Chapter III.XV

Vitaly Ivolginsky

Always Visible (Another Prayer for the Dying Horror Genre)

Third Act — Qualquer ou Uma Grande Recompensa

Chapter III.XV

Suddenly two people stopped next to them. Of course, these were also Japanese, but this time they did not limit themselves to just comments in their language, but bowed to Galbraith and extended their hands to him.

“Hello”, the younger one said in fairly good English.

“Greetings”, his senior companion said in a cheerful tone.

Apparently they are brothers, the inspector thought, shaking hands first with one, then with the other.

“These are our new employees”, the specialist told him.

“I hope their names will not be a secret to me?”, the policeman remarked sarcastically.

“Of course not”, the silver-haired man seemed not to understand the hint. “Get acquainted with Okamura brothers, Shinoda and Ichinose”.

At these words, the older one chuckled displeasedly, and his younger brother smiled sadly, which somewhat embarrassed Galbraith.

“I’m glad that there was finally a volunteer willing to test our supercomputer”, said Ichinose.

“I hope the guest will appreciate the fruits of our labours”, Shinoda chimed in to his brother.

The inspector sighed – he was not satisfied with the fact that these guys talked about him as if for them he was not a person, but some kind of guinea pig. It was not the words themselves – the false wall of feelings – but the intonations of these two. Galbraith prepared for the worst.

“What do you call this project among yourselves?”, he asked the brothers.

He asked the question not so much out of curiosity, but in order to observe the reaction of these two and assess whether irritation from the excessive importunity of the guest would appear on their faces.

“We call it D.O.O.R”, Shinoda replied.

“Can you tell me how this is deciphered?”, the inspector did not let up.

From the way the Japanese minted the letters, Galbraith guessed that this was an abbreviation. The older brother frowned and, tilting his head to the side, thought for several seconds, as if deciding whether to answer the policeman’s question or not. Then his face brightened.

“D.O.O.R. is Digital Oriented Objective Replica”, he began to answer.

The eldest son of the Okamura family pulled out the vowels so much that it seemed to enhance the effect of these words, but in fact only convinced his interlocutor that Shinoda’s English was not perfect.

“Don’t listen to him”, Ichinose suddenly intervened in the conversation. “He is too pedantic and does not see the hidden meaning in the name of our project!”

Shinoda gave his younger brother a stern look, but he did not notice the reproach. Galbraith couldn’t help but admire Ichinose. Still, these Asian brothers were not exact copies of each other – each had their own characteristic feature, which he, a Europoid, was able to discern in each. Shinoda had a decisive fold above his upper lip, which had something masculine about him, while Ichinose, on the contrary, had a kind of childish roundness in his face, not without a peculiar beauty and charm. What they had in common was that they were both almost the same age, and that they both had dark eyes and short hair.

“And what meaning do you see in this thunderous word?”, the inspector asked the younger brother.

“D.O.O.R. is The Door to The Future!”, Ichinose exclaimed with sincere delight.

After that, Shinoda leaned over to his brother and began to whisper something angrily in his ear – apparently, he was reprimanding him for being shockingly inappropriate within the walls of the institute. But Galbraith was much more satisfied with Ichinose’s answer – he thought it made much more sense than the cumbersome and abstruse sequence of words that the eldest Okamura brother insisted on. Then the silver-haired man suddenly spoke up, having previously quietly observed the conversation between the guest and the two new employees.

“Now excuse me, I have to go, things to do”, he said calmly.

The specialist nodded slightly to the inspector and quickly walked towards the fork in the corridors. A few steps short of the turn, he turned around and waved to Manabu, then disappeared down the left corridor. The Japanese followed the example of his foreign companion and set off after him. Galbraith looked after him for several minutes – the combination of a strict white robe and bare heels looked a little funny.

When Manabu disappeared around the bend in the corridor, the inspector again turned his gaze to the brothers and only now noticed that they were also wearing flip-flops. “Nothing can be done”, he thought, “In this underground institute everything is not like normal people”. He asked himself an essentially stupid question – do employees change their shoes upon arriving at work, or do they wear slippers in public? Galbraith looked at the eldest of the brothers – he was standing against the wall on which the logo was written, three huge red letters “M.C.I”. Apparently it was the emblem of the institute. Shinoda moved his lips in concentration and seemed to have forgotten about the guest.

“Sorry, but what should I do now?”, the inspector turned to Ichinose, who was twirling a ballpoint pen in his hands out of boredom. “Where is your supercomputer, or whatever it’s called, D.O.O.R.?”

These words brought the older brother out of his trance and he, stopping moving his lips, looked at the inspector.

“We will now take you where you need to go”, the Japanese said somewhat thoughtfully.

“If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us”, his younger brother interjected.

“In this case”, Galbraith involuntarily felt inspired, “before you take me to the machine, could you arrange an audience for me with professor Makoto Shugarami?”

The policeman put all his self-esteem into these words, because he believed that he should not allow others to push him around like a weak-willed animal. After some silence, Shinoda grinned wryly and Galbraith involuntarily felt as if he had exposed himself to ridicule with these words. But it was still better than if the inspector behaved like a weak-willed and naive idiot.

“Makoto-san left for Tokyo”, Shinoda said.

“On affairs?”, Galbraith asked out of politeness.

“The professor decided to pay tribute to his favourite writer”, saying this, Ichinose raised his hands to the ceiling.

“In what sense?”, the inspector was surprised by the answer of the younger brother Okamura.

“Makoto-san honoured with his visit winter residence of…”, and Ichinose pronounced a name unfamiliar to Galbraith, which apparently belonged to some Japanese writer.

“Okay, that’s his business”, their guest waved, meaning professor Makoto.

It was bad luck, Galbraith thought, that fate brought him to this institute precisely at the moment when its rector was on vacation. He would have to entrust his life into the hands of these fidgety dunces, in whom the inspector had absolutely no trust. He was already beginning to regret his decision to come here, but a thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Do you happen to know doctor Baselard?”, Galbraith asked both brothers.

He asked the question at random – he did not expect to receive a positive answer to it. Actually, that’s exactly what happened.

“No, this is the first time we’ve heard this name”, the Okamura brothers answered in unison. “And who is it?”

“Well, he’s short, bald, gray-haired and wears glasses”, the inspector listed the doctor’s characteristics from memory.

The brothers shrugged their shoulders – none of them had seen a person with such signs. The inspector lost heart. Ichinose put his hand on his shoulder.

“Come with us, respected guest”, the Japanese said in a soothing tone.

The brothers turned at once and headed down the corridor, Galbraith trailing behind them. The three of them walked through narrow passages and countless corridors lined with metal plates that glittered under the white light of the ceiling lamps. Occasionally there were niches in the walls in which gas cylinders and batteries were located. Sometimes the walls were crossed by long pipes, from which a faint hum emanated – apparently it was a heating pipeline.

But the inspector had nothing to do with the architectural delights and technical subtleties of this institute – his thoughts were occupied with completely different problems. He walked quickly behind the Okamura brothers, trying not to lag behind them even a step, and thought that if it weren’t for these two, he would probably have gotten lost in these monotonous metal guts of tunnels, each of which seemed to have at least a thousand passages and branches.

Finally the brothers stopped in a small nook. The inspector stood behind them and watched as Ichinose winked at him and, facing the corrugated iron door, leaned on the handle with visible effort. She didn’t give in. A grin crossed Galbraith’s face for a second. Shinoda glanced at his younger brother with a frown.

“Move away, ototo”, Shinoda said and lightly pushed Ichinose.

He jumped away from the door in fear and, hunching his shoulders, pressed himself against the wall. The older brother immediately grabbed the handle and pulled it towards himself. The massive door swung open so sharply that Shinoda almost lost his balance and only managed to stay on his feet by grabbing the door frame. His guest grinned again, but when the Japanese turned to him, the inspector immediately fell silent and, just in case, took a step back, as if fearing that his smile could cause displeasure in his interlocutor.

For a second, Galbraith and Shinoda looked into each other’s eyes, then the second turned his gaze to his younger brother, who had already come to his senses, and grinned.

“Then it’s up to you”, Shinoda said cheerfully.

“Are you talking to me?”, Galbraith did not understand to whom the phrase was addressed.

“Of course”, the older brother Okamura again turned his gaze to the inspector.

There was interest in the Japanese’s eyes – about the same as that of a scientist observing the behavior of a laboratory rat. “I don’t like this look”, Galbraith thought, but did not argue and stepped over the threshold. Once he was inside, he heard the door behind him begin to slowly close. The policeman turned around with lightning speed and leaned on the heavy door with both hands.

“Behave yourself, baka!”, Shinoda muttered displeasedly.

The inspector had to obey, and when the door slammed shut, he looked around suspiciously. It was dark – the only source of light in the room was a red light bulb that flickered dimly on the ceiling. Galbraith hesitantly took a couple of steps into the darkness, when suddenly a loud click reached his ears, and the room was illuminated by the bright light of the same fluorescent lamps that were in the corridor.

“Now, listen up, guest”, came a booming voice, followed by a hiss of static.

The policeman turned his head in the direction where the source of the sound was coming from. The voice came from a speaker hanging directly above the door.

“Go ahead, guest, and do what I tell you”, said the invisible announcer.

The inspector shrugged and turned on his heel. What opened before his eyes was a room with a low ceiling, covered with the same iron plates as the rest of the interior of the underground institute. Galbraith moved forward. He saw a dashboard mounted into the wall, next to which stood what looked like a chair, which the policeman could tell was made of chromed metal. Its back curved slightly back, and the seat and armrests were upholstered in what looked like faux leather.

Galbraith involuntarily shuddered when he saw this – he immediately associated this design with the electric chair, in which executions were still carried out in some states of America. It was strange to see such a thing in an English computer institute run by the Japanese, but he was not laughing at the moment.

“So, you see The Spectator’s Seat”, the distorted voice rang out again.

“Huh, a very pretty name for this structure”, Galbraith thought sarcastically. He walked up to the chair and touched his finger to the upholstery. It turns out that the chair was upholstered in rubber. “So as not to accidentally give me an electric shock?” he thought.

“Get into it and press the red button, which is on your left”, the announcer’s voice gave the command.

Galbraith was in no hurry to sit in this chair. The thought occurred to him whether this was part of doctor Baselard’s plan, the essence of which was to lure the inspector underground, and then put him in the electric chair and that’s it, the unwanted person was eliminated… The policeman decided to turn to the invisible owner of this impudent voice. He didn’t expect anyone to answer him or even just hear him, but it was still worth a try.

“Hey, what is your name…”, Galbraith shouted, turning his head around.

“What?”, a voice boomed questioningly.

“Why is this chair?”, asked the inspector.

“In order to connect to the thoughts of D.O.O.R.”, the announcer answered loudly.

“I don’t understand where the logic is here”, the policeman shouted.

“You sit in The Spectator’s Seat and at the press of a button a special adapter will be connected to your head, allowing you to read the dreams of a supercomputer”, the voice explained loudly.

“Why is everything so difficult?”, Galbraith exclaimed almost capriciously.

“Nothing complicated”, the invisible announcer seemed to smile. “You just sit down and connect”.

“Is it really true that you didn’t find a single person in your entire institute who could simply mount a screen?”, asked Galbraith.

“D.O.O.R. provides information in the form of a sequence of pulses. We are actively working to ensure that a supercomputer can convert it into a continuous stream of video signal, but at this stage all tasks associated with visualization are performed by the brain of the “spectator”. Much like with a book – it’s just a set of letters, but in your head they are transformed into vivid images”, after this tirade the voice died down.

Due to the static and echo of the room, it was impossible to understand who this voice actually belonged to, but when Galbraith heard this analogy from the lips of an invisible operator, the inspector immediately thought that the person sitting at the microphone was none other than a gray-haired specialist. However, the policeman did not enter into an altercation with him – what was the point if he was still locked in a room similar to a prison cell…

“Sit in the seat”, the voice rang out again.

“Well”, thought Galbraith, “You pushed it enough”. He straightened his jacket and settled into his chair.

“Now push the button”, the announcer continued.

“…and I will get the result”, thought the inspector. Galbraith turned his head to the left and saw, right next to the armrest, a small recess in the dashboard, in the depths of which a blue light flickered. He leaned closer. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed that it was a round plastic button with a barely noticeable bulge in the middle.

“No, wait!”, the policeman raised his head up.

“What questions?”, a voice boomed from the speaker.

“Would you describe in general terms what I will see in these “dreams”!”, Galbraith shouted as if fighting for his life.

“Okay”, the announcer muttered, as if doing him a favour. “Professor Makoto Shugarami did not intend to create a specific personality of the machine mind, he simply downloaded information into it. However, when we did the “first reading”, we noticed that the supercomputer in its thoughts considers itself a young American mafioso who lives in a European town”.

“Huh, this electronic brain has an unbridled imagination”, thought Galbraith.

“And what is the name of this “E-Mafia” of yours?”, asked the inspector

“Edwin Deforest”, the voice answered dryly.

“All right, gentlemen, I’m ready”, the policeman finally agreed.

Galbraith looked away from the shiny metal ceiling and looked again at the blue light. He hesitated a little – almost like when he first boarded his first plane. Then the fact was that he was leaving his native England in order to get to the unknown Das gelobte Land. And now – what an irony of fate! – he did return trip, in order to get into the thoughts of some electronic brains in the depths of a suspicious underground bunker.

Galbraith wiped the sweat on his forehead with his hand and, thinking tenderly about poor little Delia, resolutely extended his hand to the button…