Paprika Page 5

  “Yes. I see.”

  “Doctor Chiba. Of course, you understand it all very well, don’t you,” the science correspondent said, now turning to Atsuko.

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “You think you do? What do you mean by that?”

  “Most of these PT devices have only just been developed, including their components. Some of them don’t even have names yet. Even the principles by which they work are new. So there are no existing scientific terms that can describe them.”

  “Well, that certainly is a problem.” The journalist broadened his nostrils and changed his tone. “Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I’m the Senior Science Editor at the Shinnichi.” And he paused as if to confirm the effect.

  Atsuko now saw her chance for some retaliation. “And when did you start thinking that, exactly?”

  The room erupted in laughter and the tension was dispelled. The Senior Science Editor raised his voice in irritation. “Excuse me, would you mind? I know you have your corporate secrets and all that, but I’d be grateful if you’d desist from these smokescreen tactics. They’re very confusing.”

  “Yes, yes. Understood, understood,” Shima said loudly, silencing the Senior Science Editor. “It has nothing at all to do with corporate secrets, I can assure you – Doctor Tokita has even published papers on the subject. Of course, they’re all in English, so that foreign scientists can read them. Anyone who wants to use the research results is welcome to do so. I’ll get these papers rewritten in simple, everyday Japanese and have them distributed to you all.”

  “Actually, I’d rather have heard it directly from Doctor Tokita,” the science correspondent said glumly before moving on to the next question. “Incidentally, I understand that these PT devices aren’t limited to accessing the subconscious of your patients. They could also be used – or misused – on ordinary citizens, for example. Did you not realize that? Of course, it would be fine if it was just for criminal investigation or the like, but what about a company trying to modify its employees’ personalities? Or a government manipulating the minds of its subjects? This is a question for either Doctor Tokita or Doctor Chiba. In your own time.”

  Tokita hadn’t fully read the model answers Atsuko had given him. Instead, he now started to regurgitate his usual grievance, like a toddler about to have a tantrum. “Why, oh why, oh why does it always have to go like this?! We’re working at the forefront of science here! Why do you always have to trivialize things for the sake of the masses?!”

  “What are you implying, exactly?” Atsuko interrupted quickly from the side. “That we’ll just go around scanning people’s minds willy-nilly? Utter nonsense. The public will of course have every right to refuse treatment. If done without permission it would be a criminal act. In any case, there are only a limited number of specialists authorized to access a patient’s subconscious using the collector. The reflector can detect the user’s intentions, and access may be denied if those intentions are deemed improper.”

  “And I’ve asked Doctor Tokita to ensure that all devices developed from now on are equipped with this kind of function,” Shima said helpfully.

  “A bit like Asimov’s three laws of robotics.”

  No one reacted at all to Tokita’s infantile muttering. The journalists had already despaired of hearing normal everyday speech from him.

  “Doctor Chiba, it seems you’ve been collaborating with Doctor Tokita for some years now,” said a bespectacled female reporter who looked about thirty. She was doing her best to conceal her burning curiosity under a contrived smile. “One thing I’d like to ask, out of interest as a woman, is whether there’s been any hint of romance in the meantime?”

  The journalists all grinned. Not only were they inwardly keen to mock Tokita’s repulsive obesity, thereby absolving their sense of intellectual inferiority; they would also happily grasp any chance of belittling Atsuko Chiba, whose exasperating combination of beauty and genius made her a suitable target for their wrath. A scandalous affair with the unsightly Tokita would surely do the trick.

  “The question received from the Press Club concerned only my involvement with Doctor Tokita’s development work. So I shall answer that question.” Atsuko managed to maintain her practiced expression of affability. “It started when I was a student in the Medical Faculty. One day, Doctor Shima gave me the chance to collaborate with Doctor Tokita in his research. Well, I say Doctor, but he was just an assistant then.”

  “Doctor Chiba was already an outstanding therapist at the time,” added Shima.

  “Doctor Tokita’s research was almost complete. I merely selected patients whose cerebral images were to be recorded. I then analyzed and interpreted those images as a therapist. Sometimes we made ourselves human guinea pigs and recorded each other’s cerebral images. As a result, we found that the devices developed by Doctor Tokita could faithfully detect and record fields of consciousness. This meant that they could be applied very effectively as a means of psychotherapy.”

  The female reporter couldn’t hold back any longer. “So if you did all that to each other, I mean peeping into each other’s thoughts and that, your relationship must have been much closer than is normally the case between two professionals?”

  7

  “Aaaahhhh! Why is it, why oh why is it, that whenever people see an ugly man and a beautiful woman, they always start churning out all that Jean Cocteau rubbish?!” Tokita suddenly moaned aloud as he writhed in his seat. In their astonishment, the journalists all turned their attention to him. “Or was it Victor Hugo?! All my life, all my life I’ve had to put up with this! Even when I was a child, when I was already fat and ugly, the other children would shove me together with the prettiest girl in the class and stand around jeering. And it wasn’t just me they were taunting, oh no, it was the girl too! They couldn’t stand the thought that such a pretty girl was so much better than them!”

  Tokita thrust out his fleshy red lips as he continued to whine like an infant. Stifled laughter started to spread among the massed ranks of journalists. It was a diabolical, insidious kind of mockery that they must all have observed, or even experienced, during their own childhoods.

  “I mean, even I can like pretty girls, can’t I? But they didn’t care, oh no, they didn’t care, they’d just stand around and jeer nastily, or they’d push me onto a girl and make me kiss her against my will. Whether I liked her or not, I’d always end up feeling sorry for her. But the girls all resented me for it, they hated me. So in the end I didn’t want to be with other people anymore and started to think of nothing but computers. Well, what else could I do?!”

  Tokita’s babyish wailing could almost have been an act designed to hoodwink the female reporter, but it was altogether too undignified for that. Out flowed the moans, on and on, until the journalists had simply had enough.

  “All right. All right. I understand. I’m very sorry that we asked such an insensitive question.” The science correspondent stood with a pained smile and bowed his head repeatedly until Tokita’s whining had ceased.

  The female reporter, mortified at such a put-down by a colleague, slapped the palm of her hand on the tabletop in frustration.

  “Would you mind continuing?” the science correspondent entreated Atsuko. “I assume you went through a phase of trial and error before applying the devices to psychotherapy?”

  “Well, first we recorded patients’ dreams, purely to discover the abnormal way in which they associate signifiant with signifié. To me, for example, you look like a science correspondent from the Mainichi Times. But to a patient, you might look like a spy from some foreign country. Then the patient would always put those two concepts together as a kind of mental association – spy equals newspaper reporter. But this isn’t like some word association game on TV, where you know the answer but it’s hidden at first. The very fact that the concepts are associated is unknown to the patient. Using patients’ dreams, we discover this kind of abnormal association on their behalf. In some cases, t
his alone has proved very useful in treating patients.”

  “In a single institution, twenty patients entered the recovery phase during the same period,” Shima threw in with some pride. “Well, we call it the remission phase, but anyway. This was quite unheard of, and caused quite a stir in the psychiatric world at the time, I can tell you. Globally, that is. Perhaps some of you can remember it.”

  “Next, we discovered that we could access patients’ dreams and treat those patients using the collector,” Atsuko continued – only to be interrupted again, this time by the science correspondent.

  “Sure, but as soon as it was reported in academic circles, it came out that the treatment was extremely dangerous, didn’t it. Then you were forbidden to take the devices outside this Institute or use them for other purposes – weren’t you?”

  “That’s it!” the Senior Science Editor from the Shinnichi suddenly exclaimed, making a crude scraping sound with his chair as he stood. “Now I remember! When the devices were banned, wasn’t there a rumor that they’d been taken outside the Institute and used in experiments to treat mental illnesses other than schizophrenia?”

  This new input caused quite a commotion. Some nodded. Atsuko instantly realized that the newspaper reporters had secretly been circulating such rumors for some time, but that, for whatever reason, they’d hesitated to come out with them until now.

  Seeing that he’d properly set the cat among the pigeons, the Senior Science Editor now directed his chin toward Atsuko with a triumphant look of satisfaction. “Am I right? You secretly used the devices to experiment on patients other than schizophrenics outside the Institute. Experimenting on human beings.” He suddenly stopped when he remembered that the devices could only be used on humans anyway; anything else would have been impossible. “Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “I am aware that there were such rumors,” Shima said casually. “But there was not one ounce of truth in them. Not one ounce. On the contrary, I heard that the rumors were spread by patients and their families who were already anticipating the huge benefits of the devices.”

  “Naturally you will deny it,” said the Senior Science Editor, vexed by a lack of firm evidence with which to press his case. “It’s just that there were rumors going around to that effect.”

  “On the subject of rumors,” started a white-faced young reporter who looked like a man to be reckoned with. He even had the nerve to remain seated. “Five or six years ago, when PT devices were still banned, a certain rumor was doing the rounds. I say ‘rumor’ – it was more like a legend. According to this ‘legend,’ a certain young woman would use PT devices to treat people in high positions who didn’t want it known that they were suffering from mental problems. I heard the rumor again recently, so I decided to investigate it. Once the ban was lifted, people started revealing information that had been kept secret until then. All of them agreed on one thing. The main character in this legend was a young girl who went by the alias ‘Paprika.’ Now, this is something that I’m extremely interested to discover the truth of,” he said with a meaningful look in Atsuko’s direction.

  “Rumors, rumors, nothing but rumors!” Shima repeatedly interrupted the journalists’ claims with dismissive laughs, though his voice was beginning to falter now. Atsuko was only too aware of the heavy burden he felt, honest and well meaning as he was. He was being forced to tell untruths to cover up illegal acts committed in the past; that went against his better nature. “Rumors. No truth in them whatsoever.”

  “Come to think of it, I heard that rumor too,” said the social affairs correspondent who’d asked the very first question. “Her name was Paprika, that’s right. She called herself a ‘dream detective.’ She would get inside men’s dreams, then engage in some kind of sex act and thereby cure them of their mental hangups.”

  “I heard it too,” piped up the science correspondent. No one stood to speak anymore; the place began to resemble a courtroom. “Paprika was some kind of code name. She was about eighteen, and quite a stunner, or so the story went.”

  “Only a moment ago, President Shima said that Doctor Chiba was already an excellent therapist when she was still a student in the Medical Facility,” said the Senior Science Editor, peering diagonally across at Atsuko with a vulpine expression. “I also heard about the legend of Paprika. I’d always thought it was nothing but a fairy tale, a whimsical product of the ban on PT devices. But now I’m beginning to wonder if it really was true. Surely it can’t have had anything to do with Doctor Chiba?”

  “Could we have a clear answer from Doctor Chiba?” the female reporter now demanded loudly. “Would you please confirm that this young woman was not yourself?”

  It was partly her anger at the female reporter’s gall that made Atsuko feel the color draining from her face. But even then, she still had confidence – just – that she could control her expression, and thereby prevent her inner turmoil from being exposed to all and sundry. “It’s just as Doctor Shima said. This story of a young woman called Paprika is a complete fabrication.”

  “Really?” asked the female reporter. She was more than happy to follow the standard pattern of brainless questioning usually reserved for celebrity press conferences.

  “There were only two people who could access the devices – me and Doctor Chiba. Honestly, I assure you. Nothing like that ever happened,” Tokita said in his usual awkward way. “So do you want to keep asking about it? Even when no one else really knows what happened at all? How about asking the question in different words and just going around and around in circles ad infinitum? I really love that kind of argument! Come on then! Come on!” He assumed the challenging expression of a child and rolled his shoulders in excitement as he surveyed the journalists’ faces.

  “She was supposed to be about eighteen years old,” Atsuko said with a snigger. “Five or six years ago I would have been twenty-four. And anyway, an eighteen-year-old would only just have started at university. How could she already have been a practicing psychotherapist?”

  “Well, of course, now that it’s legal to use the devices, I guess we could overlook the fact that they were used illegally in the past,” said the white-faced reporter, with disconcerting calm and an expression as inscrutable as a Noh mask. “But I think a more serious situation has arisen in this Institute recently, has it not? Being able to access a patient’s dreams using PT devices is different than just observing them on a monitor, isn’t it. It means actually identifying with the patient. So doesn’t that mean the doctors themselves could become schizophrenic? In fact, I’ve heard that one of the therapists in this Institute has been infected with a patient’s schizophrenia. Is that true?”

  Atsuko was again shaken by an anger that made her vision blur. The news had obviously been leaked by Vice President Inui, or perhaps by Osanai and his gang.

  “There is absolutely no truth in that either,” she said. She would have to strike back and discover the source of the reporter’s information. “I’m very concerned that you labor under such a misconception. Where exactly did you hear such nonsense?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot reveal my source,” the reporter replied defiantly, betraying no emotion. “But I repeat, I have heard that such a thing did actually happen.”

  Commotion descended on the room once more.

  Atsuko decided to provoke her adversary. “I cannot believe that anyone in this Institute would say anything so utterly stupid. Moreover, I find it utterly incredible that someone who calls himself a journalist could swallow such nonsense from an outsider.”

  With the interrogator’s thrust firmly turned on him, the young reporter at last showed some color in his face. “What do you mean by that? You appear to be questioning my integrity.”

  “Well, I ask you!” Atsuko laughed, looking out over the roomful of journalists. “It’s clearly nonsense! Can you all believe such rubbish? Infectious schizophrenia?! What’s next!”

  Several of the reporters laughed loudly. They were the ones who didn’t know
that people close to a schizophrenic can be affected by related delusions – even if not “infected.”

  “But I heard it from a very reliable source, one who knows everything that goes on in this Institute,” the reporter shouted angrily.

  “If your source ‘knows everything that goes on in this Institute,’ it must be someone who works here.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  With the origin of the rumor gradually becoming clear, Atsuko chose to push the increasingly wretched reporter a little further. “That’s a special privilege of the press, I suppose. Claiming something to be fact without having to disclose the source.”

  “Now, wait a minute. I haven’t claimed it to be fact. All I’m doing is checking out what I’ve heard.”

  “And now I want to check it out too. I want to know whether you heard it from the mouth of someone in this Institute or not.”

  “And as I’ve already said, I can’t—”

  “All right, all right!” For Torataro Shima, it was peace at any price. Now he spoke up to douse the heat of the contest, and not a moment too soon. “If I’m honest, it is possible for a therapist to be affected by a patient in certain ways. But that would only happen with an inexperienced therapist. We don’t have any of those here, so it couldn’t possibly happen. And the very idea that someone has been ‘infected’ by PT devices, well …”

  “And I tell you that I have heard, from a reliable source, that that is exactly what happened!”

  Just as the now crimson-faced reporter was about to kick off again, Tokita started to wail shamelessly in a manner that suggested he was sick and tired of the whole charade. “Oh for crying out loud!” he groaned. “Not this again, not this! Why can no one understand? This is cutting-edge science we’re engaged in here! How can it possibly be understood in layman’s terms? Whenever there’s a problem, it’s always some side issue that’s nothing to do with the matter at hand! No one, not one of you, has asked about the most important thing! Even though, for me, PT devices will soon be a thing of the past! And I don’t mean to sound arrogant by saying that – it’s the normal speed of progress in machine technology! Why can’t anyone see that?!”