Digital Devil Story: Reincarnation of the Goddess (2 page)

Nakajima entered the elevator and pressed the button to the thirteenth floor. With the change in air pressure, his body started to hurt, reminding him of the unpleasant events of the afternoon. A copper plaque with the word "NAKAJIMA" engraved on it was affixed to the door to apartment 1302. Nakajima pressed the doorbell, but there was no response. Sighing, he unlocked the door.

Opening the door and going inside, Nakajima took off his shoes, threw them aside randomly, and headed to the bathroom. The injured lip of the face looking back at him in the mirror had swollen up like a balloon, and was quite unpleasant to look at. His left cheek had a yellowish bruise on it as well. After looking at himself in the mirror for a bit, Nakajima abruptly turned on the faucet and splashed his face with the water that came pouring out. Returning to the living room and collapsing on the sofa, he noticed a memo on the side table.

"I'm going to be late at a meeting. Heat up your dinner in the microwave...."

Nakajima crumpled up the note without reading it to the end.

"If you're just going to write the same old excuse, you might as well just photocopy the thing..."

After Nakajima's father was transferred to the branch office in Los Angeles, his mother had become more and more involved in her job as a designer. Sometimes she wouldn't get home until the middle of the night. Picturing his mother's face, Nakajima's smoldering anger suddenly flared up. Right at that moment, the telephone rang. Of course, it was probably for his mother. Glaring at the ringing phone, Nakajima opened the door to his room.

Nakajima's room was quite dreary, without a single poster or decoration. With the exception of the one with the window, the walls were filled with large steel bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling. The bookshelves had anime magazines and comic books, much like one would expect to find in a high school student's room, but one corner seemed starkly out of place. That shelf was filled with books on magic and sorcery with titles like "The Book of the Dead" and "Pnakotic Manuscripts." On top of his steel desk sat a fully decked-out computer, and sitting next to it was a general-purpose book on magic called "The New Golden Dawn Theory." From the look of the wear on the leather cover, it was clear that the book had seen a lot use.

Nakajima pulled his chair out from the desk and sat down in front of the display. Turning on the switch on the side of his speakers, the vocals of David Coverdale filled the room. Nakajima's fingers started flying over the keyboard.

> LIST

Entering the command, a very long program scrolled down the screen. Following the program list with sharp eyes, Nakajima started tapping the keys with a flowing rythm.

Nakajima first became interested in magic when he had the opportunity to read "The New Golden Dawn Theory." While the book was poorly written, and the interpretation therein was clumsy and unskillful, Nakajima read through the whole thing regardless; while the world of magic held an appeal that hid a dark and sinister side, it also showed a rational and scientific realism to it as well. While re-reading passages that seemed to unusual to him two or three times over, Nakajima had made a sudden realization that was almost like an epiphany.

Magical theory and computer theory were surprisingly similar.

At first glance, the two worlds did not seem to have any connection to each other. However, the similiarities between them had been discovered by both magic and information technology researchers long before Nakajima. Charles Feed, a professor at MIT, a school famous for its study of artificial intelligence, was one of those researchers. Nakajima had immediately become a member of his group, ISG. (International Satanist Garden) And for the past few months, Nakajima had been immersed in writing a program to summon demons, the idea for which he had thought up himslf.

It was almost complete.

Nakajima had already finished the core part of the program. All he had to do now was add a few subroutines and it would be finished. But until yesterday, Nakajima had had reservations about finishing the project to completion. If his theory was correct, the program would definitely call a demon into the world. But up until this point, Nakajima couldn't think of any particular reason to summon a demon; he wouldn't even know what to make it do. But the events of the day had given him a clear, simple, goal.

"I feel a little sorry for you, but you're going to be the subject of a little experiment." Nakajima started creating his final subroutines.

"Use data addresses 3780-3990 for 'Toad's Legs.' Put this in the buffer, and before displaying the result, chant the spell. Yod, Dur, Dawr, Set. Wonder what this spell means?"

Picking up the modem receiver, Nakajima called Arkham in Massachusetts, to connect with ISG's host computer. As the connection picked up, his computer's display filled with the image of the demon Lucifer. Calling up the AI, Craft, and explaining the situation, he asked about the spell. Nakajima's English was not particularly good, so several times the only thing that appeared on-screen were question marks.

> OK, I UNDERSTAND.

Finally, Craft appeared to have gotten it; Nakajima asked the AI what the spell meant.

> PERHAPS IT'S ONLY A COUNTER?

Craft's response probably indicated that the spell was only a time counter.

> THANK YOU, CRAFT.

Cutting the connection to ISG, Nakajima set himself to the task of writing the subroutine once again. Two hours later, there was a knock on his door.

"Come on in." With a hint of irritation in his voice, Nakajima responded to the knock without taking his eyes off the program list on-screen.

"Did you eat dinner?"

"...."

Nakajima didn't respond, and just kept typing on the keyboard.

"Oh, what happened to your lip?" Nakajima's mother bent down from behind him to take a good look at his face.

"I ran into the goalpost playing soccer." Nakajima stopped typing and looked back at his mother. Nakajima had a strong resemblence to his mother, who was a beautiful woman with a slender face. When they were together, they would frequently be mistaken for siblings. When it came to her son's education, she was very conservative; she wanted him to get into Keio University's medical school. Of course, there were too many blemishes on his academic record for that to ever happen.

"Shouldn't you put some medicine on it?"

"It's OK, mom. It's not serious."

Irritated at his programming being interrupted, Nakajima absentmindedly tapped keys at random on the keyboard.

BEEP.

The computer made a harsh tone, and an error message appeared on-screen. As if realizing that her son wasn't going to pay her any heed, Nakajima's mother left the room as if giving up.

That night, at 3AM.

"All right, it's done!"

Nakajima slapped his thighs with his hands and stood up from his chair.

> RUN

The disk drive started whining, and bizarre letters blinked on and off the screen. But in less than five minutes, the screen displayed an error message and stopped.

> OUT OF MEMORY

If there wasn't enough memory for the program, it was probably either because the program itself was too long, or because it dealt with more variables than the machine could handle.

"No big deal. One little computer isn't enough to run a program like this anyway. If I use the school's host computer, it should have more than enough memory."

Nakajima's eyes glittered with anticipation.

CHAPTER 3

Later that week, at 7PM on Saturday, Professor Iida, who was on night watch, noticed that there was someone in the CAI room and opened the door.

"Who's here at a time like this?"

At the sound of his voice, a student looked up from one of the CAI terminals, his face glowing strangely in the reflected light of the display.

Iida's expression softened. "Oh, it's just you, Nakajima. What are you doing in here with all the lights off?"

Nakajima's academic record was far from perfect, but his genius had endeared him somewhat to the math and science teachers and earned their trust.

"My program's just not working out the way I wanted to. But I'm almost done fixing it." Nakajima's voice seemed slightly metallic, as if in tune with the sound of the disk drive spinning.

"I'm always happy to see your enthusiasm, but you know that you need to ask permission in advance if you want to work in this classroom late at night. You're lucky that it was me that found you instead of someone else." Scolding Nakajima, Iida flicked on the light switch.

"What is this!?" Iida's shocked voice echoed through the now-lit CAI room. A large geometric figure was drawn on the floor in white and red chalk, with Nakajima's seat situatuated at the center.

"It's a Solomon Hexagram."

"Solomon? That has an occultish sound to it." Nakajima paid Iida's sarcasm no heed, and his fingers slid over the keys of the terminal. Presently the host computer located in the adjacent machine room sealed off by thick glass walls started to run.

"Great, the bugs are finally gone. It's done!" After sending a print job to to print out the contents of the program list, Nakajima stood and turned toward Iida. His girlish, almond eyes glittered in a demonic grin. The wound in his lip that he had gotten when Kondo beat him up had since sealed, but the excitement had reopened the cut, and a trickle of fresh blood stained his jaw.

Iida's gaze became stern. "All right, Nakajima, do you want to explain just what kind of program you're running on the host computer--and without permission, I might add?"

Nakajima brushed aside some hair from his forehead and responded nonchalantly. "I've written a program that will summon demons. This hexagram is here to protect me from them. In just a moment a demon will appear. Professor, you should probably enter inside it too. You might get shredded to pieces otherwise."

For an instant, Iida's mouth gaped open, and he took a long hard look at Nakajima.

"Have you lost it?"

"Is it me who's lost it, or the school? Professor, take a good look at me. This wound on my lip, the bruise on my face. I got the crap beaten out of me by Kondo from the karate club. Takamizawa Kyoko is just as guilty. The school just lets wild animals like that run free, and doesn't do anything to deal with them at all. No matter what happens to me in the classroom, the teachers and students just pretend it didn't happen. The violence that happens in this school is as plain as day, and yet nobody gets punished. I suppose the teachers are just waiting for students like that to graduate. As long as they keep their eyes shut, the calamity will just clear itself up on its own; they just have to endure it for two or three years. But this is the only time I get to be a high school student. I'm not going to let them just do whatever the hell they want any more. I'm going to summon a demon and execute those annoying insects." Nakajima's speech seemed excited and his shoulders rose and fell in time with his wild breathing.

Nakajima turned away from the stunned Iida and to the keyboard.

> RUN

With the final command displayed on the monitor, the magnetic tape of the host computer started to gradually spin. Iida tried to yell at Nakajima and stop the computer. But the moment he opened his lips, a frigid breeze from nowhere struck him and covered his arms in goosebumps.

"Summoning demons with a computer...what a concept!" Iida twisted his lips into a smile to hide his fear.

"Computer theory and magical thought have many overlapping similarities. I bet the first person who thought up the principles of computing was an alchemist or Kabbalist. It's not that well-known, but things like spells, sacrifices, and thaumaturgic circles are very easy to put into binary format. Summoning a demon is just a transfer of the matter comprising the demon in the Atziluth World to the real Assiah World, and a computer is the perfect device to facilitate it."

While Nakajima was explaining his theory, the cold air wrapped around Iida almost like a living creature, and a bizarre smell entered his nostrils. The lights of the classroom flickered out, and the CAI room plunged into darkness, the only sound that of the spinning disk drive. Presently the computer let out a low whine.

"Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh." To Iida's ears, the whine sounded like actual, real words.

"Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh." While whispering in synch with the computer, Nakajima continued to enter commands on the keyboard with unbelievable speed. Soon the entire room started to shake like an earthquake, and cracks formed in the windows. At the same time, Nakajima entered his final command.

> KILL! KONDO HIROYUKI, TAKAMIZAWA KYOKO

Iida did not like students like Kondo Hiroyuki and Takamizawa Kyoko. In fact, he hated them. But he felt even more repulsed by the manner in which Nakajima intended to deal with them.

"Stop this foolishness. If you'd like, I can make sure the incident is investigated fully and have Kondo expelled. Just stop doing this."

While stumbling in the shaking room, Iida desperately reached for the computer's power switch. To prevent him from interfering, Nakajima grabbed his arm with a strength one wouldn't even imagine him displaying normally. However, while the two struggled, the rumbling started to subside. The fluorescent lights lit up with a creaking sound and filled the room with light, and the freezing air about Iida's body dissipated.

"Where did you go!? Why won't you show yourself? Demon, are you going to abandon me?"

Crying out, Nakajima headed toward the keyboard.

> KILL! KILL!

But the host computer's magnetic tape slowly and mercilessly started spinning to a halt. Anxiously opening the program list, Nakajima scanned the details of the program with bloodshot eyes and aimlessly stood as if sapped of all his vitality.

"My program was perfect. There wasn't a single bug in it. So why did the demon vanish before showing itself? It should have appeared right over there!" Leaving the program list open, Nakajima stumbled out of the CAI room as if in a trance. Staring dumbfoundedly at Nakajima's back as he left, Iida finally came to his senses and turned off the power to the computer.