Kazuto Morimoto wasn't particularly good at keeping a job. In fact, he wasn't particularly good at anything. He was one of those average, single Japanese men in their twenties, with an average degree in computer science or some other over-saturated field. The kind of degree you get with average grades, coming out of average universities. The kind of man so average, they look as if they’re standing on tiptoe, on the edge of an immense cliff, threatening to collapse into it at any moment, sinking into the deepest depths of the social ladder. That was Kazuto, one of those guys living on the thin line between a failed employee and an hikikomori.
Once again, he found himself at home, in his poorly maintained, somewhat shabby third-floor apartment. He was staring at the carcass of an old IBM computer while enjoying instant noodles from a cup. The living room window was wide open to let in the night air, suffocating with the heat of June. The noodles tasted like cardboard and salt, and they even had the texture to match. Nothing appetizing, but it was all he could afford since he had once again been fired from his job last week. He scratched his chin while pondering the electronic puzzle in front of him. He had noticed the sporadic and somewhat too long hairs growing there, making him look akin to a scruffy teenager, but he honestly couldn't care less. It wasn't like anyone was coming to visit him anytime soon. The only fan at the other end of the room finally turned in his direction, pushing the humid air through his somewhat thin, somewhat greasy, and somewhat long hair.
He had picked up this antique from a company’s trash three days earlier. He had had to sell his own laptop to pay the rent, and seeing the corner of a yellowed white keyboard sticking out of a dumpster from afar, he thought it must have been his lucky day. In the end, all he got was this old white, bulky box, which looked straight out of a sci-fi movie. By some miracle, it still turned on and even worked, but even that wasn't very useful to someone who couldn't afford an internet line.
Kazuto put down his now-empty cup of noodles and pulled a cigarette from an old pack, lighting it. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in the apartment, but of course, he didn’t care. He went back to digging through the guts of the machine to extract the serial cable. With so much free time on his hands and this thing at his disposal, Kazuto had made it his new obsession to wire it. These old computer models worked with phone lines, and by chance, his apartment – probably as old as his find – still had one. Not that anyone, including him, used landlines anymore, though. He frowned once the cable was in front of him, then looked at the old modem lying beside him.
“But this crap doesn’t fit…”
He sighed, then brought the cable to his lips. "Kids, don’t try this at home," he thought humorously before biting off the plastic covering the cable. Without further delay, he turned the modem upside down and unscrewed it. After a few minutes of fiddling, he ripped off the plastic from another cable, this time the modem's, and connected the two together. He took a drag from his cigarette and stepped back to admire the monstrosity he had just created.
“Well, let’s see.”
He turned on the computer, which greeted him with its distinctive “beep.” The fan hummed to life like a soft purr, and the screen lit up. He used the keyboard to navigate to the internet connection program and launched it.
[No modem detected. Please check the modem connection.]
Kazuto sighed even harder, blowing a puff of smoke in the computer's face. The modem emitted a singular "beep," then nothing. He crushed his cigarette straight inside the empty noodle cup and lit a new one.
“Well, if you beep, that means you received something,” he said to the modem as if speaking to a pet that couldn't understand him.
He opened the configuration files of the internet software, thinking the modem model must surely be different from what the computer was expecting. Since these systems worked by using the phone lines of ISPs, he began entering every number he could find through his phone, with no success. After nearly half an hour, he gave up and started entering random numbers into the configuration before trying to launch the program, which stubbornly kept responding that no connection was detected. Feeling frustration rise, he hit the keyboard numbers while cursing them. He looked at the result in the configuration, and got stunned: by accident, his hits had created a perfect palindrome: 03-8711-7830. He snorted and hit the connection button. The software loaded for a second. Two seconds. Then the modem emitted a horrible sound, like an electrical scream, which made him jump. He turned toward it, in shock. Finally, a new "beep" came from the computer, accompanied by a message:
[Connection established!]
The window changed to display another program full of information. Kazuto stood frozen. Had it really worked? By hitting the keyboard, no less? He started laughing, his voice echoing off the walls of his cluttered apartment.
"Who said violence doesn’t solve solutions, huh?"
He took another long drag from his cigarette before focusing on the program on the screen. It had opened by itself, without asking for any sort of permission. It was like an Excel sheet, but green on black. Several columns were displayed, each labeled with a title.
[Name | Birth City | Age | Birthdate | Date of Death | Status]
The list seemed to be constantly moving, with new names being added every minute and statuses changing from "Pending" to "Processed." All the information was written in English, except for the names, which were in various languages. There was Chinese, Germanic languages, Arabic languages, even a few Japanese names occasionally flickered by. The display was so bare, just a grid and text, that it was almost chilling. The most disturbing part, however, were the death dates, almost all of which were dates yet to come.
“What the hell did I stumble upon?” he wondered.
Surely, this server was still being updated and used, as the names and statuses kept appearing. But who could still be using an old IBM server these days? What did the information in the grid mean? And most of all, why was there no name, no reference, no clue to explain the purpose of such a software? He thought it could be a medical register, something belonging to a local hospital that hadn't bothered to update their 80s system.
”Or maybe it’s military” he thought. “Or a hitman thing. Shit, I hope I didn’t step into a hornet’s nest.”
Although slightly worried by his discovery, he continued scrolling through the list with curiosity. He stopped at one of the few Japanese names he saw.
[Hideyo Kimura | Tokyo | 38 | 8/10/1986 | 24/06/2024 | Pending]
Again, Kazuto scratched his chin and raised an eyebrow. The death date was tomorrow. Succumbing to his curiosity, he grabbed his phone and typed Hideyo Kimura's name. It didn’t take long for him to find his Twitter profile. He was a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo, and he seemed to be doing well, as he had posted a humorous video just two hours earlier. The young man’s gaze drifted to the death date, then back to the Twitter profile.
"This is really creepy."He extinguished his cigarette in the noodle cup again. The sound of some birds chirping outside brought him back to reality: it was almost 4 AM, and he really needed to sleep if he didn’t want to ruin his circadian rhythm even further. He turned off his phone and took a few steps to lie down directly on the living room sofa, nearby, pulling his blanket over him, leaving the old IBM running in the dark.
"It'll be my nightlight," he thought as sleep began to take over him.