Mr Thomas

12:16:2002
Part one of a short story

"Mr. Thomas?"
"Mr. Thomas wake up."
"Mmmmn."
"Mr. Thomas, wake up please."
"What do you want?"
Three men in black body suits stood beside Mr. Thomas. He was in seat 30c; next to the aisle. The lights were off and most of the other passengers were asleep. They were in a large aircraft speeding above the world in the dark. The three men did not seem to be employees of the airline. They appeared more to be residents of this timeless, spaceless limbo. The one who had been gently shaking Mr. Thomas now pulled him up by his shoulders.
"Hey! what.."
"Please remain calm, Mr. Thomas. Come with us." Two men began walking him up the aisle while the third led the way towards first class. Mr. Thomas offered no resistance in his confused state. None of the other passengers stirred.
"In here"
"The cockpit?"
"Yes."
"hey, wait a minute! what’s going on? why..." Mr. Thomas stopped. The cockpit was empty. Two flight control sticks drifted up and down in front of the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.
" What..."
"Mr. Thomas, we want you to fly this aircraft."
" But I don’t know how to...."
"Fly it." The three men left through the cockpit door. Mr. Thomas tried the door but it was locked. He fell into the pilot’s seat and tried to make anything out of the windows. It was totally dark outside. Sighing, he placed his hands on the pilot’s flight control stick and pulled it back.
Nothing happened. He pushed it forward. Still nothing. He pushed some buttons at random. Still nothing. One lever in the centre of the panel caught his eye: Auto pilot. Mr Thomas reached over to disengage the lever and caught himself with a start. What the hell was he doing? he didn't know how to fly a plane. He had seen the movies; as soon as the auto pilot was switched off the plane would lunge forwards under his inexpert control. Where was the real pilot? Shaking his head free of the remaining fug of sleep, Mr Thomas considered his situation.
Somehow the pilots of this aircraft had been spirited away and he had been selected to take their place by... by whom? Those men who had woken him up. And who were those men? he had been too drowsy to get a proper look at them before they had locked him in the cockpit but they had exuded authority. In fact they had 'agency' written all over them. One of those three letter deals: CIA, MI5, FBI, ATF, DEA, CID, FAA, FCC, god knows. Whoever they were they had put him in charge of flying the plane.
"Excuse me!" Mr. Thomas knocked on the cabin door. "Look, I think you've made a mistake. I don't know...how ...to fly...a plane!"

Nothing. Suddenly an angry buzzing noise started behind him. Mr. Thomas spun round and tried to locate its source. One of the buttons on the panel above the window was flashing yellow in time to the noise. It had something written on it: D-SRAN. What the hell did D-SRAN mean? more to the point, what was he supposed to do about it? It could mean anything from ‘imminent explosion of fuel tank’ to ‘faulty flush mechanism in toilet D’. Mr. Thomas didn’t want to attempt to fix the problem in case he caused the whole cockpit to fill with klaxons and flashing lights. Still the light buzzed.
He tried to ignore it and slumped back in the pilot’s seat. Whatever was going on, there must be a rational explanation. One: it was a dream. No, it couldn’t be. He knew what dreams were like and even the vivid ones were not like this. Anyway, when had he ever asked himself during a dream whether or not he was dreaming? never. Two: it was a joke. A stupid stunt. this wasn’t the real cockpit and those three men were in the employ of some idiotic TV show. Perhaps all the passengers were in on it; laughing at him as they watched his pathetic squirming on their seatback TV monitors. Somehow it didn’t ring true. What airline would collude in a stunt like this? he could sue them for millions. Who would want to fly with them if this is how they treat their passengers?. Three: the flight staff had been taken ill and he had somehow been mistaken for an off duty pilot by the three men. Perhaps he had the same name as a real pilot? Perhaps sitting out there was the real Mr Thomas the pilot sipping a bloody mary and ready to fly the plane out of trouble at a moment’s notice. This seemed like the most probable explanation for the situation, bizarre as it seemed. In any case, he had to get out of this cockpit before something went wrong.
As Mr Thomas banged on the cockpit door, the flashing D-SRAN button was joined by its neighbour, flashing double time and in red. Mr Thomas broke off his thumping on the cockpit door and studied the new light. Red was not a good colour, and the letters on the button perturbed him still further: WARN. You didn’t have to know anything about aircraft to realise that a red WARN button was bad news. Obviously the D-SRAN situation was getting serious. If he didn’t get the real Mr. Thomas on the case then god knows what could happen. He doubled his efforts on the door.
"Hey! you’ve got the wrong man! excuse me! Unlock this door! MY NAME IS CIPRIANI THOMAS AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FLY A PLANE."
Even as desperation welled up inside him, Mr Thomas felt a pang of embarrassment in using his full first name. He hated the name Cipriani and usually went by Chip or Charlie. Still, in cases of mistaken identity it was probably best to come out with Cipriani. He almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of the situation until something happened that threw him right off kilter.
All four engines simultaneously stopped. The background roar of the 747 that one becomes accustomed to on long haul flights stopped dead. No winding down, just total silence as if they had been turned off like so many lights. D-SRAN and WARN also stopped flashing but in the absence of any engines this was a very minor relief.
It’s going to end, thought Mr. Thomas. My life is going to end at the controls of a 777 with no engines. Me, a tech rep for a wire manufacturing firm based in Surrey. There was still total blackness outside the windows and no sense of falling, but he knew it was coming. How long? he thought. A minute, maybe two. Then hitting the water at an incredible speed. They say that if you hit it hard enough, water is as hard as concrete. Surely someone would come to the cockpit if the engines stopped? where were those three men who put him in here? they didn’t want to die did they? Could this be a TV show? What the hell, he thought. I’m going to push every damn button in this cockpit. Maybe something will happen.
As soon as he sat once more in the pilot’s seat, Mr Thomas was blinded by a white light that flooded all the windows simultaneously. Heaven? he thought as he shielded his eyes from the glare. Was heaven a brightly lit room with scrubbed concrete walls?
The cockpit door clicked and opened. Mr. Thomas looked round, feeling the sudden urge to pee. There was nothing behind the door, only clean brightly lit concrete. A figure wearing the same uniform as the three men who had woken him stood in the doorway. A woman.
"You can come out now, Mr. Thomas" she said.
With a final glance at D-SRAN for no reason he could fathom, Mr Thomas rose to his feet and followed the woman out. There was no plane beyond the cockpit door, only a windowless concrete room. He was apparently on the ground somewhere. Four large loudspeakers were mounted close to the ceiling. Presumably they had provided the noise of the jet engines and this explained why they had been cut so suddenly. Reluctantly, Mr. Thomas abandoned the theory that he was being set up as part of a TV show. He felt relieved that he wasn’t going to die in a plane crash but these thoughts were drowned in a deluge of confusion. Where was he? How did he get from the plane to this room? who were these people in black uniforms?
"This way, please." The woman was standing by a doorway in the concrete.
"what..."
"Everything will be explained shortly Mr Thomas. Come this way please."
Fear and confusion led to indignation as Mr Thomas followed the woman through a concrete corridor and into a windowless room containing a table and two chairs. Behind the table sat a man in a black uniform. Mr. Thomas recognised him as one of the men who had woken him up in the plane. He waited for the woman to leave before he spoke.
"I expect you have a few questions you’d like to ask, Mr. Thomas."
"What’s going on?"
"At one o’clock this afternoon you were waiting in the Terminal 4 executive lounge in Heathrow Airport for your two o’clock flight to Tokyo. You never made that flight. Instead you fell asleep due to a hypnotic in your coffee and brought here where you were put into a trance. While you were under it was suggested to you that your flight was largely uneventful up to the point where three men brought you against your will to the flight deck and asked you to fly the plane. At that time you were transferred to the simulation chamber and put under observation. Any questions?"
Mr. Thomas was stunned by the information he was being given. He had no doubts about its veracity- it had a brutal edge of truth to it. As had the man who was imparting it.
"but why..."
"Yes, the big question: why?.... well Mr Thomas, we’ve been watching you for a while now and we thought you might be a good contender to join our organisation. As you have seen, we have somewhat unorthadox methods of recruitment but these are absolutely necessary as we are highly secretive. The whole simulated situation you have been through was a test to see how you react in an unexpected crisis situation."
Mr. Thomas reeled inwardly. He was being inducted into some sort of secret organisation. Were they spies? terrorists? aliens? It was pure science fiction. Amid the shock he felt a spark of excitement. His humdrum life was about to embark on a new chapter. The man went on.
" Regrettably you handled the situation very badly. Had you made some attempt to pilot the airccraft despite your lack of knowledge it would have demonstrated the considerable resolve and initiative that we’re looking for. You, however, spent most of the time banging on the door attempting to escape the situation. I’m afraid there is no place for you in our organisation."
"What?... wait..." Mr. Thomas’ psyche took a dive. They were rejecting him?
"I’m sorry to have taken up your time. Please accept this compensation." The man slid a bundle of notes across the table. It looked like a couple of thousand to him. Mr. Thomas pocketed the money but said nothing. He began to feel a little sick.
" You will be put on the next available flight. Your company and contacts in Tokyo have been informed that you were bumped off your original aircraft due to double booking. You will be no more than a few hours late into Tokyo. Hopefully this will not inconvenience you too much."
Mr Thomas was about to speak when he saw the man’s eyes look over his head as if at someone else entering the room. Before he could turn round a capsule was held under his nose and a vapour which reminded him of pear drops caused everything to go red, then blue.
A roaring sound filled his ears. He was back in seat 30c, headed east. It was night on the plane and the lights were out.
* * * * *

"I trust you had a pleasant flight?" Asked Mr. Will at the airport.
"Fine, thanks. Uneventful." Mr Thomas said levelly. "Managed to get some sleep."
"Good job the airline called and told me about you being bumped. I’d have had to hang around here for hours".
In other words, thought Mr. Thomas, why didn’t you call me yourself? The little bastard’s gettng at me already. We haven’t even left the airport.
"Yes, well I was stuck in a concrete box without a ‘phone the whole time. Wasn’t exactly a picnic"
"Still, gave you time to look over those specs for tomorrow, eh?"
Now he’s implying that I haven’t done my homework. Calm down. Just act the jet lagged suit. They were headed for the train into the city.
"Mmn. Which hotel this time?"
"You’re booked into the Prince. It’s close to downtown. Ayushi Building’s just down Seppan there. Five minutes."
Oh yes, thought Mr Thomas, Mr. I-Know-Tokyo. Will was little more than a company lackey. A glorified assistant sent on airport runs and acting as ballast for meetings. Several positions below me in the general hierarchy but because he’s been here two years he assumes a role of Mr big-man-in-Tokyo helping poor farts like me get to our meetings in the Nipponese neon jungle. With a certain amount of pleasure Mr Thomas imagined the Japanese despising him. They lapsed into silence as the train slid out of the airport station.
Mr Thomas allowed his thoughts to go back to his bizarre encounter with the black bodysuit organisation who had put him through their elaborate vetting process and ended up rejecting him. It had all the qualities of a classic life-anxiety dream: being at the controls of a jet he had no idea how to fly, facing death, then judgement at the hands of all-powerful beings... it was classic symbolism. He would have had no trouble in convincing himself it had been a vivid fantasy brought on by the onset of a mid-life crisis had it not been for his discovery in mid flight of a bundle of cash in his inside pocket...
"...fantastic teppan-yaki and sashimi straight off the boats down by the docks..." Mr Will was regaling him with some Tokyo eating tips designed to demonstrate his insider status. Mr. Thomas listened imassively. At this point he thought it best to keep the matter of the black bodysuits to himself. No point in coming out with an unprovable story about strange agencies that kidnapped people and tried to get them to fly planes. Fatigue combined with emotional depletion gave him a relaxed visage but at the back of his mind Mr Thomas knew that this whole experience was bound to affect him somewhere down the line.
Mr. Will dropped him off at the Prince and went home to his apartment on the outskirts of town. Mr Thomas had been there once and it was about the size of a toilet. The rooms at the Prince, however were scarcely bigger, containing a bed, chair, desk, dresser and television mounted on a wall bracket. An adjoining bathroom took up less space than the bed and seemed to have been designed using a computer to figure out how to put a shower,toilet and sink inside one square metre. It was a fairly typical Japanese business hotel and contained no more or less than the basic amenities Mr Thomas was after. The view out of the window afforded little more than three columns of windows around a central well. Somewhere below (twenty stories?) was the roof of the second floor. It was approaching darkness outside and for all he could see Mr Thomas realised that he could be in Singapore, Dallas or Swindon with this room and this view. Still, tomorrow he would be needed to demonstrate the specifications of the new copper-alloy wire his company was trying to sell to Ayushi for their UK manufacturing base, and here he was in Tokyo to do the job.
His mind went back to the black bodysuits. What the hell was their game? he didn’t ask to join them. What right did they have to reject him? Maybe they were just some gang of perverts looking for kicks. With this in mind Mr Thomas showered in his tiny bathroom and flopped onto his single bed with a glass of Suntory whisky he had picked up at the airport. Not in the mood for yet another read of the wire specs (knew it all anyway) he flipped on the TV.
There were a good many channels to choose from, all apart from CNN in Japanese. Some porno stuff that the hotel was transmitting on special channels- pretty softcore most of it. Some weird stuff too. A few news channels, some teenage pop videos, girls who looked about ten miming to crappy processed music, an orchestra playing something, adverts for who knows what, cartoons, ‘Freebie and the bean’ dubbed into Japanese with Japanese subtitles (now what was the point of that ? ) , a monster movie and well! Monty Python dubbed into Japanese.
Mr Thomas kept Python on for novelty value and went to the bathroom to put some water into his whisky. When he returned the Python sketch was finished and some Japanese thing had taken its place. He realised that this was a sort of comedy compilation show with bits of Python dropped in here and there. Now there was a hidden camera scene where they had a man inside a postbox suprising people who were trying to post letters. He was throwing the letters out again and shouting what appeared to be curses through the slot. Huge laughs as he gave some old woman a near heart attack.
The next clip was a very long sketch between two men which ended up with one of them trying to put what looked like pieces of coal down the other one’s trousers, to enthusiastic applause. Then a Python cartoon. The strains of the last day (two days?) and the whisky began to weigh down on Mr Thomas’ eyelids and he was nearly drifting off when he saw something that jolted him awake like an electric shock to the heart. Another hidden camera scene was on, this one on board a wide bodied jet. A man was being approached by three men in black bodysuits. They said something to him that was dubbed into Japanese followed by hysterical canned laughter. The man looked confused and was helped to his feet and marched to the cockpit. As the camera closed in on the victim’s face, Mr Thomas recognised him as one of the men he himself had been woken up by.
He jumped off the bed and made half a step towards the TV. His towel slowly unwound itself and left him standing naked in the middle of the room. On the TV the man had been locked into the cockpit and was banging on the door to raucous canned laughter. Then he turned to face the controls and grabbed the co-pilot’s sitck, flipping off the autopilot as he did so. The canned laughter turned into canned applause and infuriatingly the scene spun off the screen to be replaced by another sketch, this time where one guy was appempting to get an umbrella to open in another’s mouth.
Mr. Thomas stared transfixed at the screen until the air conditioning made him aware of his nudity and he wrapped the towel back around him. So it was a TV stunt after all! The bastards had him on some stupid Japanese candid camera and were probably editing his segment right now so they could put it on next week’s show! He looked at his hands. They were shaking with a mixture of shock and relief. Then indignation returned. How could they do this to him? how could tey do this to anyone? He’d sue them, that’s what he’d do. No way could they traumatise hm and then humiliate him on national TV for a measly couple of thousand quid. What if the people at Ayushi saw him panicking in the cockpit? how much respect would they have for him then? If he knew the Japanese, probably none at all. We’re talking big loss of face here.
After a few minutes some doubts began to invade Mr. Thomas’ indignation. Something was not quite right here. His brother worked in television and on a few occaisions had imparted some details of the business. Firstly, everything that was broadcast had to be cleared in terms of rights. That meant getting the person they had duped to sign a release form allowing the TV company to feature them in the broadcast. Mr Thomas had signed no such form. Secondly, why had they gone to all the trouble of getting him into some sort of concrete installation via a combination of drugs and hypnosis? and why had they put him under again to get him out of there? It seemed totally needless, not to mention illegal. Thirdly, it looked like the man he had just seen having the ‘cockpit treatment’ had passed the test and was now working for them. How normal was that for a stupid comedy show?
The more he tried to reason it out, the more confused he became. If this was some secret organisation, as it had every appearence of being, why was their recruitment procedure turning up on a Japanese comedy show? If it was a comedy show, why were their methods so downright illegal? He had seen enough of Japanese television to understand that they had a strange taste in humour, but he couldn’t see a televsion network laying itself open to litigation or even prosecution just to get some ratings points.
The show was coming to an end and the credits were being scrolled rapidly over the sight of a sumo wrestler attempting to dance with a ballet troupe to more hysterical canned laughter. If he was going to get to the bottom of this, Mr Thomas realised, he would at least have to find out what this show was called and who had made it. He flipped through the TVguide that lay on top of the television and found the day’s prime time listings by virtue of the fact that the only characters not in japanese were the numerals of the date. With some difficulty he negotiated the grid matrix of television shows until he found the box that lay at the confluence of Channel 10 and 8pm-9pm. Within the box lay some characters which must have been the name of the show although they looked as alien as any other of the characters on the page. He marked the box with a circle and tore the page out, stuffing it into the inside pocket of his suit which was hanging up for tomorrow’s meeting.
The television wa s now showing some kind of current events show and Mr Thomas felt disinclined to watch any more. He flipped it off and regarded the blank box for a few seconds. Somehow it now looked more menacing. He wished he was back home and toyed with the idea of calling his wife but couldn’t work out what time it was in England. Enough, he thought, and went to bed. He didn’t expect to be able to sleep but within a few minutes had slipped into a fitful dream involving the ballet dancing Sumo wrestler.
* * * *
"...one hundred strand copper wound multicore insulated at a price of four hundred pounds a kilometre."
Mr. Thomas felt wan. Never had he performed a technical rundown with so little enthusiasm and with so much desire to have it over and done with. He hoped to god the Ayushi people wouldn’t badger him with a bunch of stupid questions. On his side of the table sat Mr. Will and Mr. Gaskin, the head of the Japanese office of Cablecom. Luckily Gaskin neither knew nor cared about the technical spiel and so tended to switch off during Mr. Thomas’ presentations. The row of Ayushi men facing him however seemed to sense his detatchment and he imagined they weren’t too impressed. He felt relieved that he was just a tech rep and not a sales rep and that the facts of his presentation were all backed up in the glossy data sheets he had brought along. He wished Cablecom had just been able to send the sheets but he knew that the Japanese appreciated the personal appearence of an ‘expert’ with the fourteen hour plane journey it implied. Or in his case a drugging, duping, humiliation, rejection, another drugging, a fourteen hour plane journey and then the prospect of ending up on a crappy comedy show. One of the suits was asking him about resistance values. He answered curtly.
"If you’ll consult the data sheet... uh... Mr Izumi, you will see the answer to your question". Christ take it easy he thought to himself. To a Japanese that was practically a slap in the face. Even Gaskin looked up. The old fool has finally realised that I’m off form. A junior Japanese executive stood up.
"Thank you, Mr Thomas for a most enlightening presentation." Polite applause from the rest of the Ayushi team, apart from the old man who stared ahead impassively. Mr Thomas nodded his head in a stiff business bow that he had been taught as ‘polite acknowledgement’. The meeting then wound up with Gaskin and the senior Ayushi suit exchanging goodwill speeches. Naturally Ayushi wouldn’t accept or reject Cablecom’s tender at this meeting. There would be other meetings and more protocol, the two companies circling echother before any deal was be struck. A whole process Mr Thomas was happy to be no part of.
As the meeting broke up and some stiff closing pleasantries were exchanged Mr. Thomas avoided the looks that Mr Gaskin was giving him and sought out Mr Obata, Mr Will’s counterpart and the most approachable junior of the Ayushi team.
"Ah, Mr Thomas. A fine presentation you gave this morning. I hope you will be staying in Tokyo for a while?"
"I would like to stay very much, Mr Obata but I regret I must return first thing tomorrow morning."
"A shame. If there is anything I can do for you in the meantime..."
This was the standard line and never one to be taken seriously but Mr. Thomas suprised the young man by bringing out the page of the TV guide and opening it up.
"As a matter of fact... I happened to see a most entertaining television show last night which featured some comedy sketches from my own country..." Mr Thomas decided to go with a Python pretext in enlisting Mr Obata’s help; "and I was wondering what the name of the show was..." he pointed at the circled Japanese characters.
Mr. Obata peered at the text. "ah yes, komoderu no- ichigoru. It means literally ‘happy- time mixture’. A very popular programme. I have seen it on occsaion myself, although regrettably not last night. Is there anything else I can help you with?". By the tone of his voice Mr Thomas surmised that Mr Obata was hoping for a negative. It was time for the push.
"Well, I happen to be an... amateur archivist of Monty Python information, and it woud very much interest me which television company is responsible for filming ...er... ‘happy-time mixture’ and where they are based... and who their senior production staff are." It was a lot to ask and Mr. Thomas was hoping he hadn’t overstepped the mark. Mr. Obata raised his eyebrows and gave him a mischievous smile.
"Goodness, what a funny thing to ask! You must be a true Monty Python man. Almost what we would call Otaku but I would never label you with such a word. Naturally, It would be a pleasure to find the information you require. I am certain it would take no more than a phone call or two. Where are you staying?"
"At the Prince"
"Very good. I’ll fax the information to you by this evening."
"Thank you very much." Mr Thomas felt an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude for the young man’s help. He realised it was mostly due to the action of doing something positive about the mystery in which he had become embroiled . Once Obata had provided him with the relevant information, he would be closer to tracking down these black bodysuited swine and their comedy terrorist organisation or whatever the hell they were up to. He had no little faith in Obata Obata was Japanese and therefore a good deal more reliable and discreet than the Cablecom lot. He would also be better placed to get the information than creeps like Will or farts like Gaskin. The two of them were standing by the door, evidently waiting for him with fixed smiles on their faces.
The three of them took a taxi back to the Cablecom regional office. Gaskin, thankfully, must have been more switched off during his lacklustre Tech presentation than Mr Thomas had given him credit for. He made no mention of it, preferring to hold forth on how it always seemed to be raining in Tokyo. God, the old man’s out of it, thought Mr Thomas. He could have given Ayushi a talk on jelly babies and the git wouldn’t have blinked. Probably got a year left in him before an early retirement in Surrey on a decent pension. Will knew it too, he sensed, and was doubtless already seeing himself behind the old man’s desk. Let’s face it, Cablecom were more likely to bump him up a level and send someone new over to be his assistant than have to break in a new manager to the complexities of doing business with the Japanese on their own turf.
Which was bullshit really, Mr Thomas thought. There was this whole idea that doing business with the Japanese was some sort of cultural minefield. Granted, there were some matters of politeness which were as well to know about. Belching in public was ok. Sneezing wasn’t. Always look at a business card when it is proffered. Don’t lose your cool. Make points in a more roundabout manner than you usually would. They had their rules of etiquette, the Japanese, but they don’t let them get in the way of making a deal. They want to make money like anyone else, and they’ll put up with a lot more breaches of protocol than westerners gave them credit for. Still, little turds like Will made it their business to convince Head Office in London that it took years to ‘learn the Japanese culture’ and with his experience he would be the natural choice to take over the regional office - and Head Office would probably swallow the lie.
They kept Mr Thomas at the regional office for an hour or so signing some papers and distributing more Tech sheets and then he was free to go. It was three o’clock and in theory he could do as he pleased until his flight at ten the following morning. This was usually the deal with these trips, and Mr Thomas was accustomed to spending the time doing a little exploring or shopping or paying a visit to the electronic consumer goods district. However the business with the men in bodysuits and the comedy show had cast a shadow over this whole trip. He’d get to the bottom of it, he vowed. When Mr Obata got him the info on the comedy show he would get onto it. Maybe his brother had a contact in the TV business who would help.
There was no fax or message from Mr Obata when he got back to the Prince. Mr Thomas was disinclined to switch on the television which squatted malevolently on the dresser. In fact he suddenly felt a desire to be out of Japan. There were something like a hundred and fifty million people out there and at the moment he didn’t feel inclined to interact with even one of them. Outside it had started to rain, and Mr Thomas suddenly felt the drive flowing out of his body as if down a drain. Sighing, he picked up the remote control and switched the TV onto one of the hotel’s movie channels. Hollywood films, about six months past their cinematic release.
So Mr Thomas passed the rest of the aftenoon placidly taking in some fairly recent American movies sitting, then half lying, on his bed. At one point he felt a pang of guilt that he ought to be taking advantage of being a t liberty in Japan, but it passed. He made a conscious point not to watch any local TV stations, not through fear of seeing himself again but more through a dull sense of revenge. If they had fucked him around to get ratings, then he would deny them his attention. Any of them. Tired by the day’s events and mindful of an early start the next day, Mr Thomas turned in at 9pm, local time.
This time he was subjected to a full-on nightmare. Mr Will was in it, dressed in a black bodysuit and obscenely kissing him full on the mouth. He couldn’t make out any other details, other than the certainty that he was about to die, and the word ‘consortium’ which kept spinning around his head like a maddened bee. An insane chattering jolted him awake, and turned out to be coming from the clock radio unit mounted in the wall above the bed. Mr Thomas switched it off with a stab of a finger and lay back in the gloom. The clock read 6am. Presently he became aware of a flashing red light on the telephone next to the bed. A message. He picked up the telephone and a voice answered in Japanese. Presumably reception.
"Hello, this is Chip Thomas, room 1028. Do you have a message for me?"
"One moment please". Mr Thomas could hear a keyboard tapping over the line.
" You have a message from Mr. Obata. He called last night at ten o’clock but there was no reply from your room. He left message that he comes here seven o’clock this morning to speak with you."
"he’s coming here? to the hotel?"
"yes, sir. Shall I send him up when he arrive?"
"no, I’ll wait for him in the lobby"
"OK. "
What was going on? Obata only needed to send a fax or a message, but he’s coming here personally. Why? Mr Thomas showered, changed and packed rapidly. Seven o’clock saw him standing in the Hotel’s small tidy lobby. Men in suits filed out of the lifts and into the street. Businessmen on busines trips, Mr Thomas thought, just like me. Seven fifteen came, then seven thirty. This was odd. It was feasable that Mr Obata would be delayed, but surely he would have made an effort to inform him. The Japanese were rarely late, and never without forewarning. Eventually Mr Thomas had to accept that Mr. Obata wasn’t going to show and that he had better get to the airport before he missed his plane. Leaving forwarding instructions with the hotel desk he stepped out into the street and headed for the station.
Although hungry and thirsty, he couldn’t bring himself to eat or drink anything at the Airport. The food on display in the snack bars looked the picture of serility, safety. The drinks all came from metal cans or clean pumps. He wasn’t touching any of it. They messed with his drink on the outward trip, why not on the return? Then again why should they? they were done with him, weren’t they? Even Mr Obata couldn’t be bothered with him. No. Best not risk it. Get something to eat on the plane. But couldn’t they just as easily poison or drug his airplane food? He felt he was being silly, but didn’t he have a right to be cautious, after what he’d been through?
But what had he been through? He’d been scammed by a TV show, pure and simple. They hadn’t counted on his actually watching the show, but when Mr Obata finally got him the name of the TV company responsible what was he going to do? sue them in the Japanese courts? They’d show the tape of the show as evidence. He’d be a laughing stock, but this time his pathetic antics in the cockpit would be brought to the attention of a lot more people. Cablecom, for example. And Ayushi. Maybe he should just take the money and run...
At the gate he found himself in the way of a small Japanese man in a black suit. Reflexively stepping around him he realised the man had fixed him with a level stare.
"Mr Thomas?"
"Yes?" . Mr Thomas tried to work out if he had met this man before, but drew a blank.
"My name is Daishimi-san. I am a colleague of Mr Obata" The man offered Mr Thomas a card. Mr Thomas took it without reading it.
"I was supposed to meet Mr Obata this morning. Was he held up?"
"Mr. Thomas, I must report with great regret that Mr Obata was in an accident this morning at six o’clock. I believe he was on his way to meet you when he fell off a crowded rail platform and was hit by the Bullet. He was killed instantly."
"Oh my god!" Shock. A horrible fleeting image of a man smashed to pieces on the front of a gleaming aircraft-nosed white Bullet train. Guilt. He was on his way to see me. He had something to tell me. In person. It’s my fault.
" A terrible tragedy. Was it a business matter he was to discuss with you? Can I help?"
"Yes. No. No, it’s OK.... Look, they’re calling my flight."
"I am sorry to be the one to give you this bad news, Mr Thomas. A senseless death. They are always giving warnings on getting too close to the Bullet, but still some people die each year."
"Yes." an awkward moment passed between the two strangers suddenly linked by death. Mr Thomas was broken out of it by another call for his flight.
"look, I have to go." At a loss for anything else to do, Mr Thomas grasped the smaller man’s hand and they shook hands stiffly. The man bowed and headed out of the gate. Mr Thomas stood at the entrance to the tube that led to his plane. So Obata’s dead. He ignored the warnings and was hit by the Bullet. That was what the man said. Not Bullet train, but Bullet. This man. This colleague of Mr Obata. How did he get all the way to the gate? Did he buy a ticket just to get here to warn me? What was his name? Daishimi-san?
Mr Thomas looked at the man’s card that he still held in his left hand. It was odd for a business card. It had no company name, no telephone number. Only his name. And it wasn’t Daishimi-san. It was Sran. D.Sran. Mr Thomas pocketed the card and strode down the metal tube that led to the plane.





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