Ichi-go

Ichi-go

I guess you never really know what to expect when traveling to your own past. The memories I had were strange, brittle things — more shapes than pictures. Now, I hardly recognize what I’m seeing. My mother’s right in front of me. Alive, smiling – joking with the doctor putting stitches in her thumb. Even with the bipolar, she’s incredible — fun, bright, loving. Still, part of me wants to cry.

“You can’t actually cry, you know,” my AI, RATS, chirps in my head.

Robotic-Amni-Temporal-Stability-Unit-7, I call him RATS. He’s more hall monitor than friend.

Why not? I ask.

It isn’t timeline accurate. You didn’t cry the first time.

Right, I think back. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to cry the first time either. All Mom’s doing is flirting with the doctor. Something not at all unusual for her.

“Have you ever met a woman with just one thumb before?” she asks the doctor.

“Yes,” he says plainly. He probably has…

“But they weren’t this pretty, right?”

He looks her in the face, perhaps actually speculating as to which of his thumbless patients was more attractive. In the end, he seems to realize the danger and goes back to work. Presumably, her flirting is for our benefit, but you never know. The injury itself was a surprise. She arrived at summer camp to pick up my brother and me with a nest of bandages around her thumb.

“See,” she’d said, “I was trying to make breakfast, and I got some bacon, but it wasn’t pre-sliced, so, I was slicing it, but then — whoops! — the knife nearly took my thumb off, and it was bleeding so much, and I think I need a hospital.”

Now, we’re in said hospital, one near camp.

RATS speaks in my head. “Want to say something?”

Like what? I think back to him. Anything?

A glowing word prompt appears in my mind, revealing a script I can speak out loud.

“Mom,” I say, my voice whinier than I remember, “are you gonna be okay?”

RATS supposedly mapped my life using something called “subatomic sonification.” By tracking photons that have lodged into a black hole, RATS could track my words and actions. Now that we’re in the black hole, he’s trying to keep me on script so the tachyons we’re using to travel here won’t destroy the timeline.

“Of course, honey,” Mom says, the doctor leaving the room to get more supplies. “Aren’t I always?”

No, I want to say. By the end of the year, her mania slipping into depression, she’ll have killed herself. If only I could do something about that.

“How would you rate your trip so far?” RATS asks, always studying me.

Well, I think, trying to take the question seriously. I guess a ten. It’s an awkward time for a survey, but RATS is meant to study me. It’s the only reason I’m allowed to be on this experiment.

“Really? I just flagged a wave of sadness in your brain.”

Yeah, it’s still a ten. Ichi-go, ichi-e.

“I wasn’t trained on Japanese,” RATS says.

It's a yojijukugo, a four-character saying. It means ‘one-time, one-meeting.’ Even replicating something – say coffee with a friend – it’s still new coffee, new conversation. Nothing repeats.

“And where’s an organic being of your…capacity learn something like that?”

RATS is surprisingly snooty, though the scientists warned me he would be based on my own personality, my own self-loathing.

Just something I picked up when I worked in Fukuoka. She and I had always wanted to go together, before…well, you know.

“Ah, right. Well, it’s pretty Zen for a guy who dropped everything to go on an experimental trip to the past.”

Strangely, the thought embarrasses me. I’m not proud of what my life has become.

Well, there’s Zen, and then there are mothers. If mothers never died, there’d be no need for Buddhism.

“Well put for a talking mammal.”

Maybe I should change my rating to a seven.

“Why? Because I’m teasing you? There’s nothing wrong with being a mammal. Or an organic, for that matter…”

No, I think. Just remembering where this leads. It’s strange not to help her, you know?

“In fact, I do not know,” RATS says. “What’s strange is assuming you can fiddle with an established timeline.”

He begins reading me the Riot Act on timeline integrity and the dangers of the butterfly effect.

Okay, I think between his outbursts, but it’s possible, right? That’s why you’re here to watch me.

“Technically, yes,” RATS says. “The whole reason we can be here is that tachyons travel faster than light. If I weren’t plugged into your brain, controlling your muscles, you could wreak havoc.”

But if the timeline is that sensitive, it wouldn’t take much, right? There’s your reaction time, your model calibration. It wouldn’t be timeline accurate for you to freeze me permanently.

RATS is quiet for a long time.

“Interesting,” he finally says. “I see a chance of…four in a quadrillion that you get past my controls.”

But not zero.

“Not zero.”

Mom turns her gaze to the ceiling, her eyes large, dark pools. She looks like she might cry. How long until the depression comes back, until she can’t get out of bed? Even as it rips my heart out, though, there’s something beautiful about seeing her. This woman only existed once, and she’ll never exist again. She’s the very essence of Ichi-go. One-time, one-meeting. One mother, one incredible love. Right now – whatever “now” means – this is where I am too. Only this time, I intend to do things differently.

Let’s see if you can stop me, I think to RATS.

“I can always pull the plug on the experiment.”

And waste all that R&D? You said I only had four in a quadrillion odds.

“True. I suppose that’s…within tolerance.”

I go to hold Mom’s hand, and RATS lets me. I don’t know how I can possibly help her. I can’t say, “I’m your son from the future!” But I will try.

“Mom—” I begin, the word like a magic spell. I’m following the script, but I know I’ll reach her. Somewhere between the words, there’s a son who would dive into a black hole to save her.