Idoru

“No,” Mitsuko said, “I must greet you. I am the social secretary.”

“Thanks,” Chia said. “I’m on my way.”

With her bag over her shoulder, left partly unzipped so she could follow the Sandbenders’ verbal prompts, Chia rode an escalator up, two levels, bought a ticket with her cashcard, and found her platform. It was really crowded, as crowded as the airport, but when the train came she let the crowd pick her up and squash her into the nearest car; it would’ve been harder not to get on.

As they pulled out, she heard the Sandbenders a

The sky was like mother-of-pearl when Chia emerged from the station. Gray buildings, pastel neon, a streetscape dotted with vaguely unfamiliar shapes. Dozens of bicycles were parked everywhere, the fragile-looking kind with paper-tube frames spun with carbon fiber. Chia took a step back as an enormous turquoise garbage truck rumbled past, its driver’s white-gloved hands visible on the high wheel. As it cleared her field of vision, she saw a Japanese girl wearing a short plaid skirt and black biker jacket. The girl smiled. Chia waved.

Mitsuko’s second-floor room was above the rear of her father’s restaurant. Chia could hear a steady thumping sound from below, and Mitsuko explained that that was a food-prep robot that chopped and sliced things.

The room was smaller than Chia’s bedroom in Seattle, but much cleaner, very neat and organized. So was Mitsuko, who had a razor-edged coppery diagonal bleached into her black bangs, and wore sneakers with double soles. She was thirteen, a year younger than Chia.

Mitsuko had introduced Chia to her father, who wore a white, short-sleeved shirt, a tie, and was supervising three white-gloved men in blue coveralls, who were cleaning his restaurant with great energy and determination, Mitsuko’s father had nodded, smiled, said something in Japanese, and gone back to what he was doing. On their way upstairs, Mitsuko, who didn’t speak much English, told Chia that she’d told her father that Chia was part of some cultural-exchange program, short-term homestay, something to do with her school.

Mitsuko had the same poster on her wall, the original cover shot from the Dog Soup album.

Mitsuko went downstairs, returning with a pot of tea and a covered, segmented box that contained a California roll and an assortment of less familiar things. Grateful for the familiarity of the California roll, Chia ate everything except the one with the orange sea-urchin goo on top. Mitsuko complimented her on her skill with chopsticks. Chia said she was from Seattle and people there used chopsticks a lot.

Now they were both wearing wireless ear-clip headsets. The translation was generally glitch-free, except when Mitsuko used Japanese slang that was too new, or when she inserted English words that she knew but couldn’t pronounce.

Chia wanted to ask her about Rez and the idoru, but they kept getting onto other things. Then Chia fell asleep, sitting up cross-legged on the floor, and Mitsuko must have managed to roll her onto a hard little futon-thing that she’d unfolded from somewhere, because that was where Chia woke up, three hours later.

A rainy silver light was at the room’s narrow window.

Mitsuko appeared with another pot of tea, and said something in Japanese. Chia found her ear-clip and put it on.

“You must have been exhausted,” the ear-clip translated. Then Mitsuko said she was taking the day off from school, to be with Chia.

They drank the nearly colorless tea from little nubbly ceramic cups. Mitsuko explained that she lived here with her father, her mother, and a brother, Masahiko. Her mother was away, visiting a relative in Kyoto. Mitsuko said that Kyoto was very beautiful, and that Chia should go there.

“I’m here for my chapter,” Chia said. “I can’t do tourist things. I have things to find out.”

“I understand,” Mitsuko said.

“So is it true? Does Rez really want to marry a software agent?”

Mitsuko looked uncomfortable. “I am the social secretary,” she said. “You must first discuss this with Hiromi Ogawa.”

“Who’s she?”

“Hiromi is the president of our chapter.”

“Fine,” Chia said. “When do I talk to her?”

“We are erecting a site for the discussion. It will be ready soon.” Mitsuko still looked uncomfortable.

Chia decided to change the subject. “What’s your brother like? How old is he?”

“Masahiko is seventeen,” Mitsuko said. “He is a ‘pathological-techno-fetishist-with-social-deficit,’ ” this last all strung together like one word, indicating a concept that taxed the lexicon of the ear-clips. Chia wondered briefly if it would be worth ru

“A what?”

“Otaku,” Mitsuko said carefully in Japanese. The translation burped its clumsy word string again.

“Oh,” Chia said, “we have those. We even use the same word.”

“I think that in America they are not the same,” Mitsuko said.

“Well,” Chia said, “it’s a boything, right? The otaku guys at my last school were into, like, plastic anime babes, military simulations, and trivia. Bigtime into trivia.” She watched Mitsuko listen to the translation.

“Yes,” Mitsuko said, “but you say they go to school. Ours do not go to school. They complete their studies on-line, and that is bad, because they cheat easily. Then they are tested, later, and are caught, and fail, but they do not care, It is a social problem.”

“Your brother’s one?”

“Yes,” Mitsuko said. “He lives in Walled City.”

“In where?”

“A multi-user domain. It is his obsession. Like a drug. He has a room here. He seldom leaves it. All his waking hours he is in Walled City. His dreams, too, I think.”

Chia tried to get more of a sense of Hiromi Ogawa, before the noon meeting, but with mixed results. She was older, seventeen (as old as Zona Rosa) and had been in the club for at least five years. She was possibly overweight (though this had had to be conveyed in intercultural girl-code, nothing overt) and favored elaborate iconics. But overall Chia kept ru

Chia hated club politics, and she was begi

Mitsuko was getting her computer out. It was one of those soft, transparent Korean units, the kind that looked like a flat bag of clear white jelly with a bunch of colored jujubes inside. Chia unzipped her bag and pulled her Sandbenders out.

“What is that?” Mitsuko asked.

“My computer.”

Mitsuko was clearly impressed. “It is by Harley-Davidson?”

“It was made by the Sandbenders,” Chia said, finding her goggles and gloves. “They’re a commune, down on the Oregon coast. They do these and they do software.”

“It is American?”

“Sure.”

“I had not known Americans made computers,” Mitsuko said.

Chia worked each silver thimble over the tips of her fingers and thumbs, fastened the wrist straps.

“I’m ready for the meeting,” she said.

Mitsuko giggled nervously.