The baby was not good company.

"Look Touichirou, it's 1974…here, at least." Said Abigail as she watched the final seconds of 1973 ticking away. The baby looked at her, she looked down at him, then he turned away and went back to chewing on his little rocket ship. She frowned. He could have at least been a little bit excited.

He may not have known what was happening but he could have at had the decency to smile back at his mother.

"Come on, smile. You can smile, the doctor said that you're old enough to." Said Abigail as she smiled down at her son. He just blinked and went back to gnawing, giving a slight glance at the fireworks on the TV. There was color, at least, though watching them on TV wasn't nearly as interesting as seeing them in person.

But it was too far.

It was too far, too cold, and too late. Midnight was no time for a woman and a baby to be out even if it was a holiday. If Yoshio had been home then maybe they could have gone out. But of course he wasn't. The year might have been over, the books may have been done, but he still had to go out with his bosses…or maybe his employees? She hadn't really been listening. All she knew was that he had to be out drinking all day and all night because it had something to do with business. Not that she was any stranger to business, she'd spent many a night waiting up for her father to come home after a night out with clients, but with Yoshio it just seemed so…

Much.

"Look, see, I'm smiling. If I can smile then you can too." Said Abigail. There was a moment where she thought that she might have finally gotten her smile. He took the spaceship out of his mouth and looked at her. She kept on smiling. She kept on smiling so that he'd smile and then, she didn't know, they'd start 1974 out on a high note? Or a mid note?

Anything but a low note.

But he didn't smile. He just turned and faced the TV. It was like she wasn't even there. She knew that she was, she had to be, it was her there sitting with him in the dark watching the year turn. If a tree fell in the forest and nobody was around to hear it then it did, of course, make a sound. If she was here then…then she was there. She didn't know what this was, this invisible feeling, this problem…she wondered if this was one of those 'problems that had no name'.

She needed to do less reading.

And she needed to watch less TV, too. Sometimes it felt like that was all she did. She so rarely got to work, if it could be called work. Yoshio just called it a hobby like it was nothing. Unless he had forgotten how they'd met her work wasn't nothing. It was the reason she had come to this country in the first place…the reason why she was stuck here.

She wasn't stuck, she had made her choice.

Or, rather, Touichirou had made the choice for her. Being conceived and all. She knew that she was starting to lose it, he hadn't asked to be born, but here he was. He had a sort of awareness to him, something happening behind his eyes that she had never seen in another baby before, and she had seen a lot of babies. Siblings, cousins, all her years spent as a babysitter. Touichirou was smarter than the average baby. Anyone with eyes could have seen that, especially her, because they had the same eyes.

He had her eyes, she knew what was happening behind them.

"Touichirou." said Abigail as she took his spaceship from him and turned him around. He blinked and looked at her for a moment as if he was asking her 'why' and 'how' and, now that his little eyebrows were furling, 'what the hell was that for' or something along those lines. She wasn't exactly an expert in those eyebrows, of course, were from Yoshio. It was always hard to tell what was going on with them, with each of them, though it wasn't as though she spent much time with the original owner of those eyebrows…

She wasn't alone. The baby was here.

"Smile." Said Abigail as she smiled down at her son once more. He looked up at her and did nothing. He looked at her for a moment before reaching out his little hand. She pulled the spaceship back until it was completely out of his reach. He squealed and flailed his little hands.

There was no way she was giving into him now.

"No baby, you're not going to win me over by being cute. I'm not your dad, I know you and I know all of your tricks. Now, you're not going to get this thing back until you smile." Said Abigail before she demonstrated, again, how to smile. It wasn't such a difficult thing. He was nine months old. He was crawling, he was babbling, and he was even trying to stand. He could smile. He should have been able to smile. He was just choosing not to.

He was just being stubborn.

"No, you're not going to act like this, now stop that and smile at your mother. We're not going to start the new year off like this, alright? Last year was already crappy enough, we have to have a good one this year, even if it's going to just be the two of us. Ok? So just smile already before I lose my temper with you!" said Abigail as she saw red…literally. There was a sort of red glow around them as Touichirou reached out with both of his little hands. It could have just been the fireworks, maybe, on the TV or that lamp in the corner with the red shade or even the glow of the light against there hair…there was a reasonable explanation for everything.

Nearly everything.

The spaceship was pulled from her hands…but nobody had taken it from her. There were only two people in the room, herself and Touichirou, and he was just a baby…but he had the spaceship in his hands…and she was no hallucinating. She hadn't had a drop to drink that night, the only thing sadder than spending the holidays alone with a baby was drinking alone with the baby like some kind of lush, and she hadn't touched any mary jane since high school…and she hadn't even liked it! Ditto for the time she'd gone to Haight Ashbury with her friends in high school. She was perfectly sober, practically a T-Totaler, so…so what she had seen had been real.

Or she was in the Twilight Zone.

"Do not adjust the picture, we are in control…" muttered Abigail. She wasn't funny, she had never been funny, and she didn't know who she had been trying to be funny for. Not her baby. The baby who couldn't laugh or smile but could move things without touching them…this was hard. This whole thing…she may have been losing her mind, like those prisoners of war who'd been locked in the tiny cages for years at a time.

This house may not have been tiny but it was a cage.

She needed air…she needed to leave. This was…this defied any rational explanation. He had done it. She hadn't been imagining things. She had been right there and he had taken it from her. The spaceship. That damned bit of cheap plastic. She couldn't stand it anymore! She took it from him and threw it across the room.

Or at least she tried to.

It stopped in mid air, turned around, and slammed into Touichirou's chest. He looked at her, looked down, and then started crying. With tears. The tears were what hit her right in the guts. She wanted to pick him up, to hold him, to make the tears stop…but that red glow was still around him. She held her hand out. The glow was real and it was coming from him…her baby. Her glowing baby.

She needed to get out of here.

So that was what she did. She got up, put on her shoes and coat, and then left. Halfway down the block she realized that she had forgotten her hair. She couldn't go back to it. She couldn't go back to that house. This was…this was like Rosemary's Baby! This was like that exorcist movie, she assumed, she hadn't been able to convince Yoshio to go and see it with her. There wouldn't have been anyone to watch the baby…the possessed baby…

She really should have paid more attention in church.

She had always known that something had been off about him but now she knew. She wasn't crazy. If she had been going crazy then there would have been signs before this…and moving to the other side of the world to marry a man she barely knew didn't count despite what her parents seemed to think. There was something that she could do…right? Call a priest or…there weren't any catholic priests here and, anyway, she didn't want to go back to church! She didn't want to go back home, either, not to the house or back to her parents. She didn't want to go anywhere!

But she had to be somewhere.

And that somewhere was the train station. It was so cold, the wind was whipping her hair into her face, she could even feel ice forming on her eyes. She didn't know what was happening. She didn't know…there were drunks all around her. Drunks to the left of her, drunks to the right, drunks pushing her forward...a train was coming. She was being pushed onto it. She was being pushed onto it, or maybe her feet were carrying her. Maybe this was fate. Maybe this was just what her life was like. It didn't hurt at all. If she turned around then it would. Then she'd be going against the crowd. She wasn't that strong. She was weak. She wasn't too weak to-

-she was weak enough to be dragged away.

"Abi! See? This is my wife! And look at her hair, see? I told you I wasn't lying!" said Yoshio…a very drunken Yoshio, as he pulled her out of the crowd. He had lost his suit coat at some point, his tie was undone, and his coat was covered in something that smelled like a combination of beer and grilled meat…right, he had said that he was going out with either his underlings or his bosses for grilled meat…whatever the word for that was…

She wasn't sure. She didn't have time to remember.

"And this is my baby…where's the baby? We need that baby! It matches…that's important. It's important to match your family…his hair is red too…I love read hair…" said Yoshio as he grabbed handfuls of her hair. His coworkers…underlings…whatever all agreed with him. They must have been underlings, then, if they were agreeing with him. She knew what the stares she always got whenever she left the house meant, why Yoshio's side of the family refused to so much as meet her, why he never brought people home…home.

They had to go home.

"Come on, let's get you home before hypothermia sets in." said Abigail as she steadied him. This was…not good. She had to bring him home and…and she had to go home, too. She only had ten dollars…the equivalent to ten dollars in her pocketbook, she didn't know all the kanji yet, and also Touichirou was home alone…

Nobody was going to believe her.

What was she supposed to do? Tell the authorities that she had abandoned her baby because he had been possessed? They would have dragged her off and fitted her for a straight jacket immediately. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in a cell, padded or otherwise, so she brought her drunken husband home.

She had no other choice.

"Abi…Abi…you'll never believe who I met tonight." Said Yoshio

"Let me guess, The Great Gazoo?" asked Abigail as she tried to keep him steady. She was wearing the wrong shoes. The sidewalks may have been shoveled but the ground was still freezing. She should have worn boots…she should have given this escape attempt some thought. She shouldn't have just gone running out into the night.

"No! No, no, no, but he sounds interesting…I met another foreigner! A man from…from Magnet Box-" said Yoshio

"Magnavox, they make TVs." Said Abigail as she led him away from an ice patch. He still slipped anyway but she caught him.

"No! I mean yes, they make televisions, but they also have this amazing product that's been on sale since-since a while!" said Yoshio

"A while?" asked Abigail

"1972! That's two years they've had on us…a year and a half? I didn't get the month…oh.." said Yoshio

"What is this wonder product? A remote?" said Abigail as she rolled her eyes and kept him walking.

"No, well yes, remotes are amazing but no! It's a box that you plug into your television and it…it makes…shapes! Games!" said Yoshio as he waved his hands in the air like Touichirou did when he wanted something…Touichirou. The poor little thing was probably so scared…scared and alone…

She picked up the pace.

"It's a tennis game that you play on the television! And here I was just getting used to television and now we can play games on it! Transistors…the future….they're so small now…" said Yoshio

"Sounds like a children's toy." Said Abigail as they came to their block. So many lights were on…so were hers. All of hers…

"It is but…but it's amazing! The transition, the microprocessor, so many things…things that are going to change our lives! Touichirou's life….where is Touichirou, anyway? He needs to hear about this…he's going to like this. He loves toys and I'm going to give him all of them…I don't care if it's imperialist…fuck you, father!" shouted Yoshio. Abigail quickly put her hand over his mouth.

"Shush up! Don't you have a rule about not bothering people or something?" asked Abigail as they reached their house. The lights were on and…and she could hear crying. Now all she had to do was get her key out and-

-and the door swung opened.

"Touichirou! My baby boy! Guess what Daddy's getting you for your birthday or…or whenever! Whenever I can get my hands on it…oh! And also, I met a man from some card company and he said the same thing, this table tennis is going to change the world…" said Yoshio as he stepped through the threshold and picked up the baby. He threw Touichirou over his shoulder. Abigail could have sworn that her son was glaring at her…she wouldn't have put it past him…

He was capable of it after all.

Yoshio stepped on the spaceship, stumbled, and fell onto the couch. Touichirou didn't cry or even mew. He just kept his eyes on her…her eyes, those were her eyes after all. Her eyes, her hair, Yoshio's eyebrows, but his abilities….whatever that had been had been all his own. It had been something new, something unforeseen, something that she just…just couldn't explain.

So she wasn't going to. She was just going to go into 1974, that was all, and she was going to do it with her sense of reality intact thank you very much.