Society

Chapter 1

R had two children, Atom and Uran. Since summer vacation began, the two had spent nearly every day playing together. Not long before, R had given Atom, the older of the two, a fishing rod for his birthday. He suggested that they all go fishing the following weekend.

Atom and Uran could hardly wait. They even made a little calendar by the front door, counting down the days—three more, then two, then one.

At last, the weekend came, and the two children went with R to fish at a lake in a nearby park.

They left their lines in the water for quite some time, but caught nothing. At first, the children watched their lines in excited silence. As the hours passed, however, their patience wore thin. Before long, they were eating the snacks they had brought from home and chatting away with each other.

R simply watched over them with a gentle smile.

When it became clear that the fish were not biting, R asked them a question.

“Atom, Uran. Have you ever wondered how the fish feel?”

If you want to catch a fish, he told them, perhaps it would help to think like one first.

The two children happily lost themselves in thought.

After a while, Uran let her gaze drift toward the great phoenix tree standing by the shore.

“How about this?”

And she began to tell a story.

Chapter 2

John the fish fell in love.

John already had a girlfriend. Her name was Elena, and they had been together for about a year.

It wasn’t that John was unhappy with her. He had always imagined that they would become mates, have children, and spend the rest of their lives together. That seemed like happiness enough.

To John, happiness meant living a peaceful life among the shoal.

Perhaps he was a little more settled than some of the younger fish around him. But there was nothing particularly unusual about the way he thought. In time, he assumed, the others would probably come to feel the same way.

John believed that this was the happiness he and Elena would build together.

Until the moment he fell in love.

It happened at the height of summer.

John’s shoal had been swimming somewhere different from their usual grounds. At that time of year, the great phoenix tree by the shore cast a broad shadow over the water, and the place had become a popular spot among fish seeking refuge from the heat.

They spent the morning swimming leisurely in the shade.

Then, sometime in the afternoon, an unfamiliar sound came from far away.

John and the other young fish paid it little attention.

But one by one, beginning with the oldest, the fish started leaving for their usual grounds. John noticed, but assumed it was nothing more than the whims of old fish.

The unfamiliar sound grew louder.

Then it stopped.

A little while later, something bright and silver fell from the sky.

The fish scattered in surprise, then formed a wide circle around it and watched from a distance.

How could anything in this world be so beautiful?

John stared at it.

He wanted to rush toward it. He wanted to rub his body against it, take it into his mouth, and run his tongue all over it.

But with the others watching, he hesitated to be the only one to give in to the beautiful silver thing.

That was how John had always managed to get along in the shoal.

As the ripples from the silver object slowly faded, a tense silence settled over the fish.

Then, without warning, one of the younger fish—a notorious show-off—darted toward the shining object.

Damn. Too slow.

John had missed his chance.

Now all he could do was watch the show-off perform his elegant silver dance.

But then the silver thing pulled him upward.

He rose toward the surface and, a moment later, disappeared from the water entirely.

It happened so quickly that John had no idea what he had just witnessed.

Eventually, urged on by the others, he returned to their usual grounds.

But the seductive silver shape remained burned into his mind. And there was something else he could not forget.

The look of ecstasy on the show-off’s face the moment he took the silver thing into his mouth.

Wearing that expression, he had vanished into a world beyond the lake—a world none of them knew.

From that day on, John could not stop thinking about what he had seen.

And one day, he realized that he was in love with the silver thing.

After that, whenever he could slip away from the shoal, John returned to the shade beneath the phoenix tree.

He told the others that he simply wanted somewhere cool to swim.

Elena quickly noticed the change in him.

The older fish had told her what had happened to the show-off.

He had been caught.

He was dead.

“Why didn’t you warn John and the others? Why didn’t you get them away from there?”

One of the old fish answered her.

“We didn’t have the luxury.”

“But—”

“When you’re trying to save your own life, do you really think about everyone else?”

Elena supposed perhaps that was simply how things were, and said no more.

John, too, had heard what had happened. He had been told that the show-off had been caught and killed, and that it would be wiser to stay away from that part of the lake.

But warnings like those were nowhere near enough to dull the edge of his desire.

Elena, meanwhile, felt that abandoning the shoal just to keep watch over John would be unreasonable.

And so she let him go.

It was not long after John fell in love that he was caught beneath the phoenix tree.

He had gone there as usual when he saw the silver thing plunge through the surface of the water.

This time, John swam straight toward it.

As if to show it all the love he could, John took the silver thing into his mouth.

Then he felt it pull against gravity, lifting him upward, carrying him toward a world he had never seen.

John trembled with excitement.

And lost consciousness.

Several days later, Elena heard from the others that John had been caught.

She wept.

But about six months later, Elena found another mate.

In time, the two became a pair.

And they lived happily ever after.

Chapter 3

“That’s quite an interesting story.”

R smiled at Uran.

“Perhaps fishing only works because there are fish willing to fall in love with the hook.”

Uran looked pleased.

Atom, on the other hand, fell silent and seemed lost in thought.

After a while, he spoke.

“Dad, what about this?”

And he began to tell a story of his own.

Fish are far more intelligent than we imagine.

Each may appear to swim freely on its own, yet together they form shoals whose movements follow a certain order.

With their intelligence, they have even deduced that the lake they live in is artificial.

Who created it, however, is beyond their understanding.

They also know that something is deliberately keeping the lake clean. Without this unknown caretaker, the water would eventually become polluted, and the fish would no longer be able to live there.

So the fish ask themselves a question.

How can they persuade this unknown being to keep maintaining their lake?

The answer they have arrived at is simple.

Every now and then, they make sure the fishing yields a catch.

They already understand what fishing is.

If something is caught from time to time, the unknown being will continue to see value in maintaining the lake.

In this way, the fish ensure that their lake continues to be maintained.

This practice is passed down from generation to generation.

When a fish reaches adulthood, the truth is revealed to them. Then, when they have children of their own, they hide it until those children, too, become adults.

Instead, the adults tell the young a different story.

“What do you think happens to the fish who are caught? You think it looks painful? You feel sorry for them? Nonsense. Of course, perhaps it hurts for a moment. But then the hand of God carries them away to paradise. That is why we adults choose the bravest fish among you and allow that fish to be caught. And why the bravest? Well, you wouldn’t want to show God a face full of pain, would you?”

Then the adults choose whichever child is most convenient and arrange for that child to be caught.

And so, generation after generation, they preserve their society.

One day, a young fish named Sigma was chosen.

His family was saddened, but they seemed to accept that there was no other way. The whole of society had to be protected.

Sigma, however, was a perceptive child.

And so he understood what was going to happen to him.

He did not believe the story the adults had told.

I am going to be sacrificed.

I have been chosen to die so that society can survive.

Alone, Sigma had reasoned his way to the truth.

What should I do?

No answer came easily.

Of course he was afraid to die.

He was sad.

And yet Sigma was also capable of making the cold, rational judgment that sacrificing himself might truly be the best thing for his family and the others.

That only made his suffering worse.

Maybe it would be easier if I were stupid, he thought.

Or more emotional.

If he were stupid, he could accept the adults’ story without question and die believing himself a hero.

If grief could simply overwhelm him, perhaps he could die before having to think any of this through.

After struggling with the question again and again, Sigma decided to leave the shoal.

In the end, one thought settled the matter.

He wanted to choose his own fate.

Now that he had seen through the adults’ lie, submitting to it and dying seemed to Sigma like the destruction of something sacred—something larger than himself.

Of course, perhaps that was only how he justified abandoning the others.

Sigma himself could never completely dismiss that possibility.

Even so, he had no choice but to believe.

And so Sigma fled.

He traveled as far from his old shoal as he could and began living alone.

Fortunately, he was able to find food for himself.

Even so, for the first few days, the loneliness was almost unbearable.

But this was the fate he had chosen.

And because he had chosen it, he endured.

Eventually, Sigma realized that he was happy.

He had defied the fate given to him and was living one he had chosen for himself.

That knowledge filled him with contentment.

The end of Sigma’s happy life came suddenly.

Something dropped from the sky and struck the surface of the water.

Sigma assumed it was a fishing hook and calmly moved to avoid it.

Then another one came.

But it was not a hook.

It was a bird.

The bird seized Sigma.

He lost consciousness before the suffering began.

And died.

What did the shoal do when they discovered that Sigma had fled?

The adults hid the truth.

“He simply wasn’t brave enough. It’s probably for the best that God never had to see a child like that.”

Then they chose another child to sacrifice.

And so, for a while longer, society went on happily ever after.

Chapter 4

“That’s quite an interesting idea too.”

R stroked Atom’s head.

Perhaps pleased to have earned his father’s approval, Atom smiled.

“Dad! A fish!”

Uran’s excited cry drew R’s attention to the bobber trembling on the water.

He jerked the rod upward.

A young fish was caught on the line.

R told Atom to put the fish into the bucket they had brought with them.

Atom did as he was told.

Summer days were long, but the sky had begun to darken.

R suggested that they keep the fish for a while, and the three of them headed home.

Along the way, Atom and Uran excitedly talked about everything that had happened.

“That feeling when we caught it!”

Uran beamed.

“Let’s find places where we can catch even more next time.”

Atom proclaimed it proudly.

Then the two happily began discussing what they should name their new fish.

When they arrived home, R’s wife, B—the mother of Atom and Uran—was there to greet them.

“Welcome back.”

Atom and Uran were about to tell her about their day, but B interrupted them.

“I have something to tell you too. Do you mind if I go first?”

The children were surprised. Their mother normally listened happily to whatever they had to report.

“O-okay.”

They nodded uncertainly.

“Well, you know that thing we registered you for a while ago? We received the acceptance notice. Atom, Uran—you did it. Starting tomorrow, both of you will be able to serve humans. The people at the government office said that you two were the most suitable. Congratulations. You’re going to do work that all of us robots can be proud of.”

Uran’s face lit up.

“All right! I’m going to do my best!”

Atom shouted too.

The two children could barely contain their excitement.

R smiled quietly.

Afterward, Atom and Uran told their mother about the fishing trip.

Then the four of them went to rest.