Following that logic, Hashiba realized that some part of him actually desired to see the end of the world. He’d often thought that if the world were to end, he’d want to be there to see it. He had to admit that some part of him wanted to go out in a blaze of glory; if it was going to happen, then he wanted it to happen to his generation. That was why his subconscious had made the decision to believe that the phase transition was real. The idea that the end would swallow all, that the fate of humanity was somehow intertwined with that of the whole universe, seemed to alleviate some of the fear. He even thought he detected a perverse elation in his bosom. To die slowly and painfully, alone after losing a loved one—that was the type of death he dreaded the most. To live to the end of the universe—now, that was something different altogether.
Once, he sat with his colleagues discussing a “Last Supper” article someone had read in a magazine about what you’d eat on the world’s last day. His colleagues had joked around, giving easy answers like tuna, foie gras, sushi rolls. Everyone had enjoyed his own version of the end. Hashiba had thought seriously about the question, and when asked for his answer, he said it was more important who he ate with, not what. At that point Hashiba had already been married with a kid, but the person that came to mind was not his wife. He had always been known as a good guy, progressing steadily along with his career, settling down into a marriage that was stable and bland. He remembered deciding that if he was going to consider the idea then he might as well entertain his fantasies, and tried to imagine the perfect woman as his companion. As it went, no one in particular came to mind. Now, however, when the scenario was actually coming true, he realized that he had found the woman of his dreams. It was ironic, he guessed.
How should he actually spend the final hours that he had left? Should he play the good guy as he’d always done and sideline his desires? He asked himself whether he was really happy with the life that he’d led so far. He wasn’t sure; that was the honest answer. He was sure there was no afterlife waiting for him, so he wasn’t particularly worried about judgment after death. The voice of temptation beckoned him, inviting him to throw away all his morals. The memory of Saeko, half-naked on her bed as they groped in the darkness, came back to him. The image was so vivid he felt he could almost smell her skin as it brushed against his. It seemed natural and correct for a man to want to have sex with a beloved before his end came.
No, I can’t …
Hashiba repeated the thought out loud, trying to get a grip, but the temptation took hold like an eagle, wrapping a tight claw around his emotions. An untapped mass of nervous energy coursed through his body.
Until a few moments ago all he had wanted was to see out a quiet end. How easily that notion had fallen apart, giving in to this inner struggle. Regardless of what people might say, everything fell apart at the end. Facing such extreme circumstances, Hashiba doubted that anyone could resist the urge to spend their last moments with the one they loved. The desire for Saeko continued to grow in intensity, stronger than ever before. He wanted her body; he wanted her love.
It was probably all the worse for them having been stopped halfway into the act. The frustrated desire had been dormant, smoldering inside. He sat, tormented by his feelings, cradling his head in his hands.
Hashiba made his decision. He was going to use the time left to him to complete the only thing that left him unsatisfied. If he was going to do anything, he had to do it now. He would have to take one of the cars himself and get Kagayama, Kato and Hosokawa to use the other. The three would head for Tokyo, where his family was too, but he would drive straight to Takato. He couldn’t help noticing that Atami was almost exactly at the geographical mid-point between the two locations, as though to embody his dilemma. His heart felt as though it was being pulled in two, as opposing forces tore a fissure through him. He picked up his phone, his hand shaking. He dialed Saeko’s number again. He hadn’t heard anything from her since they parted outside the herb gardens earlier that afternoon.
The call went straight to her voicemail.
Hashiba hung up; her phone was still off. It was possible that she had forgotten to turn it back on after reaching the Fujimura house. It struck him that he’d received a call from there. The number would be in the call history of his phone, and Saeko would definitely have arrived by now. His throat was dry, and an acid feeling churned in his stomach.
Hashiba went through the phone’s menu system and opened the archive of received calls. He found the number and pressed the call button.
The phone started to ring. Someone actually picked up, catching him off guard. Hashiba coughed to clear his throat before speaking.
“Hello?” His voice was hoarse.
Instead of a reply he heard the sound of the phone being hung up and the line going dead. He was just about to ring back when Kato came flying into the room.
“Hashiba, you’ve got to come.”
Hashiba didn’t even turn round. “Can’t you see I’m busy? I’ve got stuff to do!” he shouted. His hand tightened around the phone.
“Isogai’s calling everyone back.” Kato’s admonishing tone suggested that he knew what it was Hashiba was busy with.
“Isogai? What’s he saying?”
“He’s getting excited about something. I don’t know, he’s acting strange.”
Without any particular reason Hashiba looked at his watch, tutting. “Is it important?”
“It definitely looks that way. They’re getting excited, hugging each other and shouting stuff back and forth in English …”
Hashiba knew that if he was to see Saeko again then time was of the essence. But if Isogai had discovered something new, then perhaps he should hear it. Hashiba nodded and followed Kato out into the hallway.
When they came to a stop outside Isogai’s room, the loud clamoring of voices sounded through the door. As Kato had said, they were definitely excited about something. It appeared as though they were in the middle of some sort of debate, but Hashiba couldn’t pick up on the content.
He opened the door and the two of them looked over. Isogai pitched across the room, almost tripping in his excitement.
“You were looking into cases of people going missing, right?”
“Certainly.” Hashiba felt disappointed. Why would he be asking about that now? Surely that was irrelevant at this point. That was why Isogai was here in the first place, to help them finish the program on mysterious disappearances after the death of Shigeko Torii, to eschew the paranormal for a more scientific approach.
“Could you show me the information you’ve collected so far?”
Hashiba saw something in Isogai’s eyes that spurred him to agree to his request. He saw a dim flicker of light mixed in among the despair, a sliver of hope. It had to be a good sign, maybe he’d thought of something to stop this after all …
Hashiba collected the file from his room and handed to Isogai a summary of all the information they had collated on the disappearances at Takato, Itoikawa, and Atami. It even had details on the Californian cases they had come across. Each case was mapped for its physical proximity to tectonic fault lines and linked to recordings of heightened sunspot activity with visual aids.
Isogai took the file from Hashiba and began to scan the contents without even taking the time to walk back into the room. He paged rapidly through, as though trying to confirm something, then started to explain something to Chris in rapid English before asking his opinion. Chris’ eyes darted back and forth as he replied, and he spoke so quickly that Hashiba could see tiny bubbles of spit forming on the side of his mouth. When the two seemed to reach a conclusion, Chris sat shaking his head, his eyes betraying a mix of hope and fear. Hashiba had heard them mention the name Jack Thorne a number of times.
“Just who is Jack Thorne?” he blurted, his frustration at not being able to fully understand the conversation beginning to boil over.
Isogai stopped mid-sentence, surprised at Hashiba’s outburst. He stared blankly for a moment, t
hen, oddly, winked. The gesture was so unnatural that Hashiba didn’t immediately recognize it. Isogai’s nose twisted and his mouth hung half open as one side of his face wrinkled together with the movement. As he registered it as a wink, Hashiba began to wonder if Isogai had actually begun to lose it. When he spoke, however, his tone was calm and focused.
“As we know, scientific advisors to the U.S. President are currently gathering the world’s top minds in physics and mathematics and bringing them to Washington. One of them is Jack Thorne. When I first learned that he was included in the roundup, I was a little surprised to say the least. His field is almost classical—gravitational theory. The rest are all cutting-edge theorists in fields related to quantum mechanics. He stands out like a sore thumb, so we started to look into possible reasons for his inclusion. Then we saw exactly the words we were looking for. Turns out he specializes in the study of black holes and, more importantly, wormholes.”
Hashiba knew more about black holes than the latter. “And again, a wormhole is?”
“Essentially, it’s like a shortcut to another universe.” There was something jarring about the casualness with which Isogai said it. A shortcut to another universe? He glanced at his watch, purposely avoiding Hashiba’s gaze. “We’ve got no time to lose, we can’t waste anymore time explaining this.”
“I don’t care how much time we’ve got or haven’t got. Look, you guys know what’s going on, this is your thing. But I have no idea. I just want to know what the hell’s waiting for us.”
Isogai was taken aback by Hashiba’s uncharacteristic forcefulness. He pressed his left hand against his forehead, seemingly a habit when he felt flustered, and began to explain.
“A wormhole is as the name suggests. It’s like a hole through the ground. In terms of general relativity, it’s also known as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge—a fitting name since the concept of a bridge is more accurate than a hole. The idea is that the universe we know is not unique, that in fact there are countless numbers of universes, all existing on top of each other. That’s what Jack Thorne believes, anyhow. A wormhole links these separate universes together. Wormholes are like bridges, except that they only function in one direction. Once you cross the threshold, wherever you end up is your new home. There’s no coming back.”
“I see. Actually, I still have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, but I kind of see. Whatever. There’s multiple universes, and these wormholes link them. How does this relate to the phase transition?”
“If Washington has included Jack Thorne on their list it can only mean one thing. They’re looking for wormholes. His belief is that a side effect of a phase transition is the simultaneous emergence of wormholes in the fabric of space. Think of wormholes as bubbles that appear when a phase transition in water causes it to boil and turn to its gaseous state. Any organisms in the water will be carried upwards, taken with the water as it makes the transition. Don’t picture these wormholes as tunnels. They’re more like bubbles that resemble black holes.” Isogai raised his finger at the end.
“Okay, and?”
“Washington must have accepted that there’s nothing they can do to stop the phase transition. We’re essentially helpless to stop our universe from undergoing the change. The only course of action left, a last desperate attempt to do something, would be to try and escape. To abandon our universe in search of another.”
“You’re saying that they’re trying to find these wormholes?”
“Exactly. There’s no other way to survive this.”
Hashiba felt that he finally understood the glimmer of hope he had seen in the two men’s eyes when he had first entered the room. “Where will the wormholes open?”
“Only in a few locations. A few, very specific locations.”
“And you think that Washington knows these locations?”
“Washington?” Isogai laughed. “I’d say they have no idea.”
“And you know this and they don’t because …?”
“Because,” Isogai smiled, “they haven’t got an expert on mysterious cases of people gone missing.” He repeated the sentence in English to Chris, who laughed, weakly.
Hashiba and Kato exchanged glances, the humor lost on them. Hashiba felt a surge of blood rush to his head; he was finding it hard to concentrate. Isogai was waiting for a reaction but none came.
“Come on, don’t you see?” he exclaimed impatiently. “We’ve been standing right next to the pot of gold without even seeing it! Right now, we’re probably the only people in the whole world able to guess exactly where the wormholes will appear.”
Hashiba’s confusion began to clear away, replaced by the beginnings of understanding. He felt momentarily overwhelmed, unable to speak. He clasped his hands in a ball, and his knuckles whitened as his body began to release the nervous tension that had been building up inside him.
“You’ve been following these mysterious disappearances. And where did they go missing? Near tectonic plates, near local magnetic disturbances—all the factors you’ve racked up and linked together.” Isogai rolled up the papers and slapped them against the edge of the table.
“They were all sucked into wormholes? Is that what you’re saying?”
Isogai nodded excitedly. “Although not sucked into, to be precise. More like carried through, into another universe. It’s obvious now. When you tapped me to work as scientific advisor for your program, I read the information you provided and was pretty much in agreement about the combination of physical factors that had resulted in the disappearances. One thing didn’t gel, however. Why was it that only people vanished? The Fujimuras’ house, the convenience store, nothing vanished apart from humans, right? Everything else remained: the building itself, the stock …
“It’s as though something is targeting people and people alone, but even if that’s the case, it still doesn’t make sense. If whatever force at work does somehow only target people, then what happens to their clothing? Surely their clothes would be left behind? If you could differentiate between animate and inanimate objects, then surely it wouldn’t be difficult to work out the difference between person and clothing. So you would expect clothes, watches, anything the people had been wearing to be left behind. But that didn’t happen. Take the people that went missing here in Atami. As tourists they’d have had bags, and phones, but there’s no sign of them.”
“You’re right.” Hashiba had visited the site almost directly after the disappearances and had seen for himself that there were no traces of any personal items being left behind.
“At first I couldn’t get past the apparent contradiction. If some distortion in space had appeared, then why was it that nothing else disappeared along with the people and their belongings? It didn’t make any sense. However, if you postulate that the distortion was a wormhole, then the contradiction is resolved nicely. Why? Let’s say that a wormhole, a gateway to another universe, appeared in front of you. Perhaps whatever you saw on the other side was so appealing, so tempting, that you couldn’t help but want to cross the threshold of your own free will.”
Hashiba didn’t share the conviction. “A gateway to another world? Why on earth would something like that look appealing?”
“People who’ve gone through near-death experiences are almost unanimous in claiming that the world they saw was one of beauty—so much so, in fact, that it was hard to resist. These people must have been so enchanted by whatever it was they saw on the other side of the wormhole that they felt compelled to cross over. What other reason could they have for going through? They all chose to cross the event horizon. That’s the best way to think of this.”
If what Isogai said was true, it did seem to solve some of the mystery behind the disappearances. Hashiba thought of the geography of the herb gardens, of the many small paths that crisscrossed through the place to that single area in the middle of the park. No matter which route you took, you had to pass through that one point. That must have been where the wormhole appeared. Suddenly, the my
stery of how so many people could vanish together seemed clearer. It wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been as many as a few hundred people walking down the paths that day; even a thousand would all have found the wormhole and walked through. Perhaps, if it was as Isogai suggested, there had even been a mad dash like ants leaping into a hole for the promise of honey.
Chris whispered something into Isogai’s ear.
“You’re sure?”
Chris kept nodding in reply to Isogai’s question.
“What’s happened?”
“It looks like we hit the bull’s eye. No question about it now. The President is on board Air Force One, heading to Bermuda as we speak.”
The Bermuda Triangle. Hashiba knew the area was famous for the many strange disappearances of planes and boats.
“So you understand what I mean when I say time is of the essence, Hashiba. We can’t waste any more time sitting here talking.”
“You want us to go back to the gardens?”
“Of course.”
“Hold on.” It was Kato. Until now he had just stood, listening in silence. “This wormhole thing is like a black hole, right? Is it safe to go through?”
Kato was thinking of what Isogai had said earlier about bubbles in boiling water. Hashiba understood his fear. Black holes were known for having immense gravitational pulls, the forces inside powerful enough to crush light itself. The idea of going into one was terrifying. Sucked into the darkness, what guarantee was there that they wouldn’t be crushed flat?