Cybernetic Samurai by Victor Milán

Author:Victor Milán
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence
ISBN: 0-441-13234-0
Publisher: ACE / Arbor House
Published: 1986-12-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

The days ran shorter. Midsummer flowers took their turn on sunlit stages of mountain and hill. The case against Major García and Yoshimitsu Telecommunications arising from the skirmish with the Japanese Red Army was smothered under a torrent of papers gushing from the Tokyo-based firm of American émigré lawyers who represented YTC in its dealings with a hostile government. Yoshimitsu Akaji allowed himself to hope that the failure of that ploy would at long last tire the ministry of its attempts to wear him down.

For all his acumen and blunt near-Western ways, Yoshimitsu Akaji was at root a romantic.

For the fourth time in five years, Takai Jisaburo took a holiday from his post in YTC’s top secret TOKUGAWA lab. And for the first time, he did not take his wife and son with him to the Japan Alps or a resort on the Inland Sea. Instead, he went off to Tokyo on his own for three days. Sitting amid the jovial clamor and companionable darkness of the beer bar, he could still feel the pain on Yoriko’s face when he told her he was leaving alone.

She thinks I’ve come up here to see a mistress, he thought. Nothing could have been further from the truth; his wife and their seven-year-old son were all the world to him, unsuitable as that may have been to a healthy Japanese male. When he was with ICOT, back in his ministry days, his coworkers had often teased him for his refusal to avail himself of a substantial pool of “office ladies” more than willing to ingratiate themselves with important scientists embarked upon the exciting work of creating the fifth generation. They called him kaka denka. Perhaps he was. But he loved Yoriko and their son, Taro—which meant firstborn—with a single-minded intensity that matched his devotion to his work. Yet he couldn’t tell Yoriko his reason for coming to Tokyo alone. He couldn’t even tell himself.

He’d considered himself amazingly fortunate seven years ago, when YTC had stepped forward to offer him a lucrative and prestigious job. After a truly valiant effort, ICOT had managed no better than a tie in the race for so-called artificial intelligence. As the trade war with America had warmed, and it became obvious that Japanese technology wasn’t about to take a huge leap ahead of the rest of the known universe, ICOT’s status began to slip even more rapidly than the Japanese economy. Maverick Yoshimitsu Telecommunications lacked status, it was true. But the very fact that it took more note of ability and achievement than seniority—even as ICOT had—was one of the things that made it a loner.

Confident in his abilities, Takai accepted eagerly. He won numerous bonuses, and several times the commendation of Yoshimitsu Akaji himself, for his absolute artistry in software engineering. When a chance came to become part of the TOKUGAWA Project he was skeptical—but once he assured himself such a breathtaking conception might become actuality, he’d been more than happy to take part, to return to the cutting edge, as to a mistress.

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