Doctor Who: The Evangelion Error (Book Two)

E9 Part 4: San Francisco Bay Blues

Bateau Apartments. Tokyo-3.

"You..." Makoto stared at the woman with the plastic hair. "Wait..."

She glared at him with the same cold expression. "Are you gonna sign for this or what?"

"Umm..." Makoto took the clipboard and the pen from her. He skimmed the contract. I, the Undersigned, do hereby confirm that I have received the items listed below... "You... really don't look like a deliveryperson."

"I'm really not." She sighed. "Look, if I explain, will you sign the damned paper already?"

"Oh... uh, sure." Makoto scribbled down his name.

"God, finally." She snatched the clipboard back from him. "I work for the Renraku-Columbia Entertainment Music Group. We represent several major artists here in Japan. One of whom asked that this be hand-delivered to you on this exact date." She took out a manilla envelope and held it out.

Makoto took it. "I really don't think I know anyone like that."

The woman shrugged.

He opened the envelope and pulled a few sheets of paper out. He glanced at the date at the top of the front page. "Wait... 1996?"

"We field a lot of... special requests from our clients," she said in a bored tone of voice. "Medications. Private business arrangements. Random charity donations. Delivering autographed guitars to the top of Mount Fuji. That sort of thing."

Makoto started to catch on. "Or... say... having a cyborg supermodel run all their errands for them?"

"Something like that."

Makoto looked back down at the envelope. I'm in the wrong business, he thought.

"Look, can I leave now?" the woman asked. "I really hadn't planned on spending my whole day chasing you around. Especially in these." She pointed to the high heels on her boots.

He flushed. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Of course." He scrambled away from the door.

She raised an eyebrow. "And the lock?"

"Oh. Right." He tried to smile apologetically as he typed in the code.

The woman strode past him without a second glance and out of the apartment.

Makoto stared at the door for a while after it slid shut behind her. His mind was just... blank. As if it'd just given up on him and crashed the way his workstation at Headquarters did sometimes. Fatal error -- expected input of type "Reality," found... something else entirely. Please file a report with your manager and reboot your psyche at the earliest opportunity.

Eventually, his eyes drifted once more down to the manilla envelope. I should probably sit down, he thought. He sat down in the chair beside the kitchen window and started to read.

He stayed there for a long time.

***

To whom it may concern:

The original handwritten version of this document was destroyed during Second Impact. However, a digital copy was retained on our servers and used to prepare the prints now in your possession. As per the client's request, this document has not been read by anyone else, nor has it been modified -- save for an automated censorship algorithm that was mistaken applied to all company files during a corporate merger in late 2006. We apologize for our predecessors' oversight and deeply regret any loss of content that may have resulted.

Sincerely,
K. Togusa
Corporate Archives and Data Retrieval
Renraku-Columbia Entertainment Music Group

Original document follows:

August 22, 1996

Hey, man --

!#$%, dude. I don't even know where to start with this !#$%. I guess the big question on your mind is what exactly your old buddy Aoba is doing writing you a letter old enough to vote. Wish I could tell you, but I'm honestly as lost on that as you are. One minute I'm standing in Secondary Dogma, pointing a gun at this stupid old pop-culture display; the next, I'm waking up in Golden Gate Park, just a block away from Haight-Ashbury and a bit over eight thousand kilometers from where I'd been. And, oh, by the way -- the year was !#$%*!#1964!

Yeah, you read that right. !#$%*!' time travel, man. Knew I hated it for a reason.

Anyway, good news for me was that the hippie movement was just getting started right about then, and most of those dudes had already seen things a whole lot weirder than some Asian guy from the future. Took me a while to adapt, but once I did, things were honestly pretty great. Caught a bunch of the big events -- the Beatles' last gig at Candlestick Park, the moon landing, all of that stuff. I managed to get ahold of an old Stratocaster. You know I always wanted to focus on my music, man. Nothing like singing for your supper to make you concentrate.

Eventually, I got good enough to get some work as a studio guitarist. I was never great, but I did okay for myself. Went over to London. Got the chance to jam with Hendrix in 1969. Tried talking to him about cutting back, but... yeah. Man had some demons. Then I ran into Mr. Eric Clapton himself in this pub down in Westminster. Wound up playing backup on some of his solo albums. (You'll find me in the liner notes under either 'Hiro Maizuru' or 'Hiro Sandwich.' Eric thought that last one was hilarious. Yeah, I'm gonna be honest. We were all pretty dosed up at the time.)

Pretty wild, huh? I must've listened to all those tracks a thousand times since I was a kid -- and the whole time, I was listening to myself. Makes your head hurt, right?

Past that, not much to tell. Went into producing around the time computers started getting involved. Turns out all those hours hacking on the MAGI were good for something after all. I first met my wife Ruby back in the Haight-Ashbury days -- she's the black girl in all the photos with me. We finally got around to tying the knot in '73. Thought about having kids. Couldn't go through with it, though. Not with Second Impact waiting for them.

So, yeah. Second Impact. Been thinking about that one for a while. Tried doing some stuff to warn people, especially when I first arrived. But it pretty much was just like Jimi all over again. Some things are just too big for one guitarist, you know?

So, anyway, I've got about five years left at this point. Ruby and I've bought a place way up in the Rockies over in Colorado. We're hoping to ride the whole thing out there with some friends. If it works out, maybe you'll hear from me in person. If not... well. You remember what all that was like. Can't say I'll be too broken up about it if I don't have to see that !#$% go down all over again.

As a backup, I've left this letter with my label. I know they'll make it through; I used to own some of their albums. Gave 'em instructions on where and when to get this to you. Trust me, it's not the weirdest thing I've asked them to do. (Oh, and I told them to send it over with the hottest chick they've got on payroll. Just consider it a last favor from a dirty old man.)

Well, that's about it. Tell Katsuragi and the rest about what happened to me, okay? Maybe they can make some kind of sense out of it.

And other than that... do one last favor for me, buddy. Call that girl with the yellow scooter. I've been wanting to push you on that for thirty years. Don't let an old man down, will you?

Take care of yourself, man. In a lot of ways, I got lucky. At least I know what's waiting for me.

Your friend,
Shigeru Aoba
aka Hiro Maizuru
Alameda, California, USA

P.S. Oh, yeah. And will you tell Maya that I said to just man up and come out of the closet already? Seriously. Girl's just embarrassing herself at this point.