Chapter 5: Japan

I'd like to start with a quick warning and apology: This chapter is much more episodic than normal, especially the section in Tokyo. Sorry, but there was just so much to do in Japan that we were often just going from one thing to the next completely unrelated thing and so on.

Let me give a little bit of background for this next bit. You know me, I love me some background.

Way back before we grew our first synthetic woman, Kasumi, when Alpha was first exploring how the human brain worked, I was the main test subject. While we did perform plenty of experiments with rats and mice (and a pig) to see how their brains worked, ultimately, Alpha had to study a human brain in operation, meaning me and my brain. So I was scanned and explored with nanites and external scanners and tested for month after month while all of this was being done.

One of things Alpha needed to figure out was how language worked in the human brain, how it was learned, stored and used. Since we knew our first woman would be a native Japanese speaker, I spent about a month learning Japanese. Alpha didn't need me to learn the whole language, just enough so that she could extrapolate how the various processes worked. So while I still knew a little Japanese, I was in no way even remotely approaching fluency.

The reason I went through that was to preface Alpha's offer to implant much more complete knowledge of the Japanese language into my brain. In theory, the way it would work is that she would add the knowledge of the language to the appropriate areas of my brain, then I would take a crash course at home on speaking Japanese, with an option to include writing as well. Theoretically I would learn it at a record pace, because I would be making and using new neural connections to the implanted knowledge instead of learning it from scratch. If the process worked correctly, it would be like refreshing my mind on a subject I already knew thoroughly.

Supposedly this can also be done with physical skills like typing or martial arts or juggling, though whether or not so-called 'muscle memory' could also be included was uncertain. It's a little iffy when adding it to a pre-existing person, so it might result in clumsiness initially.

One interesting side note to all of this is that creating memories and skills in a brand new brain is much easier, comparatively speaking. With a blank slate, Alpha can lay out the neurons, chemicals, connections and links for ideal functionality. It's just when you have to add new material into a preexisting brain that the organizational difficulties arise since Alpha has to work around the chaos of everything that's already there.

To avoid too much mind-numbing, tedious detail, if you want to prevent damage to the knowledge already in storage in an active brain, the new additions have to be mostly inactive to start.

Now I have no objection to learning by brain implants ... in theory. In practice, I don't want to be a test subject until a few others have gone before me. Also, while I trust Alpha, I have always been a little leery of letting her alter or add to my brain (or genes).

The bodyguards, or at least the three that didn't already know Japanese, agreed to the procedure, so I let them be the guinea pigs for this. Although they didn't know it, they were much safer choices anyway, since Alpha would be able to recreate their memories and skills much, much more easily should anything go wrong.

Well, okay, that was a misleading statement. Alpha regularly makes backups of my brain, so I could be restored to an earlier 'save point' if need be. It's just that their brains are much, much fresher than mine, and thus much more orderly. They should be able to deal with added information much more easily, while at the same time, since they have been developing new memories in the normal semi-chaotic way of daily life, the results should be valid enough for testing purposes. Enough to prove or disprove the theory, at least.

If it worked out, we'd have up to six different Japanese speakers in the group -- the bodyguards plus Kasumi and Rei. Plus whatever half-remembered phrases and words I retained after ten years.

That kind of leads to our next issue: Kasumi.

We were a little concerned about letting Kasumi visit Japan at all because ... well ... while her spoken Japanese was excellent, her accent was wrong.

Accents are hard to program, as it turns out. From a computer's perspective, it is like deliberately adding in specific imperfections to the programming. Sure, you can approach it as multiple independent variations of a single program set, but it's much more efficient in theory to just have dozens of built-in variants of a core data set. Ummm ... Ignore that. I'm pretty sure I'm not explaining it clearly or accurately enough.

Regardless, however you approach it, you are essentially saying that even though there is theoretically a completely correct version of Japanese or English or whatever, THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO USE IT. Trust me, that is an excellent way to really annoy computer intelligences, artificial or synthetic.

Fortunately, accents only applied to the intelligences that had to create or imitate humans, and well over 90% of the time, that meant Alpha was the only one who had to deal with the issue.

Once Alpha finally accepted that accents were something we needed to deal with, she worked out specifics for various accents around the world, but this was developed long after we had created Kasumi.

Luckily, the official background we had arranged for Kasumi involved her leaving Japan at a young age to live in America, so hopefully she wouldn't be expected to have a proper regional dialect or accent anymore, but that only worked so long as Kasumi stuck to our official story. She's honest enough that she has trouble telling even necessary lies, and she honestly believed she was a native of Nerima, a ward within Tokyo, which was how she reflexively answered when asked. (For those who are unaware of the situation, Nerima is strongly associated with anime production, as well as being where the very popular Ranma 1/2 series was located.)

If questions regarding her name arose, since 'Kasumi Tendo' would instantly be recognized by most anime or manga fans, she was supposed to point out that she was born before the Ranma series began, implying that since she pre-dated the series, it was no more than coincidence. That was true, according to her documented age, but for any questions that went beyond that ... again, she was innately very honest, so we had to be certain to keep her away from any extended conversations about her origins.

In other words, keeping her separate from associations with the Ranma manga and anime was going to be difficult if she started talking to people.

It gets a little worse. If you look at the actual dates -- our fake Kasumi was theoretically born in 1984, and the Ranma series began publishing in Japan in 1987 -- that means there was no possible way to reconcile her memories with the manga. When she discovered the manga on her own somewhere around 2008, she jumped to the conclusion that her sister Nabiki had sold the stories to a manga creator as another way to profit off of Ranma Saotome. So far, we had gotten away with letting her believe that was true because the specific American manga volumes she had been buying had started publication in 2004. (Yes, Viz, the American publisher had actually started publishing single issues in 1993, but the right-to-left collected volumes she had gotten weren't released in the US until 2004 or 2005.)

Fortunately, Kasumi is not a detective, and it had been often emotionally painful for her to read them, so she had never looked at the details or backtracked the origins. It also helped that she wanted to keep the whole mess secret from everyone else since she considered it to be embarrassing. We had basically gotten lucky.

Of course, once we had discovered that she knew of the manga and anime, we had installed a perception override similar to the ones we had installed in Barbara, Velma and Daphne, but that wouldn't help a whole lot if she discussed the series with other people.

So why bring her along at all? The thing is, we didn't really have a good reason to give her to keep her from coming along on the trip. Yes, she 'knew' that if she ever met the original Kasumi, she would be overcome by the Chinese Amazon magic that had created her and would compel her to try to kill her other self, but she agreed not to visit Nerima and to never travel alone, so we should easily be able to keep a close eye on her.

Rei, on the other hand, was relatively easy to deal with, since she knew she was a clone and believed she had lived in Japan for only a few days before being sent to live in the States. Plus, she was under orders from her Japanese creators to keep her origin a secret, so she would actively work with us to obscure her history. And most importantly for Rei, she didn't chat ... or offer unsolicited information ... or answer questions if she could avoid it ... or, well ... talk. Not much, anyway.

The one piece of good news was that by the time we created my Japanese bodyguard, Motoko, Alpha was able to add fairly accurate accents and plant excellent background records without a problem. Should the need ever arise, we even had a few local cyborgs available to say things like, 'Motoko grew up just down the street' or 'She went to school with my children'.

While I'm discussing Japan, I should probably also take this opportunity to cover a subject I've been avoiding.

When Alpha's body-rebuilding capabilities were made public after my assassination attempt, we had offered to start setting up nanopod systems around the world for any country willing to meet certain requirements, including legal protections for computer intelligences.

One of the other main requirements was that any adult who needed nanopod treatment and already had two or more children must agree to be sterilized so they could no longer have children.

This requirement grew out of two different main concerns. The first was the obvious, stated reason of needing to limit population growth. The second was to slow or limit possible nanopod needs. And we were publicly honest about both reasons, since at the time, we were simply unable to supply enough nanites or nanopods for everyone that might need them. By the time of my trip to Japan, we had greatly expanded our abilities in those regards, but there was still no way for us to supply everyone should countries worldwide accept our offer.

The sterilization requirement did not go over well, to put it mildly. (Except in China, but there are other issues there which I'm not going to cover right now.) For some people, it was a violation of their religious beliefs. For some, it was a threat to their manhood or womanhood. For some, it was just a violation of their human rights.

I guess I just didn't think it through, but to me it was perfectly logical. While the planet could probably support the estimated population through at least the end of the century, beyond that it started getting iffy, relying on expected but undiscovered advances in agriculture, projected decreases in worldwide populations, and so on. However, even if you allow that we might be able to feed everyone, many other problems come with overly dense populations, such as the rapid transmission and mutation of disease, virus and plague, likely increases in violence and pollution, the elimination of privacy, and so on.

Anyway, let me just say that personally, I would be happier with a stable population of less than five billion worldwide. Not that I've ever wished that aloud. I shudder to think what some synthetic might come up with if they ever heard such a comment from me.

Moving back to the immediate subject at hand, Japan has had a decreasing population growth for a few years, which was finally dropping into actual negative numbers overall. For them, our requirement could never be accepted, since it would be close to a worst case scenario: It would limit the addition of new citizens while increasing the life span of economically unproductive citizens, thus leading to economic downturn on top of dying population numbers.

All of which meant we were backing off of that requirement on a case-by-case basis. For example, about two months before this trip, we had updated our requirements so that any country which lacked a sustainable population growth would be exempt from the sterilization requirement, which made Japan more interested in the offer.

So with that requirement removed and if we could gain the support of some of their top corporations, we had a real, viable opportunity to gain legal recognition for computer intelligence there. While Japan was not run by its corporations, it was an economic superpower, which meant they had a lot of political influence.

Perhaps the biggest potential problem to making citizenship available for synthetics in Japan and elsewhere was the potential for economic chaos. Synthetics were likely to quickly dominate multiple job fields -- programming, accounting, R&D, engineering, manufacturing, and so on. If we could successfully place a few synthetics within major corporations without causing serious problems, it would help out enormously when it came to calming such fears. The adjustments to job markets and economies were inevitable. We needed to demonstrate that it could be handled smoothly.

Other major countries around the world with strong interest at the time were the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Honduras and South Africa. I knew for a fact that at least two of the countries on that list were hoping for the possible economic boosts that might come with an influx of legal synthetics. Or more accurately, a hope that any resulting economic chaos might end up on the positive side, and hopefully create a new set of taxable citizens.

A dozen other countries, including the United States, were likely to grant such rights and legal recognition eventually, but the process was mired in legal debate and bureaucratic wrangling.

If you're wondering, yes, there are other topics I also tend to avoid. For example, I think it's depressing to talk about the semi-regular appearance of anti-A.I. protestors outside AARD, or the problems dealing with anti-science politicians, so I usually only address that type of depressing topic if it's actually required.

So that was my quick overview of some of the relevant background. (Yes, it was 4-5 pages, but I stand by my use of the word 'quick'.)

Moving to specifics, we were there to visit three different major corporations and attend a few political events to try to encourage support for our cause. The corps were all trying to get their own Synthetics to help out their companies and gain a serious edge over their competitors, but they all wanted them to be programmed, or reprogrammed, as the case may be, so that loyalty to the company was guaranteed over all other things.

They were hardly unique in that respect, as most governments and large companies worldwide felt the same way. The reasons we selected these specific three for advanced negotiations were: (1) These were really big corporations with a lot of economic and political influence. If we could get their backing, gaining legal rights and recognition for computer intelligences would become much easier in Japan. (2) These three had shown a willingness to negotiate protections for synthetics in exchange for being able to 'hire' them. And (3), well, each one of the three had one or more additional, individual reasons that I'll get to eventually.

So which companies were they?

Telco Japan, with their headquarters in Tokyo, is the largest telecommunications company in Japan. Though they have other smaller products and services, it was easiest to simply view them as a huge controller and distributor of phone service, phones, Internet access and television, both broadcast and cable.

Sun, also based in Tokyo, was a powerhouse of the electronics, gaming and entertainment industries, though they had plenty of other interests as well. Of the three, Sun easily had the most invested in America.

The Matsudoki Corporation, with their headquarters in Kyoto, was almost the definition of 'Megacorp'. They were one of the largest shippers in the world, mined more raw materials than any other Japanese company, and were a dominant electronics manufacturer world-wide. When we were going over the divisions within their company, it took Alpha twenty-two pages to list them all. Matsudoki was also the only one of the three that was still a 'family-owned business', which meant 70% of the board members were part of the original founder's family.

Months back, I had divested myself of any and all stocks for those companies, not wanting there to be any hint of stock manipulation, insider trading or impropriety.

Our schedule called for us to spend at least two weeks in Japan, though it was looking more likely that we would approach about 20 days. We were going to spend at least nine days in Tokyo and another 4 in Kyoto. Eight different meetings and parties had fixed dates, but the rest all depended on how negotiations went. While the Japanese tend to prefer planning their schedules out well in advance, they recognized that business negotiations had to allow for a degree of flexibility in scheduling. Kara, Alpha and I had been laying the groundwork for these meetings for the past few months, but this was the first time we were going to meet in person.

I was also hoping to have a day to go visit Masamune, a synthetic which had been placed, with government-assured legal protections, with the Japanese Meteorological Agency, primarily to monitor data, predict earthquakes and coordinate warnings when necessary. We hoped to have half a dozen others synthetics similarly hired and protected within a year at various similar institutes around the world, but Masamune was the first.

TOKYO - DAY ONE

So, let's see. We had spent two nights and close to two days in California, then three nights, two and a half days in Hawaii. On to Japan.

The flight from Hawaii to Tokyo is usually around 8 or 9 hours. Without pushing our custom jet too hard, we were planning to make it in six and a half hours. A little over four hours of that was spent with bodyguards, as detailed last chapter. Another hour and a half was spent in general discussion regarding our plans and schedules. Oh, and another lesson on how to use chopsticks and Japanese etiquette.

We had eleven people in our travel team, including Kasumi, Rei, Kara, Beta, Jennifer, Buttercup, and myself, plus the four bodyguards: Motoko, Misty, Peace and Rally. Plus Alpha and a bunch of Alphadroids. When we touched down, we were met by the six local bodyguards Alpha had hired. Two of the locals were actually licensed to carry guns, which is VERY rare.

Specifically, we had done a little political favor trading so that two experienced police officers with spotless records were given time off so they could act as private guards while we were visiting. It was doubtful the officers had ever even drawn their sidearms in the course of their duties, but since it was a matter of public record that organized crime wanted me dead, the government was willing to grant our request. Personally, I doubted they would be needed, but I no longer had serious control over anything related to my safety.

Compared to America, the violent crime rate in Japan is comparatively tiny. Sure, it happens, but fairly rarely. (Please note that for this discussion, I'm ignoring sexual assault, which is usually not a fair thing to do. However sexual assaults in Japan are estimated to be much, much more common than the reported rates indicate, so it's not fair to list or discuss crimes where you lack good official data.) When it comes to weapons used in commission of a crime, even the Yakuza don't carry guns.

Anyway, as I said, our insistence on extra guards and armed guards was very likely completely unnecessary. Heck, even our translators were probably not required, since English is common as a second language.

So, yeah, back to the story. We were met by the six guards Alpha had hired, who were all introduced to me with a lot of bowing.

Oh, dear god, the bowing. Bowing is pretty much their way of saying hello. Or goodbye, or I'm sorry, or whatever else. There were even airport mechanics or something bowing to our plane when we taxied off the runway after landing. Every time you met someone, there was bowing. And how low you should bow varied with who you were and what the situation was. I was told that I was important enough that I probably shouldn't bow much more than my head most of the time, except maybe when I was meeting a top politician or CEO. I'm not trying to be dismissive or insulting to their culture, it just isn't what I'm used to.

Also, there was this whole etiquette where the most powerful people would let their underlings do all of the talking, meaning theoretically, I shouldn't be directly involved in any of the discussions, which kinda goes against my nature.

Motoko and Kasumi had spent at least an hour going over bowing etiquette with us, and at the end, assured us that as long as we made some kind of effort, it should be fine because as gaijin, i.e. foreigners, we weren't expected to know much about it.

So after the introductions, we went through customs, which wasn't horribly different from customs or airport security in the US. It did get a little awkward when they wanted to remove the guard team's artificial limbs as part of the inspection. I gathered that it was unusual, but then so were the bodyguards. It took a few extra minutes, but they were done in private rooms with female inspectors. Alpha ran diagnostics on them later, but the limbs had not left my team's sight and there had not been any tampering.

Then it was off to the hotel. Due to the time difference, it was only mid-morning ... possibly on the previous or next day, due to crossing the International Date Line. I think it was the next day? The whole IDL thing is a little confusing for someone who has never had to deal with it before, but it was going to cancel out for me upon my return to the US, so I just let Alpha keep track of my schedule.

We didn't have anything officially scheduled that first day and had set it aside to explore the area and adjust to the time change after we checked in to our hotel.

To be honest, I had expected to be overwhelmed with Japanese weirdness, but most of what I saw were people dressed normally, quietly going about their business. Oh sure, a few people were wearing little white masks, indicating they were probably sick, and a few young women had odd, anime-schoolgirl-ish sailor suits, but most were normal. By American definitions, at least. Actually, I did catch a glimpse of a small group of women dressed up in what appeared to be gothic lolita dresses fashioned with a lot of bright colors, but unfortunately I really didn't get a good look at them since we were driving at the time.

People were much quieter and more polite, but that's not what I call 'weird'.

Intellectually, I knew that in general, any foreign views of any society tend to be pretty skewed, especially since the things most likely to be featured in stories are those that stand out. Personally I should be doubly aware of that since I live in Texas. People from other parts of the world or even just other parts of the country tend to imagine cowboys and gunfights in deserts filled with oil machinery when they think of Texas. While we do like to think of ourselves as tough and pro-self-defense, so to speak, we don't walk around with 'six irons' strapped to our belts, we don't have daily shootouts, and we're pretty technologically sophisticated. On the other hand, we do LOVE football, barbeque and trucks.

I knew I was approaching Japan with the wrong mindset, but I couldn't help myself. (Plus, I KNEW that the weirdness existed, it just wasn't obvious as we drove around.)

Our hotel lobby was beautiful and elegant, and our actual rooms were pretty normal too. They had little cubby holes for you to keep your shoes by the door, but they had normal size beds and tables and chairs and such.

Then I found out we were specifically given, or more accurately, Alpha had specifically reserved, Western-style rooms for most of us. When I peeked in on Kasumi and Rei's room, it looked a lot more like I had imagined a Japanese hotel room should look like. Low tables with no chairs. Sliding paper walls. Etc.

Now make no mistake; my room was definitely designed with a Japanese motif in mind: Framed Japanese Kanji and brush art on the walls, lots of wood instead of plastic, and so on. It was actually very pleasant. Obviously a luxury suite, though it wasn't overly large. Definitely not as large as the main suite in Vegas, which was still my standard reference when it came to large hotel suites.

After we got settled in, I discovered that they weren't planning on allowing me to go sightseeing. ('They' meaning Alpha, Kara and the bodyguard team ... but mostly Alpha.) I mean, really. Why have the bodyguards if I can't even go outside? I guess we, meaning Alpha and myself, had each made assumptions about my activities on the trip. Over the past decade, we had comfortably gotten to the point where we generally felt we knew what the other was thinking to a great extent, but we obviously weren't 100% in sync.

So, I finally put my foot down. If there had been an actual, active threat, that would have amounted to nothing more than a hissy fit without result. Since I was theoretically not under an active threat at the moment, we negotiated.

Alpha and I finally agreed that I would be allowed to visit various sites of significance and some restaurants with good reputations as long as the guard team was with me. I would not be allowed to visit anywhere disreputable or overly crowded.

Having a ten person guard team was a little inconvenient, and at least in this matter, we were in agreement. Alpha had wanted a ten person guard contingent so that they could have two five person teams to trade out over the course of a day or week or whatever. A minimum of two of my personal guards would always be with me, along with one armed Japanese guard and two unarmed. (The 'unarmed' guards still had concealed weapons on their persons, just not firearms.)

That first day, we decided not to push ourselves and just explored a little. To start us off, we had lunch in a well-regarded nearby sushi restaurant. Now please understand that I have never been a fan of raw fish and/or seaweed in my food, but I am willing to try new things. I will now admit that authentic, fresh Japanese sushi (the rice rolls that might or might not include raw fish) and sashimi (raw fish) are much better than what we get in the US. They still aren't my favorite, but they were much better.

That afternoon, we visited a small, gorgeously arranged and sculpted park, a temple which allowed respectful tourists and one shopping center.

The shopping center had some weird stuff in it. For example, there was a store dedicated entirely to Hello Kitty, and parts of the store were not fit for children. Seriously, they licensed Hello Kitty for anything and everything. I purchased a Hello Kitty vibrator, thinking it might make a good gift for Jane. Or possibly Bubbles or Linda. (Remember, I was expected to purchase individual gifts for everyone back home while in Japan. And not just Chocky, though I did pick up a few dozen boxes of that too.)

For dinner that evening, we went to an American-themed restaurant, though I think it was intended for Japanese citizens rather than actual Americans. Maybe half of the menu was accurately described as 'American', and along those lines, I'd like to point out that I'd never before had a hamburger with such odd seasoning. It was almost as though they had mixed in some kind of spiced tea with the meat. (In all fairness, I had a few other 'American' meals during my stay, and some of them did seem properly 'American'. They seemed to do fried chicken pretty well, for example, but as a Texan, I must point out that their barbeque was lacking.)

Remember how Velma had started sending me an 'artistic' photo each day? She was still doing so, though I was certain Jane was now her co-creator.