Koji Suzuki - Edge

“Okay. Just one more.”

Hashiba felt a duty to call Kitazawa and tell him the whole story since he’d been instrumental in helping them come this far. It had been thanks to him that they had been able to put together the important pieces of the puzzle and link the disappearances to tectonic activity in the first place.

Kitazawa listened quietly as Hashiba explained what was going to happen in the next few hours. Then he asked, “Is Saeko there?”

“She’s in Takato, at the Fujimura residence.”

“Takato …”

“Theoretically, a wormhole should appear there too.”

Kitazawa let out a sigh of relief. “Good. But she’s going to have to find her own way again, isn’t she?”

Hashiba urged Kitazawa to come and join them in Atami, but Kitazawa just laughed him off. He didn’t seem to care whether he survived or not.

“Don’t worry about me. It’s not for me, all that effort just to find a new place. I’m ready to move on. Time to be reunited with my parents and all that. It’s better that way, just going to let be whatever happens.”

“We’re indebted to you,” Hashiba entreated. “We’re all waiting here. If you jump in a taxi and use the highways …”

Kitazawa seemed to brighten a little. “Thanks, I’ll take your advice. My son, Toshiya, will be heading your way. Could you look after him when he gets there?”

“Of course, but you should come together.”

“Ha ha. No, really, I’m okay — trust me.”

“Get off your phones already!” Isogai shouted.

Jolted, Hashiba put a hand around the phone’s mouthpiece. “Just make sure you get here, okay?” he insisted, ending the call.

“What the hell’s gotten into you? Have you all gone mad?”

Hashiba had a hunch as to why the four of them making so many calls vexed Isogai. He hurried forward to catch up with the scientist to find out for sure.

“How many people can get through the wormhole?” Hashiba asked, suddenly worried.

“That depends on how long the wormhole remains open. I don’t know — that’s the answer. It could be a few minutes. It could be just a few seconds. It’s impossible to know. But it won’t be open for long. It could be just an instant.”

“Ninety-one people went missing here, we know that.”

“Only God knows whether the next wormhole can carry the same amount.”

So that was the reason for Isogai’s anger. There was simply no way to gauge how long the wormhole would be open. The more people here, the more likely a mad rush. Out of fear that their last moments on earth could end in blind panic, Isogai wanted everyone to stop calling. It made sense, at least until they had a better idea of how long the wormhole would stay open.

“That’s why I told you to just call your family!” he screamed.

Kagayama, Kato, and Hosokawa lowered their voices and made, one by one, to finish their calls.

Hashiba was unsure how to handle the dilemma. They held the info needed to survive this. Was it unfair of them to use that advantage to save only the people they loved? No, there was no such thing as fairness in this situation, no correct answer. Surrendering such a decision to the authorities would not alter that. Maybe if it were up to divine will the most deserving would be chosen, but humans couldn’t be so objective, all they could do was surrender to emotion. It was inevitable that they would choose their loved ones over everyone else.

The six men came to the hub where the garden’s paths converged. They’d come up the hill at such a pace everyone was close to gasping, and everyone paused to catch their breath. It made sense that this was the spot where everyone had gone missing, and the crater was almost directly above. If the wormhole was going to appear in either of the two places, they should wait somewhere in between to maximize their chances of getting to it.

Each of them found somewhere to wait. Hashiba sat on a bench next to Isogai and Chris, who were holding hands and staring out at the gradual shifts in texture of the darkening night sky. They had a gentle wistfulness on their features. There was something noble in the way they looked now that Hashiba hadn’t seen before. He didn’t want to interrupt their moment together, but there were still so many enigmas.

“Er, sorry, do you mind if I ask a question?” he began.

“About God?” Isogai responded with a question of his own without missing a beat.

For a moment, Hashiba forgot what he had wanted to ask, then remembered. Isogai was right, the question would have eventually led to that topic. “All of us here, will we all go to the same world?”

“I believe so. All of us here should go to the same place. I don’t think that a single wormhole would send us off in different directions.”

“And that world would be somewhere in the past?”

“That’s right.”

“What makes you believe that, would you mind telling me? What makes you sure that the wormhole won’t send us to the future or a completely different world?”

“The progress of civilization hasn’t always taken a straight road. There have been spurts of development and periods of regression. It’s been an uneven, hesitant progression. It just doesn’t look like human civilization developed in an orderly, step-by-step way. Every now and then we see the emergence of a particularly advanced civilization. But instead of continuing to progress, as you’d expect with the march of time, they start to backslide and their sites are abandoned. It’s a pattern that keeps repeating itself.

“Take Stonehenge, which was built around five thousand years ago based on accurate observations of the stars that shouldn’t have been possible at the time. Or the Ancient Sumerians, their knowledge of medicine and mathematics way beyond their time, who described their gods as ‘people who descended from the heavens.’ There are maps that show the landmass of Antarctica long before it was discovered. Some Mayan reliefs contain depictions of what appear to be spaceships. There are so many examples like this, so many advanced civilizations that have just withered and died, and all without any discernible reason. So many legends from Africa and South America that describe peoples arriving from overseas, teaching law and order, moving on when their work was complete. Isn’t it beginning to look like we’re not the first people to be facing this eventuality? That it has, in fact, happened many times before?”

Messengers from the future were sent by wormholes into our own historical past, too … They tried to seed their advanced knowledge but were unable to train successors and saw decline …

Hashiba remembered reading a bestseller that said much the same. One theory was that the purveyors of knowledge were survivors from Atlantis or Mu, nations lost to the bottom of the sea after some cataclysm, and another was that an alien race had arrived in spaceships.

“That’s exactly why we need to be ready for this.”

“Like gods …”

“Exactly. That’s what we will be to the people of the world we’re heading to.”

“But how can we possibly prepare for that?”

“Our knowledge of the world will be far superior to theirs. All we can do is try to use that knowledge to bring happiness to as many people as possible. We have to be careful. If our scientific knowledge is shared with the wrong people, it would give them the power to rule their world. Knowledge equals power. It’s down to us whether we become gods or devils. And you can be sure that temptation will come.”

Such a question had never seemed relevant to Hashiba until this point. He had never considered himself as a bad person, though he had often sensed a potential within himself to stray that way. To be a god or a devil — everything they did would define their very essence. In a new world it was inevitable that one force would claim victory, a person’s true nature taking over. If they were not vigilant at all times, a single slip could end up staining the course of history.