Summary
: Welcome to Ai. Ai is far and away one of the best chapters in this game, and is the first Tokio chapter to not be a secondary exposition dump for the Transmitter side.
: I’ve been thinking about it, and in hindsight, a lot of this game is kind of a low point. Kamuidrome took me like four recording sessions to sit through, and a lot of the early Tokio chapters kinda suck.
: I think if I had played this before, I would’ve done Decoyman, then a bit of Yume, then Parade and Tsuki, and then Ai, Lifecut, and Hikari (which is Tokio’s final chapter).
: “…!!”
: “…Live weight…? Fuck… it was a dream..”
: “A dream, huh… what the hell?”
From: S. INOHANA
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Kamui Net
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 9:24:12Last night, the International Environment Agency host computers were hacked by someone, and X-level data was stole and published online. The published data was deleted by the same agency two minutes later. Those who read the message are being tracked. This incident will likely not be publicized.
The only data that was publicized was a link to Kamui Net on a BBS. The handle name used was “Sayuki”. Probably some sort of play on Kamui’s name.
Activities on the internet thought to be linked to Kamui have been building up recently. At the very least, Kamui Net needs to be marked. Look into online activites related to Kamui.
From: Yuu
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: Found You
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 3:00:14Hey. You didn’t forget, did you? We just spoke a little while ago. I just tried doing an internet search on you. What a surprise.
So you used to work for a gossip magazine, huh? You need to tell me this stuff. I should have you take some bikini photos of me. I mean, nothing weird or anything, though. Maybe just something on the street. If it’s nothing too nasty, I could even get naked. How about we start there?
I’m usually at Ronny Rocket’s. Pretty much all night. Lots of juicy info there. I also met this genius web designer. He said he’d make my website for me. I’m gonna try and be an internet idol. I’ll let you know when it’s ready, so check it out. <3"
: “More weird-ass mail… that’s about enough of this shit.”
I don’t care for Kamui Net. It’s probably because of all the fuss around Kamui, and me being sick of him, but on top of that I also don’t want to mess with someone I know nothing about. “Investigate the Net?” That’s so vague it makes me sleepy. By the way, even the HC Unit has been chasing after lots of online crime these days. Apparently Unit 1 is especially all over it.
These has been all this talk about state secrets being leaked, and some sort of messed up plans being implemented and whatever, but more importantly, the news about Sayaka Baian is way more realistic and interesting. It involves the internet and everything. From what I gather, it looks like for the entire week leading up to her suicide, Baian had been being secretly filmed in her apartment. The magazine I used to work for was all over that shit.
But it was only for a moment.
At dodgy websites and underground clubs, you could buy secretly filmed videos of her final concert for 10,000 yen, or undated movie files of her diddling herself for 25,000 yen. The prices for videos of the day of her suicide were 100 times that. All kinds of fake copies flooded the market, and in only six days, those prices dropped considerably.
: Man, Nakategawa’s not even good at getting porn.
Digital data doesn’t rot. So long as copies can be made, the videos are basically worthless. Just consume them and toss them. That’s it.
Same thing with Baian’s suicide. Nobody gives a shit anymore. From around the 3rd or so, it was already over. It’s like a high school kid’s fleeting hobbies. This is how the times are now. Including myself, the people of the world are numb to this stuff now. A super famous idol singer gets secretly filmed at home and then kills herself – from the shock, which is fucked up.
But the fact that everyone is already forgetting that might mean that Sayaka Baian wasn’t such an awesome idol after all. There was a press conference about a year ago, just before Baian’s private concert. At the time, she just seemed like some annoying fucking upstart. But viewing her through the monitor, she had this strange glow about her, like she herself had been digitized.
She had this balance between reality and surreality. That’s why she got famous. Then she got “consumed” out the ass, and subsequently deleted. This can only be called a tragedy.
: “What is this, a sitcom…? Everyone and their uncle is a goddamn comedian these days…”
: “I went to the HC Unit for the first time in three days. Kusabi looked bored. Maybe it’s because he has nobody to talk to recently. Ever since that shit went down, Kusabi won’t talk about Sumio.”
: “At the very least, he has nothing to say to me. He keeps acting like nothing’s happening.”
: “What investigation?”
: “I don’t know, but you’re probably still looking for underground sites and stuff, right?”
: I don’t know that Kusabi knows what the internet is, apart from that place Nakategawa goes to waste a lot of money that could otherwise be spent on horse racing.
: “The fuck are you talking about?”
: “Like on the internet.”
: No one tell Kusabi about online gambling.
: “I agree, but there are lots of crimes going down, right? Net crime…”
: “What was it again? I know I heard about that from someone, but I don’t get it, to be honest. What is the internet even for?”
: If this game had been made just four years later, Kusabi would know that the internet is for porn.
: If Salty Vanilla wasn’t busy doing a bunch of commissions for later in the LP, I would absolutely be having him do one of Tokio explaining the internet to Kusabi with one of the Avenue Q puppets.
: “I agree, but there are lots of things you can do with it.”
: “Whatever, I’m just not interested.”
: “It looks like the others disagree. Like Timrod, etc.”
: I mean, I only disagree in that three quarters of the internet is a corporate-owned hellscape and the other quarter is me LPing games no one has heard of.
: “Oh really?”
: “Well, whatever…”
: “What, you going home already?”’
: “I’m going to the sauna to refresh and go home.”
: “Like an old man.”
: “Maybe I’ll just cheat.”
: “Oh yeah, I’ve got a cellphone, too. I haven’t used it ever since the charger broke, though…”
: “Morishima.”
: “Oh, Tokio. Hold on, I’m in the middle of a chat.”
: “Ah, OK. I’ll hang up then.”
: “What what what what what?”
: “Nothing. I just read your mail.”
: “Oh, OK. What a surprise. I didn’t think you’d call. So, ‘scout’, then?”
: “I mean…”
: “Hey…”
: “Do you know where Kamui Net is?”
: “Nope, not really interested… I’ll ask.”
: “Ask whom?”
: “In chat, now.”
: “Would someone there know?”
: “The top page URL changes all the time because of copycats and fake sites and stuff.”
: It’s funny how the only site I can think of that does this is The Pirate Bay, which does it because of the copyright lobby constantly shutting down their domain names.
: “I see…”
: “Also, the real Kamui Net has a shitload of links stuck to it, and nobody seems to be sure which is the real thing and which are fakes.”
: “Huh.”
: “I mean, I’m just reading what I was told here in chat, but…”
: “I thought you sounded kinda monotone…”
: “Hold on, I’ll write it down.”
: “Ready? OK… www. shine dan. com/”
: When I recorded this, I checked the URL and it redirected to a Suda51 fan page called believeinthe.net. They’re the ones who translated a couple of Suda’s manga from after this game released.
: It appears that since then, the site was eaten by a domain squatter.
: “Thanks.”
: “Also… here’s the backdoor password. ‘Indonoyamaoku’. This should work.”
: “Got it.”
: “I’ll be waiting for my prize.”
: “OK… I’ll give you something good.”
: “What, for reals?”
: “Yeah.”
: “Awesome.”
: “Be careful out there.”
: “I’ll be fine. I’m pretty resourceful.”
: “Later.”
I accessed Kamui Net. I read all kinds of messages and replies and propaganda.
This place is huge and weird. Kamui has been deified and is worshiped here. It’s kind of like the people who were really into Sayaka Baian.
Kamui Net is just totally full of shit. Even if there were something there with any amount of meaning, it would be impossible to actually find it. Kamui Net is now deteriorating. Is Kamui hiding out here?
: This is another Kamuidrome-style chat log, most of which is totally pointless, so I’m going to skip some of it.
: The basic idea is that you have a bunch of people chatting in the background, and then Sazanami sending PMs to Tokio.
: The problem is that the whole thing is kind of a clusterfuck to read, so I’m going to cut out the irrelevant chatter and just use dialog portraits. I’ve also corrected the punctuation and capitalization.
: “Do you get it? This is a private message between you and me alone. You’re watching us from there, right? You’ve been found out. Everyone knows.”
: “OK, so this command lets me message specific users only, so we can talk in secret.”
: “Well yeah, duh. I don’t know how you made it here but fuck off, you’re annoying.”
: “Come on, lemme try it out.”
: “Everyone’s starting to look into you.”
: “What do you mean they’re looking into me?”
: “Who you are, where you live, etc. They can find that out in minutes.”
: Tokio gives no fucks. I used Futaba simply because I needed a generic hacker, but she’d probably go just to complain about how bad Tokio is at making coffee.
: I probably should’ve used Baofu instead since this is 1999, but Baofu isn’t a whiny little bitch.
: “What are you talking about?”
(Grandkid) it’s just some bullshit
(Connector) he thinks hell be fine
(Gilon) fucking idiot
(Sazanami) or he just doesn’t understand at all
(TurtleGuy) you dicks talking about me?
(Connector): check this asshole out
(Jeffrey) youre gonna die
(Planecat) i can kill you anytime
(TurtleGuy) be a bit more friendly, fucksticks
(Planecat) what should we do with him?
(Sazanami): hes an amateur
(TurtleGuy): you guys are dirty. you’ve all been monitoring me?
(Connector): fuck off
(Grandkid): shut the fuck up
(Connector): you stick out too much
(Sazanami) kill yourself
: “This place is fucked.”
: “What’s wrong? You look exhausted…”
: “I’m not exhausted, but…”
: "But…?’
: “Hey, you know what ‘generation gap’ means?”
: “Hehe… did you get a young girlfriend or something?”
: “I mean, like… can you even understand the younger generation? Like the ‘internet generation’ or whatever…”
: It’s crazy to think that he’s basically talking about me. I mean, I’m significantly younger than a lot of the people in Kamuidrome probably are, but still.
: “Really?”
: “People in their 30s may not really understand what the internet is really made of, I guess.”
: “What do you mean?”
: “For example, people publish their journals and stuff, right? Online, I mean.”
: “Journals, yeah, I’ve seen those.”
: The implication, as we’ll see later on, is that Tokio doesn’t really think of what he does as “blogging”, but I like to think he does and just doesn’t want to admit it.
: “I read those a lot, myself. The ones written by younger people are totally beyond my comprehension.”
: “Like how?”
: “Those journals are written by writers who are conscious of the reader, right? And most of those writers have a specific type of reader in mind.”
: “They use words specifically to create a world only for themselves and the reader… there should be a huge number of people who can read something like that and actually understand it properly.”
: “But these journals are written with the ‘perfect reader’, who can understand and share the writer’s feelings, in mind.”
: “And?”
: “That’s some pretty lonely work, really. Don’t you think? These people have the entire world as their audience, and yet they sit there writing up stuff that nobody can really understand.”
: I mean, it wasn’t lonely, I got like 30,000 reads on it and really the only reason no one could understand it is because the script was more typo than anything else.
: There is almost no way this line wasn’t changed for the re-release.
: “But I guess this sort of thing is necessary. To young people, at least.”
: “What, these ‘tweets’ and ‘twitters’ are necessary?”
: “Yes… that, and quietly bringing these things to light as well.”
: “And you read a lot of this kind of shit, huh…?”
Any article is written under the assumption that people will read it. Even articles that the writer doesn’t want read. Subconsciously, one begins to start “speaking” to the reader.
Why do I write up my investigation reports like a diary? At first it was just for memo purposes. After several years, it turned into a sort of diary. Articles can’t contain personal viewpoints. Maybe that’s why I write all this shit in a diary. Even more happily than writing the articles themselves.
I had a dream this morning.
There was a long line of kids in front of me. They were at a bus stop, waiting for the bus. I was there, too, as a child. After awhile, the bus came, and a pretty woman checked each kid and let them on.
My turn came, and as she checks me, she says, “You don’t have enough live weight, so you can’t get on the bus.” So I was left behind by myself, and the bus took off. I woke up just as I was crying my eyes out at being left behind.
: I remember Live Weight Inspection Day back in elementary school, where they’d weigh you and you couldn’t move on to the next grade unless you had enough live weight. They don’t do it like that anymore.
: “Live weight… what the hell is that?”
: “Shit… again…?!”
: “I think maybe I’m cursed. My whole damn life is cursed.”
From: Misao Morishima
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: From Mom
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 9:17:10It’s still hot out, but how have you been doing? As always, you don’t call, so I’m mailing you now. You’re probably surprised, right? Taka taught me how to use the computer, so now I can send emails. Taka also told me your email address. Is this mail reaching you?
What have you been up to these days? Do you have work? Please be careful, and take care of yourself. I received a bunch of the pomegranates you love, so I sent you some. They should be there by now.
Anyway, I’ll mail you again soon. Please get hold of me once in a while.
Mom
: “I’ll reply later.. but after three years of no contact, of course a person would worry… and sending pomegranates out of the blue after all this time… that’s pretty abrupt.”
: I have to wonder if the pomegranates are meant to be an allusion to Hariti or not.
From: no-name
To: Tokio Morishima
Subject: no-title
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 13:10:08Do you know who I am? Don’t bother checking the address. But you probably have an idea who this is.
Stay away from Kamui Net. Same goes for the HC Unit. Stay completely away from anything involving Kamui. This isn’t a request. It isn’t even a warning. What I’m doing is much more simple than that.
(TurtleGuy) what command do i use to leave?
Forget Kamui. Kill your memories. Yes, that’s the command you’ve been given.
(TurtleGuy) OK, fine, I got it. Sorry for disturbing your chat. I feel bad. I’ll disappear.
That’s right - your very existence is literally going to disappear. If you don’t follow orders.
Take care.
The Bat is always watching you.
: I mean, of course it is. It’s a giant poster in the middle of Tokio’s room for no good reason.
: “Son of a bitch… you finally showed up. Motherfucker! This better be the real one. I’m gonna expose the shit out of you.”
From: Tokio Morishima
To: Slash
Subject: About “The Bat”Remember “The Bat”?
He mailed me. Looks like the person you found before wasn’t really The Bat. It was a dummy.
Look into it properly this time. I’ll pay you whatever. Just get me info on him. I want to draw him out. Right in front of me. You get paid to do this, so you’re a pro, right? Don’t get fooled again this time.
The Bat is a hassle. I can tell that he’s just going to keep getting in my way. He knows everything I’m doing online. He also knows that I’ve been going to the HC Unit. Who would want to know this shit? Maybe someone’s in love with me.
I need to find out more about The Bat. Maybe I’ll contract another investigation. Slash should be able to find something. That chatroom is run by his company. Erika can’t do anything, but Slash should be able to get in through the backend and check stuff out. It’d be no problem for him..
But the problem is that I was chatting with Erika. I have to be careful.
: “How did The Bat know about me? Is there some sort of hidden camera in my apartment? How did he know from the beginning that I was chasing after Kamui…? I can’t figure it out..”
: It took four fucking chapters, but we finally know what the deal between him and Erika is. I feel like they probably should’ve revealed this back in Yume or Hana.
: “Nope. That can’t be it… can it?”
: Anyway, I’m going to cut this update here. We have a couple of long sequences coming up with no good breaking points between them.