No matter how prodigious its ability to process information, no matter how fast its calculation speed, a computer has no “inspiration” function, reflected Kaoru. It was impossible for a machine to bring together two utterly disparate phenomena and consider them as one. Were such an ability to arise, it would be because human brain cells had somehow been incorporated into the hardware. Human-computer intercourse.
Which actually sounded pretty intriguing to Kaoru. There was no telling what sort of sentient life form that would bring into the world. Endlessly fascinating.
Kaoru’s desire to understand the workings of the world manifested itself in a lot of different questions, but at the root of all of them was one basic unknown: the source of life.
How did life begin? Or, alternatively: Why am I here?
Evolutionary theory and genetics both piqued his curiosity, but his biological inquiries always centered on that one point.
He wasn’t a single-minded believer in the variation on the coacervate theory which held that an inorganic world developed gradually until RNA and DNA appeared. He understood that the more one inquired into life the more the idea of self-replication became a big factor. It was DNA that governed self-replication; under the direction of the genetic information it carried came the formation of proteins, the stuff of life. Proteins were made of alignments of hundreds of amino acids, in twenty varieties. The code locked away within DNA was in fact the language that defined the way those acids aligned.
Until those amino acids lined up in a certain predetermined way, they wouldn’t form a protein meaningful to life. The primordial sea was often likened to a soup thick with the prerequisites for life. Then some power stirred that thick soup up, until it so happened that things lined up in a meaningful way. But what were the odds of that?
To make it easier to comprehend, Kaoru decided to think in terms of a much smaller, neater number. Take a line of a hundred amino acids in twenty varieties, with one of them turning into a protein, the stuff of life. The probability then would be twenty to the hundredth power. Twenty to the hundredth power was a number far greater than all the hydrogen atoms in the universe. In terms of odds, it was like playing several times in a row a lottery in which the winning ticket was one particular hydrogen atom out of a whole universe full of them, and winning every time.
In short, the probability was infinitesimal. Essentially impossible. In spite of which, life had arisen. Therefore, the game had to have been rigged. Kaoru wanted to know just how the wall of improbability had been surmounted. His uttermost desire was to understand the nature of that dice-loading—without resorting to the concept of God.
On the other hand, sometimes there arose the suspicion that maybe everything was an illusion. There was no way to actually confirm that his body existed as a body. His cognitive abilities may have convinced him that it did, but there was always the possibility that reality was empty.
As he lay there in the dim room, illuminated by only a night light, the stillness was such that he could hear his heart beat. So it would seem that right now, at this very moment, it was no mistake to think that he was alive. He wanted to believe in the sound of his heart.
The roar of a motorcycle sounded in Kaoru’s inner ear. A sound he shouldn’t have been able to hear. A sound that shouldn’t in reality have been able to reach his ears.
“Dad’s home.”
In his mind’s eye Kaoru could see his father on his off-road bike skidding into the underground parking area a hundred yards below. He’d bought that bike new less than two months ago. Now his father got off the bike and looked at it with satisfaction. He used it to commute to work, probably because otherwise he’d have no time to ride it. And now he was home. The signs of it communicated themselves to Kaoru intensely. There was no mistaking them. Separated though they were, Kaoru’s sixth sense enabled him to follow his father’s movements tonight.
Kaoru imagined his father’s every little movement, tracing each one in his mind. Now he was turning off the ignition, now he was standing in the hall in front of the elevator with his helmet tucked under his arm, now he was looking up at the floor indicator lights.
Kaoru counted to see how long it took him to get to the twenty-ninth floor. The elevator door opened and his father strode quickly down the carpeted corridor. He stood in front of the door to apartment 2916. He fished his card-key from his pocket and inserted it …
Imagined motions and sounds were replaced by real ones starting with the click of the front door opening. He felt a palpable moment of precariousness, caught between imagination and reality, and a cry rose within his breast.
It was Dad after all!
Kaoru wanted to jump up and go to greet his father, but he forced himself to hold back. He wanted to try and forecast what his father would do now.
Hideyuki seemed to be walking down the hall in the apartment with no care for who might be trying to sleep. The helmet under his arm banged loudly against the wall. His humming was nothing short of its normal volume. At the best of times, Hideyuki seemed to make more than the usual amount of noise when he moved. Maybe it was because he radiated so much energy.
Suddenly Kaoru found himself unable to read what his father would do next. All sound stopped, and he had no idea where his father was. His mind was a blank, but then the sliding door to the room where he slept was flung roughly open. Without warning, light from the hall flooded the room. Not that it was that bright, but still Kaoru had to narrow his eyes against it. He hadn’t foreseen this. Hideyuki walked onto the tatami mats until he was right next to Kaoru’s futon. Then he knelt and brought his mouth close to his son’s ear.
“Hey, kiddo, wake up.”
Kaoru pretended he’d just this minute woken up, saying, “Oh, Dad. What time is it?”
“One in the morning.”
“Huh.”
“C’mon, wake up.”
This happened a lot to Kaoru—getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night so he could keep his dad company over beer, conversing till dawn. Kaoru would always end up missing school the next day, sleeping the whole morning away.
Last week he’d been late for school twice on account of his father. Hideyuki evidently didn’t think much of what his son was studying in elementary school. Kaoru often found himself exasperated at his father’s lack of common sense: to a kid, school wasn’t just a place to study, it was also a place to play. His dad didn’t seem to get that.
“I want to go to school tomorrow.”
Kaoru whispered so as not to wake his mother, sleeping next to him. He didn’t mind getting up to talk—in fact, he’d like nothing better—but he wanted to make it plain that it shouldn’t go too late.
“Pretty responsible for a kid. Who do you take after, anyway?” With a devil-may-care tone in his voice, he ignored Kaoru’s efforts to keep the noise down. Frustrated, Kaoru leapt out of his futon. If he didn’t get Dad out of the room now, he’d wake Mom up.
Yeah, who did he take after? In terms of facial features, Kaoru and his father sure didn’t have much in common. In terms of personality, too, Kaoru was a lot more sensitive—high-strung, even—than his rough-and-tumble father. Of course, he was still a child, but still, Kaoru was sometimes puzzled by how little he and his father resembled each other, outwardly or inwardly.
Kaoru put his hands on his father’s back and pushed him across the room into the hall. Then he kept pushing him until they’d made it to the living room, at which point