Red’s strongest emotion was a helpless inability to comprehend what was on the screen. The machine was a six-foot-tall brass ball with circular fins, sitting in a tank of pink liquid. Takamatsu said the fins helped to keep it cool, like ears on an elephant or something. Politicians lined up to talk to it as if they were at Disneyland, faces open in wonder. Then they left the stage, expressions changing to match Red’s mom’s. It was his first experience of racism, of fear of the different.