How High We Go in the Dark(67)

Your neighbor,

Dan Paul





Melancholy Nights in a Tokyo Virtual Cafe


In the evenings, Akira walks down the busy streets of Tokyo’s virtual reality district to the neon-lit Ameyoko Market and browses knockoff VR visors and discounted bento boxes with his hands in his pockets. Projectors camouflage old buildings, immersing visitors in a different environment each night—nineteenth-century Paris, the halls of the Louvre, an anime wonderland filled with creatures from Japanese folklore. Around nine thirty, the crowds begin to disperse. Vendors close their shops, lock their stalls, load their merchandise into the backs of vans or onto carts attached to their bicycles. There are certain vendors Akira suspects are homeless like he is, the ones who stay later, long after the projectors are turned off, because they have nowhere else to go. Sometimes he catches himself yearning to speak to them in the darkness, except they probably prefer the illusion as much as Akira pretends he’s shopping like everyone else. Like them, he has nothing left, and yet he’s still one of the lucky ones—he never got sick, he survived.

Most nights begin like this for Akira, who at thirty-five joins the growing class of underemployed who couldn’t finish their education during the plague years and now aren’t satisfied with the limited positions offered by the transition programs. Before he was reduced to the two duffel bags he carries everywhere, before he constantly counted the yen in his pockets—which have holes that need to be taped or stitched shut—Akira was an intern designer at a printing company that eventually went out of business when virtual advertising became all the rage. His fisherman father died more than ten years ago. He was among the first adults to die from the plague in Japan after the virus reached the coastal Siberian towns—organ failure after organ failure at Akita City Hospital, until the virus transformed his heart cells into lung tissue and the doctors could only stand by and watch. Akira doesn’t want to burden his mother. She moved to a mountain village to stay healthy and he’s never told her the truth about his life.

Akira resides at Takahashi’s Many Worlds, a virtual cafe complete with personal pods featuring a serviceable futon, shower facilities, and a small kitchenette. Reservations are typically not allowed. The owner is Ms. Eiko Takahashi. She sympathizes with Akira and the other young people who have been effectively exiled following the deaths of their families and despite government assistance. Before selling most of his belongings, Akira would spend whole afternoons plugged in—killing zombies, hitting home runs for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters to roaring applause. Since the plague, many more people have turned to VR to connect and to escape—new friends and lovers replace the dead, spending the day in pre-plague Japan, packed baseball stadiums and annual festivals attended by families who haven’t been torn apart. Lately, though, Akira prefers to hang out in the cafe lobby talking to Ms. Takahashi and the occasional tourist.

“People have come back outside onto the city streets, but notice how they keep their distance. Nobody smiles at each other. Everyone staring at their phones or lost in their augmented reality glasses,” Ms. Takahashi says.

“Strange opinion, seeing that you run a VR cafe,” Akira says.

Ms. Takahashi laughs and slaps Akira on the back. Around the cafe, the sounds of zombies and gunfire can be heard from the kiosks. At the community computers, a group of men chat with their hundred-yen-a-minute online girlfriends, airbrushed models from America and Russia. Poor Ryu, a cafe regular, has long been convinced that Natalia from Moscow is going to marry him someday. Just a little more money, she says. When are you coming to visit?, he says.

“Well, not everyone can afford their own VR system yet,” Ms. Takahashi explains. “At least not one that’s truly immersive.” She points to the posters behind the lobby desk advertising VR apps of tropical islands and singles mixers. “Everybody deserves a little time to feel normal. Maybe some people aren’t ready to be out in the real world just yet, you know? And judging from the logs, you’ve been spending a fair amount of time with these apps yourself.”

“Something to do,” Akira admits.

“Shoot ’em up games or something? Maybe love fantasies?” Ms. Takahashi jabs Akira in the side, laughing. “What kind of girls do you like? You seem like such a sweet boy.”

“That’s a secret,” Akira says.

As if Ms. Takahashi willed it into being, Akira receives a private message from a Yoshiko2376 that same night when he logs into his VR session: We have eaten from the same rice pot. The message floats in the air like smoke before it fades away . Unlike others who have opted for more familiar forms, save for pointed ears, a tail, or a set of wings, Yoshiko glided above the virtual ocean as a Pegasus with a silver mane. Akira noticed Yoshiko’s avatar right away. She galloped around the Greek amphitheater where they held support gatherings for plague survivors struggling with their second chance at life. Many attend these virtual meetups looking for a suicide partner—through door-to-door mercy services or by rope in Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji—and Akira understands their loneliness, the memories and dreams lost during the outbreak. But he attends the meetings for his own reasons, to embrace the possibility of being someone else—a rockabilly greaser with a leather jacket, cool and confident. He comes to escape and remind himself what it feels like to belong among others who feel like they, too, don’t quite fit anywhere else. Akira can see ellipses on the horizon now, alerting him that Yoshiko is sending another message—a virtual address to her private island. He swipes left with his glove interface to open the navigation menu and transports himself to an arts and crafts shop filled with handmade trinkets, antique lamps, and vintage teddy bears. Behind the counter, Yoshiko as a Pegasus belts out a cheerful Irasshaimase!