Shinji Ikari Goes to New York
Chapter Two - Vector
Shinji shook his head. It was the only thing to do in this situation. And it was clearly not the worst situation, true, but Misato had not let him out of her sight without making sure he had a basic geopolitical education. Most of those lessons were stale now, taught shortly before the formal dissolution of the United Nations and the corresponding act of piracy that had determined the course of Shinji's life for the last three years. But so long as someone remembered those weird ops in Japan back right before the whole world was swept away, Shinji would be an enduring intelligence asset of a classification unseen since the Americans had had a monopoly on nuclear technology. He was a target to enemies, allies, and rogue elements of the Matsushiro Diet.
But it was still better to be the Third Child, then be called by that other name.
"I don't know," Shinji said. A good, neutral, quasi-coherent response. He let the book fall open, discretely checking up and down the street as he did so. The crowd seemed to have thinned out even more. He learned nothing from this glance, and while the building behind the bench was a blank section of that ancient-but-unhistoric post-Second Impact construction, there would be plenty of windows directly overhead. Plenty of vectors. Plenty of threats.
He looked at his watch. An hour left. Looked down at the book, leafed a page, and read: "...suggests an ur shape prior to assuming the psychologically compatible form, generally witnessed in reflective surfaces or in cases of extended distance viewing due to the viewer moving at a significant but irregular rate of acceleration at the time of Manifestation. General consensus is..."
The man beside Shinji finally cut in. "I'm guessing you might be wondering about how I recognized you?"
Shinji closed the book, put it back in the travel pack, turned to the man with all due deliberate ceremony, and replied: "Yes."
The man let out a little laugh. "...well," he began. "This is gonna sound a little crazy, but I dreamed about it. Just last night, in fact. Was having myself a nice little panic attack," he spun a finger around one ear, looking down at the pavement. "Standing at my station on deck, watching the Lancelot go down. That was the first ship the bastard got, you know? Nothing new there, I think about the attack a lot." He was speaking slower now, eyes still fixed down.
"Sometimes, there's nothing else I can think about."
The man then twisted about, shaking the memory off, and smiled again. "Except last night, things don't get bad, the way they usually do. See, I worked search and rescue on the Lancelot's demise. Oil smoke, boiling ocean, screams like you can't imagine dropping off one by one and," the man's eyes were shining. Shinji looked away. "B-but before I get to that part of the dream, t-this," a tired laugh. "This little critter wanders onto the scene, bouncing along the deck rail. Grooving to some beat I can't hear. It was a cat. A tabby."
Shinji glanced over at the man, who gave a laugh-cry. "Yeah! You seen that little guy before? My ma used to call cats like that 'pumpkin puss'. And this guy was strutting along like he was a cartoon, man, there was no more Lancelot, just that tail swishing back and forth."
"I can't remember the whole thing. Dreams, you know. But being a dream-cat, this guy, he was a talker. Sounded old and gravely, like my grandad, and I'm sitting across from him on the deck, and he's cooking this deep dish, somehow. You had deep dish?"
There was a pause, and Shinji realized the man was waiting for a response. He shook his head. He wasn't sure what 'deep dish' even meant.
The man closed his eyes. "Five inches tall, tomatoes chunky and zesty, the cheese a solid layer an inch thick, the meat an Italian sausage blend the perfect place between mild and medium heat. I could even taste the crust: buttery, with a dusting of something sharp and tangy, kinda like Cool Ranch flavor. Maybe something with dill." The man looked at Shinji. "Best damn pizza I'd ever had. Better than Uno's. You don't know Uno's. Can't get that around here."
"Anyway, main thing I remember is the way that pizza tasted, and what the cat said to me as I finished it. Old pumpkin puss said: 'head on over to 1st and 106th today, after the Hammonds job. You'll see something interesting.'
The man was still wearing that self-aware, crazy smile, and Shinji allowed a tired kind of humor to creep into his expression in response.
"I know!" the man said, laughing again. "I know! So I go and I finish the Hammonds job. Double stranded fiber, vertical utility conduit specially laid, up thirty seven stories. Clean line, no noise, smooth and easy. Did that, went out, saw you, and, and I was a hundred percent I was wrong about who you were. Dreams aren't really sound context, you know? And I barely remembered what you looked like.
"But here on the bench, I saw a bit of it. Your hair isn't all that different, and I recognized that expression you got there when I sat down on the bench. Same as the one you were wearing when that girl was dragging you down decks. You're the kid from the Fisher King. You killed the thing that ripped open the Pacific Fleet."
Shinji said nothing in response. He did not admit, or deny. He did not mention that Asuka had done most of the work, which had been his normal approach when confronted with a situation like this, back in Japan, among allies.
The man wiped at his face, and waved a hand dismissively to Shinji's lack of response, then leaned in. "I guess I don't need to tell you this, kid, but stay the fuck away from the military. If that's an option. And boats. It's just you floating over a buncha of graves, you know?"
Shinji nodded, in order to move the conversation along.
"Anyway," the man's hand went to his breast pocket, a motion so smooth and quick Shinji didn't even have time to get nervous about it, and withdrew a rectangle of paper.
The man proffered the card, and Shinji took it. There was a blue logo of a bird in flight, and next to that was printed 'Amacus D. Daniels, Electrical Engineer, Consultant' along with a phone number.
"It was damn nice to meet you proper, kid." Daniels said, rising to his feet. "I was starting to feel like maybe I wasn't real. None of my folks came back. Hard to get a handle on a world like this. Seeing you today…" his arms spiraled together and apart. Like a stretch after waking up, or maybe to indicate that he was now present here, truly, for the first time in a long while. Daniels took a second, looking into the sunset, then said: "So yeah, don't you waste any time in that park."
Shinji looked from the card to the man, Daniels, mildly stunned, both from how banal the exchange had ultimately been, and by the fact that it seemed to be winding down without him having to do anything.
No assassins or snatch squads here, just two people with an unexpected connection. Impossible, but plenty of true things were.
Shinji pulled out the letter, and turned it over, to show Daniels the map. The man glanced at it a moment, and shook his head. "There's no house in there, as I recall. Maybe a couple stands of trees they didn't bother to cut down once the city started back up, but no forest. It's just the stones, the Lady, and the shore where everything else used to be."
"...thank you, Danieru-san," Shinji said, his mouth compressed to a grim horizontal line. The map didn't need to be literal in order to be accurate. The idea that it was neither... Shinji had poured far too much effort into getting here to tolerate the nauseating presence of earnest doubt.
The man hesitated a moment, then turned away. Took a few steps. Turned back. "If you're going anyway, kid, just remember you can run. Drop that bag, if you have to, and run. Things can get dicey down there. The people that go down there, specially at night, are cracked. And the cops don't patrol down there. They don't like the Lady, I think. It's just the rangers and the crazies down there, and good luck telling them apart. Whatever's in that pack isn't worth your life. Just…" he winced, then his expression relaxed. Letting this whole thing go. "Just give me a call if you need a ride to the airport or something, okay?"
"I will do that," Shinji said, and then, without giving the matter much thought, stood and dipped forward at the waist. Because that was what it seemed like he owed Amacus D. Daniels. The other man nodded, flashed the weak grin of a finished conversation being overextended by unnecessary niceties, and sauntered off.
But the doubt he had gifted Shinji remained, a writhing and coiling nest of thick-bodied hookworms.