Dial 110 for police.
Dial 119 for fire or ambulance.
Two telephones are visible: they are that singularly bilious shade of green the Japanese reserve for pay phones. They have slots for phone-cards, small liquid crystal displays, round steel keys. They are mounted on individual stainless-steel writing-ledges, each supported by a stout, mirror-finished steel post. Beneath each ledge is an enclosed shelf or hutch, made of black, perforated steel sheeting. Provided as a resting place for a user’s parcels.
The hutches now serve as food-prep storage: four ceramic soup bowls of a common pattern, three more with a rather more intricate glaze, four white plastic bowls and several colored ones. A plastic scrubbing-pad, used.
On the floor below, on newspaper, are an aluminum teapot and what may be a package of instant coffee sachets. Three liter bottles of cooking oils.
On the steel ledge of the left-hand phone is a tin that once contained J.O. Special Blend ready-to-drink coffee.
TWELVE
NIPPON SERIES
An office.
A gap has been left in the corrugated wall, perhaps deliberately, to expose a detailed but highly stylized map of Tokyo set into the station’s wall. The wall of this shelter and the wall of the station have become confused. Poly- tie binds the cardboard house directly into the fabric of the station, into the Prefecture itself.
This is quite clearly an office.
On the wall around the official, integral subway map, fastened to granite composite and brown cardboard with bits of masking tape: a postcard with a cartoon of orange-waistcoated figures escorting a child through a pedestrian crossing, a restaurant receipt (?), a newspaper clipping, a small plastic clipboard with what seem to be receipts, possibly from an ATM, a souvenir program from the 1995 Nippon Series (baseball), and two color photos of a black-and-white cat. In one photo, the cat seems to be here, among the shelters.
Tucked behind a sheet of cardboard are four pens and three pairs of scissors. A small pocket flashlight is suspended by a lanyard of white poly-tie.
To the right, at right angles to the wall above, a cardboard shelf is cantilevered with poly-tie. It supports a box of washing detergent, a book, a dayglo orange Casio G-Shock wristwatch, a white terry face cloth, a red plastic AM/FM cassette-player, and three disposable plastic cigarette-lighters.
Below, propped against the wall, is something that suggests the bottom of an inexpensive electronic typewriter of the sort manufactured by Brother.
A box of Chinese candy, a cat-brush, a flea-collar.
THIRTEEN
TV SOUND
Close-up of the contents of the shelf.
The red stereo AM/FM cassette-player, its chrome antenna extended at an acute angle for better reception. It is TV Sound brand, model Lx-43. Its broken handle, mended with black electrical tape, is lashed into the structure with white poly-tie. Beside the three lighters, which are tucked partially beneath the player, in a row, are an unopened moist towelette and a red fine-point felt pen. To the left of the player is a square red plastic alarm clock, the white face cloth, and the Casio C-Shock. The Casio is grimy, one of the only objects in this sequence that actually appears to be dirty. The book, atop the box of laundry detergent, is hardbound, its glossy dustjacket bearing the photograph of a suited and tied Japanese executive. It looks expensive. Inspirational? Autobiographical?
To the right of the Lx-43: a rigid cardboard pack of Lucky Strike non-filters and a Pokka coffee tin with the top neatly removed (to serve as an ashtray?).
On the cardboard bulkhead above these things are taped up two sentimental postcards of paintings of kittens playing. “Cat collection” in a cursive font.
Below these are glued (not taped) three black-and-white photographs.
#1: A balding figure in jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt squats before an earlier, unpainted version of this structure.
One of the cartons seems to be screened with the word “PLAST — ”. He is eating noodles from a pot, using chopsticks.
#2: The “alley” between the shelters. The balding man looks up at the camera. Somehow he doesn’t look Japanese at all. He sits cross-legged among half-a-dozen others. They look Japanese. All are engrossed in something, perhaps the creation of murals.
#3: He squats before his shelter, wearing molded plastic sandals. His hands grip his knees. Now he looks entirely Japanese, his face a formal mask of suffering.
Curve of square tiles.
How long has he lived here?
With his cats, his guitar, his neatly folded blankets?
Dolly back.
Hold on the cassette-player.
Behind it, almost concealed, is a Filofax.
Names.
Numbers.
Held as though they might be a map, a map back out of the underground.
David Marusek
The Wedding Album
David Marusek is relentless as he explores the implications of creating simulated people in VR. This story asks us to reconsider the criteria for being considered human. Who has rights when there can be multiple copies of an individual? Meanwhile, the advent of a cybernetic iteration of the singularity is thwarted, only to be replaced by one that is decidedly posthuman. At the center of a tour through future history that is practically Stapledonian in its scope are a pair of newlyweds; it is their fragile relationship that gives Marusek’s speculation emotional weight. For them, and perhaps for us, this is a horror story. And yet, for the posthumans who gather around them, there is a happy ending indeed.
Anne and Benjamin stood stock still, as instructed, close but not touching, while the simographer adjusted her apparatus, set its timer, and ducked out of the room. It would take only a moment, she said. They were to think only happy happy thoughts.
For once in her life, Anne was unconditionally happy, and everything around her made her happier: her gown, which had been her grandmother’s; the wedding ring (how cold it had felt when Benjamin first slipped it on her finger!); her clutch bouquet of forget-me-nots and buttercups; Benjamin himself, close beside her in his charcoal
