EDGE (42 page)

A chill crawled up her spine as she slowly became cognizant of the ominous threat. The revelation was so massive that it was simply impossible to process it all at once. Bit by bit, her physical reactions began to catch up with the information her mind had already processed, and she felt the hairs on her arms begin to stand on edge as fear began to penetrate the core of her consciousness.

Isogai closed the lid of his laptop and put it back in his bag, and they resumed climbing the steps. For a while neither spoke, concentrating only on the task of walking. A gust of wind blew across the path, strangely warm for the time of year. The wind died down as suddenly as it came, leaving the branches still and quiet.

There was a faint sound coming from above, like crumbling earth. The high sun was beginning its descent towards the west. Over the past few days, the dryness of the air had seemed to amplify the sun’s light, making it sharp and blinding. Today, however, the light seemed strangely muted, although it was still too bright to look directly at the sun. Scattered and diffused, different somehow from the warm glow of dawn or a dusky sun, it broke through the canopy in mixed shades of orange and crimson.

Saeko traced the path of the light through the trees until a point where it seemed to darken; she stopped dead as the view of the giant crater opened up before them. Isogai continued for a few more steps before coming to a halt at the crater’s edge.

Saeko stood speechless, unable to process the change in the familiar
landscape. The crater stood vast and silent, exuding a suffocating odor of freshly uncovered earth. From where she was standing, the gaping hole looked exactly like the figure zero.

A small cry escaped her lips, but Isogai’s reaction was more muted. Never having been to Herb Gardens before, the gaping hole simply looked to him like the beginnings of a construction site for a vast underground facility.

Hashiba had walked a quarter of a way around the rim of the crater. Kagayama stood with one foot against a shrub, peering over the edge. When Saeko and Isogai appeared around the corner they waved them over, feeling strangely jovial.

Saeko stepped forward to introduce Isogai but couldn’t seem to find her voice. Fortunately, Isogai stepped forward and introduced himself, shaking hands with Kagayama and Hashiba—a quick perfunctory shake for Kagayama, a more enthusiastic shake for Hashiba. Still clasping Hashiba’s hand, Isogai stepped towards the edge of the crater and scratched his nose with his other hand.

“That’s a pretty strong smell,” he observed.

“What do you make of it?” Hashiba managed to get free of Isogai’s grip and held his hands up as though in defeat.

“I guess I would have to say it’s a giant bowl-shaped hole in the ground.” Isogai smiled. His cheeks looked slightly flushed.

Hashiba realized that Isogai needed to be brought up to date with events, including the sudden appearance of the crater. Judging from the calm, they were probably the first people to have found it.

The crater looked like a circle at first sight, but a more careful look revealed that it was more of an oval. Its walls were wavy and pleated, like the plastic casing of a caramel custard, the kind you unmolded onto a plate, though this crater was more triangular, pyramid-shaped.

Saeko remembered that she had seen something similar before, during a driving holiday through England’s Peak District with her father. There had been these hills off the side of the road. Her father had explained that they were called “mounts”; they were not naturally formed and had been constructed for some purpose by the ancients. They had reminded Saeko of the mound-like shapes of Japan’s prehistorical tombs.

Isogai stood up straight and put on a serious face, licking his lips. “It looks like a meteor impact, but that’s not it, is it?”

“No recordings of any impact, it seems.” Hashiba explained that they
had called the meteorological agency and confirmed that no tremors or vibrations had been recorded, nothing to indicate a meteor strike.

“So it just looks that way,” Isogai said to himself, approaching the crater’s edge. He bent forward and put a finger to the loose soil on the surface. “No external pressure, then. When did you say this appeared?”

“We’re not sure,” Hashiba answered. “Perhaps just an hour ago. At most half a day.”

“So the question is how it appeared.”

“Agreed. We have no idea. As far as we know, it just appeared out of the blue.”

“Okay. So it doesn’t seem to be a meteorite impact. And it’s doubtful that someone turned up with a digger and just dug the thing out.”

“Right.”

“Are you really sure about this? I mean, if that’s the case then we’re all in trouble here.” Isogai took a step closer to Hashiba, pointing a finger at him.

Hashiba was surprised by the accusatory gesture and looked across to Saeko, questioning. “What does he mean, trouble?”

Isogai unzipped the front of his jacket and placed his bag on the ground, as though preparing himself. Saeko preempted him.

“E=MC
²
.” Her voice was a whisper.

Isogai clapped his hands together and threw his head back; he was becoming increasingly excited by the developments. “Exactly! That’s the problem right there. E=MC
²
. Einstein’s equation taught us of the vast levels of energy concealed in ordinary matter. If you were to convert even a single gram of matter into pure energy you could instantly boil a stadium full of water. We all know how this translates into weaponry. A nuclear warhead releases a vast tumult of energy through mass atomic fission. Atomic fusion works to the same principles. Nuclear weapons only use a small amount of mass, but we all know the terrifying results. Now, there’s actually another, much more efficient way of releasing this energy: collisions with anti-matter.”

“Anti-matter?” Hashiba repeated subconsciously. He had heard the word before but wasn’t sure of the details.

“Matter is made up of atoms,” Isogai explained, “while atoms, in turn, are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. We know that there are also a set of anti-particles that have the same mass but demonstrate exact opposite electrical charges. When the universe began, these particles and anti-particles existed in equal numbers. For some reason, however, the
anti-particles have disappeared. Particles and anti-particles are like pairs of identical twins, if you like. They look exactly the same but have completely opposite personalities. In basic terms you can think of a particle as having a plus-one value and an anti-particle as having a negative-one value. If you put the two together, each cancels out the other and you get a clean slate: zero. In other words, if they meet, they cease to exist.”

“And the existence of these anti-particles has actually been proven?” Kagayama asked, frowning.

“Not just proven. They’re actually being made using a high-energy particle accelerator at the CERN laboratory in Geneva.” Isogai explained how the machine worked and how the particles were kept separate from each other. The others stood listening. “Now, the particle accelerators are not the only places where anti-particles are being made. They’re also formed naturally in space. Occasionally, the particles formed in space have been known to enter our atmosphere. If the anti-particles were to reach the surface through a complex route involving electromagnetic waves and the earth’s internal structure, then it’s possible that they could bring about disappearances of people. Or the formation of a huge crater.

“But let’s think about this for a moment. If this crater was indeed created through the mass disappearance of soil … Well, you can probably see what I meant when I said that we’re all in trouble. Let’s say the 500,000 tons of earth here was transformed through a collision with anti-matter. The byproduct of that would be the immediate and ferocious release of an enormous amount of energy. We’re talking about the destructive equivalent of around 500 billion nuclear warheads. In other words, more energy than if the world’s entire stockpile of nuclear weapons were all detonated at once.”

The horrific destruction that would tear through the earth was beyond imagination, a veritable depiction of hell on earth. The planet would literally be ripped to shreds.

“Of course, if that was the case, I doubt we’d be standing around like this. The world would have ceased to exist the moment this crater was formed.”

The Earth still existed, that much was clear. Saeko kicked uneasily at the earth around her. The soil was soft and warm.

“So you’re saying that the crater was formed some other way, right?” Kagayama’s voice wavered slightly, as though he was afraid to hope.

“Not necessarily,” Isogai warned. “Maybe the world has been destroyed. Maybe we just haven’t noticed yet.”

Saeko knew that it was a slippery slope. Once you began to entertain doubts about the stability of the universe, even the feeling of the ground beneath your feet could do nothing to assuage them. When it came down to it, there was no way to actually prove that the universe still existed.

A sharp gust of wind blew down towards the shrine. Saeko heard the wooden clattering of hundreds of wish boards. The group turned towards the shrine, following the sound. The
torii
still hung over the threshold, but as they watched, it creaked forwards, slowly at first and then with increasing momentum, beginning an inexorable slide into the abyss as the soil gave way from under it.

Somehow the crimson gate sliding down the browned soil felt like a sign of things to come. Kagayama took a few steps back, but Saeko and Isogai stepped forward, watching the
torii
until it came to rest at the bottom of the crater.

Then everything was still. The gate lay upturned and unmoving at the bottom of the crater. Occasional birdcalls broke the silence from above. To Saeko, the sounds only served to accentuate the feeling of nature’s incomprehensibility. It was getting late, but the sky seemed to be getting brighter.

6
After Hosokawa got all the shots he wanted, the group decided to head back down the path towards the hotel. When they reached the gate at the bottom and passed by the restaurant, Isogai pulled Hashiba to the side.

“Can we talk for a minute?”

“What is it?”

“Do I have my own room at the hotel?”

“Of course.”

Isogai looked embarrassed. In stark contrast to earlier he seemed to be having trouble stringing a sentence together. “If it’s not too much trouble … Er, would you mind if I called a friend to join me?”

“Hmm?” Hashiba looked up, intrigued.

“A good friend and quantum physicist, Chris Roberts. I don’t want you to hire him as an advisor, don’t worry. He’s a genius in his field, and I think he’ll be able to help us work out what this damn crater is. In fact, I think he’ll be more use than me. I need his advice if we’re to do this … I guarantee he’ll be of use.”

Hashiba already knew the name from the file he’d put together on
Isogai’s credentials. Chris was Isogai’s colleague and lover, his partner during the chimpanzee experiments at Carnegie Mellon. When the experiments—electrocuting the chimps’ brains—had gone public, Isogai had faced the ire of animal cruelty groups and come back to Japan in fear of his safety. It made sense that he wouldn’t have just left Chris there. They must have come back to Japan together.

“No problem at all. Give him a call.”

Isogai’s face brightened. He pulled out his phone and started to call his friend. Hashiba walked over to the parking lot with Saeko and told Kagayama and the rest to go back to the hotel ahead of them. He tapped Saeko on her back and they walked together to the main road.

“Are you really going to do this?” Hashiba checked again.

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“Did something happen?”

“I just get this feeling, you know, that I’ve wasted so much time since my father disappeared. I don’t want to waste any more time.”

“Even so, there’s no need to rush off tonight.”

“Listen, I’m sure there’s something we missed, something
I
missed out there. But it’s my problem, not the show’s.”

Hashiba looked at the time; it was already past three in the afternoon. “How are you going to get there?”

“I was thinking of renting a car. I saw a place near the train station.”

“It’ll be dark by the time you reach Takato.”

“They’ve still got electricity and water, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Then there’s no problem. I won’t have to wander around in the dark.”

“Where are you planning to stay?”

“I’ll find a business hotel or something in Ina.”

“Okay, good.”

“Good?” Saeko nudged him in the ribs. “You didn’t think I’d stay in that house, did you?”

“Sometimes I have no idea what you’re going to do.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised with a defiant look.

“All right, if you find anything let me know as soon as you can, even if it’s the middle of the night. Okay?”

“Of course.”

“And if you need me for anything, just call.”

He meant it—if she needed his help, he was ready to drop everything
and go straight to her. There was something about Saeko that he just couldn’t pin down. She was both traditional and madly eccentric. She had this normal desire to settle down, to get married. On the other hand, she had an incredible streak of inner strength and independence. It was hard to reconcile the two. Hashiba knew that people generally struggled with an internal mix of conflicting attributes, but he worried that the trait was too strong in Saeko. He knew he was in love with her, but he couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t too independent for him. So he wanted the chance to help her; he wanted to see when, to see if she would turn to him for help. It was, in a sense, the only way he knew to test the closeness of their relationship.

The two of them ambled in the direction of Route 135. Once they got close, Saeko waved down a passing cab.

“At least let me drive you to the station,” Hashiba said, taking her by the hand.

Saeko shook her head. “You have lots to be getting on with. I don’t want you wasting any time.”

She was right, of course. He had to get back to the hotel and finish writing up the scripts for the shoot. Besides, the taxi was already waiting. “All right, please be careful.”