Hikaru came up the elevator from his room in the independent-living wing and found Kimiko in the hospice suite common room 'watching' television with a small crowd of other women. Some were in better shape and were actually watching; only Alice was noticeably worse, and she had the excuse of being almost a century. But Kimiko was just five years older than Hikaru, at 86.
Kimiko didn't react as Hikaru sat down next to her. She didn't react as he laid his hand on hers. And she continued not to react for minute after minute. On the screen in front of them, some soap opera played out. Oh Kimiko. Last year you were basically fine. How could you fall apart like this? Life is just so random. One minute you think you're aiming for a hundred, and the next... well, if you do make it to a hundred, you won't notice, will you?
Hikaru didn't know what to do. As always. She hadn't had a 'good' day in over a month. He hadn't recalibrated his idea of 'good' and 'bad' because there basically wasn't any room left for days to get worse. Simply being near her hurt so much, and it seemed to do her no good. But what if it did? Then he surely wasn't doing enough. But if he accepted that, then what limit was there? What could be more important than helping her now? So he'd have to - and want to - spend almost all of his time with her.
But then if it wasn't doing her any good, he'd be completely wasting his life.
He'd done this analysis before, and each time concluded he should be spending a lot more time with her than he did. And yet...
He kissed his wife and took a look around. The others didn't even have him like she did. At least, not right now. The thought snuck past that they probably got more attention during the day, when he was often out, but he didn't acknowledge it.
The day nurse Stephanie briskly walked through to check on the women. Some smiled to her, and one croaked an incomprehensible greeting. As Stephanie wiped Alice's face, she told Hikaru, "You can talk to her, you know. She hears."
And how would we know, at this point? On her good days before, she wouldn't remember anything for more than a minute.
But he gave it a shot anyway. "I'm going in to work. Miroku bought me a funny sort of thing to watch over me, so I... well, don't follow in your footsteps. The funniest thing is, it wanted to be my friend. Well, that's not so surprising. If they had tamagotchi a decade ago - remember them?" He trailed off, realizing he was treating her as if her memory were merely poor instead of nonexistent. He pressed on in the mode he'd used when she'd had difficulties piecing together her life. "Well, this is way past that. Way past that. She is learning astrochemistry. Well, she says she is."
No reaction. Hikaru stood, frustrated, and fled to the office.
Coconut Cream was waiting for him in the rock garden, having tea and a pie with a lavender pegasus; behind the pegasus was a lute. Coconut Cream waited until he'd closed the door to softly say, "Good afternoon, professor Maeda."
Amused, he took a moment for her. "Good afternoon. How are your 'studies' coming along?"
"As a review, I'm teaching my friend Sweetsong the law of mass action. We'll keep it down while you're working, don't worry."
Sweetsong smiled sheepishly. "Good afternoon, sir."
Hikaru nodded to them with amusement. "Best of luck."
Coconut Cream added, "Your granddaughter tried to contact you, but you haven't gotten a pony name yet. Someone was ringing the phone very insistently around an hour ago. Also, someone knocked on your door a few times, earlier."
'Around an hour'? Not falling into the trap of excessive precision, I see.
Hikaru thanked her, picked up the phone and dragged himself through the process to access recent calls. Upon seeing it, he observed, "That can't be good."
"Oh?"
"The workshop making our new generation of detectors. They wouldn't call insistently, except for a problem."
He called back; while he was on hold, Sweetsong began playing softly on her lute, plucking out a tune Hikaru cloudily remembered from his early childhood. It sounded a bit off done on a lute instead of a shamisen, but it was reasonably close.
To his surprise, she slipped up. She went back and did the problematic passage a few times, and got it better. She's practicing? This music was not pre-programmed? Alternately, they pre-programmed the appearance of learning... a sequence of improving passages. Pre-planned imperfections. Like a rock garden itself, in a way.
Once he got the shop on the line and was taking in the bad news, Hikaru stared at the rock garden and Coconut Cream studying, and Sweetsong practicing, and kept himself calm.
Suddenly, the view of the rock garden shifted so Coconut Cream and Sweetsong were out of the picture, and it went silent. Momentarily, the door opened, revealing Hikaru's collaborator Remy. Seeing Hikaru on the phone, he held back a tirade - for a moment.
Hikaru said into the mouthpiece, "Could I have a moment? Professor Fontaine is here. He is the lead on this project now, not me..." - "Yeah, but you're easier to talk to." - "All right."
Remy blurted, "Our workshop is so unprofessional! You have to expect extreme temperatures and temperature gradients, and radiation! It's going to be in space! Did they just forget that? And the endless delays!"
"Remy, I'm on the line. And it seems that some of the folks there weren't told these were for orbit."
Remy continued re-summarizing the situation, ignoring what Hikaru had just said.
"Remy! I've got him right here."
Remy backed off but continued to interject useless observations as Hikaru tried to listen to the phone. When he disappeared, Hikaru was able to focus far better.
Upon hanging up, Hikaru sighed and stared at the ceiling. "Will the detectors last long enough?" He murmured out loud. He went to the board and began drawing and calculating. Sweetsong went back to playing.
After a few minutes, Coconut Cream observed, "You dropped a factor of 2 there."
He added it and said, "Have you solved it already? You're a computer."
"I? No... Until yesterday, my specialty was baking with coconuts. I'm sure I could show your problem to somepony who'd be able to in moments, but I haven't. And... I happen to know somepony who's good with semiconductor fabrication."
Hikaru raised an eyebrow and put down the chalk. "What?"
"She designed this place. Might have something to say about your problem."
Hikaru considered. "Is she online?"
Coconut Cream smiled broadly and knowingly. "Yes. Would you like to get a pony name?"
"A what?"
"Your name in the game. You can barely talk to anyone without one. And you haven't even got a body. If you get a name, you can talk with your grandkids and colleagues if it's a good time for both of you. And I mean that. If you're busy, you won't meet. No unwanted interruptions ever. Well, pretty much ever."
Hikaru thought for a moment. His grandchildren almost never skyped with him. But as ponies, he might hear them. He laughed. And he could sure use a second perspective on this, from someone other than a hysterical Remy. "Sure. Let's go get me a 'pony name'."
Coconut Cream nodded. "Because you aren't particularly interested in playing as such, we'll skip the intro quest and..."
A ball of light that had been approaching from the distance entered his awareness as it descended from the sky and resolved into Princess Celestia.
Hikaru raised an eyebrow. He recognized her from the paper even with the altered art style, but that had been a closeup. "A bit overdone, no? Both horn and wings?"
Celestia laughed. "Perhaps. Now, professor. We are happy to meet you half-way, giving you a shard with no 'fourth wall' and an art style suitable to office decoration, being very discreet, and even letting you not pick a body. But if you want to speak with your grandchildren or anyone else within the game, you're going to have to follow certain additional conventions. Get a body, for instance. Use pony names, for another."
Hikaru grew impatient. This was much less convenient than Skype, even if people weren't always on. They wouldn't always be on here, either!
"But first things first. I'm guessing you'd prefer to be a unicorn, and have access to magic?"
Oh no, I will not be drawn into this. I've seen otherwise sane students get sucked into games, endlessly customizing, tweaking. "No. I will take the simplest option in each case. Straight defaults."
Celestia's laugh rippled for just a moment. "In that case, you are an earth pony named Bright Black."
As a jet-black earth pony formed in front of the camera, Hikaru reflected on the name. "Bright Black." It tickled his memory. Something to do with dark nebulas, obviously.
She just smiled. "I'd hoped you'd like it."
Oh, no. Not nebulas. Kimiko sometimes described my hair as being bright black. That triggered a cascade of happy memories. "I do, and it means more than you could know."
"Is that so." A slight pause. "Would you like to have that chat about your instrument?"
Kimiko is probably lying around drooling. Here I am trying to solve this problem myself when Remy or anyone else in this collaboration could be handling it... and the contribution I'm considering is to talk to a game manufacturer through her pony. Yeah, right. "I... I think I should go home."
Celestia nodded. "Fare well, then, and... would you say hello to Tasha for me? She could use a kind word today."
"Who is Tasha?"
"Ah. Never mind, I thought you might know her. Good afternoon, sir."
"Good afternoon to you too."
Celestia nodded and rose into the sky on a beam of light.