Eli William - Cash Crash Jubilee

There wasn’t any of course and Amon said nothing. Although he wasn’t going to tell Rick, in his heart he shared some of his partner’s foreboding. Their target was a powerful, well-connected man and there would be plenty of onlookers. But mixed with his worries was a feeling of pride. The challenge Sekido had assigned them made it clear just how much confidence he had in their abilities, and Amon was grateful for this last trial to prove his mettle before meeting with the headhunter.

Inside popsicle-colored high-definition globules that rose before Amon’s eyes and evaporated rapidly like champagne fizz, an interviewer was asking the idol about an ex-choreographer’s alleged sexual harassment. Her resplendent eyes began to tear up, sending Amon a vague tingle of sadness. He blinked away the infoglare and shook off the vicarious emotions as he wove through a cluster of scooters mounted by slick-haired rockabilly revivalists in leather jackets, directing his attention instead to Minister Kitao’s bank account.

“It looks like he had a solid income and a big savings until recently.”

“Yup,” said Rick. “According to his transfer records, the government salary was only a small portion of his earnings. The majority was dividends from shares in knitting and electronic lubricants that he inherited from a relative.”

“Can you see what drove him over the edge?”

“No, but this should help make it a bit clearer.”

The small box to center-left in Amon’s eye was highlighted with a white glow as Rick shared a chart with him. Amon selected it with a verbal command and a line representing the value of Minister Kitao’s assets appeared. For most of the minister’s life, it rose jaggedly, dropping slightly now and again from pricey action-sprees, but leaping up even higher with each salary deposit. Then about two years ago the drops in the line grew closer and steeper, his sprees gradually increasing in frequency and cost until his expenses surpassed his income and the overall trend became downwards. In the last month, the line had begun to plummet, almost totally vertical: the man was now spending more than a years earnings every day.

This pattern of oscillating financial deterioration was common for bankrupts. Amon had seen it ten-thousand times before. Yet, in this case, he found it hard to believe. Who could have guessed that an upstanding public servant with abundant assets would ever in a million years end up in the Gutter—let alone go bankrupt—while armed, on a bustling street? Amon still thought that most GATA workers were frugal and responsible like himself, and therefore immune to bankruptcy. But looking at Kitao’s precipitous chart, it seemed that anything was possible; that anyone might succumb to their darkest, most exorbitant impulses.

Their navi-beam began to point towards an exit up ahead, so Amon and Rick eased off the acceleration, pulled into the left lane, and coasted down a ramp leading off the highway into the thick of Shibuya.

Parking their bikes in front of a ramen bar on a narrow side-street, they entered a mall through glass doors, took an elevator to the fifth floor, and walked over to a window overlooking the intersection where Minister Kitao awaited.

Red light: cars roared through and crowds accumulated at each corner. Green light: the crowds crossed and interweaved. Accumulate, cross, interweave, roar; accumulate, cross, interweave, roar. Traffic signals directed population clog, like router arteries pumping data clots through junctions of fiber-optic veins. Up above, a multitude of animated billboards kept blinking open in mid air and then vanishing, like fleeting windows into the city’s commercial soul. A zaibatsu CEO sipped an energy drink that cured knotted shoulders while guiding a tour of his mansion. Runners in skin-tight gray rubber crouched at their staggered start lines around a track amidst a cratered, moonlike landscape. TV personalities used hooked poles to fish packets of longevity-enzyme-exuding air freshener off chains dangling from the necks of hungry, caged pandas. The ecstatic faces of deep-fried sushi taste-testers. Transitory segments of these 3D marketing narratives played on walls over storefronts and floated above shopping thoroughfares, popped out of curbs in the faces of streetwalkers and rippled atop roadside kiosks, blipping in and out, sometimes never to return, sometimes reappearing in different places at fresh angles with altered color schemes, segueing into each other, trading places, blending and merging into one—existentially unstable desire-paintings on strobing display in gallery Shibuya.

Hordes of twenty-somethings decked out in the latest styles stood beside the monuments of a dog and a decommissioned streetcar in the Hachiko Plaza, a stretch of open sidewalk occupying one corner. Many of them were waiting for friends, smoking cigarettes or just posing ostentatiously. The fashion trend of the afternoon, as the surrounding billboards confirmed, was the Four Elements. Ragged leather hats ablaze with dancing flames; baggy T-shirts rippling and bulging with gusts of wind; half-pants of gray, brown, and black mineral sedimentation in fissured patterns that tremored with ersatz earthquakes; and sneakers made of two glass layers with water in between so the foot looked like it was at the bottom of a swimming pool. While Four Element attire seemed universally popular, there were variations in the intensity of the flame, in the force and interval of the wind, in the coloration of the earth, and roughness of the water that indicated clique membership, differentiated according to music genre or product preference or some other factor Amon was too socially aloof to identify.

An arrow appeared above these convening fadsters, pointing down at their target. Amon zoomed in. Height: 2 m, 10 cm , read his profile. Minister Kitao was extremely tall, definitely the tallest Japanese Amon had ever seen. He had long legs, long arms, long fingers, everything long except for his face, which was broad and commanding, embellished with a trim goatee. Amon remembered how the minister’s great stature had always made him look impressive in the black suits he wore at award ceremonies and other GATA functions. But now, wearing a green polo shirt and brown cords, hair gelled flat to a head that loomed over the multitude of cool youth, he looked incongruously lanky. Smiling slack-jawed, he stood still and gazed about the city, his eyes glazed with a strange expression of giddy wonderment. A pocket in the crowd had opened around him, as the nearby youth seemed to be keeping their distance, but passersby took advantage of the space and streamed steadily through.

“Why do you think the kids won’t get close?” asked Amon.

“How should I—” Rick stopped what he was saying, frowned, and gestured out the window with his pointed chin. “Maybe that’s got something to do with it.”

Kitao’s eyes went wide with gleeful excitement, revealing blood-shot whites, as they tracked a stocky salaryman in a pinstripe suit just entering the crowd gap. The man was busy talking to himself (or a FacePhone friend) and was totally oblivious when the minister lunged in with his long arms and grabbed him under the armpits. The startled man sprung back and struggled against his grip, but the minister lifted him off the ground and brought his face close to the crown of the man’s thrashing head. He then took a deep sniff, waving his nose about sensually as though inhaling a divine fragrance. With an expression of pacified satisfaction, the minister put down the man, who scurried off into the crowd cringing in humiliation and horror.

“What the hell is he doing?” Rick wondered aloud.