Koji Suzuki - Loop

"I do. Maybe it's because I've lived my whole life hugging the ground."

Did she mean she'd always lived in one-story houses? If so, it was a stark contrast to Kaoru's own living environment. He still lived with his mother in their apartment tower overlooking Tokyo Bay.

Reiko changed the subject in an effort to dispel the oppressive atmosphere; in an enthusiastic voice she started talking about dreams. She started right in, like a shot, with what she wanted to do first when her son had recovered from his illness. The precondition itself-her son recovering-being utterly impossible, she was free to dream whatever unrealistic dreams she felt like. Among the more realistic ideas she mentioned was taking a trip overseas.

So when she changed tack and asked Kaoru, "What's your dream?" he was able without hesitation to come up with the family trip to the North American desert that they'd planned ten years ago.

Kaoru gave Reiko a brief account of what they'd talked about that late night ten years ago- the relationship between gravity and life, the mysteries of life itself, and how those led to the possible existence of longevity zones.

He then explained in simple terms how his father's promise to take him to the desert had fuelled further interest in global longevity patterns. Then came his father's cancer, which had prompted him to deeper research, and the belief that there had to be a relationship between longevity zones and the number of cancer victims.

This last point piqued Reiko's interest, and, still leaning against the glass, she turned to face Kaoru.

"What kind of relationship?"

"I'm not entirely sure yet, but the statistics show certain peculiarities that can't be ignored."

Kaoru warmed up to his explanation, as he could see that Reiko had pricked up her ears.

"It was not just coincidence that led me that night into associating gravitational anomalies with longevity. I had a flash of intuition. Most scientific discoveries are the result of intuition. Inspiration comes first, then reason. It might not be far off to think that I was responding to some kind of suggestion that night.

"When my father's cancer spread to his liver, I started researching longevity zones worldwide. It wasn't just my imagination. It's been confirmed: there are spots on the globe where people live longer. I analyzed all kinds of data. If they had something in common, I was going to find it.

"I finally narrowed it down to four particularly well-known longevity zones: Abkhazia, an area of the Caucasus on the shores of the Black Sea; Vilcabamba, a sacred valley on the border between Peru and Ecuador; Hunza, a mountainous region surrounded by the Karakoram Mountains and the Hindukush and cut off from the surrounding area; and Sanaru Island, in the Samejima archipelago of Japan. I wasn't able to visit these places myself to investigate, so I read everything I could get my hands on that related to them, and compiled my own statistics. When I did that, one thing stood out. It's a bit too early for me to make a definitive judgment, but it would seem that these places have not seen a single death from cancer. Doctors and biologists from around the world have investigated longevity zones, and they've left countless reports. None of them record deaths from cancer.

"The reports all agree in pointing to diet as a possible cause for this low cancer rate. But this is nothing more than a guess, seeing as how we haven't yet fully explained the mechanism that produces cancer. There's no denying that people in these areas live on a simple diet consisting mainly of vegetables and grains, but data suggests that their consumption of tobacco and alcohol may even be higher than other areas. At the very least, we aren't able to say that their exposure to carcinogens is lower than normal.

"All of this makes me wonder. Why is it that these longevity zones have so few people suffering from cancer? And then… Listen to this. Cancer cells have the ability to make normal cells immortal. Is that somehow related? And how are we to account for the fact that these longevity zones match up perfectly with areas of unusually low gravity?

"There's got to be a satisfying explanation, but I haven't been able to come up with it yet."

Kaoru paused for breath. His excitement had risen to a peculiar pitch as he talked.

Reiko was silent for a time, looking at Kaoru. Then she licked her lips and spoke.

"This MHC virus that's suddenly everywhere- where did it come from?"

Her question struck Kaoru as beside the point.

"Why ask me?"

Reiko's eyes were open wide and her expression was serious: she evidently really wanted an answer. At that moment Kaoru found her unbearably adorable. He forgot all about the fact that she was ten years older than he; he wanted to place his hands gently on her cheeks and draw her to him.

"Don't laugh. It's just that I wondered, for a second, if the MHC virus might just possibly have come from one of these longevity zones of yours."

Kaoru could guess at her train of thought. He'd read a novel once about someone whose entire body had been overrun by cancer; only, instead of dying, the cancer had made him immortal.

Maybe people in those areas have learned to coexist with cancer, and that's why they live so long. Most likely Reiko's imagination had moved along those lines. Maybe it's not that those areas are free of cancer. Maybe they're full of it, in fact. Maybe it's just that nobody dies from it. Maybe the cancer virus started there…

"Maybe a virus somehow picked up these people's cancer chromosome and the result escaped into the world as the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus. Is that what you're saying?"

"It's all much too difficult for me to understand, I'm sure. It was just a thought. Forget about it."

Reiko turned her gaze to the world below. Over the last few minutes the sky had changed colour dramatically, and that change was reflected even more vividly in Reiko's expression. Deep shadows pooled in the hollows of her eye sockets. The darker it got outside, the more the window began to function as a mirror. Against the backdrop of skyscrapers Kaoru saw Reiko's face reflected in the glass as if it was floating disembodied in the darkness.

"Metastatic cancer victims are especially numerous in Japan and America."

It was true: the geographical distribution of the victims showed marked variation. Japan and America each had roughly a million patients with the disease, and the advanced nations of Europe had several hundred thousand, while remote areas of the type where the longevity zones were located had hardly reported any cases at all. Kaoru was trying to imply that her hypothesis had holes.

"What about the desert area you mentioned, in North America? It has abnormally low gravity, so it wouldn't be surprising if people there lived longer, would it?"

"It's just a guess."

"So you have no proof."

"I suppose you could say all this has just been a game for me."

The word seemed to come as a shock to Reiko: she became visibly discouraged. "Oh." Now her discouragement turned into a frown; she made as if to turn away from Kaoru.

"What's wrong?"

Kaoru was a bit taken aback by this sudden change in her.

"I was hoping for a miracle. It's all we have left," she said, still looking away.

A miracle, Kaoru thought in disgust. Reiko was about to fall into the same trap as his mother.

"I think you'd better stop hoping for a miracle."

"I won't stop."

"You have other things you need to be doing."

He wanted Reiko to keep her wits about her. But she wasn't listening to him now.

"I was just thinking, maybe all the inhabitants of those longevity zones get viral cancer at some point. But before the cancer cells incapacitate their internal organs, some factor turns their cells immortal, and the cancer becomes benign. It’s bad side disappears, and the cancer is able to coexist with human beings. Their cells are able to undergo mitosis more times, with the result that they live longer. How's that for a theory?"