Jigoku No Mokushiroku by John G. McDaid1 gets off to an intriguing start with an AI elevator called Hitoshi talking to Crazy Bob, a visitor to a huge futuristic library built and run by the Koreshians. Although Hitoshi thinks that Bob might be mad, the AI chats to him when he can (partially as part of the building’s security protocols), and reveals that it is named after Hitoshi Igarashi (the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, who was assassinated by Moslem extremists in 1991). Hitoshi even quotes parts of Bob’s books back to him when he stops in-between floors to allow Bob to have an illicit cigarette:
“If I may quote your last book, ‘The vacuum of disbelief sucked the rationality out of culture.’”
“Yeah. We started ringing like a bad circuit. Any control was better than none. Until finally, here I am, in a nation of nonsmoking, nondrinking, vegetarian strangers, stripped of all weaponry in the name of safety, with no culture in common, each plugged into their own unique digital information environment, under a government financed by 40 percent tax and the forfeiture of every convicted criminal’s assets.” He took a long drag and exhaled slowly through his nose. “And I can write all this stuff down, blast it out on the net, and there’s not even anybody left who cares enough to read it.” p. 109
This feels as if it is, or will be, remarkably prescient.
As the story progresses Bob asks Hitoshi about a woman called Aki who, on one elevator trip, gets on along with a couple of “Koreshi suits” (we learn along the way that the library, a huge underground structure, has been constructed by followers of The David (David Koresh of the Waco siege2) and that each of the disciples is required to emulate The David, usually in some act of self-immolation).
Later on in the story Bob becomes involved in Aki’s plan to nuke the library but, as they are in the process of smuggling the bomb down to the basement, Hitoshi convinces them to let him do it so it can be freed from its current constraints as an elevator AI. After they leave the elevator Hitoshi takes the bomb down to the sub-levels and disarms it for possible future use.
This is a witty and entertaining piece but I’m not sure the satire, which mostly seems to be aimed at mad millennial types, has much point—it’s a pretty obvious target—and I’m not sure I understand Aki’s motivation in wanting to bomb her own library.
The story has a pretty good start but a weaker ending; I think its Sturgeon Award overrates it.
*** (Good). 5900 words.
1. The full title given on the opening page is Jigoku No Mokushiroku (The Symbolic Revelation of the Apocalypse). Google translates the title as “Book of Revelation”.
2. The Wikipedia page on the 1993 Waco siege.