Flashback

“Ahhh,” said Sato but the syllable did not suggest real enlightenment.

Finally… “But how do you feel about all this change, Bottom-san?”

Nick sighed. For whatever reason—and perhaps it was Mr. Nakamura’s curiosity—Sato really wanted to know his fucking feelings. If he hadn’t been strapped and clamped and armored in place, Nick might have left the room then, but the room was moving at forty-eight miles per hour at the moment. Their next town, he saw by the GPS display, would be Las Vegas… Las Vegas, New Mexico, not the Nevada gambling town.

“I feel like almost the full second half of my life has been a goddamned nightmare,” said Nick. “I expect to wake up any day and find out it has all been a fucking nightmare… that Hawaii didn’t secede and you Japs didn’t take it over after them being a monarchy again for six lousy years. That Dara and I could honeymoon there again if we wanted to. That Santa Fe was just a quaint town in a neighboring state with good food and some good art, rather than being a place run by bandits where someone stuck a six-inch blade in my bowels.

“I expect to wake up and see that I live in a country that projects power in the world for good reasons—to find justice there—rather than watch us send our children, my kid next year, Sato, to battlefields we can’t pronounce where they die fighting battles for you Japs… and not even for your goddamned country, but for your zaibatsu or keiretsu or whatever you call those damned teams of corporations that really run Japan these days.

“I expect to wake up and be able to walk down the street of my own city in my own country without being afraid that some goddamned jihadist kid is going to explode a suicide vest on me for no sane reason and where I can go to a Rockies game on a summer evening without worrying about bombers and snipers. I expect to wake up and find that the money I saved could actually buy something—like a plane trip somewhere, or a driving vacation—and that my wife is still alive to go with me.

“But the nightmare’s real. The bad dream is the reality, and everything good that we dreamed about—Dara and me, my whole fucking country—that’s gone, history, a fading dream.”

Nick was breathing hard when he finally fell silent. His cheeks were wet with what he hoped to Christ was sweat.

“This is why you take flashback, Bottom-san?” Sato said softly.

“You bet your ass it’s why I take flashback, Hideki-san,” answered Nick. “And it’s why half the cops I used to know have swallowed their guns.”

“Swallowed their… ahh, yes,” said Sato.

Nick shook his head as much as he could within his helmet and armor mask. Sato asks him three or four obvious, stupid questions and has former homicide detective Nick Bottom blubbering—or at least sweating—like a little girl. It was pathetic. It made Nick realize—or at least be reminded of—what a wreck he was. All he wanted to do right now was to get back to his cubie in the corner of the old Baby Gap, lock his door, and settle into several hours of flash.

He said to Sato, “But Japan has changed, too, hasn’t it?”

“Ah, yes, Bottom-san,” said Sato. “In the past years of upheaval everywhere, Nippon has shrugged off this shell of culture and government forced on it by MacArthur and the occupying Americans after the lost war and has returned to its natural form of hierarchy and government.”

“Which is what?” asked Nick. “Rule by the family and strongman who wins the constant battle between the zaibatsu or keiretsu teams of companies we were talking about?”

“Hai,” grunted Sato. “Yes, Bottom-san. More or less. In that sense, Nippon has thrown off the uncomfortable pretense of democracy forced upon us—a cultural form that never fit us—and returned to something like the bakufu or tent-office or Shogunate, the seii taishgun form of strong military-industrial leader that ruled Nippon for so many generations.”

“During your Middle Ages,” said Nick, not completely hiding the sneer in his tone.

“Yes, Bottom-san. Our Middle Ages which continued until you Americans forced our island and culture to open to the world, almost to the twentieth century. But be cautious in your contempt, Bottom-san. Seii taishgun means ‘great general who subdues eastern barbarians.’ ”

“That’s us,” said Nick. “The gai-jin. The foreign devils.”

“Hai. Foreign but not devils. That is the way the Chinese think and speak. They, the Chinese, are the greatest racists in the world. Not the Nipponese. Gai-jin may translate best simply to ‘the outside persons.’ ”

“Meanwhile, your boss, Mr. Nakamura, wants to be a modern Shogun.”

“Of course. As do the heads of the Munetaka, Morikune, Toyoda, Omura, Yoritsugo, Yamahsita, and Yoshiake keiretsu.”

“There’s an Omura as Advisor in California and a Yoritsugo Advisor in the Midwest somewhere—Indiana and Illinois?”

“Hai, Bottom-san. And Ohio.”

“So being a Federal Advisor here in the States is a big step toward seizing the Shogunate in Japan?”