Chapter 12
Lighthouse

Armed with the knowledge he had gained from the scores of haiku which Otomo had so obligingly read for him, Bernard felt a little more prepared to confront the scene at the purported home of the masked man. It was this kind of classical Japanese mentality which eluded his modern perception, and he sought to recapture it by prolonged exposure to the works of one of its great minds. Now, this theory would be put to the test, as he would examine the ruins and determine whether or not they were relevant to his search for the source of the problems surrounding the degradation of affective capability. His feeling grew stronger and stronger as he neared the spot that the man had directed him to, with the last, cryptic warning “Don’t wander about inside for too long.” How he was meant to wander about inside the shattered ruin of a lighthouse, he had no idea, but he had promised to heed the fellow’s words.

The site itself was almost a disappointment. Covered in silt and rocks, the shattered glass had been covered with algal growth for some time, and the ocean had done its best to repurpose the intruder as a home for smaller creatures such as crabs and fish which preferred the enclosed environment to being open to attack by the constant stream of predators. In order for him to more efficiently conduct his investigation, he decided that he would use yet another capability of his vessel and drain the area of water temporarily that he might explore it directly. Giving a command via the multi-purpose drive handle, he directed the sphere to expand and encompass the crumbling ruin, keeping a pouch apart for himself to retain atmosphere. This done, he set the membrane to generate a reverse osmotic pressure and replace the solvent with the oxygen produced using the power of the drive, and watched as the water and creatures within in were gently but inexorably drawn outward, looking very surprised by this turn of events. Once the process was complete, he stepped out of his tiny pouch, and regarded the cracked glass of the lamp room. Several of the eight panels were missing almost entirely, and the remainder were chipped or broken off in places; the bronze circle at the top had corroded, but it remained in place. By some coincidence, the entire assembly had landed upright, and he stepped inside it, gingerly brushing off the dried algae that had resisted the current generated by his vessel.

Inside the lamp room, he saw that the lens was surprisingly intact; while the lamp within and the fuel can nearby had long since yielded its kerosene to the surrounding waters, the beveling of the Fresnel design remained whole and magnified the extinguished light several times over. Intrigued by its effect, he walked in a circle around it, watching the glints of sunlight from far above filter through the transparent surface of the canopy overhead and be refracted through its walls.

Coming upon the old log book, Bernard opened it delicately, yet discovered to his pleasant surprise that the damage done by the water was minimal, and that the pages still separated even if they were a bit more brittle than before. He observed the pattern of the dates and times, although he could not read the Japanese characters that must have made up the masked man’s reports. With astonishing regularity over a period of some twenty years, he saw that every day the man had arisen early and stayed awake until late, checking in at four hour intervals without fail, the only spaces in the log corresponding to the winter, when ships would not presume to travel through these waters that were treacherous even in the warmth.

Even simply reading the log, he was struck by the intense poignancy of this man’s life. He had never known companionship, and had never complained over the repetitiveness and dullness of his existence. His actions might well have saved the lives of thousands, yet the only acknowledgement he ever received was a small silver medal which he carried about like a talisman that reflected the effulgence of the sun as though it were aflame with the fierce emotion within his heart. And the dates in the logbook confirmed it; either he, too, had come down here as Bernard had and fabricated the entire thing, or he had lived for some two centuries and more. Given that the only people who lived on the island were eccentrics that eschewed the company of the world and had no access to the technologies that would make such exploration possible, he believed that the man’s story was the only sensible explanation until a better one presented itself. And if he had lied, it mattered not at all, for the true tale of the lighthouse keeper who had dwelt here was a tragic one whether the contemporary teller of that history was conveying the truth about his provenance or not.

He thought again about the many haiku which Otomo had translated for him. In telling of the journeys of one man, they had evoked images of nature and the cosmos, relating Basho’s own wanderings to the experience of all mankind in a rich language rife with cultural ties and symbolism. Within these microcosmic tales lay much to be meditated upon, mulled over for years perhaps, but Bernard wished most of all to know why the poem about stars had struck him so. There was a certain beauty in seeing the curve of galaxies as one with the curve of the sand and waves, and he imagined standing on a long beach looking over to the stretch of the boundary there on a moonlight evening, the sand glistening like a million strands of pearls extending to the horizon. Yet this mere aesthetic pleasure was of no particular relevance to his present scenario, and he felt compelled to discover what more lay secreted away within the remnants of the lighthouse.

Recalling that Alice had left him a standing offer of assistance, he called up a holographic panel and initiated a connection to her house, hoping that she would not be disturbed from her work. A moment later she responded and looked at him curiously.

“Have you found it?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m inclined to believe what our masked friend told me; the log book is here, even as he described it, and the lighthouse has most certainly been here a couple hundred years at least.”

“You know, I’ve done some investigation of the area you describe. That lighthouse has a more complicated past that I would ever have suspected. In the local town there were many stories of people appearing out of nowhere and the locals believed it had some connection to the lighthouse, but they could never prove anything. The records do indeed reveal a man living there at the time; his name was Okakura Kazoru, and after the lighthouse was destroyed he notoriously disappeared without telling anyone where he was going.”

“All this checks out... can you tell me anything else?”

“Here’s an interesting fact. It happens that this Kazoru is a direct ancestor of the man who discovered the affective gene.”

“Really!” That scientist had started the entire branch of genetics in which he was involved, and been tremendously influential in society, a new Einstein for the 22nd century alongside the developer of artificial intelligence. While that latter had produced the most direct effect in changing human society into its present form, the former was the one who had truly initiated the whole affair, and enabled people to realize their potential as they had. It was interesting indeed that the masked man who had confronted him, too, had possessed heightened levels of charismatin, and was in fact the progenitor of that great man; it explained much that he had such intense individuals in his family tree.

“Thank you, Alice,” he said, and made his farewell before returning to look through the ruin once again. Surely he must have missed something in his investigation, and he was determined to find it.

Bernard imagined what it would be like to watch the crescent of the sea from the top of the high cliff above, and realized suddenly that night had fallen around him like a cloak. The stars were not distinctly visible from below, but instead formed a coruscating fabric infinitely far above the surface, a tapestry made of points of light that seemed to waver in the wind and to shift in response to a slow but unremitting current of unknown source that propelled it across the sky.

He glanced at the lamp once again, and stared in shock. No longer the dead and dim shell of a beacon, it was luminous, with a radiance recalling the aurora in its spectral hues. The light flowing from it with intensity and haste was reflected in each of the remaining panels of the lamp room, yet he realized that there was some discrepancy between the scene in front of him and the reflections which he viewed. Rather than showing the lamp, each remaining window held a different view: the one before him showed an ancient library lit with torches; the one at right, a forest; a grassy slope; a strange configuration of stars that circled rapidly, at a rate he estimated to be one revolution every four seconds. These assorted scenes were flickering and elusive, yet they seemed to be more than mere projections, actually existing within their own independent reality. He wondered if Kazoru had been aware of the marvels which were present in his beloved lighthouse. Certainly he must have been; yet why had he not spoken of them?

He glanced among the various scenes. A dock, a stretch of open sea, an atrium with many desks. Finally, he came upon quite a surprise. Here was the image of the very park in which he had finally wrenched the story out of the man! Could it be, then, that this lighthouse was the means by which he arrived so far in the future, none the worse for wear despite his journey of some two hundred years? However, there was no evident way to use the images for transportation. Still, he must have reached the shores of Seattle in some fashion. Bernard resolved to cautiously experiment, and reached his hand out to touch the plate holding the likeness of the park which he had come from.

Without the slightest hint of transition, he found himself standing and looking at the park bench and sail to his side, while the glass which he touched held a picture of the lighthouse still shrouded in darkness. Hesitantly, he removed his hand, and the glass remained tangible, concealed in the copse of geometric crystal trees behind the bench. Then perhaps it had been there all along, and he had never suspected! This explained how he had come to Washington from all the way in Hokkaido. Relieved, he touched the glass which showed the lighthouse again.

He instantly returned to the bubble that his ship had generated. Bernard was shaken profoundly by this experience, but his scientific curiosity was engaged and he could not imagine stopping his investigation there. His spirits high, he touched the panel showing the grassy bank and looked about him expectantly.

The vista of the San Francisco Bay spread out before his eyes. He was rendered breathless by the beauty expanding outward in front of him; each tree on the mountainsides and fiery mote on the water seemed to sum together and produce a vision of natural loveliness. Yet as he looked about further, the buildings seemed somehow strange, given that they did not conform to their users’ visions as he would have thought. Gradually, he realized that the proportions of the bay were wrong; should that stretch of land not be flooded, with the bay stretching over much of the land he could see, and the original site of the city itself immersed in water?

He then realized that the buildings looked unusual because they were of very old construction indeed, and that several had cylindrical protrusions which were actually giving off grey clouds of ash; smokestacks, he thought. Then this was not the San Francisco of his day, but the land as it had been in some past epoch!

Astounded by this concept, he was overwhelmed by the desire to report what he had found. He touched the panel of the lighthouse’s glass again, and with no discernable shift, he found himself standing in the lamp room once more. It seemed, then, that the lighthouse served as the anchor location, present and continuous in the timeline as he knew it, while the various panels corresponded to differing times which remained fixed in place, both in the past, present, and future with respect to where Kazoru must have been. Alas, it was impossible now to return the lighthouse to its intact state; although the matter generation technology could restore the physical structure, whatever strange power with which the glass had been imbued might easily be eliminated by such presumptuous and hubristic acts. Therefore, it would not be easy to get to the source of these various portals without undergoing a certain degree of adversity, and it would be ill-advised to have the ship maintain this bubble indefinitely, for it must certainly cause a substantial amount of damage to the material of the edifice to be exposed to oxygen once again.

He was preparing to command the ship to generate a duplicate of itself in order to have a vessel in which to return home and consider his possible courses of action, but he realized that this would be unwise, for the lighthouse was changing again. He realized that he had spent so long investigating its capabilities that the dawn was breaking overhead, and the auroral flames of the lens were starting to die. Alarmed by the thought that he would never have access to the device’s abilities again, he reached blindly out and touched the panel showing a grassy bank, before realizing that he did not know if he would be able to return, either.

The glass he touched still held the image of the lighthouse, yet before he could touch it again, the pane dissolved without any warning. Coming to grips with the fact that he was trapped in a strange place and time, not knowing if it were possible for him to return at all, he sighed and sat on the grass, trying to divine his next move. E-mail: vokuro@adelphia.net