I find a North Korean helicopter behind a building, which I steal and fly towards South Korea. The border resembles the Battle of Britain. The sky is molecular, full of fighter jets, gunships, and floating platforms. I was correct in my suspicions: North Korea invaded South Korea just as we signed the treaty. I escape the peninsula in the confusion, starting about East Asia. First, Inner Manchuria, whom Imperial Japan occupied in 1931 and the Soviet Union later annexed. I pass a number of cities — Tong Hua, Shenyang, Dalian — whose names and populations appear above in a translucent font as I fly by.
Anshan, Fushun, Tangshan.
Mountain, desert, Beijing, and more cities, most I've never heard of, each at least twice as big as the mid-major city I grew up next to (Cleveland) or the mid-major city where I work now (Denver).
Jinan, Nanjing, Qingdao.
Copper and iron.
Shanghai.
Molybdenum and manganese.
Xuzhou, Huainan, Hangzhou.
Silicon.
Wenzhou.
I turn into the East China Sea to approach South Korea from the back door. It's called the Princeton Offense. I was correct in my suspicions: South Korea invaded North Korea just as we signed the treaty. Avoiding enemy and friendly fire, I get lost. I'm spatially adept but bad with directions — I didn't learn how to drive until I was 23. I end up in Tokyo. The city is neon; each skyscraper of Nishi-Shinjuku is a different color. Translucent pop-ups appear as I hover over, telling me who is doing what and where and how.
On the 21st floor of the Hyatt, a man with thinning hair and arteriosclerosis stares at himself in the mirror with 2 jackets, 4 shirts, and 5 ties scattered about him on the floor;
On the 34th floor of Old Mitsui, a woman with recurring migraines and 29 lifetime prescriptions for various antibiotics enters her credit card information into the third screen (of four): VISA, 2463764468468218, CVC2 903, expiration 03/15, authorized for $14.95 on the eighth of every month;
On the 55th floor of Shinjuku L, two vassals, one with a disposition to diabetes and a left fibula that never quite healed right and the other with a case of athlete's foot and an allergy to shellfish and a malignant FICO score, take leave of their duties on the desk of a Marquis of Marketing Strategy, who has warts;
On the 89th floor of Tax Tower1, a perfectly healthy man is working late again. Passing out on his desk, he kisses the moon goodnight.
The moon, immune to lobbyists,
does not respond in kind.
***
I land on an American aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan. Freedom! The men on deck keep distance, looking at me and whispering to each other. A general with a cob pipe steps forward.
"I'm _______," I say. "_______." I try to say my name, but it is the sound of one lip talking. "_______!"
"We know," he says. "Is that all you got here with?"
The helicopter I started with in Pyongyang has been reduced to a helmet with a propeller on it. I remove it.
"Yes." I toss the mangosteen to the general like a knuckleball. He catches and examines it.
"You better start running." The general takes an antioxidant-rich bite.
"What?"
I was correct in my suspicions. They are going to cover up Kim Jong-Il’s death, install a lookalike, and kill me, in no particular order. I met the Buddha face-to-face; sure, he was extravagant, but he was also kind, generous, eloquent, a veritable student of history. Yet we see him as this power-crazed midget, drunk on cognac and Korean blood, banging 19-year-old Belgian girls at will while watching Rambo. We see him a step from keeping jars of his own urine and shuffling around with five-star tissue boxes on his feet.
In places we don’t talk about at parties, we want a crazy Kim Jong-Il. We need a crazy Kim Jong-Il.2
"For governor," the general says,
juice dripping down his chin.
The drops harden
into bits of dried
dung before
they hit
ground
zero.
"You're a hero!"
The men
cheer.
I have nowhere
to
go.
Notes:
1 The second-tallest building in Tokyo, Tax Tower is a nickname for Tokyo City Hall, which in turn is a nickname for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
2 With apologies to Colonel Nathan R. Jessup from the 1992 film A Few Good Men, but not very many of them.
Stephen Charles Lester is a senior business analyst at a software company in Denver. His work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Iconoclast, failbetter, DIAGRAM, Juked, and Matter Journal. Steve recently saw fifteen wild turkeys descend from a forest near a cliff in Mesa Verde National Park and take flight one-by-one from the edge to roost. Sources were unable to confirm whether Sarah Palin was giving an interview up in the woods (fish, meet barrel).