Kondo Tatsumi's 1st Interview

KYOTO, JAPAN

 [The old photo of Kondo Tatsumi shows a skinny, acne-faced teenager
with dull red eyes and bleached blond highlights streaking his unkempt
hair. The man I am speaking to has no hair at all. Clean-shaven, tanned
and toned, his clear, sharp gaze never leaves mine. Although his manner
is cordial and his mood light, this warrior monk retains the composure
of a predatory animal at rest.]

 I was an “otaku.” I know that term has come to mean a great many things
 to a great many people, but for me it simply meant “outsider.” I know
Americans, especially young ones, must feel trapped by societal
pressure. All humans do. However, if I understand your culture
correctly, individualism is something to be encouraged. You revere the
“rebel,” the “rogue,” those who stand proudly apart from the masses. For
 you, individuality is a badge of honor. For us, it is a ribbon of
shame. We lived, particularly before the war, in a complex and seemingly
 infinite labyrinth of external judgments. Your appearance, your speech,
 everything from the career you held to the way you sneezed had to be
planned and orchestrated to follow rigid Confucian doctrine. Some either
 have the strength, or lack thereof, to accept this doctrine. Others,
like myself, chose exile in a better world. That world was cyber space,
and it was tailor-made for Japanese otaku.

 I can’t speak for your educational system, or, indeed, for that of any
other country, but ours was based almost entirely on fact retention.
From the day we first set foot in a classroom, prewar Japanese children
were injected with volumes upon volumes of facts and figures that had no
 practical application in our lives. These facts had no moral component,
 no social context, no human connection to the outside world. They had
no reason for existence other than that their mastery allows ascension.
Prewar Japanese children were not taught to think, we were taught to
memorize.

 You can understand how this education would easily lend itself to an
existence in cyberspace. In a world of information without context,
where status was determined on its acquisition and possession, those of
my generation could rule like gods. I was a sensei, master over all I
surveyed, be it discovering the blood type of the prime minister’s
cabinet, or the tax receipts of Matsumoto and Hamada, 1 or the location
and condition of all shin-gunto swords of the Pacific War. I didn’t have
 to worry about my appearance, or my social etiquette, my grades, or my
prospects for the future. No one could judge me, no one could hurt me.
In this world I was powerful, and more importantly, I was safe!

 When the crisis reached Japan, my clique, as with all the others,
forgot our previous obsessions and devoted our energies entirely to the
living dead. We studied their physiology, behavior, weaknesses, and the
global response to their attack upon humanity. The last subject was my
clique’s specialty, the possibility of containment within the Japanese
home islands. I collected population statistics, transport networks,
police doctrine. I memorized everything from the size of the Japanese
merchant fleet, to how many rounds the army’s Type 89 assault rifle
held. No fact was too small or obscure. We were on a mission, we barely
slept. When school was eventually cancelled, it gave us the ability to
be wired in almost twenty-four hours a day. I was the first to hack into
 Doctor Komatsu’s personal hard drive and read the raw data a full week
before he presented his findings to the Diet. This was a coup. It
further elevated my status among those who already worshipped me.

 Doctor Komatsu first recommended the evacuation?

 He did. Like us, he’d been compiling the same facts. But whereas we’d
been memorizing them, he’d been analyzing them. Japan was an overcrowded
 nation: one hundred and twenty-eight million people jammed into less
than three hundred and seventy thousand square kilometers of either
mountainous or overurbanized islands. Japan’s low crime rate gave it one
 of the relatively smallest and most lightly armed police forces in the
industrialized world. Japan was pretty much also a demilitarized state.
Because of American “protection,” our self-defense forces had not seen
actual combat since 1945. Even those token troops who were deployed to
the Gulf almost never saw any serious action and spent most of their
occupation duty within the protected walls of their isolated compound.
We had access to all these bits of information, but not the wherewithal
to see where they were pointing. So it took us all by complete surprise
when Doctor Komatsu publicly declared that the situation was hopeless
and that Japan had to be immediately evacuated.

 That must have been terrifying.

 Not at all! It set off an explosion of frenzied activity, a race to
discover where our population might resettle. Would it be the South, the
 coral atolls of the Central and South Pacific, or would we head north,
colonizing the Kuriles, Sakhalin, or maybe somewhere in Siberia? Whoever
 could uncover the answer would be the greatest otaku in cyber history.

 And there was no concern for your personal safety?

 Of course not. Japan was doomed, but I didn’t live in Japan. I lived in
 a world of free-floating information. The siafu, 2 that’s what we were
calling the infected now, weren’t something to be feared, they were
something to be studied. You have no idea the kind of disconnect I was
suffering. My culture, my upbringing, and now my otaku lifestyle all
combined to completely insulate me. Japan might be evacuated, Japan
might be destroyed, and I would watch it all happen from the safety of
my digital mountaintop.

 What about your parents?

 What about them? We lived in the same apartment, but I never really
conversed with them. I’m sure they thought I was studying. Even when
school closed I told them I still had to prepare for exams. They never
questioned it. My father and I rarely spoke. In the mornings my mother
would leave a breakfast tray at my door, at night she would leave
dinner. The first time she didn’t leave a tray, I thought nothing of it.
 I woke up that morning, as I always did; gratified myself, as I always
did; logged on, as I always did. It was midday before I started to feel
hungry. I hated those feelings, hunger or fatigue or, the worst, sexual
desire. Those were physical distractions. They annoyed me. I reluctantly
 turned away from my computer and opened my bedroom door. No food. I
called for my mother. No answer. I went into the kitchen area, grabbed
some raw ramen, and ran back to my desk. I did it again, that night, and
 again the next morning.

 You never questioned where your parents were?

 The only reason I cared was because of the precious minutes I was
wasting having to feed myself. In my world too many exciting things were
 happening.

 What about the other otaku? Didn’t they discuss their fears?

 We shared facts not feelings, even when they started to disappear. I’d
notice that someone had stopped returning e-mail or else hadn’t posted
for a while. I’d see that they hadn’t logged on in a day or that their
servers were no longer active.

 And that didn’t scare you?

 It annoyed me. Not only was I losing a source of information, I was
losing potential praise for my own. To post some new factoid about
Japanese evacuation ports and to have fifty, instead of sixty, responses
 was upsetting, then to have those fifty drop to forty-five, then to
thirty…

 How long did this go on for?

 About three days. The last post, from another otaku in Sendai, stated
that the dead were now flowing out of Tohoku University Hospital, in the
 same cho as his apartment.

 And that didn’t worry you?

 Why should it? I was too busy trying to learn all I could about the
evacuation process. How was it going to be executed, what government
organizations were involved? Would the camps be in Kamchatka or
Sakhalin, or both? And what was this I was reading about the rash of
suicides that was sweeping the country? 3 So many questions, so much
data to mine. I cursed myself for having to go to sleep that night.

 When I woke up, the screen was blank. I tried to sign on. Nothing. I
tried rebooting. Nothing. I noticed that I was on backup battery. Not a
problem. I had enough reserve power for ten hours at full use. I also
noticed that my signal strength was zero. I couldn’t believe it. Kokura,
 like all Japan, had a state-of-the-art wireless network that was
supposed to be fail-safe. One server might go down, maybe even a few,
but the whole net? I realized it must be my computer. It had to be. I
got out my laptop and tried to sign on. No signal. I cursed and got up
to tell my parents that I had to use their desktop. They still weren’t
home. Frustrated, I tried to pick up the phone to call my mother’s cell.
 It was cordless, dependent on wall power. I tried my cell. I got no
reception.

 Do you know what happened to them?

 No, even to this day, I have no idea. I know they didn’t abandon me,
I’m sure of it. Maybe my father was caught out at work, my mother
trapped while trying to go grocery shopping. They could have been lost
together, going to or coming back from the relocation office. Anything
could have happened. There was no note, nothing. I’ve been trying to
find out ever since.

 I went back into my parents’ room, just to make sure they weren’t
there. I tried the phones again. It wasn’t bad yet. I was still in
control. I tried to go back online. Isn’t that funny? All I could think
about was trying to escape again, getting back to my world, being safe.
Nothing. I started to panic. “Now,” I started to say, trying to command
my computer by force of will. “Now, now, NOW! NOW! NOW!” I started
beating the monitor. My knuckles split, the sight of my own blood
terrified me. I’d never played sports as a child, never been injured, it
 was all too much. I picked up the monitor and threw it against the
wall. I was crying like a baby, shouting, hyperventilating. I started to
 wretch and vomited all over the floor. I got up and staggered to the
front door. I don’t know what I was looking for, just that I had to get
out. I opened the door and stared into darkness.

 Did you try knocking at the neighbor’s door?

 No. Isn’t that odd? Even at the height of my breakdown, my social
anxiety was so great that actually risking personal contact was still
taboo. I took a few steps, slipped, and fell into something soft. It was
 cold and slimy, all over my hands, my clothes. It stank. The whole
hallway stank. I suddenly became aware of a low, steady scraping noise,
like something was dragging itself across the hallway toward me.

 I called out, “Hello?” I heard a soft, gurgling groan. My eyes were
just beginning to adjust to the darkness. I began to make out a shape,
large, humanoid, crawling on its belly. I sat there paralyzed, wanting
to run but at the same time wanting to…to know for sure. My doorway was
casting a narrow rectangle of dim gray light against the far wall. As
the thing moved into that light, I finally saw its face, perfectly
intact, perfectly human, except for the right eye that hung by the stem.
 The left eye was locked on mine and its gurgling moan became a choked
rasp. I jumped to my feet, sprang back inside my apartment, and slammed
the door behind me.

 My mind was finally clear, maybe for the first time in years, and I
suddenly realized that I could smell smoke and hear faint screams. I
went over to the window and threw the curtains open.

 Kokura was engulfed in hell. The fires, the wreckage…the siafu were
everywhere. I watched them crash through doors, invade apartments,
devour people cowering in corners or on balconies. I watched people leap
 to their deaths or break their legs and spines. They lay on the
pavement, unable to move, wailing in agony as the dead closed in around
them. One man in the apartment directly across from me tried to fight
them off with a golf club. It bent harmlessly around a zombie’s head
before five others pulled him to the floor.

 Then…a pounding at the door. My door. This…[shakes his fist]
bom-bombom-bom…from the bottom, near the floor. I heard the thing
groaning outside. I heard other noises, too, from the other apartments.
These were my neighbors, the people I’d always tried to avoid, whose
faces and names I could barely remember. They were screaming, pleading,
struggling, and sobbing. I heard one voice, either a young woman or a
child on the floor above me, calling someone by name, begging them to
stop. But the voice was swallowed in a chorus of moans. The banging at
my door became louder. More siafu had shown up. I tried to move the
living room furniture against the door. It was a waste of effort. Our
apartment was, by your standards, pretty bare. The door began to crack. I
 could see its hinges straining. I figured I had maybe a few minutes to
escape.

 Escape? But if the door was jammed…

 Out the window, onto the balcony of the apartment below. I thought I
could tie bedsheets into a rope…[smiles sheepishly]…I’d heard about it
from an otaku who studied American prison breaks. It would be the first
time I ever applied any of my archived knowledge.

 Fortunately the linen held. I climbed out of my apartment and started
to lower myself down to the apartment below. Immediately my muscles
started cramping. I’d never paid much attention to them and now they
were reaping their revenge. I struggled to control my motions, and to
not think about the fact that I was nineteen floors up. The wind was
terrible, hot and dry from all the fires. A gust picked me up and
slammed me against the side of the building. I bounced off the concrete
and almost lost my grip. I could feel the bottom of my feet bumping
against the balcony’s railing and it took all the courage I had to relax
 enough to climb down just those few extra feet. I landed on my ass,
panting and coughing from the smoke. I could hear sounds from my
apartment above, the dead that had broken through the front door. I
looked up at my balcony and saw a head, the one-eyed siafu was squeezing
 himself through the opening between the rail and the balcony floor. It
hung there for a moment, half out, half in, then gave another lurch
toward me and slid over the side. I’ll never forget that it was still
reaching for me as it fell, this nightmare flash of it suspended in
midair, arms out, hanging eyeball now flying upward against its
forehead.

 I could hear the other siafu groaning on the balcony above and turned
to see if there were any in this apartment with me. Fortunately, I saw
that the front door had been barricaded like mine. However, unlike mine,
 there weren’t any sounds of attackers outside. I was also comforted by
the layer of ash on the carpet. It was deep and unbroken, telling me
that no one or nothing had walked across this floor for a couple days.
For a moment I thought I might be alone, and then I noticed the smell.

 I slid the bathroom door open and was blown back by this invisible,
putrid cloud. The woman was in her tub. She had slit her wrists, long,
vertical slices along the arteries to make sure the job was done right.
Her name was Reiko. She was the only neighbor I’d made any effort to
know. She was a high-priced hostess at a club for foreign businessmen.
I’d always fantasized about what she’d look like na\*\*d. Now I knew.

 Strangely enough, what bothered me most was that I didn’t know any
prayers for the dead. I’d forgotten what my grandparents had tried to
teach me as a little kid, rejected it as obsolete data. It was a shame,
how out of touch I was with my heritage. All I could do was stand there
like an idiot and whisper an awkward apology for taking some of her
sheets.

 Her sheets?

 For more rope. I knew I couldn’t stay there for very long. Besides the
health hazard of a dead body, there was no telling when the siafu on
that floor would sense my presence and attack the barricade. I had to
get out of this building, get out of the city, and hopefully try to find
 a way to get out of Japan. I didn’t have a fully thought-out plan yet. I
 just knew I had to keep going, one floor at a time, until I reached the
 street. I figured stopping at a few of the apartments would give me a
chance to gather supplies, and as dangerous as my sheet-rope method was,
 it couldn’t be any worse than the siafu that would almost certainly be
lurking in the building’s hallways and stairwells.

 Wouldn’t it be more dangerous once you reached the streets?

 No, safer. [Catches my expression.] No, honestly. That was one of the
things I’d learned online. The living dead were slow and easy to outrun
or even outwalk. Indoors, I might run the risk of being trapped in some
narrow choke point, but out in the open, I had infinite options. Better
still, I’d learned from online survivor reports that the chaos of a
full-blown outbreak could actually work to one’s advantage. With so many
 other frightened, disorganized humans to distract the siafu, why would
they even notice me? As long as I watched my step, kept up a brisk pace,
 and didn’t have the misfortune to be hit by a fleeing motorist or stray
 bullet, I figured I had a pretty good chance of navigating my way
through the chaos on the streets below. The real problem was getting
there.

 It took me three days to make it all the way down to the ground floor.
This was partially due to my disgraceful physical stamina. A trained
athlete would have found my makeshift rope antics a challenge so you can
 imagine what they were for me. In retrospect it’s a miracle I didn’t
plunge to my death or succumb to infection with all the scrapes and
scratches I endured. My body was held together with adrenaline and pain
medication. I was exhausted, nervous, horribly sleep deprived. I
couldn’t rest in the conventional sense. Once it got dark I would move
everything I could against the door, then sit in a corner, crying,
nursing my wounds, and cursing my frailty until the sky began to
lighten. I did manage to close my eyes one night, even drift off to
sleep for a few minutes, but then the banging of a siafu against the
front door sent me scurrying out the window. I spent the remainder of
that night huddled on the balcony of the next apartment. Its sliding
glass door was locked and I just didn’t have the strength to kick it in.

 My second delay was mental, not physical, specifically my otaku’s
obsessive-compulsive drive to find just the right survival gear, no
matter how long it took. My online searches had taught me all about the
right weapons, clothing, food, and medicine. The problem was finding
them in an apartment complex of urban salarymen.

 [Laughs.]

 I made quite a sight, shimmying down that sheet-rope in a businessman’s
 raincoat and Reiko’s bright, pink, vintage “Hello Kitty” schoolbag. It
had taken a long time, but by the third day I had almost everything I
needed, everything except a reliable weapon.

 There wasn’t anything?

 [Smiles.] This was not America, where there used to be more firearms
than people. True fact—an otaku in Kobe hacked this information directly
 from your National Rifle Association.

 I meant a hand tool, a hammer, a crowbar…

 What salaryman does his own home maintenance? I thought of a golf
club—there were many of those—but I saw what the man across the way had
tried to do. I did find an aluminum baseball bat, but it had seen so
much action that it was too bent out of shape to be effective. I looked
everywhere, believe me, but there was nothing hard or strong or sharp
enough I could use to defend myself. I also reasoned that once I made it
 to the street, I might have better luck—a truncheon from a dead
policeman or even a soldier’s firearm.

 Those were the thoughts that almost got me killed. I was four floors
from the ground, almost, literally, at the end of my rope. Each section I
 made extended for several floors, just enough length to allow me to
gather more sheets. This time I knew would be the last. By now I had my
entire escape plan worked out: land on the fourth-floor balcony, break
into the apartment for a new set of sheets (I’d given up looking for a
weapon by then), slide down to the sidewalk, steal the most convenient
motorcycle (even though I had no idea how to ride one), streaking off
like some old-timey bosozoku, 4 and maybe even grab a girl or two along
the way. [Laughs.] My mind was barely functional by that point. If even
the first part of the plan had worked and I did manage to make it to the
 ground in that state…well, what matters is that I didn’t.

 I landed on the fourth-floor balcony, reached for the sliding door, and
 looked up right into the face of a siafu. It was a young man,
midtwenties, wearing a torn suit. His nose had been bitten off, and he
dragged his bloody face across the glass. I jumped back, grabbed on to
my rope, and tried to climb back up. My arms wouldn’t respond, no pain,
no burning—I mean they had just reached their limit. The siafu began
howling and beating his fists against the glass. In desperation, I tried
 to swing myself from side to side, hoping to maybe rappel against the
side of the building and land on the balcony next to me. The glass
shattered and the siafu charged for my legs. I pushed off from the
building, letting go of the rope and launching myself with all my
might…and I missed.

 The only reason we are speaking now is that my diagonal fall carried me
 onto the balcony below my target. I landed on my feet, stumbled
forward, and almost went toppling off the other side. I stumbled into
the apartment and immediately looked around for any siafu. The living
room was empty, the only piece of furniture a small traditional table
propped up against the door. The occupant must have committed suicide
like the others. I didn’t smell anything foul so I guessed he must have
thrown himself out of the window. I reasoned that I was alone, and just
this small measure of relief was enough to cause my legs to give out
from under me. I slumped against the living room wall, almost delirious
with fatigue. I found myself looking at a collection of photographs
decorating the opposite wall. The apartment’s owner had been an old man,
 and the photographs told of a very rich life. He’d had a large family,
many friends, and had traveled to what seemed every exciting and exotic
locale around the world. I’d never even imagined leaving my bedroom, let
 alone even leading that kind of life. I promised myself that if I ever
made it out of this nightmare, I wouldn’t just survive, I would live!

 My eyes fell on the only other item in the room, a Kami Dana, or
traditional Shinto shrine. Something was on the floor beneath it, I
guessed a suicide note. The wind must have blown it off when I entered. I
 didn’t feel right just leaving it there. I hobbled across the room and
stooped to pick it up. Many Kami Dana have a small mirror in the center.
 My eye caught a reflection in that mirror of something shambling out of
 the bedroom.

 The adrenaline kicked in just as I wheeled around. The old man was
still there, the bandage on his face telling me that he must have
reanimated not too long ago. He came at me; I ducked. My legs were still
 shaky and he managed to catch me by the hair. I twisted, trying to free
 myself. He pulled my face toward his. He was surprisingly fit for his
age, muscle equal to, if not superior to, mine. His bones were brittle
though, and I heard them crack as I grabbed the arm that caught me. I
kicked him in the chest, he flew back, his broken arm was still
clutching a tuft of my hair. He knocked against the wall, photographs
falling and showering him with glass. He snarled and came at me again. I
 backed up, tensed, then grabbed him by his one good arm. I jammed it
into his back, clamped my other hand around the back of his neck, and
with a roaring sound I didn’t even know I could make, I shoved him, ran
him, right onto the balcony and over the side. He landed face up on the
pavement, his head still hissing up at me from his otherwise broken
body.

 Suddenly there was a pounding on the front door, more siafu that’d
heard our scuffle. I was operating on full instinct now. I raced into
the old man’s bedroom and began ripping the sheets off his bed. I
figured it wouldn’t take too many, just three more stories and then…then
 I stopped, frozen, as motionless as a photograph. That’s what had
caught my attention, one last photograph that was on the bare wall in
his bedroom. It was black and white, grainy, and showed a traditional
family. There was a mother, father, a little boy, and what I guessed had
 to be the old man as a teenager in uniform. Something was in his hand,
something that almost stopped my heart. I bowed to the man in the
photograph and said an almost tearful “Arigato.”

 What was in his hand?

 I found it at the bottom of a chest in his bedroom, underneath a
collection of bound papers and the ragged remains of the uniform from
the photo. The scabbard was green, chipped, army-issue aluminum and an
improvised, leather grip had replaced the original sharkskin, but the
steel…bright like silver, and folded, not machine stamped…a shallow,
tori curvature with a long, straight point. Flat, wide ridge lines
decorated with the kiku-sui, the Imperial chrysanthemum, and an
authentic, not acid-stained, river bordering the tempered edge.
Exquisite workmanship, and clearly forged for battle.

 [I motioned to the sword at his side. Tatsumi smiles.]