. A detailed medical history and analysis, some consisting of over a 1000 pages, is prepared on each person. Then a program of recovery is negotiated with each patient. The patient must approve the program before it is administered and it can be changed any time that the medical staff and the patient think needs changing. "Do you always trust the patient?" I asked.

"In virtually all cases, yes," the nurse I was talking to said.

"Was it not so in your time?"

"We assumed that the person had done wrong and was out of control and should have no rights," I said.

"Forgive me, but that is highly unwise," said the nurse. "In extreme cases we must insist on certain cures, but that is under conditions where the person is very far gone. Even then we make sure that the person is not degraded. You see, Tom-san, in our society we assume people are basically responsible. It is something that we especially have to reaffirm when people are sick with an addiction. When that is established a program cure is usually successful."

"What do you do with people who are criminally insane, serial murderers for instance?" I asked.

"That's a difficult question," the nurse said. "A person may commit an act of violence in a moment of passion or a person might commit a hideous premeditated killing. In both cases there is an element of insanity. In the first case it is temporary insanity. In the second case the insanity is total. The murderer in the first case usually feels such remorse that we must guard that he or she doesn't commit suicide. In the second case you will find an individual who feels no remorse, even when knowing right from wrong. In the first case, the wrong doers are often consulted for determining the punishment, or, as some of our more progressive people like to say, the 'redemptive process.' The family and loved ones of the victim are also consulted."

"I find this impossible to believe," I said. "Wouldn't someone who committed a serious crime simply wish to escape punishment?"

"In your time people behaved that way because society was fundamentally unjust," said the nurse. "There were laws and there was morality, but everyone knew that in reality a different set of unspoken rules prevailed for the rich and powerful and for the working class. Am I right?"

"Very much so!" I said.

"And people were generally in conflict," the nurse said. "Social conflict was much like wars of old. You destroyed your enemy and did all you could to survive unscathed. How different is the attitude of people who live under a system of cooperation and passionate attraction! When people have done wrong they are genuinely remorseful most of the time. Those who are not we treat as madmen and we must put them outside of society until they can be rehabilitated."

"I understand there are special institutions for the very hard cases," I said.

"The few crazies in our midst are put into special institutions. We do as complete a psychological and medical study on such people as is possible and we basically try to make them into different people. Often we will wipe out parts of their memories or put them on a permanent drug therapy. We will give them a new identity before releasing them into society, even performing plastic surgery, and send them where they are unknown. We monitor them all their lives. I personally have worked with some of those types and I've seen some interesting transformations. I've also seen a few failures. Some of our less progressive comrades think that it's more humane to simply execute the failures who have committed murder, but I personally don't think so. Doing so would establish a dangerous categorical imperative that says that in some cases expedience is more important than human life. Anyway, the criminals you are talking about are very few--only a few dozen per century."

"So then people really are good in this society and all laws are built on that assumption," I said.

"I don't think people are all that good," the nurse said. "I'm certainly not without my faults. People can be unkind, they can be rude, and they can be greedy even if they have all they need. They can be pushy and unreasonable the way a lot of our council representatives are all too often these days. Yes, people can also be jealous in love and sex, even though it is fashionable these days in Japan to deny that one is jealous. (Sometimes I think if I hear one more person insist he or she isn't capable of jealousy I'm going to become criminally insane!) People can be downright monsters. That's why our system goes a long way against empowering the whims of evil-minded people. You know that back in the days of the Shoguns, lords could kill and torture people as they pleased. If one day the lord ordered that all people over three meters be executed no law was there to stop him. In your age many countries were blessed with democracy where that couldn't happen. Yet, we know the system of laws still managed to weigh in favor of the ruling class, who could order gangsters to murder labor leaders and police to intimidate the rank and file. Such was society divided by class and hierarchy and reinforced by racial, ethnic and sexual discrimination. Today all evil can be contained."

I should mention that I had many deep discussions with the patients up in the mountains. I opened my heart to them and talked about the grief I felt over the loss of my family. But please don't worry about me. I am quite content up here.

I have been reading quite a bit. I just started Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. Nagano sort of reminds me of the place that Hans Kastorp goes to. Let me tell you, my "rest cure" up here has been great! I love everyone at the Time Collective, and you most of all, Kro-chan. Please take care.

All Best,

Tom.

Svetlana Suzuki sent an e-mail to my mobile phone: "Dear Tom-san, I am happy to hear of your cure. Please return to the Time Collective. Katsuro and I have talked about it, and we want to adopt you as our son. We love you very much. Please come home."

This was followed a few minutes later by an e-mail from Kropotkin Tsuda: "Tom-chan! Stay where you are. I'm coming up. We have to talk."
Chapter Fourteen: The Tokyo Forest

"That's a Buddhist temple!" I said, pointing out the train window.

"So what? There are lots of Buddhist temples," Kropotkin Tsuda replied. "They tend to be in secluded areas. Ever since religion stopped being commercial and became a completely spiritual matter."

"People don't talk much about religion, do they?"

"What is there to talk about? If you believe something, it is your business. What others believe is their business. When the revolution separated religion from power it went inward. We have no religious conflicts or even debates. I suppose when people do talk about religion it is in very speculative terms. It is considered bad form to impose your religious beliefs on other people. The seclusion of temples, churches and such is a natural consequence of this turn inward."

"So there are no longer any priestly bureaucracies and hierarchies?"

"No, just a community of friends who get together and share spiritual wisdom as they see it."

"And do they ask who is in charge before they begin?"

"I don't know. I've never had any religious inclinations. I've visited Kyoto and Nara and saw all the well-preserved temples and shrines of old. Beyond that I've had no interest in religious matters."

"I always thought of myself as a kind of Buddhist, I guess," I said.

"Well, I can take you to a Buddhist meeting. There is quite a lovely old temple in the Tokyo Forest."

"No--that's okay. I have an allergy to any sort of places of worship. Probably because as a kid I was forced to got church."

"Suit yourself."

We lapsed into silence.

It had been this way, these intermittent and prolonged silences, ever since Kropotkin Tsuda had come up to Nagano. She had been uncharacteristically subdued and distant. We had stashed our bicycles on board a train early that morning and headed for the village of Shinjuku, the last stop for the Tokyo Forest.

"There's Mount Fuji!" I exclaimed. "Do people still climb it?"

"Yes, Mount Fuji is still dear to all of us. We can stop by on our way back from the Tokyo Forest if you like."

Again the uncomfortable silence.

I took out my copy of The Magic Mountain and began to read.

Kropotkin Tsuda went into a lotus position on the train seat and became meditative. Soon we were in Shinjuku. As we unloaded our recumbents from the bicycle car, I looked around in wonder.

"Is this really Shinjuku? Amazing! There used to be skyscrapers, traffic, mobs here. Now there is only this quaint little train station and huge trees all around!"

"Yes, indeed, indeed," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Tom-chan, would you be against leaving these bikes here and getting a tandem? We can better talk that way as we ride."

"Fine with me."

"Good. There is a bicycle place right around the street."

We crossed the street to a geodesic-domed building almost hidden behind some pine trees.

"A tandem?" said the bicycle mechanic who greeted us. "I just finished tricking out this one with a few of my own small innovations. Take it out and see how you like it. I've ridden it and it feels great."

"We trust you," Kropotkin Tsuda said to her. "We'll be back before nightfall. If anyone needs these bikes that's fine. Just have them sent back to the Time Collective. You know what a problem it is to have bicycles piling up in one place."

"Indeed I do!" said the mechanic. "We always have that problem here. I can even have them delivered to the Time Collective. If you'd like, keep this gem of a tandem. Let me know how it rides."

The tandem was like the one I had ridden in Kyushu on the hunt.

"Are there any wild boars in the Tokyo Forest?" I asked as we rolled the tandem out.

"If there are, I'm sure they're steering clear of you, Tom-chan."

"Wait a minute! This is serious! Are there or are there not inoshishi in this damned forest?" I said angrily.

"I'm sorry, Tom-chan. I didn't mean to make light of your hunting experience. No, I am sure there are no wild boars within a few hundred kilometers. This forest is a major recreational area and very well monitored. Frankly, Tom-chan, I really don't care for how they manage nature in Kyushu. Their attitude is let it all go as nature intends. Then they have problems like the one you witnessed. Animal overpopulation can be controlled with birth control sprays. Yet in Miyazaki they absolutely rebel if you suggest sending a helicopter and sterilizing a select number of wild animals. It isn't natural, they say. Then they go and kill a herd when there is overpopulation."

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about!" I said.

"Let's take off," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "It's better than getting into a fight over someone else's business. Are you captain or stoker?"

"You know the way better. I'll be the stoker."

We started pedaling down the road through the Tokyo forest.

Kropotkin Tsuda was silent, not even responding to the cheerful greetings from other cyclists. I did not try to engage her in conversation and wondered if this intimate tandem ride was such a good idea after all.

"Did you know old Tokyo very well?" Kropotkin Tsuda asked after about a quarter of an hour.

"Not that well. I came up a lot of times. I never lived there."

"We are near the old Imperial Palace. They've excavated it and made it into a museum."

"I'd just as soon skip it," I said. "Say, by the way—"

"I have a great idea!" exclaimed Kropotkin Tsuda suddenly brightening up. "There's a beautiful meadow by the ruins of the old stock exchange. Let's have our lunch there."

"Okay." I said, relieved by Kro-chan's abrupt change of mood.

As we rode, Kropotin Tsuda began to sing to herself. I kept quiet, lest I send her into a sour state again.

We were presently pedaling along a dirt road that passed through a meadow full of autumn flowers. Soon there were giant jagged slabs of mossy stone and concrete--the remains of the old stock exchange.

"Lots of foundations of old skyscrapers here," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "People decided not to excavate them as it would ruin the meadow. Let's park here, shall we?"

We stood the tandem up against an ancient cement slab and spread a blanket on grass between several huge chunks of weather-beaten concrete.

"Peaceful here," I said as I helped Kropotkin Tsuda unpack our food.

Laughter issued from somewhere within the ruins a few hundred meters away.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Lovers," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "The old stock exchange is a favorite place for lovers to meet and make love. I think that's the real reason there have been no excavations here. Too many people from too many generations have too many fond memories of this place."

More laughter echoed.

"You should hear this place some summer evening," she said. "My parents say I was conceived somewhere out here."

"Very romantic," I said. "I was supposedly conceived in the back seat of a 1937 Ford."

Kropotkin Tsuda said, "You know there are erotic folk stories about this place."

"Is this why you took me here?" I asked.

"I thought this would be a great place for a picnic, that's all."

"So you don't want me?" I said.

"Why don't we sit down and eat, Tom-chan. We have to talk."

"Kro-chan. I meant what I said in my letter. About loving you."

We embraced, leaning against the mossy side of a concrete block.

"Kro-chan, listen," I said. "I've thought and thought and I've decided to ask you to marry me. I'm ready to let go of my old life. I'm ready to let the past rest. I'm ready to devote my life to you."

Still embracing me, Kropotkin Tsuda said, "I can't, Tom-chan."

"Koda-san?"

"No. Something more serious."

"Hey, don't pull this on me, please. I love you, you blasted woman! If there are any problems we can solve them."

"We cannot!" she said, disengaging from me. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Tom-chan, you're my great, great grandfather."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"I probably left out a couple of 'greats' just now but, yes, I am positive. Svetlana told me just before I left for Nagano. She had been studying your genealogy and made the discovery a few days ago. I was shocked."

The lovers' laughter echoed through the ruins of the stock exchange.

"Why did you wait until this moment to tell me?" I demanded.

"I had a great conflict within myself. To tell the terrible truth, as we were riding I decided to bring you here for ulterior purposes. I thought, until we embraced, that the gap of generations and other factors would make our love all right. No--a grandfather is still a grandfather, no matter how many generations removed, no matter how young, and even if he might be a grandfather from another universe."

"Another universe? Kro-chan, how many surprises are you going to pull today on your poor old grandpa?"

"Dear, dear Grandfather. Please let us have our picnic. What I have to explain is complicated and speculative. I need nourishment."

"My grandmother use to say things like that."

We embraced again and laughed with a laughter that comes of relief.

"Okay, Tom-chan," Kropotkin Tsuda said after we had finished our sandwiches, "this is going to be hard. Let's take a walk."

As we walked through the meadow, Kropotkin Tsuda expounded.

"There are some things I couldn't explain. Why did we return to Real Time when we did rather than when I had anticipated? I checked and rechecked Doug. Nothing was wrong. Except my doubts. Years ago I had developed doubts if there was such a thing as time travel."

I stopped. "Then explain how I got here."

"This is just a hypothesis. I have nothing but a ledger full of mathematical jottings to back me up. But if I am right then the old discredited theory of multiple universes is right after all. Right with a vengeance! There may be actually billions of identical universes existing side by side like the rings of a tree. Only they are moving circles. Each circle moves at a slightly slower pace than the next. Each circle is a near mirror image of the other. So when you exceed the speed of light you hop universes, not travel through time."

"I am on an alien planet? I am a creature from outer space?"

"No, simply from an identical place in another universe."

"So in another universe, my family is actually alive!"

"If my theory is correct and there is a real time which is transcendent above all times."

"A lot of metaphysical stuff is going through my head," I said. "What about free will and all that? Are the astrologers right--are we guided by fate or destiny?"

"I could be totally wrong. My theory, as it stands now, is actually very Newtonian . Time and place are indeed separate. Everything that happens in the cosmos is predictable and follows a similar pattern. It's all very tidy, very mechanical."

"Is there anything wrong with that?"

"My brain has its limits. I just don't know. There can be a million reasons for why the discrepancy occurred. There may be indeed time travel. If my theory is correct we should be able to travel into the future. But we cannot do that--in spite of all the proofs of physics that we can."

"Maybe this is the outer rim of this collection of universes."

"I've thought of that," she said. "That is something we will probably never know. There will always be mysteries and imperfections even in the best of all possible worlds."

"Kro-chan, I am beginning to like this world of yours."

"What if I took you back?"

I looked across the meadow at the ruins and imagined them restored. I imagined Tokyo in my own time with its noise and pollution. Then I thought of my family.

"How could I live again in the twenty-first century knowing what I know?" I said.

"The choice is yours. Doug is fixed and ready to go. I've discussed this with the Time Collective and their decision was to let you decide."

"Kro-chan, how can I leave paradise for the twenty-first century?"

"You know what I think, Tom-chan? I think that paradise is inside you. For me paradise would be to be a part of the great struggle during the days of chaos. For you it is being with your family."

"I'm suddenly frightened, Kro-chan! Maybe everything is run by fate and maybe mine is sealed. Maybe I'll die as soon as I get back!"

"I do not believe in fate," Kropotkin Tsuda said.

"What if I land in a universe other than my own?"

"No guarantees. No absolute answers."

The long shadows of the afternoon had fallen. Silently, holding hands, we turned around and headed back to our tandem.

"Kro-chan," I said as we mounted the tandem, "I want to go home."

"Doug can fly any time."

"I want to go home as quickly as possible."

"I understand."

"I am going to miss you, Kro-chan."

"And I you. Think of me and this whole world as your unborn children. Even if we are in separate universes, we are still in a way your unborn children."

"Kro-chan," I said as we started off. "Koda-san loves you. He is miserable in that Group Marriage Collective."

"I know, Tom-chan, I know."

As we rode away, the voices of lovers echoed through the ruins of the stock exchange.
Chapter Fifteen: Osaka and Away

"We don't know exactly where you would've died," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "We think it was here in Kita Umeda, the north of the old Osaka main train station. We believe this because there was a redevelopment project going on here. Maybe a piece of equipment fell on you."

We were standing in the middle of a wooded area inside Osaka city. No trace of the train station or the redevelopment project now existed. There was a new train station, however, directly beneath us.

"Are you really listening to me, Tom-chan? This is important!"

"Sorry--I was wondering what possible business I could have around a redevelopment project."

"I am suggesting this as the possible place. Careful in Osaka!"

"I simply cannot believe this is Osaka! Kro-chan, what happened to the new international airport they built in Osaka Bay?"

"The waters took that back long ago. All those artificial islands were raising havoc with the Inland Sea's ecology. But, Tom-chan, that's not important now. I am concerned about where you are in danger."

"How can I know this area when I return? Kro-chan, you don't seem to understand how totally different Osaka was. The whole city was concrete, traffic and tall buildings. I used to call it 'Grossaka.'"

Kropotkin Tsuda suddenly embraced me. "Tom-chan, don't go!"

I became so choked up that I couldn't speak. I took my friend and great, great granddaughter by the hand. We walked together in silence through the lovely woods of Kita Umeda.

"I know you must go back," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Promise me that you'll take care of yourself. Please don't go into Osaka. Or if you do, don't go into Umeda."

"I cannot promise that. What if I wrote letters to you every day? It's likely that you would find them appearing in your time. It would be faster than any mail delivery service."

Kropotkin Tsuda giggled softly. "Just take care of yourself, Tom- chan. Now, why don't we go back, unless you want to see Osaka."

"This city is beautiful!" I exclaimed. "I have to start conditioning myself to accepting ugliness again."

"Tom-chan, I long to go back with you, to help spread the seeds of revolution!"

"My wife might find it strange. Anyway, how would you work?"

"Why I could do anything."

"You would need papers. Birth certificate, family register. Your university degrees. Without papers you would have terrible trouble."

"What would happen to me?"

"You might be put in prison if you agitated. Without papers you couldn't work legally."

"I could walk into some place and show my talents, couldn't I?"

"Tell me about it," I said. "There was a recession on when you folks got me. Women were the first fired and the last hired. And even if some company hired you they'd make you wear a uniform and serve tea."

"What if I showed them some of my designs?"

"No one would pay attention. Or some company would steal them from you when they found out you didn't have a patent."

"What's a patent?"

"Kro-chan, stay home," I said.

Kropotkin Tsuda was silent.

Thinking I'd angered her, I said, "There is still so much I do not know about your world."

"Let's take a walk," she said. "On the other side of those trees there is a perfectly ordinary community where people get married, have children, work at responsible jobs, and send representatives to area and national councils. Nothing exciting happens there. The people are as content as any community of workers. There are no wild boar hunters, no weird Train Collective people, no Time Collective egomaniacs, no eccentrics like those characters from our Historical Society. Just plain good people. People who work with their hands in the morning and with their heads in the afternoon. Who tend to their families all the time in one way or another. People who think the Group Marriage Collective is silly. People who take long vacations like most people do when all necessary work has been done. They are very nice people. They will invite us into their homes. They will talk to us about their children. They will show us home movies and they will feed us generously. We can also visit their cemetery and you can see how they are brought to rest. We'll meet people who are curious about the world outside their collective and those who are only interested in domestic and local matters. We'll meet smart people and not so smart people. The nice thing is that they all know that they matter, Tom-chan. And they all know that there can never be a power over them, unless it is their community of friends. Some of them will be brash, some will be shy, and some will be gently outgoing. They will all say exactly what they mean. They will speak the truth as they know it because they have never lived where doing so would be dangerous. They have always known freedom and the responsibility that goes with it. They have their meetings and they make decisions. Not always the right decisions, but usually honest decisions which they believe to be for the common good. There are people among them who are extra good and others who are not that good, or even downright mean. Fortunately, the foul people cannot have any more power than ordinary people, so they can never take away our freedom."

"Sound nice. Lead the way, good friend."

"This collective, which is essentially a non-specific living collective, has a community of 5000 people, men and women in roughly equal numbers. There are 355 doctors, exactly 400 paramedics, 611 teachers, 1112 engineers, 102 mechanics and 1305 children. I don't know what the rest do. There are twelve communal dining halls and 34 day care centers. There is one major hospital with 20 some branch clinics. There is also a main post office and 11 branches. The average house is a two-story individual geodesic style dwelling. There is a major library and three branch libraries. The average worker cycles to work or lives in a cluster sub-collective with fellow workers. The collective cultivates 5.2 hectares of land for fruits and vegetables. It also is unique in possessing some 1500 walnut trees. You can imagine what autumn is like."

"I can't," I said.

"Walnut festival! Oh it's so much fun!"

"Japan was festival crazy in my time," I said. "Tell me about their garbage disposal and recycling."

"Well garbage is really a state of mind, you know. What you might think of as garbage we think of as fuel or fertilizer or future pavement. And recycling? We see things going through a continuous cycle of use and re-use. We don't 'recycle' much because we do not waste much in the first place. Which reminds me, we have a paper growing station not far from here. All the chemicals that go into our paper these days are nutrients. Waste paper, if we can call it that, becomes mulch. Your ancient paper making techniques sure were dirty, weren't they?"

"Yes," I sighed. "Yes they were. Let's get out of here, Kro-chan. There is more contentment here than I can stand."

"In that case, let's return. Doug awaits us."

*****

We arrived at the Time Collective late at night. After parking our tandem bicycle in the shed we walked up to the Suzuki's house. With the Suzukis were the other time travelers--Mandela Goto, Ichiko Smith, Zillanius Kawata, Corretta Shaposhnikoff, Harumatsu Ben-Ezra and William Faulkner Nakashima--along with Conway Ito. Svetlana Suzuki embraced me. "Good-by, dear friend," she said. "You were a joy!"

Everyone else embraced me.

"We've loaded all your stuff on board Doug," Katsuro Suzuki said. "We figured it is best that you leave everything of our time behind. For your own good."

"Except that Leica," Conway Ito said. I think you can invent a story about that."

"I cannot," I said. "I took the Leica made by the Nagoya craftsperson out from my bag. "I want you to have it, Conway. Please take it."

"I'll guard it with my life," Conway Ito said.

"I wish--" I began and stopped. My eyes filled with tears. "I wish you Svetlana-san and Katsuro-san could have adopted me."

"I forgot to tell you," Svetlana Suzuki beamed. I'm pregnant!"

"Svetlana! Congratulations!" I said.

"Let's go," Kropotkin Tsuda said. Before anyone could say anything further, she had pulled me out the door.

She led me to a small transparent car. We got in. She started the silent engine and we sped off.

"Is anyone coming with us?" I asked.

"Just you and me. Sorry to be so abrupt," she said. "I did not want to prolong the agony."

"Am I doing the right thing?" I asked suddenly.

"Believe me, I know you are doing the right thing."

"Svetlana-san, pregnant at 75!" I said. "What a world I'm leaving."

The transparent car silently sped along the road leading through the forest and up to the plateau where the time machine stood waiting, its gigantic body illuminated against the night sky. The long telescopic legs were extended now and the thing seemed taller than the surrounding cedars. No one met us when we stopped under Doug's belly and got out.

"Go home," Kropotkin Tsuda commanded.

The transparent car turned around and sped away.

"Okay, Doug," she said. "Let us in."

We levitated through Doug's open belly to the control center.

"Well, everything in order," Kropotkin Tsuda said after we were reclining in the time machine's contoured seats. "How are you feeling?"

"Glad to be in familiar surroundings. Otherwise rather numb."

"That's natural. Your emotions are played out and you're dead tired. Do you know that all together we cycled over 100 kilometers today?"

"Amazing," I said. "I hardly feel it in my muscles."

"You've become stronger. Maybe you'll live a century after all."

"That means I'll see the beginning of the end of capitalism and maybe even the beginnings of socialism."

"Maybe," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "Let's prepare, Doug."

I felt myself being strapped in, though no visible straps appeared.

Kropotkin Tsuda said, " Okay, Doug, let's get out of here."

I did not feel the lift off, nor did I know we were in the air until the wall monitor came on. Japan was all but invisible in the ubiquitous darkness. A few lights indicated cities and towns. A greater mass appeared--the Asian continent.

"You're going into suspended animation, Tom-chan," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "It's for your own good. To save you from time travel fatigue."

"How are you going to do it?" I asked and closed my eyes. "When I opened them again, I saw Japan on the wall monitor. This time Japan was blazing with lights from its cities and from fishing boats in the Japan Sea.

"Welcome home," Kropotkin Tsuda said. "This is March 13, 2006."

"Go on!" I said in English.

"That's how suspended animation works. You slept like a baby. I wish I could just drop you off at home, but for the sake of form I'll have to leave you where we found you. At the same time."

"I just thought of something," I said. "Do I still have my foreign residency card? What about my Japanese yen?"

"Everything is in order, Tom-chan. We have about an hour. Change into your old clothes. You can even call your wife on the telephone."

"From here?"

"Yes, from here. Doug is now a big telephone. Just tell him your phone number and he'll take care of the rest."

I gave Doug my telephone number. Presently a thrill ran through my spine as I heard the familiar ring of my home telephone.

"Moshi, moshi."

"Yuriko! Yuriko-chan!" I cried out.

"Tom-chan? I was about to go to bed. How was the banquet? There was an article about you in the paper. Are you okay?"

"Fine! I'm just fine! Yuriko! I'm actually talking to you!"

"Yes, of course. Where are you calling from, darling?"

"A flying saucer named after Douglas Macarthur."

Yuriko laughed. "Did you go to Mars, Tom?"

"No, only like three centuries into the future where I made love to a gigantic woman on top of a wild boar after our tandem bicycle fell over."

"Tom-chan! Are you drunk? Did you let them make you drunk?"

"Don't worry. I am stone sober. I swear."

"Actually you sound wonderful! Come home soon! We miss you."

"Darling. Can I please speak to the children?"

"They're in bed now. They have school tomorrow."

"Yes, yes, of course. Yuriko-chan! I love you! You know that I love you? Well, I love you!"

"I love you too. I really want to talk some more but I was in the bath when you called and I'm shivering. Call me from Sadao-san's. You are planning to visit him, aren't you? He is so looking forward to cycling with you."

"Yes, sure. Darling, I really want to get home. All right, I'll let you go. I love you! Good by--"

"Everything all right?" Kropotkin Tsuda asked after Yuriko hung up. "What did you say to her?"

"Didn't you hear?"

"I don't understand a word of old Japanese. I tried learning languages with injections and even the old fashioned way. Impossible. Some people cannot learn foreign languages no matter what they do."

"I told her the truth about where I was."

"Now I understand the laughter. Well good. I think we are where we should be. I can therefore leave you knowing you are in the right place and with the people you want to be with."

"Was there some doubt about that?"

"There are always doubts. Go and change. You know where your old quarters are. Take a shower if you like."

I showered, changed, and returned.

"Well, it should be around the right time now. I'd say half-past midnight. About half an hour after we found you. Now if you stand right over there you'll go straight down."

"Right now?"

"Yes. We're hovering over your bicycle at about 300 kilometers up. You're due down in ten minutes."

"You mean this is farewell?"

"Tom-chan, get going. I cannot get up and embrace you because I have to concentrate all my energies here. I love you Tom-chan. Go. That's right. Over there."

I did as I was told.

"Steady, Tom-chan," said Kropotkin Tsuda. "Relax your body and your mind. We're at 25 kilometers, 10 kilometers, 5 kilometers. This is it. Take care, dear, dear Tom-chan!"

I found myself floating in the cold night air. I looked down and for the first time realized how far I had cycled in my drunken state.

Little Megumi City, with its few street lamps and neon lights, slept by the cove facing the distant coast of Shikoku. The Inland Sea was sprinkled with lights from passing freighters. I looked down directly under my feet. A car was traveling swiftly along the dark two-lane coastal road. I squinted and tried to see the road on which I had turned off. I could not see it. I had never realized how dark Awaji was at night. I looked up thinking I'd see Doug's silvery body hanging over me. There was only darkness. Only looking closely could I make out a round mass darker than the night sky.

My feet touched the earth. I was set down like a rare old vase.

I looked up at the sky. There were only a few stars showing through clouds. I searched for my bicycle in the dark and nearly tripped over it. There was a penlight in my front bag, I recalled. I got down on my knees and groped for the zipper to the front pocket. There!

I switched it on and appraised the damage to my bicycle. The front wheel was pretzeled and the fork was bent. The handle bar did not seem to be bent. I guessed the frame was okay. I took the front wheel out and banged it on the ground to make it as round as possible. I tried bending the fork back into shape. I locked the wheel in the front fork. Before getting on I realized too many spokes were broken to ride the bike. I'd have to walk it.

As I was walking along the coastal highway, a truck's horn sounded behind me. Two huge headlights approached from the back and stopped about 2 meters away.

"Hey!" a man's voice called. "You there! Are you all right?"

"My bike is a mess. I sure could use a lift," I called back.

The truck driver got out of the cab.

"Put it in the back," he said.

When I was sitting in the cab, the driver said, "Hey buddy, did you see that thing in the sky? I think it was a comet!"

Doug, I thought.

"I missed it," I said.

The truck driver was a large man with a stubbly beard. He was wearing a checkered jacket.

"Hey, you're shivering!," he said. "How long have you been out here? You look half froze to death. I've got some hot coffee." He handed me a Thermos.

I unscrewed the cap and poured coffee into it.

"Thanks," I said. "My hands and feet were getting numb when you found me."

"I bet you got lost out there and crashed. I did that once out here on a motorcycle. Lucky I came along. Actually I'm ahead of schedule maybe the first time in my life. Hey, you speak great Japanese!"

I looked closely into the man's face and exclaimed, "Mandela Goto!"

"What's that, buddy? My name is Kato, actually. Nice to meet you. Hey, think you're hurt? I'll get you to a hospital. I'm way ahead of schedule for the first time in my life. It'll be no trouble."

"I'm fine. My hotel is off this road. You can let me off there."

"Think you're okay with that wrecked bike and all?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine. I have friends nearby."

"Okay, gaijin-san. Sorry, that's rude. Please tell me your name?"

"Tom Redburn."

"From America? I want to go to Colorado for mountain climbing someday. I'm studying English from NHK radio. Hey how do you say--"

Until we pulled up in front of the darkened hotel, I taught English expressions to my savior who I swear looked like Mandela Goto.
Chapter Sixteen: Unexpected Encounters

"If you're okay, I'm off," the truck driver said.

"I must give you something--"

"No! Lots of times I've been in a fix on the road and guys I didn't know came along and helped me out. I had no chance to repay them, see. So I figured the best repayment I can give is pass along the goodness. So, buddy, you pass the goodness on and you've done good by me. And, hey, thanks for the English lesson."

We shook hands, Western style. Then Kato-san drove away.

"I tried to open the hotel door. Locked! I had become so used to simply walking into places in the twenty-fourth century that I hadn't considered being locked out until this moment. Like a lot of Japanese hotels, this one had a curfew. If no one was on duty I was out of luck. Fortunately the light was on and I saw through the glass door that there was someone at the reception desk.

I pressed the buzzer and the clerk went to the door to let me in.

"We were concerned, Redburn-sensei," he said. He was a young man, possibly a university student. "Are you all right? I see your bicycle is damaged. Please bring it in. We can put it away for you, sensei."

The young man's obsequious manner of speaking disturbed me. He was probably treating me with extra respect because I was a local celebrity at the moment. I wanted to say that we were all equal but I couldn't find the words. Anyway, I would just confuse him I thought as I went up the elevator to my room.

The room was as I had left it. My suit was thrown over the bed that was still awaiting its sleeper. I was not tired. I wanted to call home again. I wished that my bicycle wasn't damaged so I could get an early start to my brother-in-law's place, 30 kilometers away. Now I'd have to ask him to pick me up.

The telephone rang. I picked up the receiver.

"Call from Kobe," the young man at the front desk said.

"Moshi, moshi," I said.

"Hey, Tom-chan! I've been calling and calling. Are you all right?"

"Kro-chan! Where are you? How did you get through?"

"I am in space, my dearest friend! And it was Doug who got through. His old Japanese is so much better than mine!"

"Kro-chan--I cannot believe this! Kro-chan, I had the most amazing experience. A truck driver. He looked like Mandela! Like Mandela Goto!"

"Dear one, it's a good sign! You must promise me to take care. This is the last time we can speak! Tom-chan, dear Tom-chan, was your landing all right? Is your body all right?"

"Yes. Yes. All right. Kro-chan, I have a million questions now about your world, about socialism! I mean I saw and yet I didn't see. There is so much that was right there and I didn't see it."

"Ask!"

"All right. Here's one. Do women have to change their names to their husbands' names? I thought of that one as I was floating down."

"No. They can keep their own names if they like. The Suzukis both had different family names before they got married. They both changed their family names to Suzuki. What else?"

"I am kicking myself for missing Kyoto. What's that place like?"

"Beautiful. Like a museum. Many artists. Tom-chan I think this is it. I must go!"

"I've only just begun!"

"Look into your imagination, Tom-chan! You'll find the answers in your imagination and in your common sense. And in your humanity!"

"Kro-chan, one last request. Marry Koda-san. He loves you."

"Yes, my dear, dear great grandfather! Yes!"

"And Kro-chan--"

The line went dead.

"Kro-chan?"

I put the receiver back on the hook and sat down on the bed and began to weep. I couldn't stop. I cried myself to sleep.

The phone's ringing woke me. Sunlight streamed through the windows.

"You got a call, sensei," the person at reception said.

"Tom, good morning!"

"Yuriko! Is that you?"

"Your voice sounds sad. Is anything wrong?"

"No. Actually, I'm more happy than you can possibly realize."

"I've missed you terribly and the children have asked for you every day-- Oh, I forgot to tell you something last night. You are to meet with Hyosubogawa-sensei in Osaka on March 20. It looks like that junior college job has opened up at the last minute."

"What junior college job? I don't want a junior college job."

"Darling, don't you remember? We talked about it. We decided it would be good for you and all of us."

My head swam. Was this another universe where all was the same but a little different?

"Darling?" Yuriko said.

Suddenly I remembered. A relative had contacted a small junior college in the area about hiring me for its art department that was opening that April. I remembered that Yuriko had mentioned something about this to me just before I had left.

"We didn't exactly 'talking about it.' I really don't feel qualified," I said. "I've never taught at a university or college before."

"We'll discuss it at home. Please enjoy yourself with Sadao san. He wrote one of his characteristic long letters saying how much he wishes to see you."

*****

Sadao-san picked me and my injured bike up in his van. At his bike shop he also had a fork that fitted my machine. He rebuilt my front wheel as well. After I left, he faxed a long letter, written in longhand, to my wife (which I saw later):

Dear Yuriko-san,

I sincerely hope that you are taking care of yourself in this most changeable of all seasons. Well, it was certainly wonderful to have seen Tom-san and gone cycling with him. His photographs are certainly better than ever. But Yuriko-san, the main reason I am writing to you is because I am somewhat worried about Tom-san. Now please understand that he has done nothing wrong. He has been very, very charming. There are just a number of things that I am concerned about. After I had fixed his bicycle he said something like, "You know, someday they will be making bicycles out of living fibers." I asked him how he knew, and then he grew embarrassed (you know how he gets red in the face) and said something about it being just his feeling. Another time we rode our bicycles into the center of town. This homeless man came up to us asking for money. We have a few homeless people who sleep near the docks and do odd jobs. I think their minds are unwell. (Tom says homelessness is a terrible problem in the U.S.) Anyway, this man came up to us and asked for money. He looked very beat up--he said he had been attacked the other night--but Tom-san treated him like a long-lost friend. Then he said: "Do not worry. Your children's children will live in Japan and one will be a great historian." The man said, "You know, I hear crazy things every day but this is the craziest thing I heard all week. Yet, for some reason, I feel very much at peace suddenly. I don't know why." Well, I later asked Tom-san why he had said that and he became embarrassed again and answered that he just wanted to make the homeless man feel good. There is something else. Sometimes he mutters to himself in a language that sounds sort of Japanese but is totally incomprehensible. Perhaps it is a dialect. I did not ask him about it. Tom-san talked a lot about changing society. (Not that we shouldn't change society.) It is eerie how certain he is that it will change. Having said all this, I must point out that there is nothing really wrong with Tom-san. He is perfectly sane, in my opinion. I have never seen him in better health. He's lost weight. If I didn't know it's impossible I'd swear that he has grown taller. Actually, he did raise his seat post. Also, he asked me to install a slightly longer stem on his bicycle. I had better add that I had always felt his old stem was a bit short. I would have no concern for Tom-san except for the things I mentioned. So I am faxing this letter so that you may take care of him when he returns

Best,

Sadao

*****

On the ferryboat from Iwaya to Akashi I met a woman who reminded me of Svetlana Suzuki.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" she asked in English. "Your face somehow looks familiar."

"I--I am amazed--!" I said.

"I'm Svetlana Mori Peterson," she said extending her hand.

"Svetlana--?"

"Yes, my father is Japanese and my mother is Russian-American. They lived in Japan for many years before moving to the States. That's how I learned Japanese--which, I must say, is a little rusty."

I introduced myself.

"Okay--right. You're the photographer! Hey, I saw your stuff in Asahi Camera. Very, very good!"

"Thanks!"

"Say, I'd like you to meet my husband." Presently Svetlana Mori Peterson introduced me to her husband, Jake Peterson, a tall African-American man in his forties. He too spoke Japanese.

Shaking his hand, I tried to hide my amazement, for Jake reminded me of Katsuro Suzuki!

"We met when we were both majoring in Asian Studies at Berkeley," Jake said. "Then we went off together to Yale and studied law."

"We started a law firm," Svetlana said, "We got rather rich and then a few years ago realized we were unhappy. I mean desperately unhappy. Even though on the surface we were the super-successful yuppie couple."

"We weren't doing anyone any good for anyone, except the rich businessmen who paid us to fight other rich businessmen," Jake said. "I guess the turning point was when my aunt, a community activist in Los Angeles, got busted in a set-up by the local cops. Some police agent arranged for a drug deal on the doorsteps of her house. Because one of the kids involved happened to be a distant nephew, they busted her as an accomplice. Under federal law they can seize the property where the bust occurred, which means they were going take her house away from her."

"Can the police really do that?" I asked.

"There are thousands of cases of abuse," Svetlana said. "We can tell you of cases where money and property has been literally stolen from innocent people by the police because they had been arrested for drug dealing. And I mean arrested--some were not even charged and still the cops kept their money. The police, see, keep the money and spend it on themselves. American cops are as bad as any you find in dictatorships--particularly where working people of color are concerned."

"The media covered up this business. My aunt would have been railroaded into the street if a couple of corporation lawyers hadn't suddenly decided to throw everything up and defend her," Jake said. "The District Attorney decided not to prosecute after we dug up evidence that a police agent was involved. We were big corporate lawyers then with ties to state senators. Funny thing, it would have been a tougher case for us to fight now after we'd gone over to the other side."

"We threw away our empty rich life," Svetlana said. "It wasn't all that hard. We didn't need the second house in Malibu or that silly cabin cruiser which we tried to use just one summer. It wasn't even hard moving out of Beverley Hills. We were never really accepted there. It was not even as hard on our son as we thought it would be. He was with us all the way. Our becoming storefront lawyers was his idea before it was ours. We worked for the American Civil Liberties Union and then started an organization specializing in protecting the civil rights of the homeless. Eventually we set up in Cincinnati and that led us to the Union Institute and University where we both got a Ph.D. in Social Welfare."

"In fact, we're off to Kyoto to a Union seminar on Discrimination East and West," Jake said. "It was designed by Svetlana and a couple of Union faculty. It's something that we'd hoped that the Union would do for years. They're having a speaker from the Buraku Liberation Front speak and someone from the Ainu Utari League. I'm going to talk about imperialist aggression against Mozambique and Angola, as well as the wars in Iraq and Iran. We'll also talk about the Palestinian question. Fortunately this coincides with an international symposium on police brutality sponsored by the Tokyo Bar Association."

"I am well aware of discrimination in Japan," I said. "Some day Japan will cease pretending that it is monoracial. I mean all borders will disappear and people will live freely wherever they choose."

They were silent.

"Excuse me--" I said.

"You sound so convinced," Jake said. "It's eerie. And what's more eerie is that you've convinced me somehow. And I'm a lawyer!"

"Well, it's just my feeling," I said.

"Here's a kick," Jake said. "One of the reasons I helped organize this seminar is because I've got Japanese roots. Back in the 19th century my great-great-grandfather came over to the Bonin Islands with a group of Americans. They'd hoped to claim the islands for the U.S. Well, the U.S. government accepted Japanese jurisdiction over those islands, which became the Ogasawara Islands, and all those Americans suddenly became Japanese--I mean they lost their American citizenship. It was doubly impossible for the Black people of the group to immigrate back to the U.S. because of a 1790 federal law barring non-Whites from becoming naturalized. My grandfather worked as a translator for the occupation forces right after the war. He immigrated to the U.S. and changed his name back to our original family name. No need to tell you how the Japanese government treated him and other so-called impure Japanese citizens of the Ogasawara Islands. I know that official myth that Japan is monoracial? Well, I'm living proof that it's bull."

I wanted to tell them about the Suzukis but stopped myself.

"We visited the Ogasawara Islands and met Jake's relations," Svetlana said. "Such beautiful Islands! I can't believe the government wants to ruin them by building an international airport there. You know, we were visiting relations of mine on Awaji and they said that the bridge is allowing developers to ruin the island!"

I thought of the bridge's rusting ruins in the twenty-fourth century.

"Here's our card," Jake said as the ferry docked. "We're both professors at the University of Cincinnati, on top of running our legal service. If you're in Cinci absolutely look us up."

*****

It was rush hour when I got to Akashi station. As I took my bike apart and put it in the carrier bag I nearly choked from the smell of exhaust. Downtown Akashi was jammed with cars. Finally, I tied my handkerchief around my nose and mouth. I felt nausea, but when that passed, I found that I was not coughing as often as I had in the past when exposed to fumes. Had my lungs built up immunity? Looking out the crowded train's window, I saw the ugly gray concrete buildings and the garish billboards, and heard the hideous noise of motors. Yet I felt a contentment that had somehow eluded me in the beautiful future. My family would be waiting for me. I would resume my old life as a portrait photographer and continue with my street photography, whether I got that teaching job or not. Unless death caught me in Umeda.

*****

Yuriko and the children were standing behind the wicket at our town's run-down station. Seeing them from the window was almost more than I could bear. I slung the bicycle carrier bag's strap over my shoulder, and took my panniers in the other hand. As quickly as I could manage, I made my way through the elbowing crowd toward the exit.

Yuriko had braided her long smooth hair and was wearing blue jeans and a sweater. The children were in their school uniforms. The little ones squealed and hugged me.

"My God, Tom, is that really you?" Yuriko said in English. She didn't embrace me but stared.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm sorry, darling. It's just that you look so young!" she said in Japanese. "You look so healthy, so wonderful! You're slimmer. You have more muscles!" She embraced me tightly, pushing herself against me, and kissed me on the mouth.

Passers-by stared at us because we were showing affection in public.

"Tom, have you actually grown taller?" Yuriko said English. "What's that around your neck?"

"Boar's tusk."

"Good heavens, where did you get that?"

Yup, I thought, everything comes out eventually.

"Tell you later, darling," I said.

On the way to the car, Yuriko said, "You have grown taller! Look at your cycling trousers. They are up to your ankles!"

"I thought they shrunk," I said.

Later that night, in bed, Yuriko said, "Darling, your body has really gone back to shape! Your hair feels thicker! It can't be that your bald spot is going away!"

As we made the most passionate love in years, Yuriko exclaimed, "Oh, you have grown bigger!"

*****

"Darling, the junior college which invited you is in the countryside between Osaka and Wakayama," Yuriko said to me the next morning while the children were still in bed. (It was Sunday and they had no school.)

"That means tearing up everything here," I said. "We can't."

"I'm thinking of our future, Tom. At the junior college you'll have more free time to devote yourself to your creative work. There is a chance I could teach at universities part-time. It's the break we've always dreamed of. And we can start another studio by and by."

"Right now we are far from being rich but we're self-sufficient," I said. "We ought to treasure that."

"Darling, you know it's becoming more and more difficult to carry on each year. This town is losing population and becoming poorer every day. There is no future here. We've known that for years. It's just that we haven't talked about it."

"I'm going to miss the mountains," I said.

"I won't miss the severe winters. And you know that artistically, your heart is in Osaka. That's where you shoot your best photographs. Not out here."

"I've been such a fool!" I said. "It's here that I should be shooting. Here under our very noses a provincial culture is dying. It has to be recorded on film. I was so blind! I sought drama in Osaka and it is right here at our doorstep!"

"Yes, you're right! Why didn't I see it either?" There is still time, darling. We'll work together!"

"Great! Your camera work and mine!" I said. "Posterity must know what life was like in a small provincial city."

"Will you see Hyosubogawa-sensei in Osaka?"

"I wish it were not in Osaka," I said. "There are good reasons for that--reasons that I hope you never will know--"

My wife was silent for a moment.

"Darling, my brother faxed a letter to me about you after you left."

"I want to see it."

"Promise not to be angry. He's concerned about you because he loves you and respects you."

"I think I know what he wrote. I'm actually glad he wrote it."

Yuriko turned and brought out the fax from a drawer.

I read it and said, "I'm not good at keeping secrets. Least of all from you. After what I tell you may think I'm crazy. But I cannot hide the truth from you. Not for even a day."

"Darling, you have never lied to me. I promise I'll believe you."

I told her what happened. The words tumbled out. She sat with her arms folded against her chest and said nothing.

When I had finished, she shook her head and said, "Incredible."

"Do you believe me?"

"Yes. Yes I do. You are not a liar. You don't even make up bedtime stories for our children. That has always been my realm. I know you are not crazy. And your physique! Something remarkable has happened to you. Including the lady and the wild boar. And the lady in Sasebo."

"Can you ever forgive me? I'd lost hope in ever coming home again."

"Oh Tom! What on earth is there to forgive?" Yuriko said. "The circumstances are so extraordinary! You were a widower!"

"The world I saw was so beautiful. At first I did not trust it. And when I finally did, I was still sad. Kro-chan said something wise before we left. She said that paradise is our family and our friends."

"Our great, great granddaughter," Yuriko said. "I feel strangely at peace. I should be going crazy at hearing all this and yet I feel so much at peace."

"Strangely I do too. Hey! Dust no longer makes me cough!"

"Yes--!"

"And I will never catch another cold again. Oh daring--how I wish you had been with me!"

"Tom, you have grown taller! At least five centimeters!"

"That's not the most amazing thing to happen to me."

"Darling, I want to hear the language they taught you."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Anything."

I spoke in the Japanese I had learned. My eyes filled with tears.

"That language! It was impossible to follow and yet it sounded so familiar. What did you say?"

"I said that I'm no longer an alcoholic. I'm permanently cured."

Yuriko embraced me and wept.

"What shall we do with the rest of our lives after something like this?" I asked.

"Live for others, live for ourselves."

"I think I should take that junior college job. I can no longer imagine myself demanding money for taking photographs. It feels unnatural."

"We won't tell the children about this until they are older," Yuriko said.

The children had been awake and listening to our conversation. Being children, they told their friends who told their mothers and fathers.

So strange gossip about us began to circulate--turgidly but relentlessly, like the current moving the foul-smelling waters of the concrete-banked river that coursed its way through our town.
Chapter Seventeen: Encounter in Umeda

Yuriko insisted on coming with me to Umeda.

"This is mad," I said as the train left our little provincial station. "What of the children if we both die?"

"Their aunt and uncle are good people. They will provide for them. You know that we made that arrangement years ago. Now listen again, dear husband. We need four eyes to look for dangers. Have faith."

I sighed and leaned back against the uncomfortable cracked blue vinyl seat. "Kro-chan said that she did not believe in fate," I said. "If it is fate that we will have socialism, then why shouldn't it be fate that I--and maybe we--will die in Umeda?"

Yuriko smiled. "I don't know why, I believe everything will be all right. We will be there to save others' lives. How would we live if someone died in our place?"

I sighed. I had not slept well. My mind was tired. The train passed a typical Japanese provincial scene--piles of rusting car bodies stacked up in what were once rice fields.

"I remember in Cabet's Voyage to Icaria how all of Icaria's trash was moved out into the countryside," I said. "Welcome to Icaria."

"It occurred to me," Yuriko said, "Maybe socialism isn't a destiny. Not unless people start fighting for it right now. Do you suppose there is a socialist conscience out here somewhere?"

I thought a bit and said, "Where there are good people there is always a latent radical conscience. Which reminds me. Here's a card that I got from my friends on the ferry." I fished out Svetlana and Jake's business card from my suit pocket. "Please keep it. I always lose these things."

In Akashi we transferred to the Shinkaisoku. We had to stand, pressing against other passengers.

"This is really degrading," I said. "I've never realized how the system degrades commuting workers. The ugliness of Japan and the noise don't bother me as much as I thought. It's the daily petty degradation of human beings I cannot stand."

"Compared to the injustices of the world, this is nothing. Think of the misery of Third World people."

"You're become quite a radical of late," I said.

"I have always been. Only I could never talk to you about politics. You were so wound up in aesthetics."

"Yes, what a cocoon. A pleasant cocoon it was but still a cocoon. Why does that Dean Hyosubogawa want to meet us in Umeda of all places?"

"To take us to that special restaurant. Remember?"

"On the way to Osaka we past through some of the areas that were the worst hit by the 1995 earthquake. Even after eleven years there were still a few "temporary" buildings. Poor people had gotten it the worst.

We had been lucky in 1995. A few broken dishes and books fallen off the shelves. Ironically, I, and possibly Yuriko, would be facing death this day.

At Osaka Station in Umeda we disembarked and rode down the escalator to the Central Exit. We passed through the wicket and Yuriko seized my hand.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you too, my darling," I replied.

"What ever happens, don't let go of my hand."

We flowed with the crowd out of the station, then followed the way that Dean Hyosubogawa had carefully outlined for us. There was an excellent sushi restaurant in the old arcade that only a few people knew about and he wanted to take me there. If nothing happened on the way, we had agreed to separate since only I had been invited. Yuriko would apologize and say she came only because she had business in Osaka. I would eat with the dean, as planned, while Yuriko would be close by, waiting.

We neared a construction site. Yuriko's hand gripped my hand tighter.

"I believe that's the dean over there," Yuriko said. "Wave to him."

I held up my hand. The old man raised his hand in greeting and approached us.

"Look out!" Yuriko screamed and pulled me away.

We fell backwards. A giant steel hook crashed into the cement in front of us.

Before we stood up a crowd had formed around the hook, half-buried in the ground like a fallen meteorite. Policemen were suddenly blowing whistles and pushing people back.

"That thing missed you by a hair!" one policeman said to us. "Are you all right?"

"Fine--we're fine. Is anyone hurt?" I asked.

"No, thanks to your wife," the policeman said.

"Where is poor Hyosubogawa-sensei?" Yuriko asked. "Oh, there he is!"

The old dean was trembling all over. He offered a short nervous bow to us. His jaw shook and he could not speak.

Yuriko suddenly became the proper Japanese wife. She bowed low and said, "Please pardon my rude intrusion. I have business in Osaka."

"Come along, come along, okusama. I must drink. This--this--whatever it is-- Oh, I must drink much tonight-- Okusama, I must insist you come along-- Oh, dear, I could have been killed--"

At the restaurant, the dean drank several bottles of beer; then a placid smile spread over his face. "Okusama, I thank you for crying out! One step more--oh dear!" He assured us that I would have the best deal the junior college could offer. He ordered more beer. He drank. He poured beer into my empty teacup and my empty water glass. When I insisted that I didn't drink, he laughed hysterically. He ordered whiskey and this made him cry. Tear suddenly ran down the gullies of his wrinkled face. He called us his son and daughter and said he would take us to a bar where the hostesses were beautiful.

He was too drunk to go anyway else. We took him to his business hotel in a taxi and then found a cheap hotel for ourselves as the last train home had already departed.

We called Yuriko's uncle and aunt, who were looking after the children, to say we were all right. Then we made love into the early morning. Even after that, we could not fall asleep.

Yuriko turned on the lamp. "Let's have something to drink. I know everything in this refrigerator is over-priced but this is a special time. She put on the hotel yukata and took some canned fruit juice from the refrigerator, then opened a bag of peanuts.

"There is one thing about your utopian experience," she giggled. "It's made you extremely energetic."

"I need it to keep up with you, my darling," I said.

Yuriko laughed, throwing back her long hair, and said, "I imagine that the huntress in Kyushu must have been a handful."

"I'm really sorry about my unfaithfulness," I said. "I should have had more discipline."

"Darling, for the last time, don't be ashamed! Do you think I'm jealous? I would be furious if this happened now, of course. But look at the circumstances, silly man! Your problem wasn't lust; it was grief. Hey, you know it actually hasn't happened yet! It won't happen for another three centuries. Unless it is a different universe. In which case--well--it's too mind-boggling."

"Even Kro-chan couldn't deal with that question," I said.

"Our great, great grand daughter. Do you suppose that on some other time plane she is worrying about you?"

"I worry about her. If she made it back."

"Darling, trust that she has. Look at today. You cheated destiny."

"Thanks to you. You saw the danger. I didn't. I only wish someone from the Time Collective had been with Kro-chan. No telling what she might do with Doug. There were times that she talked about going back to when the revolution was in progress. What if she did something crazy on a whim?"

"If she is our great, great grand daughter, I believe she would have more sense," Yuriko said.

I lay back on the bed. "I'm grateful we were alive," I said. "But I feel uneasy about this junior college job. We'll have a steady income and all that. I only fear the loss of freedom, the loss of autonomy. If only you could have seen what I saw in 2357. How beautiful people can be when they are completely free! You don't have to be on guard with people. Amazing how much of what drives people under capitalism is based on fear. It's not the hunger for profits that drives people. It's fear of being crushed. That's what's driving us to that junior college. Not the prestige. Not the money. We're afraid of losing out."

"Think of it as a transition, darling," Yuriko said.

"A transition to what?"

"To something better."

"Like what?"

"Think of it that way. What autonomy did we really have at the studio? We had to humor unruly children and retouch portraits of people who did not want their pimples to show. Think about the people who forgot to pick up their photographs. Or how we had to fight with the landlord to fix the plumbing. Think of how we had to skimp when business was bad. Remember how we sometimes worked six days a week, sometimes seven? I wonder that you had energy left on those free days when you photographed in Osaka or cycled. Now you'll be able to have so much time. And you'll be hired as a recognized artist."

"Yeah, it was shit sometimes. You know what, though? We didn't have some lousy boss running our lives."

"You can still back out, Tom."

"Whatever for? We know our little business is doomed. Now you'll have time to pursue the arts that you love. To write poetry. To do music. To teach. To photograph what you want. All the stuff the studio got in the way of. I feel badly about that."

"Necessity. Brute necessity," Yuriko said. "Fear. That's what really behind our division of labor, though I think we had an equal partnership in the studio. Though I am only a fair photographer."

"More than fair. Excellent!"

"Fair. It hasn't been my calling the way it has been yours."

"Will you miss anything about the studio?"

"Don't forget that I was our main bookkeeper, on top of being a housewife and photographic assistant. I won't miss much."

"You're right. I do wish that Kro-chan would just come along and sweep us into the beautiful future."

"That would be a miracle. We've already had more than our share of miracles. Darling-- We'll be rejoining the working class. I'm a little frightened."

"A college professor isn't exactly working class."

Yuriko shook her head. "Professors are workers. What we have been told is 'working class' is a lie. All our lives we've been taught that 'worker' equals 'loser;' someone who didn't pass the exams into a good university. Someone who just does manual work-- They have tried to destroy our working class culture. There is such a variety to the working class. It's been covered up by the phony middle class myth. Yet it is there. So much creative work but most of it is not rewarded. It was--or will be--in the socialism that you saw. Road workers who are poets, poets who work on roads. It's with us today. Only it's ignored and not rewarded."

"How shall we live our lives?" I asked.

"We've lived our lives for ourselves up to this point," Yuriko said. "Maybe we can now live for others."

"We cheated death today. That means the future is not really determined. So maybe the future I saw isn't meant to be. Who knows? I'd like to say that every photograph that I take from now on will be for working class culture. I know it would be a lie. I'm not the revolutionary type. I'm just an ordinary guy who saw the future. Yet in my gut I have an awful feeling that we're heading for the revolutionary life Kro-chan dreamed of having."

"Our Kro-chan. Who is not yet born."

Chapter Eighteen: Thomas Redburn Imprisoned

Seventeen months after I had become a junior college professor, I was arrested and locked up in a substitute prison, a detention center where suspects are put away before being brought to trial or even charged.

This was at the end of September 2007. Outside, autumn flowers were blooming and the last lingering heat of summer had abated. I could enjoy none of this. I was in a tiny cell with no windows and an ever-burning fluorescent light overhead. A close-circuit TV camera watched me 24 hours a day. I had been forced to sit in a squatting position when not being interrogated by the brutal Japanese police. Under Japanese law, a suspect can be held in such a cell for up to twenty-three days without council or bail. The police had decided to throw the full weight of de facto torture against me. I was interrogated almost non-stop for 16 hours a day. At first they merely threatened me with imprisonment; then the police threatened to arrest my wife and put my children into juvenile detention.

Yet a strange serenity I had never experienced came over me. It stayed with me through the hours in which the police screamed at me and hit so that I would confess to a crime I hadn't committed.

What was that crime? And how could I remain so serene? I must go back to April, 2006, when I began working at Gomikuni Junior College.

It took me a week to realize I'd made a big mistake in coming.

Gomikuni Junior College stood on a hill in a small town outside Osaka. On the outside it was beautiful. The buildings were covered with sparkling white tiles. Flowers bloomed in neatly sculptured terraces. Sculptures graced the walkway to the administration building. In the artificial pond by the cafeteria beautiful carp swam. Inside it was another story. The classrooms were cramped, dark and dirty. The rickety prewar wooden desks trembled when anyone sat down behind them. Plaster peeled from the walls. I found that my studio classroom had only a makeshift dark room with only one enlarger. Worse, there were light leaks.

"How am I to teach photography?" I said to Mr. Hyosubogawa when I saw him in his office.

"Well, I must tell you that the circumstance have changed. As you know we invited you to teach photography. Actually we wish you to teach English conversation. That's the proper gaijin role."

I was not as serene as I would become in the substitute prison.

"You pack of sneaky, creepy liars!" I screamed at him.

"No one is allowed to complain in this school!" the rattled old gentleman snapped. "You must learn to keep your opinions to yourself!"

"Well guess what, pal?--I quit. I still haven't sold my portrait studio and I'm going back to it!"

I walked out into the filthy hallway.

"Wait, please do not do this!" the old man cried, sprinting after me, knowing he'd lose face if I quit. "I meant that we will be reconditioning this studio for you. We must ask you to please be a little patient. And as for English conversation. It is just an idea."

"I teach photography or nothing," I said. "I'd rather clean toilets in a diarrhea ward than teach English conversation."

"I'm sorry, we thought you would like our idea."

"Your invitation says I teach photography. I teach that or nothing."

That's how old Hyosubogawa turned against me. The old man had been telling people how my wife and I had saved his life. Soon he would spread rumors that it was he who had saved our lives and that I was ungrateful.

Still, old Hyosubogawa was afraid of my modest fame and independence. Most of the professors had to double up in dirty and cramped offices. I got my own dirty and cramped office. Later I learned my salary would be about a million yen less than was promised.

Later I learned that the study money the Education Ministry allotted for each professor was never given out but went to a special fund set up by the Gomikuni family. With this fund they bought an ex-prime minister's house in England, presumably as a professors' retreat but actually for themselves. More importantly, they used this money for land speculation. Through rumors, I learned that the Gorfu Gomikuni, the president of the junior college, was an erratic speculator and that the junior college had sustained heavy financial losses.

Rumors were our chief sources of information. At professors' meetings we were told little by the administration. The professors were generally quiet and cowardly and seldom challenged what the administrators said. Rumor had it that the Gomikuni people would arrange situations where dissident teachers would be forced to resign. There were other rumors about the Gomikuni family's ties to gangsters. Soon rumors began to fly about that the school going broke.

Still at the monthly professors' meeting no one asked questions. Except me and a few other reckless souls. We tried more than once to ask about the school's financial state--and got petulant and evasive answers from the young Gomikuni.

Thanks to this, many colleagues whom I had considered friends shunned me. I finally decided to stop going to professors' meetings.

To tell the truth, I wanted them to fire me. The dirty politics and the dispirited and lazy students I had to teach were wearing on me. I stopped photographing altogether only a few months after coming to the junior college. We left our old studio unsold.

Instead of axing me, they sent a frightened Hyosubogawa to look in on me. The art department was new and still being reviewed by the Education Ministry. If I left, there would be trouble.

"Artists have a different way of doing things," he said after I told him that I would not attend any more meetings because they were bullshit.

I was left alone. I did have a few friends, a painter and a sculptor who also had been brought into the school with false promises. The sculptor was in his sixties. His father had refused to do military service in World War II because, as he told the authorities, he did not hate anyone. He would have been shot except that Japan was suffering from a labor shortage. He was put to work in a munitions factory which somehow escaped getting blown up. The sculptor was a passionate supporter of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and was often in peace rallies and demonstrations against U.S. military bases. The painter was a young man from Okinawa who had unpleasant things to say about, U.S. military bases in general and this junior college in particular. ("In Okinawa people are spontaneously generous; people in this place are stingy and greedy.") Together they taught me about the ways of this junior college's life.

The people in the sciences were generally good people, they said, and introduced me to a nutritionist and a specialist in sports medicine. They had heard Hoysubogawa's bad rumors about me but on learning the truth, they became my friends.

Though I was not teaching English conversation and refused to, I soon discovered the English teachers, all them, hated me because I was a native speaker of English. These people were pretentious and snobbish and their English abilities were non-existent. The so-called scholarly writings they put into the junior college journal would not pass as junior high school book reports in a normal school. The very presence of an English native speaker unnerved them, even if I spoke to them in Japanese.

The head of my department was a Mrs. Gomikuni, an unpleasant old woman who drew flowers and who drank tea in her classes and bragged about how she was a relative of the ruling family. The other artists had little to do with her or she with them. Only once did we have a department meeting. This was arranged so that she could scold the art department for not singing Kimigayo, "To the Emperor's Reign," at the commencement ceremony. At first I thought that having a woman department head showed that the junior college was in some way progressive. No way! The Gomikunis published her lousy flower drawings in folio-sized hardcover books that they insisted the faculty buy.

I shared many intimate thoughts with my two best friends. The one thing I could not tell them, the thing I wanted most to tell them, was that all this would not last. How I wished they could experience twenty-fourth century Nagasaki. I imagined them teaching their crafts in one of Nagasaki's bright buildings--one of those lovely buildings off a winding cobbled street graced by the smell of summer flowers. If only people knew how easy it was to live a decent life, I thought.

By June I still did not have a proper darkroom.

Yuriko was having a better time of it. She was teaching part time at a local junior college where the people were humane. The children had somehow adjusted to their new school, which wasn't too bad. This saved my sanity. Then I developed a strange sort of serenity. Whenever I was down, I'd think of the future and a remarkable peace would come over me.

"Tom, it's remarkable," Yuriko said one night. "I was afraid you'd go crazy at that place. Yet, you look so content!"

There were more places to cycle out in this area. Sometimes pedaling up some mountain, a feeling of a presence would grab me. I'd look up and see only clouds where I'd half expected to see Doug hovering.

Summer vacation came late in July. We left the cramped junior college apartment for our old home, which we still hadn't put up for sale. By that time gossip had gone around about us and I could find few people who wished to have their portraits taken by me. Also the city was dying rapidly. Businesses were closing down and there was a new seedy quality to everything.

Strange to say, it was a relief to be out of there and back at my steady job, lousy as it was. Months passed. During winter vacation we return to our old studio. We saw few of our old friends, who were still friends. We decided it was time to sell the place, even at a loss. We returned to our new home for the New Year, 2007. In February, Yuriko was told that she was wanted full time at the junior college where she was teaching. Just before the new school year began in April, we sold the studio for peanuts. Ironically, we could only feel relief that we were free of the place that had been so important to our lives for she many years.

In May, 2007 rumors started to fly that the junior college would soon close down. Then suddenly the junior college got a new Dean, a retired general from the Self-Defense Forces. For the first three weeks he was genial, telling everyone that he wanted to be everyone's friend. Then he went mad and shrieked in meetings until he was hoarse.

In early July, people began noticing moving vans coming and going to the school in the evenings. Office equipment began to disappear. In September, just before the end of summer vacation the entire staff received I.O.U.'s instead of their salaries and bonuses. Returning to work in mid-September, we found the gates of the junior college locked. A printed notice wired to the gates said that the school was out of business and everyone was fired.

By ten almost everyone had collected at the gate: professors, administrators, clerical workers, janitors, cafeteria workers and the school nurse. We were joined by hundreds of students who realized that they would have no way of completing their degrees now. People stood in groups complaining, questioning, crying, or simply kicking stones in the road. Disbelief was followed by outrage and outrage was followed by a depressed sense of helplessness. This was illegal was our first thought. Then all of us sensed a loophole had been found, deals had made, and someone in power had decided this sudden closure was a "special case."

I stood with my friends the painter and the sculptor. Our two friends from Nutritional Science joined us.

"What can we do?" the old painter said. "This is a retirement job for me, so I'm fine; but what about the others?"

"The bastards!" The sculptor said. "Those lousy Gomikuni people owe us money. How do we make them pay?"

I did not hear what the others said because I went into the first of my many trances. I'm not talking of good feelings or anything like that. I'm talking about real bonko trances. In this first trance I returned to a day when Kro-chan and I had had a heavy conversation while berry picking in the fields outside the Time Collective.

"How did the revolution actually start here in Japan?" I was asking.

"Slowly in the beginning, quickly in the end. How does any great change occur?" she had replied. "Its beginnings are like the little brooks which make a great river. In your time people were already taking over bankrupt companies and running them collectively. That was really the beginning of the revolution. Petri Optical, in 1975, was the first worker-controlled company, I believe. Worker takeovers accelerated after the destruction of Tokyo. There were many failures and much repression. But industrial unionism, the first stage of the revolution, was born from workers simply taking over bankrupt industries. Something like that started all over the world."

"How do we bring all these people together, Tom-san?" the sculptor was asking. "How can we take over this school? And then the police! And our families! What about money?"

I realized that I'd been making a speech and that all the people standing around were listening to me.

"Hey you stuffy professors!" a janitor shouted out. "Now you see the truth. You are workers just like the rest of us! Workers, break the lock on that gate!"

"Break the lock! Break the lock!" the janitors, clerical workers and cafeteria staff started chanting. Some of the professors joined in the chant. A few other professors mumbled agreement.

How were we to break the lock? With a rock? By driving a car against it? An old guard had the perfect solution.

He tapped me on the shoulder. "Sensei. I have a key for that lock. I just realized that it's the old school lock that they used. I have the key. Here on my chain."

Presently the crowd of employees parted and the old guard hobbled up to the lock and opened it. The chain fell away. Professors joined janitors, maintenance people, clerical workers and students in sliding the heavy gate open.

Once inside, people at first seemed at a loss about what to do. There were shouts for a general meeting of workers and students.

A number of professors objected.

"We professors will have a meeting first," the head of the English Literature department, an old man named Tsuruzaki, called out in his usual authoritarian voice. "Then we will tell you others what to do."

Light years of consciousness had passed after we had surged through the open gate. Formally meek workers and students shouted him down.

"Go to hell, fool! It's people like you we don't need!"

"People!" a young female student shouted. "General meeting or no meeting at all! No one excluded!"

An English professor shouted objections.

"Can you professors run the school by yourselves? No!" several maintenance workers rejoined.

"General meeting! General meeting!"

The only large place for such a meeting was the gymnasium. The old guard had a key to that too. Again the crowd parted to let him through. He unlocked the doors. People streamed in. I observed that no one stopped to take off his or her shoes. I did not take mine off either.

People sat down on the gymnasium floor. Workers sat with students. Professors sat next to janitors. The question everybody asked was how could we start up the school again and make it work. A factory was one thing. It produced things to sell. What could a junior college sell? Urgency generated at least tentative answers.

Professors who'd never cared how the junior college was maintained were now asking about bookkeeping and the generator plant's operation.

The meeting began early in the morning. It continued into the night. By that time family members of the workers and the parents of the students had joined the general meeting. Newspaper and television reporters had come, gone, and returned. The Gomikuni family at first refused to believe a workers' revolt was on. Then they send a representative to "reason" with us. When that failed, the representative threatened that the Gomikuni family would file a formal complaint that we were trespassing. But they didn't for some reason. Mostly likely they did not want media publicity. And, however well they control the local public officials, they may well have been afraid of the law at that point.

By midnight the town police chief, pressured by the Gomikunis, put a squad of policemen outside the gates. They were ordered to act against us if there was any vandalism or an outbreak of violence as an excuse to move in. But the workers remained peaceful. The police stood shivering in the snow for days as they waited for orders that never came.

A few things were resolved that first night.

The junior college employees and students would keep doing their regular jobs but at the same time be in close contact with each other.

They would work in shifts so that there would always be someone at the junior college in case there was an attempted lockout.

The parents of the students would be asked to pay all tuition and fees to the junior college council, made up of professors, clerical and manual workers and students. This would be paid in monthly installments instead of on a yearly basis and this money would go into a fund that would be put into a bank under the junior college council's auspices.

Much volunteer work was needed to run the junior college and everyone agreed to do necessary extra work outside his or her official duties.

The association of the junior college, comprising students, their parents and all workers would sue the Gomikuni family for bad faith.

It was a grand and short-lived experiment. It lasted just over a week, . But in that short time teachers talked about how their formally lazy students had changed into socially committed people. Students said that their lectures now had relevance to their lives. Clerical and manual workers and professors took to calling each other tomodachi, or friend. The Gomikuni family, meanwhile, instead of taking legal action, bought off a few key professors to turn against us and paid some local gangsters who started threatening various people, including me. (We moved the children to relatives in the provinces; Yuriko and I found secret lodgings.) Though we were weakened, a hard core of stalwarts hung on. Finally they called the town's police chief and offered him a bribe if his men could clear out the junior college with minimum turmoil. The police made night a raid on the junior college. They evicted people occupying it and locked it up.

The Gomikunis' old and imposing house was torched that same night. They survived but lost all their possessions. Gangsters were the most likely culprits--the Gomikunis had many debts. The police chose to arrest the "ring leaders" from the junior college instead. I was among them.

After the others were released, the cops kept me--"the principal culprit." The interrogations began at seven in the morning and continued without stop until seven that evening. That is until I stopped eating.

I also stopped talking. I did not respond even after a policeman threw a bucket of ice-cold water over me and then kicked my shins. I remained in a squatting position with a serene smile across my face. Four policemen came in and dragged me to the interrogation room, a small suffocating concrete cubical with a few old chairs and a gray metal desk. A police sergeant shined a bright light directly into my eyes.

I closed my eyes and I was somewhere else. I was cycling on Awaji, merging with the other bicycles and quadracycles. I heard voices but it was as if they came to me in a waking dream.

"What if I told you your wife has been arrested?" the sergeant said.

I did not answer.

"Baka! Furyo gaijin!" (Asshole! Lousy Foreigner), the sergeant screamed. He had been trying to get me to speak for days and his nerves were shot. "Baka! Your wife is a public toilet! Your filthy children are starving!"

I sighed. I was cycling next to Yuriko and she was telling me it was all a lie.

The sergeant, red-faced and hoarse from screaming, kicked my chair over. I did not fall but bounced into a full lotus position. ( What's going on ? a little voice inside me asked: I had never done yoga in my life.)

"Die, dirty foreigner!" the sergeant shrieked and kicked my chest.

I did not break from my full lotus position. At that moment I was making love to Yuriko in a full lotus position.

The sergeant leaned against his desk. "Put him in the chair," he ordered the two other policemen in the room.

"Dirty Communist!" The sergeant smashed me in the face with the palm of his hand.

I had a vague sensation of blood on my lower lip. I heard Kropotkin Tsuda's voice: "This creation is called The New Amorous World of Charles Fourier. I was in an orgy. A well-orchestrated orgy. The lovers were not squirming all over the place but doing a kind of sexual ballet. In my full lotus position, I was making love to a succession of ever changing partners. Into the middle of the orgy, Fourier himself strutted in with his famous cane marked off as a ruler. "And how are your passionate attractions today?" he asked, leaning over me with his palms resting on top of the cane. "Kro-chan, what is this puerile stuff?" I heard myself ask. She answered, "My early virtual reality film, silly!"

The sergeant raised his hand again. Instead of striking me, he clutched his chest, then fell over dead from a heart attack.

That ended the interrogation for that day.

In the afternoon a doctor came to my cell and examined me in the presence of another police sergeant.

"Normal. Everything is normal about him," the doctor said. "Pulse, temperature, breathing. Did you say that your colleague hit him in the face this morning?"

"The other officers tried to restrain him," the sergeant said. "It is forbidden to strike prisoners, as you very well know."

"Yes, yes. Just as teachers are forbidden from striking pupils." the doctor returned. "Oh! Look at this. Hardly a trace of a blow. The flesh seems to be healing before my eyes! The swelling seems to be disappearing, the cut is closing! This is extraordinary! What is this man's history? Has he studied yoga or something like that?"

"Just an ordinary gaijin, except that he is a moderately famous photographer."

"Redburn-san. Can you hear me?" the doctor said and passed his hand before my eyes.

My eyes followed his hand. I was cycling on a quadracycle through the Tokyo Forest. Yuriko and the children were with me.

"I feel he is not here," the doctor said. The body is here but the mind is not. I want him in a hospital for further observation."

"Impossible," a policeman said. "He is a dangerous criminal. If he is normal he must stay here. Can you feed him through injections? He refuses to eat. Today he has even refused water!"

"I can, but it seems unnecessary. This is a self-contained world before us. How it survives I do not know. Survive it does."

I was experiencing socialism. I was reliving a minor incident I had all but forgotten. I had gone out cycling in Nagano and stopped at a small collective to rest. A worker took me home to his family and fed me lunch. We chatted for a few hours afterwards. Then I left.

I now saw and felt the bright sun streaming through the windows of the family's home. They were gathered at the table. There was food of all sorts. Game birds, fish, rice cakes, heavy black bread. This was a traditional household. No synthetically grown food was present on their table. The fish had been pulled from the rivers; the meat was from animals that the worker and his comrades had shot in the Japan Alps. The bread had been home baked. The vegetables and berries had come from the family garden. The family members were simple people with simple tastes. Their conversation was simple. They asked what Kobe was like and what people did in the Time Collective all day. They had read about me but were too shy to ask about my own time. There were a lot of pauses in our conversation but no awkwardness. I related my adventure with the wild boars. They nodded and said that, yes, those wild boar in Kyushu could sure be fierce. They respected the boar for that reason. They loved their families and they fought hard. Like the numbers of hunters in Nagano, the number of inoshishi was few. They were seldom hunted. Birds were mostly hunted in Nagano for it was rich in game birds like pheasants, quail, wild geese, and wild ducks.

The family was five--husband and wife and twelve-year-old twins (boy and girl) and a seven-year-old girl. Cycling away, I realized that I had not learned their names.

What was socialism really? What was so different from this family and every other happy family the world had ever known?

I remembered the collective: a huddle of stone and wooden buildings in the middle of a mountain valley. Blackberry vines hung from all the walls and the town square was filled with apple trees. What was it that people did there? The collective was not a farm. It was not a hunting collective either. A giant transmitter stood about a kilometer outside the collective but what did it do? I did not care. The day was sunny. An autumn breeze blew red and gold leaves on the road--

"You are free to go now. Do you hear me?"

I remembered: November 17, 2007.

"--I said you are free to go, Redburn."

November 17, 2007.

"Can you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, yes I can," I said looking at the policeman.

"You are free to go. We are done with you."

Outside the substitute prison my wife embraced me.

"Tom darling? Are you all right? The car is here. The children are waiting for you. There has been quite a storm around you. Artists and scholars have been demanding your release. You know the calling card you gave me? I called your friends and they found a great lawyer, a fighter for human rights, to get you out. There is a whole other story to that--"

"November 17, 2007! We must go to Hokkaido! Do you hear me?"

"I know about November 17," Yuriko said. "I've packed all that is important. Books, your photographs, equipment. My work. I bought a van. We'll start for Hokkaido tonight. Only Hasegawa-san, our lawyer, knows where we're going."

"How do you know about November 17?" I said, bewildered.

"You told me enough stories. I knew that November 17, 2007 was the day that they took Ichiro Sato. That's our van over there."

"I had the most amazing experience!" I said.

"Darling, tell me the story on the way to Hokkaido. We have not a moment to lose. November 17 is sooner than you think."

"Yes, November 17. But this is October."

"It's November 10. They kept you longer than twenty-three days. The police got an extension. I'll tell you later in detail how we fought that."

"We are going back to Real Time," I said.

"That we are."

"Are there any complications? I mean--"

"Legal. No. "It turned out the police knew early on you are not guilty of any crimes. They were just keeping you for political reasons, the liars. We could sue them but we have no time."

"My junior college comrades--?"

"They will be all right. They must stay and fight."

"We should take them with us."

Yuriko brushed tears away. "I just said farewell to my mother and father. I wish we could take everyone we love but we cannot."

We reached the van. A crowd of television reporters and camera people were waiting for us.

"Damn it!" Yuriko said. "Tom, don't say anything. I'll talk to them. I've been followed by reporters since your incarceration."

Microphones and cameras were shoved in our faces.

"We have nothing to say right now," Yuriko said smiling. "My husband is very tired and we plan to take a vacation. We cannot grant you an interview now. Thank you for your kind understanding."

We drove off and became yesterday's news.

Chapter Nineteen: Real Time

"Tell us another story about Real Time, daddy!"

"Tell us about hunting the wild boar!"

"When you're older, children," Yuriko laughed.

"No more stories for now. I've talked myself out," I said. I stroked Nyan-nyan, their cat. "Besides, today we are all going to go to Real Time. I hope."

It had started raining. We sat inside the van by the shore of Lake Panketo watching the raindrops collect on the windshield.

"You know, I don't remember seeing rain in that movie of Ichiro Sato's abduction," I said.

"This is just a drizzle," Yuriko said. "It will pass soon."

"I am certain this is the peninsula. Where is Sato-san's camper?" I said.

"Be patient. Concentrate, darling."

"Okay, it's all clear to me. We need to move about two kilometers."

"Daddy's having a trance," the girl explained to her brother.

"I know, I know," the boy answered.

"Uh, uh! I've not had one of those since leaving prison," I said. "I think it was the food that did it."

"Kro-chan did it!" piped the girl.

Yuriko started the engine. The children were quiet and looked at their father with grave faces. Nyan-nyan purred and turned over on his back.

"Do you know exactly where we have to go?" Yuriko asked.

"I think I'll know when I see it."

Yuriko turned up the road that led alongside the lake.

"Turn here," I said after about ten minutes.

Yuriko turned off on to a side road. We passed through a wooded area and then came to a fork in the road. One road was paved and the other was covered with gravel. She stopped.

"The paved road," I said. "The other road is a dead end."

Yuriko turned and drove down the paved road to the lakeshore. A dirt road ran along the shore.

"There!" I said. "There is Ichiro Sato's camper."

Yuriko stopped the van about 300 meters from the camper.

"Tom, what are we going to say to him?"

"I'm not sure," I answered. "This is more awkward than I imagined."

"We should make friends with Mr. Sato," the girl said and her brother agreed.

"Not a bad idea," Yuriko said.

"Whatever happens, these last few week has been wonderful," I said. "I've been able to tell the children everything about Real Time and socialism. I am happy no matter what happens."

"Look someone has come out of the camper," Yuriko said.

A man came up to the water and turned around and faced them briefly. Then he proceeded to set up a tripod. He took a view camera out of a big aluminum box and fastened it on top of the tripod. He then looked through the camera's auxiliary viewfinder, adjusting the tilt of the camera as he did so.

"You have the perfect reason to talk to him," Yuriko said. "You too are a photographer."

"I cannot disturb him now," I said. "The light is fading quickly and he is trying to capture it."

The photographer shot and then put a cap on the lens. He looked over at their van again.

"Talk to him," Yuriko said.

She started the engine and drove over the rocky shore road to within twenty meters of the camper. The man with the view camera watched us.

"It is definitely Ichiro Sato!" I said. "Here, take the cat. I'm getting out."

The sun was setting quickly now. I walked toward Ichiro Sato.

Ichiro Sato smiled and extended his hand.

"I've been expecting you," he said. "Yuriko and the children are with you, I presume."

"Yes," I answered. "Yes they are."

"Everything's going to be fine, Tom. I am relieved that you made it. I had few doubts, given how our friends planned everything."

" I've felt strange things for over a year! Explain it, please!"

"Later. Just believe Kro-chan has been with you for months."

"You're not an illusion? You are actually real where you are standing?"

"Last time I checked myself out," he said. "I have to confess something. It was in October 2005 that they got me to Real Time. I told you a bit of fib at the Time Collective."

"Everything was planned from the beginning!"

"A lot of things were presumed, let's say. Give me a hand putting this camera back. They'll be coming for us fairly soon now. Ask your family to come out. It's better to be outside when they pull us up."

I waved to his family and called, "Come out!"

Yuriko, holding the cage with Nyan-nyan, and the children came out. Nyan-nyan was meowing.

"Please meet Mr. Ichiro Sato," I said.

Yuriko and the children bowed.

"There," Ichiro Sato said. "See that star? That's not a star. That's Doug."

"I see it!" Yuriko said. "It's moving. It's getting larger. It's stopped!"

"Nyan-nyan," I said as he picked up the cage. "You are going to be a very unique cat tonight."

Nyan-nyan stopped meowing and began to purr.

"It's time," Ichiro Sato said. "Tom, Yuriko, better take the children's hands. I'll take the cat."

The bright star that was Doug began to move again and grew larger and larger, then stopped. We rose.

"It's really happening!" Yuriko cried. "Children, are you all right? Are you frightened?"

"No!" they cried out in unison.

"Look down there!" Ichiro Sato called. "Here come the van and the camper. Look up! You see that opening in Doug's belly? That's where we're going!"

"Kro-chan!" I called out. "Kro-chan!"

"Dear ones, dear ones! I am so happy!" Kropotkin Tsuda's voice danced through the night air. "Dear ones! Welcome home!"

THE END
