I Married A Typewriter

It might sound really strange, but I have unknowingly gained the ability to traverse any kind of fictional world that was currently in existence. And I found out about it when I revisited my old oeuvre on the eve of my 21st birthday. 

On that night in question, I carefully removed all four books from my private library (from the second row of panels in between Haruki Murakami and Jonathan Franzen) and set them down on my study table. Many sleepless nights and agonizing days spent / Creating heartfelt works bereft of shallow emotion / To deliver searing provocation / And bitter lament. And thus far, it had taken me over five years and ten months of steady hard work to get to this critical stage of my writing career. But I know for a fact that it only gets harder from here. 

From my study window, I observed a brewing storm in progress. Negative cumulonimbus clouds condensed to form sizable drops of rain. Pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter. And when raging winds interfered, the drops fell to the ground in an array of unpredictable obtuse angles. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Usually, the rains didn’t bother me at all, but when work was afoot, there were bound to be issues. I could delay my oeuvre examinations until further notice, sure, but that meant lost time. So, I had no other choice but to soldier on. Like Hannibal on the Alps… 

… But when a lone bolt of lightning flashed before my eyes out of nowhere, I stumbled backwards, accidentally slipped on a fallen No.2 pencil, and hit the ground headfirst, rendering me unconscious.

When I awoke, I wasn’t in my study anymore. I slumped forward on a white laminated desk with a Microsoft PC surrounded by three walls of gray partition with an opening to my left. Unknown faces peering out of their respective cubicles. And there was a man in a pinstriped suit shouting obscenities at me and at the rest of us in the room. When he left the room, the other white-collars wordlessly resumed whatever it was that they were doing, and some proceeded giving me dirty looks for – quote on quote – causing trouble.   

When the clocks struck noon, I waltzed right out of there and went through a winding corridor and took the elevator down a few hundred floors which led me through an odd assortment of viewing decks and romantic cafes and trendy shops. And when I made my way through the exit of this labyrinthine complex, lingering thoughts piling up inside my cluttered mind cleared up and I finally understood… 

An interlocking system of iron and steel forming a heavily meticulous and geometric, web-like pattern spiraling out of control in order to prop itself up for all of Sumida and Ryogoku to see from their little standard sliding windows…

And behind me, the Tokyo Sky-tree loomed over my lonely figure…

… For some cosmic reason, I wound up in the world of my first novel. 

It is important to note that in the real world where I come from, all the offices of the Sky-tree were situated in the East Building of the Complex, and not within the Sky-tree itself. And if I remembered it correctly, the part with my made-up Sky-tree directly related to the sequential events of the second arc, meaning that I was now at the heart of Sumida Ward. The first and third arcs (Shibuya and Shinjuku, respectively) were only a few train rides away from where I was, so I figured that it was high time to see the plot begin to thicken.

Without missing another beat, I caught the 12:30 from Oshiage to Shibuya Station, and I arrived at my destination after a few minutes. Upon arrival, I was greeted by the bronze statue of Hachiko and by the hustle and bustle of the scramble crossing. Just like I imagined it would look like on paper. And then I spotted them – the two main characters of my first arc – holding hands in this sea of transient pedestrians. He wore a gold Rolex and a dark blue and white two piece suit fit for executive class. And she wore a white summer dress and let her flowing black hair sway freely in the wind. The glowing auras around them made it all the more obvious to my eyes – It was them, alright, and there was no denying it. Feeling my eyes start to gloss over, I turned my back away, wiped the joyful tears away with a handkerchief, and left them be in their fleeting state of manufactured happiness. I returned to the station, grabbed a ticket from the machine, and caught the 1:20 to Shinjuku… I couldn’t believe it – my Sky-tree was real, they were real, all of my fictional world was real – but I knew that it would be impossible to risk interfering with their already broken lives.

When the hydraulic doors slid open, I made a break through the curving underground world and clambered up the stairway to a nearby taxi stop, where I hailed a black Toyota Corolla and directed it towards Hanazono-jinja Shrine. 

He raised an eyebrow. 

– Are you from NHK or what? 

– No, sir. Why do you ask? 

– Apparently, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police unloaded two mysterious statues inside the temple, and over the last two days, many people on the scoop holed up outside the grounds and won’t move aside until they’ve been given all the answers. 

Is this… could this be…  

– Um, they wouldn’t happen to be statues of women… would they?

– Actually, you’re right. They are statues of women. 

Bingo!

I paid the two-thousand yen fare, hopped off near the gates, and sure enough, all kinds of media people were present. Formally-dressed television anchors with their cameramen on standby. Scrappy journalists with their trusty analog notepads and Dictaphones and other recording devices. Radio men and women on the lines with their respective broadcasting networks. All of them waiting for further developments on this strange incident now known throughout all of Tokyo as the Petrified Women Case.

It took a long while, but I managed to find a low-key shortcut behind the grounds leading into the temple’s interior, which I used to evade the meddlesome attention of reporters and temple guards. For some needed context, here was the exact scene from my novel that immediately came to mind…

The two statues were placed near the elaborately-ornate altar of Hanazono-jinja Shrine on the orders of the head priest – the smell of incense wafted throughout the shrine’s red and white interior, giving off a grim and ghastly air; the families of both petrified women had tirelessly prayed and grieved on both ends of the holy sanctum, still convinced that the curse would be lifted one way or another; pictures were placed beneath their respective statues along with more sticks of incense, fruits and charms in an attempt to ward off more bad luck.

… And just as I did before, I fled the scene and made my way back to the station, where I caught the final train (the 3:30 to Oshiage), proceeded through the Sky-tree by way of the high-speed elevator and winding corridor, and returned to my cubicle in a now half-empty office floor. I sat down my desk, brought my head down, closed my eyes… and before I knew it, I awoke, in the real world, on the cluttered floor of my very study, with a searing headache. 

The rains have long since passed. 

During my second fictional world run, I wound up in a plain nondescript singles apartment. To give you all an idea of how it looked like, try to imagine a dollhouse from an aerial perspective...

Four white walls of moderate structural integrity pre-fitted with a single double-glazed sliding window dead north and a main entrance on the southwest. Substandard flooring. L-shaped kitchen along the north and northeast in an upside down 90 degree angle. Sturdy six-foot-high custom bookshelf lined with classic Japanese authors on the northwest. Beige pull-out sofa bed dead west. Standard-sized bathroom on the southeast. Ending with a ludicrously-underpowered 80s Macintosh PC work setup dead east. 

… And that’s how the theoretical dollhouse would have looked like from an aerial perspective.

In this particular novel of mine, the same weird dream kept repeating itself in my head in ninety-nine similar yet unique cycles over the course of a single night. And with me being in the singles apartment, I guess the dream had already started, but which cycle was it going to be? I opened the door, and there was an unmarked box. I opened it up and… it was a white rat!

So, this must be the first cycle then – the one with the given title called Original.

Long story short, I washed the rat, put him in another box, kept him as a house pet and called him, well, Shiro (You know, because it represented the color white in Japanese). And for the next few months (in fictional world time), I willingly talked to that unknowing and uncaring creature about voting rights and Socrates and conspiracy theories about 9/11 and Roswell and histories surrounding the ultimate failure of Mitsubishi A6M Zeros near the turn of the Second World War. Like a cuckoo crazy person, ha-ha-ha… And before I knew it, the dreaded 7:30 AM on that fine April morning was just around the corner.

So, when I came back to my apartment unit from the greengrocers, the white rat – as expected – went missing on me. At that point, I already knew what was going to happen so I skipped the trashing the unit part, flipped Shiro’s box over, and there was – you guessed it – a portal! A few inches wide in diameter. White on the outer fringes like his fur coat…

… And I awoke, on my warm mattress, in the real world, with another searing headache like the one before. Only this time, it wasn’t from any sort of concussion. It was just that. A searing headache. I guess that’s one nasty side-effect of fictional world travelling. Luckily, an Ibuprofen coupled with any state of water did the job of erasing parallel world migraines fairly easily.

The third time around, before I fell into this particular fictional world, I made sure that I was wearing a full N95 face mask (You’ll find out soon enough why that is). And when all preparations have been made, I laid down on my mattress, closed my eyes…

… And there I was – right smack in the middle of nowhere. With an equally mysterious donkey parked conveniently right beside me. In a wide arid expanse of land that was dangerously close to desertification. When I looked at myself, I wasn’t wearing my usual clothes anymore. Instead, I had on a rugged cloth tunic and a weather-beaten shawl… Wait what?

I put the N95 away inside my tunic, hopped on the donkey, and rode it as far as I possibly could without straying from due north. After almost an hour, I stopped at a path to rest. There was a small pouch hanging over the pack animal’s rear end, so I took it out and drank all the water from it until I’ve had my fill. Over a hundred meters away, I spotted another man clad in a similar attire from me, so I hollered his way and asked him a few questions. 

– Where art thou headed, good man? 

– To the Vale of the Terebinth, he said. A scuffle is to ensue. 

Yep, I had a feeling this would be it… 

– Pardon me… but have thou any inkling as to what year it is today? 

– I beg thy pardon… but I have not any inkling as to what thou sayeth, he said. Methinks that thou seem to have lost thy way. Why don’t I make thy acquaintance?

And that I did. We walked with our donkeys to the Vale, all the while talking about life as we knew it (without actually disclosing to him that I was a fictional world traveler, and that he was a minor character in this particular short story of mine). When we arrived at the scene, a sizable crowd had formed – half of which belonged to the camps of the Israelites, with the other half belonging to the enemy Philistines. And they arranged themselves in a wide ring formation around the two fighters – David (who, underneath all that gleaming armor, was really just a middle-aged German atheist trapped inside of a young man’s body), and Goliath himself (who, underneath his brutish exterior, was really just a feckless coward). And just to be safe, I stood six feet away from the crowd and wore my N95. You never know if they’ve been… infected.

As intended, Goliath was the first man to move, charging straight ahead without hesitation. David merely stood his ground, carefully removing his armor as the horrid brute came his way. According to the Bible, David should have had a clear shot, but not in this story.

You see, David wasn’t able to hit Goliath with his slingshot…

… Because he sneezed on his ugly face instead.

Again, for context, this section of text lifted from the actual story should be able to give you all some vivid imagery of what had transpired:

The Philistine then moved to meet David at close quarters, while David ran quickly toward the battle line in the direction of the Philistine. David put his hand into the bag and by chance, he sneezed a great amount on the giant’s frightening face. The Philistine, who was insulted by this act, proceeded to beat David senseless until he felt no more. The Israelite army proceeded to carry David off to Saul’s tent in order to treat his great wounds. “I have bested your champion! Now, bow to the Philistines and become our vassals…”, the giant said with quacking laughter, and with that, Saul and the Israelite army had no other choice but to bow in shame. In Saul’s tent, David wept while he was in great pain. “My Lord, I have failed you…”

… When that scene was over I returned to my reality (now clad in my normal clothes), got out of bed, removed my used N94, and swallowed another capsule of Ibuprofen together with a glass of lukewarm water before the parallel world migraine started to take root and linger inside of my head.

And lastly, I was sent back in time to a Keith Jarrett Trio jazz concert at Open Theater East in 1993. 

Honey, look – the next song is up… 

There was a woman sitting right towards my right – my 'wife'. Wordlessly, she put her head down beside me, clung to my shoulder, and I caressed her. And in that moment, when Keith Jarrett started off the first few bars, it was then that I began reminiscing. Reminiscing the life that I had written for my character. Reminiscing those old days that I’ve imagined spending at the town library.

Here’s the actual paragraph of how my 'wife' and I met:

We met at a town library around 15 years ago. Same day as the concert. I was busy with research for a book that I was writing when she happened to sit a few seats away from me. I noticed that she had a couple of books stacked right in front of her – Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy... Anyway, she had the two books just sitting there and she wasn’t doing anything else. From the corner of my eye, I saw her fidgeting away at the table, sometimes stealing a glance or two in my direction and nothing else. It wasn’t until a few moments later that she began to make actual conversation.

Surprise, surprise! My character also happened to be a writer in this story – but only slightly older.

Anyway, we both introduced ourselves, chatted a little, and then we left the library together. The next day, we began opening up about mundane things – fairly ordinary things about what went on in 1978 – and then I told her about my book’s progress. Flash forward a few months later (again, in fictional world time). The setting had changed to the Tokyo Tower. She arrived – as expected – on the dot. At 7:14 PM. She looked lovely – and I was floored. We admired the city skyline from the observation deck. And then we spoke… Only this time, it wasn’t about the unfinished manuscript…

We spoke about our honest feelings…

… And then one thing led to another and I kissed her.

Who would have known?  

Who have known that I’d be sharing my very first kiss with a fictional woman?

Flash forward the following year – to the summer of 1979. I walked her to the town library while she had a blindfold on. And I held her hand as I led the way...

Where are you taking me?

Where do you think?

Oh, I don’t know… Somewhere that I don’t know of, perhaps?

Nope…

We were walking up the marble steps all the way to the entrance. The lights were still on, but they seemed dimmer. Everything’s going according to plan.

Well, if you’re not telling, then I’ll just take this cover off so I can find out then, dear…

I chortled a bit. Don’t peek yet – trust me, we’re almost there.

Oh, you sneaky you… This better be something. 

Soon enough, I took off her blindfold. Alright, you can open your eyes now –

And I returned to the real world in tears…

I haven’t married a woman…

… I married a typewriter.