Elfen Liner Notes : Air, Sea, and Land
by Rob Morris
Director Kakuzawa moved among his peers, all formidable men and women in their own right, and this was cause for concern all by itself. That he was to give the keynote address at the fabled Entrepreneurs Centrality and thereby judged before them was also not a matter to be taken lightly. Any one of them, should they sense weakness or faltering in him, possessed the power and means to at the very minimum delay his sacred plans for remaking creation. If fortune fell their way, they could even do the unthinkable and thwart him.
But fortune bent his way, after all. He would show no weakness, and he would falter not at all. Yet for all his confidence, and this was vast, he was still placed ill at ease by an indefinable sense of wrongness. It was light and vague, but its presence was undeniable. He decided to press the flesh with his fellow vipers before showing off his own scales onstage.
"Director Kakuzawa! Still hunting little girls?"
"Director Osborn! Still tossing young girls off of bridges?"
Kakuzawa let him stew as he walked away. Word was, the man was a cold monster when calm, and a frothing lunatic when not.
*Yet one teenage boy stops him cold every time. Fury and Stark lost their jobs to that one?*
"Mishima? How does that iron fist fare, my old friend?"
Mishima drank down some prized brandy and shook his head.
"Count yourself lucky, Kakuzawa. You only needed decapitation to rid yourself of an unwanted heir. Would that it was so easy for me!"
The two laughed at the joke before parting.
*You lost my respect when a schoolgirl and her panda beat the piss out of you, all for a reneged promise.*
One of the only women there (no exclusive rules, merely a feeling by many able female power-brokers that the Centrality was a pointless 'measuring' contest) turned to look at Kakuzawa. She was less traditionally feminine than he would like, but her drive intrigued him.
"Kakuzawa-San? I may take you for a session before your kind is replaced on this weakened world."
Kakuzawa smiled, only just meeting this alpha's level but having her respect for even trying.
"Ms. Ingolfson? Not if my kind replaces the other species first. By the way, I hear tell that Drakon Pharmaceuticals has won a suite on K Street. Good move. Perhaps your one will be next to one of my ten suites."
He had already sniffed her out, long before. Some foolish effort to evolve the weak Humans into something more. Why bother, he wondered, when a Plus-Human was still in the end something nature left in the trash-heap? For all this, that session she mentioned might well be worth the pain and shame of defeat, he pondered.
*But not with a clone, my dear. You think no one can tell?*
They were all there, and at times there seemed to be more than he could account for. How large was this hall, he wondered? While they all could afford by membership fees to support such a place, weren't the size of these events usually limited by the need for seclusion? He saw no reporters, invited or otherwise.
*Only the sharks swim here. But sharks need to eat, or they eat each other. Actual food is laid out, decent spread, though I've seen better. But where are the servants?*
"Kakuzawa? We need to talk."
It was the head of the Umbrella Group, an actual pharmaceutical concern, unlike the euphemism for Ms. Ingolfson's Colombian-based operations. That said, the traffic of illegal narcotics was probably honest compared to what really went on in Umbrella.
"Wesker-San. I believe we have talked. You bored me."
Wesker glared at him through the fifth-worst sunglasses Kakuzawa had ever seen.
"Umbrella will have your American operations. We didn't let Halliburton supplant us in specialized military weapons supply. Why would you think we'd let you?"
Another example of test-tube evolution making the subject think it was something more than it was. But that wasn't what bothered Kakuzawa the most, in this case.
"Give me six months to settle certain matters. I will maintain a US presence, of course. I will also keep my current contracts. But I will expand no further, and at that time, we can discuss sale of certain holdings you have an interest in."
"Good to do business with you, sir."
In six months, the satellite would be four months in the air, and the need for holdings even in Japan would start to cease. Yet this staged concession was only to make the obnoxious man go away.
*Wesker is dead-several times over. The Americans seized Umbrella and in doing so, prevented some kind of outbreak even my sources will only say would have been baseline catastrophic. I know this. I recruited from their pool of unemployed researchers, one of whom proved crucial to my plans. Yet I walk through a door-a lighthouse door?-and here he is, alive, promoted and with a viable firm.*
He began his walk towards the stage, but it was a slow one, and he bypassed many he had known, or known of, who had his interest, because somehow, he now wanted to get this done with.
Bison, using his more slender form, was amusing many with his snarky wit, while Kakuzawa found his gaudy uniform more amusing than any joke.
Shielded in shadows for the sanity of its peers was one of the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart. Kakuzawa for his part avoided the entity not for its demonic nature, but because it was at its core a lawyer.
Weyland and Yutani were discussing their merger, as they had been since 1979. Kakuzawa was not alone in wondering if the two dedicatedly homophobic men weren't in fact desirous of another kind of merger, but the discussions had gone on for so long, he was also not alone in being bored to tears by it all.
*Bureaucracies built to go slowly move faster than you two.*
The feeling of oddity would not be shaken off, so he sought out someone who was likely his superior, if only in the physical sciences.
"Luthor-San? Do you note anything odd?"
The man whose miracles could cure anything except, apparently, male-pattern baldness was looking about furtively, wholly unlike him.
"Kakuzawa? Thank goodness you're here. I'm-I'm ashamed to admit I have trouble recognizing half these people. I feel as though I should know them. I'm the first to admit, my crusade to keep the Earth and Humanity from being dominated by The Alien and his Justice Harem uses a lot of my brainpower. But there are things I simply cannot reconcile."
Kakuzawa felt bluntness was in order.
"You admit your weakness to me?"
Luthor did not chafe at this, which seemed to indicate the grave nature of it all.
"Yes. Because you alone have the clarity of thought to brush me aside if I've simply lost it, or scan out any kind of trick if I've been had."
Kakuzawa did just that, though with reluctance, since ridding the world of a mind like Luthor's, however Human he was, would be a crime he did not wish to directly participate in.
"Describe the problems you have seen, that put you so far off your game."
Luthor found the words quickly, though it was clear they troubled him.
"I once had one of my people interview The Clown. I paid them well enough, though they took the money and retired immediately afterward. That grinning idiot claimed he could see into other worlds, sometimes visit them, and that he remembered it all. Even said he recalled a time of Multiple Earths that we all visited like neighboring states, and the red skies that put a stop to that. He said he always knew when he had shifted when his mind started asking too many questions about the differences so many others would just overlook."
Luthor had Kakuzawa's interest now, and both knew it, but neither wanted to discuss that which they knew needed to be discussed.
"Go on."
"Yes-well-when I got here, the first thing I realized was - how can all these people be in the same world, let alone the same room? Each of us has a world-transforming, if not world-ending, agenda. While there can be and usually are multiple such concerns in our world, these all seem to be of a prime grade-the alphas. Yet I've never clashed with you-while I have large holdings in Japan. The same with Mishima, with Southeast Asia and Bison-and I cannot imagine not having trouble from someone like Norman Osborn, but I never have. I don't know any of you, yet I know all of you as well as I knew my favorite comic series, Warrior Angel, from when I was a boy. I am a man who dislikes not knowing, Kakuzawa. So use this against me if you must, but before I fall, tell me what has happened to put me in this state."
Kakuzawa found himself subjected to a very alien emotion - that of empathy.
"My friend, consider - do you know everyone at a family reunion?"
Luthor nodded.
"I have my people gather intel, of course. But personally? I don't even remember all those I once liked."
Kakuzawa smiled, again in a way not usually known to him - reassuringly.
"There a lot of greengrocers in any one market. They may operate without ever seeing each other, or even meeting. Maybe Osborn stayed out of your way. Maybe Bison lets you operate in his territories in order to keep around an alternative supplier to Extensive Enterprises and Sagat. And so forth. Myself, I hate these gatherings. I wouldn't attend if I didn't have to, since so much business will pile up while I'm away. Are you not very much the same?"
Luthor smiled, but suddenly his eyes went white.
"You have a son, born of the rape of Lucy's mother."
Before Kakuzawa could respond, Luthor's eyes cleared.
"...and you always have the wisdom to show this foolish Occidental his errors, Kakuzawa-San. Thanks. All success in your speech."
Kakuzawa searched Luthor's face for even the hint of deception, or mockery. He could find none, so finally he gave up and ascended the stage to the podium. Luthor's applause this once was quite sincere, his numbing questions and their burden passed on to another.
"Our legends speak of two cities constructed by men of vision who sought to turn away this foolish and corrupted world."
Insulting the world was cheap theater, Kakuzawa knew, even if the world deserved it. But the man knew what played before an audience, so he had no regrets.
"In 1893, Zachary Hale Comstock completed the floating city of Columbia after only one year, a feat to outshine the Roeblings, the designers of the Panama Canal, and even the modern Three Gorges' Dam."
Either Comstock really had pulled off the grand miracle of the ages in one year, or his former American sponsors were damned good at creating this illusion. Kakuzawa suspected the latter. How could one possibly build a major undertaking like that in a razor-thin timeframe? The continuity simply didn't work.
"In 1947, Andrew Ryan sunk his entire fortune into a new Atlantis, which he called Rapture. Using a better class of what some call Pyrex glassware, he fashioned skyscrapers where there was no sky."
Then, Kakuzawa thought, he gathered people unto him who were far too much like himself. Even the comical coyote in his daughter Anna's cartoons occasionally realized his errors. But Ryan, alas for him, was not created by Chuck Jones.
"What could drive a man to build that kind of thing? What were they trying to do? Who were they trying to impress? Did it just seem like a good idea at the time?"
It should be noted that, for that passage, Kakuzawa's speech-writer was later made to meet his fate.
"In fact, they were trying to leave behind all that leaves us in despair. For the bigoted Comstock, it was everyone not like him, and everything that did not fit his narrow conception of what his country should look like. For Ryan, it was the perception that government regulation was all aimed at his throat. Myself, I regard such regulations as free research. The public demands them, and from this we gain a gauge as to what they want in the marketplace-and they themselves pay the bill for this. These two men, with their supposed lofty goals, really had a much more crass one in mind - they wished to become the gods of their small places. How petty-why simply become a god-one among so many-when the job of God Himself is really where one should aim?"
That remark drew laughs, and some applause.
*Then again, as Luthor-San put it-most of those here likely have those same designs, so why wouldn't they applaud?*
"Comstock had beliefs that told him God's power would soon wipe clean the fetid Earth below him, if he himself didn't do it. Ryan believed that the power of the atom in the hands of those he saw unfit would leave his people alone as rulers of the planet. Poor blind fools. Comstock created a place so insular, in the end he himself could not command it, and he was literally tossed from his perch when he ordered a world tour outside their narrow mental safety zone. Ryan created a place of perfect self-interest-and an underwater marvel built by the lowest bidder and maintained by those who weren't paid enough to motivate them to save their own lives. In early 1961, as America welcomed a new young President, the Luddites of Columbia literally collided with the maddened elites of Rapture - Olympus crashing headfirst into Atlantis."
He had their attention, or at least enough of it to force them to act like he had their attention. Kakuzawa decided that was enough.
"The problem with their visions was, while the world is still in existence, you can't really escape it. In short, unless the world is gone, the world is also still there, no matter where you try and hide yourself. You can use religion and ride high and soaring in a cult of personality. You can ban religion and sit comfortably in an octopus's garden in the shade. But if you wish to act like a god among men - the skies above and the depths below are poor places to start. No, you start with the world, even if you eventually have to end that world. Becoming God-always involves a land campaign. The here and now must be dealt with until the here and now can be altered or expunged."
He finished up while nodding lightly.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of The Centrality - the world will always need innovators like ourselves. But it needs not delusional fools, incapable of absorbing or even recognizing certain harsh realities. I know that I have no use for such people. I have to believe that none of you do, either."
The applause broke out, yet stopped all at once quickly after. The members of the audience all began to look at Kakuzawa, and then at each other. Mumbles erupted.
"Who is he?"
"What lost cities?"
"If this is a trick or a trap, I swear you'll all pay."
"I don't belong to some insipid business club."
"None of you people really exist. Stuff of video games, comic books, movies!"
"I'll kill you all. KILL YOU ALL!"
Kakuzawa wondered if this wasn't some kind of set-up, a lampoon, a prank made by those with minds nearly his equal. But when he looked again at those he had previously remembered dealing with for years if not decades, his reaction now echoed theirs.
"Who-who are you people? What are we all doing here?"
Kakuzawa now saw them all fade, one by one, in equal measure from front to back. Somehow, Lex Luthor got to have the last word.
"If this keeps up, I'll be as nutty as that damned clown!"
Before Kakuzawa could even begin to assess the maddening situation, the building itself and everything of it faded, till he himself stumbled and fell over in an empty, wind-swept field. Two people, a man and a woman, emerged from literally nowhere to collect him. Still stunned, Kakuzawa looked them over as he struggled to get up.
"You-you two were my chauffeurs. You brought me here."
The man, elegantly dressed, spoke with a dry, unenthused voice.
"Well, in that light, we were everyone's chauffeurs. Or no one at all's, since we only guided the driver. I suppose you could say, we were more like taxi-cab dispatchers."
The woman looked about her, and nodded in quiet satisfaction.
"The bubble has burst, Brother. I would say the cradle has fallen, but this is one of a few places where that doesn't happen. In a nearby reality, a wayward gambler cleans up his sorry act at the urging of the daughter he loves, adores, and would do literally anything for. Not a man open to making deals, which sank his other self-literally. Not much drama, but a nice change of pace."
There was a back and forth between the two that even Kakuzawa's overwhelmed mind picked up on. The man shrugged, almost dismissively.
"Well, dearest Sister, the bubble did serve its purpose. We now know that knowledge of Columbia and Rapture has not traveled to the realities of those potential plotters and interlopers. I mean, can you even take in the possibilities of Norman Osborn in Rapture? Far too Noir for my tastes."
Kakuzawa was perhaps most stung by the way he was being disregarded entirely.
"Why-why did they know nothing of the legends of Columbia and Rapture? They are not believed by all, but the stories are universal. It would be like an astrophysicist having never heard of Professor Quatermass."
The woman smiled, but it was neither comforting nor truly smug.
"Quatermass? Is this one of those worlds? But it looks so intact-for the moment. Well, this one may be a nexus. You see, Mister Kakuzawa, we chose your world to 'host' the fiction of the Centrality, and gauge their knowledge of the two cities, because it is nearly alone in all of creation-"
The 'brother' snuck a comment in.
"-that is to say, the miniscule when compared to the infinite number of possible worlds that we've so far encountered-
"-yes, Brother, creation is vast and uncountable. Take a Nobel out of petty cash. As I was saying, Mister Kakuzawa, your world is nearly unique, even when counted against infinity, because your world's history includes BOTH Columbia and Rapture in its past, together on the same plane. Granted, they are failed versions and even in that the logistics of both being around in the same history are mind-numbing. Yet there they are - or were. It allowed us and our student to enable this reading of the movers and shakers of the dark side, to paraphrase Anakin Starkiller."
"Luke Skywalker here, Sister-and played by Mark Hamill, not Ron Howard. If one must sink to pop-culture references, keep them to true to the host reality, at least."
Kakuzawa shook his head violently.
"NO! This cannot be!"
The man tried to calm their guest.
"Chief, let's not have your head fall off several months early."
The woman sighed.
"As our occasional associate is apt to remind you, Brother-Spoilers! Mister Kakuzawa, what is it that so troubles you?"
Kakuzawa cut through the bulk of the madness and to a deeper question.
"When those others were here, I knew them, they knew me, and the talk of the lost cities did not confuse them. What sort of spell did you cast?"
The man chuckled lightly.
"No spell, Chief-at least not our own. No, as I told our Mister DeWitt-well, at least one of our DeWitts, your quantum mileage will vary, depending on the speed of light-the mind will insert memories simply in order to cope with what it dares not contemplate. Were you closer, I would urge you to consult with young Kouta on these matters."
The Chief pointed at the pair.
"You make no sense at all. This is like some manner of nightmare. But I cannot force myself to wake up."
The woman waved her hands in the air dismissively.
"Mister Kakuzawa - what became of Lucy, after the death of Mariko Kurama?"
The question was almost too straightforward, but Kakuzawa kept his calm this time.
"I-have a line on where she might be. She escaped my men, but only for now. Her destiny and mine are intertwined in ways you cannot imagine."
The woman sighed.
"To quote the earlier movie, in almost all versions, I can imagine quite a bit. Point being, if I asked a different Chief Kakuzawa where she was, he would say, Lucy likely died facing down the SAT forces he sent after her. Another would not be able to tell us, dying by Kurama's hands after his dying daughter saved him from her final explosion. And so forth."
Kakuzawa was not dumb, and he was rapidly regaining his equilibrium. He rushed forward and grabbed at the man.
"Parallel worlds? I demand you take me to one-one where I have already become God!"
But the Chief was smashed in the back of the head by the woman, who held up an odd pistol.
"Sky-Hooks. Best not to leave home without them. He should remember just enough to be afraid of who he speaks to about it. Odd one, this world. Though there is a troubled amnesiac young man, a mystery girl, and even a lighthouse-though it's at the end only. Oh, and of course, the hero as always, after all their troubles-Robert? What are you looking for?"
As Rosalind Lutece wiped off her weapon, Robert Lutece looked about the empty field.
"Wherever is our transport?"
BREAKFRONT ISLAND, THE DICLONIUS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
In the cavern and grotto below the island, a massive being shifted as it saw the impossible.
*You were not in my calculations. I can see no more of your fate than of mine. How can this be?*
Through a tear in creation, the visitor allowed enough fresh air in not to keel over in the grotto's oppressive atmosphere.
"Hi. I sensed you were here. While I mean no offense-what are you, exactly?"
The much larger entity responded.
*I was made into a living computer to serve my Papa. In this form, I am like an Oracle of Greek Myth, and can give my Papa limitless information. But there is vital information he will not let me give him. Even in this superior form, serving Papa is difficult.*
The mortal-seeming woman smiled, though it was a sad smile.
"Papas can be difficult to help. I should know. I had two. One who thought he was a good man, but was rotten to his core. The other, who thought he was an irredeemably bad man, but did everything he could to protect me and make up for his wrongs against me. The Papa who thought he was good also used me to see information he misused."
The entity was unsure of the visitor, but knew they were both lonely.
*Can we talk, even if only for a short while? Maybe become friends? My name is Anna.*
The visitor now openly smiled at the monstrous form of Anna Kakuzawa.
"Of course we can talk, and I hope we do become friends. By the way?"
Elizabeth Comstock told a forgivable half-truth.
"It just so happens that Anna is my name, too."