Maze of the Otaku

"I'm nearly there, it is just a matter of amplitude, I know this will work. Kommt ins Leben, Leben aus dem Jenseits, kommt und schmiedet einen Blutvertrag mit mir!"

The lights in the University complex and the surrounding residences dimmed for a second.

Toshihide Yukawa, PhD in Experimental Physics from The University of Tokyo. Currently up and coming star postdoctoral researcher at the recently founded Camenzind Laboratory for High Energy Particle and Informational Physics at ETH, Zurich. Age 28, blood type AB. Virgin. Off the record a huge anime, manga, JRPG fan. Off the record because the stereotype of the Japanese otaku doesn't lend itself to career progression. He was now the only one in the building, it was 4AM. Perfect time for quiet work without the human distractions. Perfect time to be yelling out quotes from the Blood Contract: Blutvertrag EXCESS airing this season.

With a plot that starts from a deal made with the devil, Yukawa couldn't help but cheer on the protagonists for the season. His Japanese otaku inner-child screaming with delight for the magic system and the plot twists present in the storyline. The recent dimensional breach arc has rejuvenated the entire industry with its fast-paced storytelling and superior action set pieces, animated by the best of the best. His passion for anime led Toshihide to naturally isolate himself in the laboratory late at night, because it just matched the vibe his ideal protagonist would give off. Madness, science, progress! It all gave the voices in his head a quiet space to vocalise without being judged. 

Yes, Toshihide's passions would sometimes spill out onto his work. 

If someone was to ever hear me, or read the comments in this custom driver code I wrote for the pulsed laser controller I'd be pretty outed wouldn't I?

References to recent seasonal anime characters and cheesy quotes littered the code on the computer screen. The key functions were even directly named after some vintage RPG spells. It made the less glamorous part of his work less tedious. Toshihide knew he could never release the code like this, he'd have to remove the comments, and maybe change a few of the more outlandish function names.

"人ならぬ精霊をその身に宿す少年が共に生きる少女を蘇らせる為,命がけで研究を進める先輩の研究室での日々も今シーズン, also nennen wir die Boot-Funktion 'awaken_spirit_within'... und fertig!", Toshihide announced to no one in particular, employing his native tongue and German whenever convenient. 

A glow emanated through a thick glass pane jutting out from the body of the experimental chamber, which took up most of the lab room. Toshihide took off his coat, rolled his sleeves, put on the plastic anti-reflective glasses and walked into the test area. There, sitting on a small stool by the pulsed-laser array, he begun manually re-calibrating the system to work with the new code. There was a lot of manual labour involved, the variables had to be hard-coded in and the driver re-compiled. Even with the impressive setup and modern technology the ghost of FORTRAN lingered in experimental research institutes around the world. 

Parts of the large titanium-lined and fibreglass plated experiment chamber resembled the vacuum tanks used by the nuclear age Manhattan project. This was something akin to a small walk-in coffin. Two flat panels positioned adjacent and at about a shoulder width apart, sat mounted vertically against the front and back. Large metal columns emerged at the floor and ceiling and faced inwards towards the open gap, supporting the rectangular openings. He'd studied and worked all over Japan in some of the leading technology labs, however none of them had ever… intimidated Toshihide to his very core like his own facility at ETH. Here, he felt truly like he'd arrived on the scientific world stage. It is likely no other lab in the world had such an elaborate and unique collection of equipment, some parts sourced from all over the world, others machined and custom-made in-house. 

Toshihide's boss was big on secrecy, always turning down the marketing and communications departments of the university from even setting foot in the lab, which was a sanctum of sorts, lest a photo of the setup end up leaking the method they were using. This was difficult, given the amount of money the university had spent on this project. It was a unique and somewhat questionable situation. Toshihide's boss was actually the director of the research center where Toshihide worked, and he definitely had to pull some strings and "redirect" funding from other projects. There was a magnum-sized bottle of a champagne in the fridge in the office upstairs. It was unopened, the cork only to fly when the Nobel prize could be tasted on the breeze.

Toshihide, typing somewhat mechanically for the last 15 minutes or so, paused. He always liked this part. 

"Let there be light!!", he announced, again to no one in particular, and pressed the ENTER key on the keyboard. Dramatically of course.

A ball of plasma grew inside a pristine metal chamber and illuminated the observation portal. 

This experiment is rather beautiful to look at isn't it? We did go through a lot of trouble to make it viewable by eye. After all, this experiment require a human being looking at it.

The enigmatic plasma ball Toshihide was observing suddenly snapped into a crystalline form.

"Is that... an icosahedron?!"

It was eerily still. Impossibly still. Then it disappeared.

Toshihide's eyebrows jumped. 

"Oh shit! We did it? But where did it go?"

Toshihide, pushed himself against the massive form of the experimental chamber and rolled his chair toward his personal computer.

As he frantically attempted to reset the experiment something latched onto his left hand.

"Compile, compile... Ah, what was that?! The keyboard melted!"

What follows is a series of events any scientist who has underestimated the danger of their pioneering work would sympathise with. In the early days of nuclear weapons development some fell victim to the deadly nature of radioactive matter. A mass of plutonium, later known as the "demon core", intended for use in a nuclear weapon against Japan in World War II, claimed the lives of physicists, engineers, even a security guard and a photographer. 

Startled, Toshihide observed the smooth, transparent outer membrane of some shapeless thing steal the light from his fingers as he lifted them from the damaged keyboard. They simply fell into a hazy darkness. Beginning with his fingers, it grew further and further up his hand as if it was alive.

"I need to get this off", he calmly stated to himself.

Toshihide knew that some chemicals react violently when exposed to water. Some substances even explode when exposed to air. In the face of the unknown it is best not to panic and remain cautious.

There's some gold foil in the student labs downstairs, it's the most inert thing that I can readily find here.

Walking briskly down the unlit hallways and stairways of the Institute, Toshihide was triggering motion sensors, which in turn switched on the fluorescent tubes to light his path.

SAFETY FIRST

– Safety, Security, Health and Environment

The poster had a pen-drawn chibi character in a hard hat in the corner. It was holding an oversized clipboard checklist.

"Yes SSHE-chan!" said Toshihide, walking now with the speed and awkwardness of an Olympic walking finalist. 

The thing was now up and beyond his elbow. Toshihide was keeping his arm outward, away from his body, to prevent further contamination.

After what seemed like forever to Toshihide, he was now inside one of the student lab rooms. Grabbing a long piece of gold foil from a bench with a bunch of equipment strewn about, he carefully hung it over the strange membrane on his arm. It didn't occur to Toshihide until now that he wasn't in any pain, in fact he felt nothing. It was as if the contaminated part of his hand simply wasn't there anymore. As he pondered what this meant for his backup gaming arm, the membrane latched onto the gold foil and ripped it from his right hand.

"It's gone!"

He could only stare in bemused amazement at the location where the foil disappeared inside the membrane.

Wait it's in there!

Floating globules of a shiny gold metal were floating in the somewhat profound darkness where Toshihide's arm should be. There's also something...

The gold globules were bouncing off other, crimson red globules. 

"Is that blood?!"

Unable to stand this ridiculous situation anymore, Toshihide begun a hurried sprint toward the emergency phone in the lab. 

Foot

Ceiling

Butt

Head

That is the order of sensation one experiences when slipping on spilled oil from an undergrad experiment from 12 hours ago. When executed on the polished hard floors of a lab it results in brief loss of consciousness, confusion, headache. Commonly referred to as a concussion.

Now this hurts, and why does it hurt more than the thing EATING my arm. I can't even feel my shoulder anymore. Argh.. well, let's take a look. 

Toshihide's entire left arm, shoulder, and part of his chest were now a meal for some giant inter-dimensional bacteria... which was now dangerously close to his face. He must have been lying pretty still because the lights in the lab turned off automatically after a while.

Great, now I die in a completely new way, unknown to man or woman, and I don't even get to see it.

As if responding to his wishes the creature emitted a faint glow revealing a gruesome anatomical display. Beads of metal and blood orbiting a medical cadaver's skinless skeletomusculature. Nerves, tendons, arteries and veins pulsing. The hand missing entirely. 

Oh I can still move it.

It twitched at the elbow, a vein burst, sending a new stream of globular blood satellites into the universe of Toshihide's rapidly dissecting backup gaming arm. Ribbons of his biceps tissue were disconnecting and blooming like lilies, exposing the bone underneath, which too after short while begun its own dance, spiralling length-wise as if made of rubber. Oddly enough it didn't seem to take interest in the floor... or the oil. 

This is a major discovery, what are you doing?

Indeed, Toshihide had likely made contact with a new life form. There was no time for idle thought. The terms "space herpes" came to mind, but that was perhaps premature and undiplomatic. Maybe this is just a very extended and awkward handshake?!

Whatever the case, I will die right here if I don't stop this.

The phone.

... I can't get up.

The ambassador for the inter-dimensional realm known as "we like Toshihide's arms, they're delicious, we will trade technology for the second one" was weighing him down with force not matching its size.

Believe in yourself who believes in you getting the fuck up!!

Toshihide threw all of his athletic might into pushing his left leg from the floor, while keeping his face away from the left shoulder, or whatever was was left of it. His effort triumphantly paid off, or the thing which was holding him down got lighter, because his body was now rotating gracefully above the ground, with his head acting as the pivot. In slow motion it surely looked like a break dancing manoeuvre. The movement continued and Toshihide landed face first, with what remained of his left shoulder dislocating. The growing membrane was now resting on his back, or more precisely on his spine. It was over.

—

Toshihide didn't cry. Toshihide never was one to cry. He felt something crawling up his face, and then his vision blurred as if he was underwater. He heard a metallic ringing in his ears and then is subsided. A moment later there was only darkness.

Toshihide Yukawa, PhD in Experimental Physics from The University of Tokyo. Currently up and coming star postdoctoral researcher at the recently founded Camenzind Laboratory for High Energy Particle and Informational Physics at ETH, Zurich.

Toshihide Yukawa, PhD in Experimental Physics from The University of Tokyo. 

Toshihide Yukawa.

To...

—

50 years later.

"It stopped just short of Genoa, the place where your grandfather was born and lived until that day", said Genevieve. Now an elderly woman, bound to a hospital bed in Bordeaux, the capital of the New French Kingdom. She was surrounded by flowers and by her precious children and grand-children.

She had never spoken of that day until now. 

"If it didn't, I wouldn't be blessed with seeing all of your beautiful faces today", she broke into tears.

That fateful week at the start of June forever left a scar on the minds of everyone on Earth and permanently changed the course of human history. It became remembered as the "Dungeon Calamity".

"Your great grandmother suffered so much, I still blame myself for it", she managed, in an almost inaudible whisper, her gaze already miles away, inside her memories. Her gaze rested there, and a couple moments later, so did her tired eyelids. 

"And it was all because of HIM. Toshihide Yukawa."

To her right, across the bedside table and next to an opulent arrangement of roses, daisies and purple asters, her oldest grandson stood still, pale as a ghost. He was clutching a reproduction copy of a Japanese art-piece titled "Maze of the Otaku" by Antonio Kitaigawa.

Genevieve ceremoniously marked the painting with black paint with her trembling hand as was tradition afforded to the survivors. The original painting was priceless, her family could not afford it.

And without saying a word, she closed her eyes forevermore.