Number 9 dream Page 0,1

sharpen my senses.

The clock touches half-past one – my deadline died. My ashtray is brimming over. I shake my cigarette box – down to my last one. The clouds are down to the PanOpticon’s ninth floor. Akiko Kato gazes through her air-conned office suite window into fog. Can she sense me, as I sense her? Can she tell that today is one of those life-changing days? One final, final, final cigarette: then my assault begins before ‘nervous’ becomes ‘spineless’. An old man was in Jupiter Café when I arrived. He hasn’t stopped playing his vidboy. He is identical to Lao Tzu from my school textbook – bald, nutty, bearded. Other customers arrive, order, drink and eat up, and leave within minutes. Decades’ worth. But Lao Tzu stays put. The waitresses must imagine my girlfriend has stood me up, or else I am a psycho waiting to stalk them home. A muzak version of ‘Imagine’ comes on and John Lennon wakes up in his tomb, appalled. It is vile beyond belief. Even the traitors who recorded this horror hated it. Two pregnant women enter and order iced lemon teas. Lao Tzu coughs a cough of no return, and dabs phlegm off his vidboy screen with his shirtsleeve. I drag smoke down deep and trickle it out through my nostrils. What Tokyo needs is a good flooding to clean it up. Mandolineering gondoliers punting down Ginza. ‘Mind you,’ continues Dowager to Donkey, ‘his wives are such grasping, mincing little creatures, they deserve everything they get. When you marry be sure to select a husband whose dreams are exactly the same size as your own.’ I sip my coffee foam. My mug rim has traces of lipstick. I construct a legal case to argue that sipping from this part of the bowl constitutes a kiss with a stranger. That would increase my tally of kissed girls to three, still less than the national average. I look around the Jupiter Café for a potential kissee, and settle on the waitress of the living, wise, moonlit viola neck. A tendril of hair has fallen loose, and brushes her nape. It tickles. I compare the fuchsia pink on the mug with the pink of her lipstick. Circumstantial evidence, at any distance. Who knows how many times the cup has been dishwashed, fusing the lipstick atoms with the porcelain molecules? And a sophisticated Tokyoite like her has enough admirers to fill a pocket computer. Case dismissed. Lao Tzu growls at his vidboy. ‘Blasted, blasted, blasted bioborgs. Every blasted time.’ I sup my dregs and put on my baseball cap. Time to go and find my maker.

PanOpticon’s lobby – cavernous as the belly of a stone whale – swallows me whole. Arrows in the floorpads sense my feet, and guide me to a vacant reception booth. A door hisses shut behind me, sealing subterranean blackness. A tracer light scans me from head to foot, blipping over the barcode on my ID panel. An amber spotlight comes on, and my reflection stares back. I certainly look the part. Overalls, baseball cap, toolbox and clipboard. An ice maiden appears on the screen before me. She is blemishlessly, symmetrically beautiful. SECURITY glows on her lapel badge. ‘State your name,’ she intones, ‘and business.’ I wonder how human she is. These are days when computers humanize and humans computerize. I play the overawed yokel. ‘Afternoon. My name is Ran Sogabe. I’m a Goldfish Pal.’

She frowns. Excellent. She’s only human. ‘Goldfish Pal?’

‘Not seen our ad, ma’am?’ I sing a jingle. ‘We cater for our finny friends—’

‘Why are you requesting access to PanOpticon?’

I act puzzled. ‘I service Osugi and Kosugi’s aquarium, ma’am.’

‘Osugi and Bosugi.’

I check my clipboard. ‘That’s the badger.’

‘I’m scanning some curious objects in your toolbox.’

‘Newly imported from Germany, ma’am. May I present the ionic flurocarb pellet popper – doubtless you know how crucial pH stability is for the optimum aquarium environment? We believe we are the first aquaculturists in the country to utilize this little wonder. Perhaps I could offer a brief—’

‘Place your right hand on the access scanner, Mr Sogabe.’

‘I hope this is going to tickle.’

‘That is your left hand.’

‘Beg pardon.’

A brief eternity elapses before a green AUTHORIZED blinks.

‘And your access code?’

She is vigilant. I scrunch my eyes. ‘Let me see: 313 – 636 – 969.’

The eyes of the ice maiden flicker. ‘Your access code is valid.’ So it should be. I paid the finest freelance master hacker in Tokyo a fortune for those nine numbers. ‘For the month of July.