Journal: 09 / 2007

I’ll call this “the sinking ship dilemma”.

Basically, you’re in this ship, right? It’s not a particularly attractive ship, but it has this sort of rusty charm that makes you like it despite its flaws. You feel really, truly at home on this ship and the way it rocks back and forth in the saltwater at night helps you go to sleep. One day, you decide to take this ship for a trip to the Arctic Circle even though your sailor buddies are warning you not to and you’re not even sure why you’re doing it yourself. You end up doing it anyway - maybe out of curiosity, maybe out of spite - and everyone sort of chuckles uneasily but they all bid you a safe journey into the wild unknown. You smile, light a cigarette and chug off in that rusty boat for the North.

So, let’s say that you’re chugging through the Arctic Sea and it’s so cold your words are freezing and falling to the ground, clinking when they hit the deck. “But hey,” you think to yourself, “This isn’t so bad. I can swing this sort of life for a while.”

Well, see, then you hit this big bastard of an iceberg. I mean it’s really fucking huge, right? Cuts this big gash all along the side of the boat while you were posing on deck looking cool in your Captain Gordon raincoat and you hear “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” playing. Problem is, the big bastard of an iceberg destroyed your radio equipment so you can’t SOS any boats that may be nearby. So, we’re left with a choice:

Do you hold on to the last second, abandon ship, jump into the icy waters of the Artic Sea, shoot some flares and hope to God that there’s a boat nearby that sees you before you freeze to death? Or, do you accept the consequences of your rash and ill-advised journey and sink down into the depths with this rusty but lovable hulk of a ship that really never did you any wrong?

The waters are cold, but the inside of the ship is warm for now; at least it will be until it sinks under the waves. Oh, and if you stay aboard you’ll drown which is quicker and probably more pleasant than dying of hypothermia, desperately trying to stay afloat until your strength wears out and you sink like a stone. Though, is that glimmering of hope - of possible rescue by another warm boat that might be rusty and lovable too - enough to deny fate for? Is that worth betraying the boat that stuck by you until the end - a victim of your decisions - for a few more fleeting moments of life? Do you think you’ll regret not going down with the ship, like a good captain would? Or, should you rage against your misfortune and forge on, not giving up? Would you rather take the plunge instead of just lying down like an old dog? you think you see another ship on the horizon, and boy does it look shiny. Though, it could just be a chunk of ice way off in the distance, reflecting sunlight. You can’t tell and your trusty boat is taking on water fast. You’ve got to make some sort of decision.

That water’s really cold, but you’re a pretty good swimmer, right?
Early 19th-century fettuccine magnate Adrian ‘Hats’ Hatsworthcelli once opined that “Speed and Leisure exist in that most dynamic of tensions; each pulls wincing at the other, and the band inevitably snaps.” Food for thought, I suppose - - but like so many people of his day, Hats did not live nestled in the Utopian clockwork of modern Japan. Nor did he ever ride Tokyo’s newest glimmering electromagnetic wunderkind: the 特別USAGI急行列車. If one rightly judges one’s self-worth by the experiences one accrues in life, I am far better than that man.

Outside the USAGI’s peculiarly convex plasticine windows, traditional Tokyo bonsai gardens blur past at a breathtaking 4000kph . . . doubtlessly impressive to the uninitiated, but a far cry from the train’s top speed of 32500. There’s no sound from the frictionless rails - - then again, how could there be, floating as we are a full seventeen meters above them. There’s a slight hiss, of course, pumped into the individual reclining seats that conform directly to the contours of every grateful passenger, but it’s nothing more than an auditory illusion designed to eliminate the unsettling sensation of Unmoored Frictionless Travel (UFT) in those unaccustomed to it . . . and it’s due to be phased out within the next seventeen days. Tokyoites, it must be said, are an adaptive lot.

The same can’t be said, sadly, for Jennifer Tetherbrackt, a self-described cosplay fan and street performer from Denver, CO. She’s wedged herself into the aisle next to me, her chalky, ham-like frame unable to find purchase in one of the USAGI’s chairs. The robotic onigiri vendors swerve nimbly to avoid her. She tries to engage me in lopsided conversation between great gulps of Pocari Sweat, but I realize just how greatly my verbal English has decayed during my long absence from the States. I give her a small origami crane and a wan smile, turning my attention back to CHIEMI.

CHIEMI is my constant companion for this journey - - the form I’ve chosen for her is that of a flaxen-haired Harajuku cosplayer, complete with black ginseng/clove cigarillo. But I’m no pederast: CHIEMI is nothing more than an adaptive-intelligence traveling companion calculated deep within the bowels of the USAGI’S centralized server farm in Hokkaido, beamed instantaneously to one of the JSDF’s orbiting satellite banks, and then down again to my speeding train car. She’s being beamed directly onto the back of my optic nerve via a tracking system in the ceiling (originally developed for use in LASIK). We’re playing Turtle Punch (rough translation), one of the games offered in CHIEMI’s entertainment pack, and the only one that doesn’t require signing up for direct withdrawl from my bank account (I’m no technophobe, but my hanko is currently being reworked to incorporate my new Japanese surname). She’s beginning to look pouty; she does this when you refuse to cough up any additional service fees. I kind of enjoy it. She senses this, and looks impassive. I dislike it, and mentally switch her off.

I think about exploring the bathrooms, but it’s too late; the USAGI’s already arrived at the station. I breathe a quick prayer of thanks for the best journey I’ve ever experienced, then quickly realize that it’s no miracle - - just firm mathematics, ruthlessly applied by Japan’s most brutal scientists, scuttling away in hot inky darkness at the dead center of Earth’s core.

And for me . . . well, that’s enough.