Author's Note:
Warnings for this chapter include language and violence. "Cascade" refers to the biology term "cascading failure", wherein a small change in a biological system leads to systemic failures as happens in stroke victims.
Chapter One: Cascade
December 2003
The typographical error occurred for a simple enough reason. Sakura TV translator Keiji Nakamura had gotten only three hours of sleep the previous night, as his month-old infant was suffering from extreme bouts of colic. Despite downing what he felt was his own weight in coffee, Nakamura found the English characters swimming in front of his eyes as he translated the newest story from Los Angeles; a dozen of the most notorious criminals in America were being transferred to a new, state of the art, maximum security facility in Death Valley. He was slightly uneasy about reporting the names and faces of these criminals considering this "Kira" that was at work, but his supervisor was adamant. The boss liked the sensationalism of this vigilante, so major arrests and criminal interest stories would continue as usual.
Well, Nakamura mused to himself, at least until the NPA shuts us down. A quick glance at the clock told him that he only had five minutes to finish his work before it had to be down in editing for the evening's run.
"Shit".
No time to proof-read then. No matter- Nakamura was extremely conscientious and had never had an error found in one of his translations before.
The story aired on the evening news on Sakura TV, broadcasting to the Kanto region of Japan. Due to the heinous nature of the crimes committed by the American prisoners, Kira quickly consigned them to death with a quick flick of his pen.
Thus began the cascade. Unbeknownst to Kira, a single character in the name of one of the criminals was mistranslated from English to hiragana. As a result, the prisoner did not die as planned. Kira, of course, did not notice. The would-be god wrote far too many names now to check on the deaths of all his victims, so the survival of a single man changed little. Since the others being transferred with him died within the environs of their new facility, the murderer's continued existence made barely a ripple in the fabric of the original pattern of the universe. The two guards assigned to transport him to his new cell arrived at home on time that night, rather than the hour delay that would have occurred with their charge's death. Minute changes in the schedules of their families began- their children went a little earlier to bed, thus getting up a little earlier in the morning. They arrived at school early the next day, changing the routine of several of their teachers and friends by a few minutes.
The ripple moved outward steadily, tiny changes in the interactions of average men and women impacting each other. As a result, in May of 2004 a Japanese businessman in Los Angeles was able to catch an earlier return flight back to Tokyo, bringing the ripple with him.
The cascade had returned to its origin.