She had completely forgotten that her phone was still off from the drive up. She held down the power button and the screen lit up, showing a number of missed calls. They were from Hashiba; he had left a couple of messages. She dialed the number for her voicemail and put the phone to her ear. The voice she heard sounded agitated and jittery:
“Saeko, don’t go near the Fujimura house, there’s someone — something, there. I’m one hundred percent serious. Call me as soon as you get this message. Please, Saeko.”
The machine clicked through to the next message. This time, Hashiba’s tone was almost mournful. He sounded completely crestfallen:
“Saeko, I don’t expect you to believe this. But please listen, and try to stay calm. Saeko, the universe — everything — is about to end. Isogai and Chris, they’ve worked out that something called a phase transition is happening. The thing originated somewhere in the galaxy and is heading towards our solar system, faster than the speed of light. It’s going to reach before dawn, and everything as we know it will just cease to exist. There won’t be any warnings. The things on the news now are the first signs.”
The first message was regarding her specific situation. The second was about the fate of not just Earth but the whole universe. Both messages told her that she was in immediate danger.
There’s something else in the house … A phase transition would strike Earth before dawn, destroying everything in an instant …
The information was too much to take in. Her thoughts spun, and for a brief moment Saeko couldn’t work out which of the two issues was the more urgent. Then she knew; there was no need to even consider the question. Anything that threatened her and her alone didn’t matter. Whatever problems anyone faced, whether they were floating alone on an iceberg, lay on their deathbed with terminal cancer, or had been kidnapped by a murderer, no longer mattered. They would all cease to be, together with the source of their problems.
A phase transition — Saeko knew the basics. It meant the replacement of the molecular structure of matter by a new form that obeyed different physical laws. It would happen in the blink of an eye. The old universe was getting ready to be replaced by a new one like a snake shedding its skin.
Did it mean that they’d gotten something wrong? That a fundamental error had eaten away at the validity of the relationship between DNA’s mathematical language and the universe? That the contradictions had finally accumulated to the point where the situation was beyond repair? That the universe was trying to reset itself?
Saeko wondered how it was that they could have gotten it so wrong. She knew that there was a contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics; maybe that had been the hint they’d needed. It was too late now, either way. Hashiba had said that the world was going to end before the night was through. She had no choice but to believe him. The evidence seemed to be there: the chasm in California, the crater in Atami, the moon-like circles of light in the sky. Everything pointed to an impending disaster.
Hashiba was alone in the room. Next door, Kato and Hosokawa were busying themselves packing away the equipment. Kagayama had been sitting on the edge of the bed, muttering to himself. They had agreed that there was probably no point in packing away the equipment if the world really was about to end. At the same time, they couldn’t break the habit. True professionals, they could only allow themselves to leave after packing everything into all the right places. Once they had checked out, they would reunite and take their two cars back to Tokyo.
Hashiba had thrown together everything he thought he needed and now sat on the bed, absentmindedly watching the TV, waiting for the others to let him know they had finished. The news coverage kept jumping back and forth between footage in California and a view of lights in the sky from Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The speed at which the images flicked around seemed to reflect the confused state of the news producers. Things were happening so quickly no one had any time to work out the causes, to add proper narrative. All they could do was chase phenomena around the world, filming whatever they could. Hashiba wondered how he would direct a program based on what he’d learned, and various ideas began to stir in his mind. He sat up straight, simultaneously excited and frustrated by the fact that he knew more than the various broadcasters of the world.
The images continued to cycle from place to place, empty of any meaningful narrative. The next image to come up was that of a clear night sky. This was new. The picture quality was good; it had to be somewhere that had a decent infrastructure in place. The reporter spoke in a matter-of-fact, dispassionate tone, linking the stars’ disappearance to the chasm that had appeared in California. Looking up was forcing him to talk in a halting manner, and he avoided sounding loquacious.
It was night in Japan. Hashiba got up and opened the window; he should be able to observe the same phenomenon himself. He leant out into the open air and arched his neck up, taking in the view of the dark sky above. He searched for the Milky Way. It was true, whereas previously the stars in that area had been dense and bright, it seemed to have become a dark hole in the sky. He was appalled to confirm the sight firsthand, but his shock morphed first into a sense of loneliness, then into an indescribable sorrow.
The Milky Way had always been such a romantic notion. Hashiba couldn’t count the number of times he had looked into the sky for inspiration. Once, during summer back in high school, he’d invited a girl he had a crush on to come out and watch for shooting stars. They had spent the whole night outdoors. He remembered how he’d wanted to kiss her but hadn’t been able to pluck up the courage to ask. Each time he tried, there had been a brief moment of awkwardness, and each time he had been saved by shooting stars crossing the Milky Way providing an easy change of subject. The stars had made sure his date didn’t become a disaster. Even though he hadn’t kissed the girl that night — he’d hardly held her hand — it had been the best time.
Now the stars were fading away into nothingness, and it felt as though memories were being erased along with them.
First the stars, then us.
Hashiba’s whole body ached with the force of the idea. It was too much to think that despite having come so far, despite 4 billion years of evolution, everything could just be swept away over the course of a single night. He now accepted that death was coming, but the feeling still lacked a visceral sense of reality. It was different from being told that he was in the final stages of terminal cancer and had only a few days to live; from departing as part of a death squad in some war and knowing that there was no return; from being a prisoner on death row. There would be no countdown. Humanity could only wait, passive and helpless, for a sudden but inevitable demise. More than anything Hashiba felt a burning sense of waste, overpowering any feelings of fear, coupled with a frustration born from knowing that nothing could be done about it.
He shook his head, at the same time surprised by his easy acceptance of an idea that was, after all, nothing more than a hypothesis cobbled together by two men. Why couldn’t he just laugh it off as a preposterous notion? The decision to believe a certain hypothesis, Hashiba knew, derived from subconscious desire. He recalled a friend from college, two years his senior, that he’d met through the ski club. The guy prided himself on his logical thinking and readily dismissed anything that reeked of the occult. His grades were first class, and he was a charismatic presence on campus. After graduation he secured a high-flying job at a prestigious trading company, and with his future almost guaranteed, he received a number of offers for well-placed marriages. Then, out of the blue, he married someone he met on a business trip to Hachinohe, a widow ten years older than him. He’d somehow become obsessed with the idea that she was the living reincarnation of his childhood sweetheart, who had died when they were still in junior high school.