Curtain Call.

Let me tell you more about the cast.

We have Miko Tsubara, a young woman of thirty-two, the wife of our protagonist. She is an accountant, and a very good one. She is intelligent, good at math, and she loves science fiction, especially space operas and giant robots.

Next there is Taka Tsubara, a six year old girl. The daughter of the protagonist. She is very sweet, and already showing the intelligence inherited from her mother and father. Her mother gives her lots of books to read, but only some of them are schoolbooks.

Then there is Agito Tsubara, the protagonist. He is a brilliant young scientist, specializing in robots and artificial intelligence. He is also thirty-two years old, and he has just died of a heart attack in his lab.

I know, I know, it’s a short cast list. But Agito is a quiet, introverted man, and he does not know many people. The teachers he learned from and the scientists who work with him are all extras at best.

The stage lights dim and black-clad figures rearrange the set. When the lights come back up, we are in hell.

Agito is surprised. He is a man of science and he didn’t believe in hell, yet his scientific mind tells him that is where he is. It will come as no surprise to you that Agito was seized by Mikaboshi and taken to the Wicked City. He is put immediately to work in his laboratories, redesigning the Demons of Iron and Violence – massive cyborg devils.

New players come onto the stage. We have Mikaboshi, king of this hell. We also introduce Reisho Guo, another dead scientist and slave in Mikaboshi’s labs.

An instant rivalry springs up in the laboratory. Guo has suffered long and hard to get where he is. The Darwinism of the Wicked City is anything but social. Failure means demotion, and demotion means being abandoned to the streets where roving gangs of cannibal cyborgs wait to eat your flesh and strip you of the implants grafted to your soul. Agito is a threat.

No, don’t look away. I know the scene is grisly, but you must watch to get the full impact of the play.

Agito is strapped down by multi-clawed robots. Twisted versions of the androids from Miko’s stories tear out his organs without anaesthetizing him. His flesh is replaced piecemeal by metal, plastic, and wires. Blood is dripping off of the edge of the stage into running down the carpet between the rows. He screams, but there is nothing he can do.

The implants serve no real purpose but to further torment the souls of the Wicked City. The cybernetic devices stimulate pain receptors, heat, cold and pressure, keeping Agito in a constant state of agony, all the while they pump synthetic endorphins and amphetamines into his brain, hyperstimulating his mind to drive him to an all too logical madness.

The young scientist toils in the lab, working for days at a time, muttering formulae and struggling with programming even in his shallow, wracked sleep. He has his own prototype demon, but he finds that it has been tampered with, the evil work of Guo. Finally pushed too far, Agito snaps.

He reaches his breaking point suddenly, but he is a scientist, and he does not lash out in madness or rage. He plots. He informs Mikaboshi through inter-hell memo that he has made a breakthrough, and that his version of the Demon of Iron and Violence should outstrip the current model in strength, firepower, and cruelty. Guo panics. He also tells Mikaboshi that his demon is ready to display its new features.

The lord of the Wicked City grins and invites the two scientists to unveil their cyborg-devils together. Agito allows Guo to manipulate him so that his rival can go first. Guo thinks that the virus he slipped into Agito’s demon’s programming will end in his demotion. But Agito has eradicated the virus, and unleashed it in its creator’s demon.

Guo’s cyborg activates and promptly fires its 20mm machine gun, spraying the entire room with depleted uranium slugs. Guo is chopped nearly to pieces by the hail of bullets, Agito’s demon is pierced like an acupuncture practice dummy, and even Mikaboshi is pelted with the heavy rounds.

Agito has thrown himself to the floor. He knew what was going to happen. He crawls through the wreckage of the lab and escapes into the streets. Mikaboshi takes a moment to dismember Guo’s devil before he seizes the scientist himself. Guo is improbably alive. The implants keep him from spiraling into the void beneath hell, while simultaneously allowing him to feel the pain of being shot to rags. That the implants are malfunctioning from the damage sustained only makes the pain worse.

Mikaboshi drags him towards the wall of the lab, dripping in his cybernetic talons. A panel opens up where there was none before. But Mikaboshi wants something to be there, and this is his hell, so there is. He feeds Guo into the two meter wide paper shredder in the wall, making sure that he does not go through too quickly. His not-quite-destroyed soul slides wetly down a chute to the lower levels, where he will be picked apart by scavengers.

The Yama king looks around. Agito is gone. Well, there are other wicked scientists in hell. And Agito won’t get far.

Mikaboshi is wrong.

Agito is driven, pushed beyond his limits, maddened by the constant pain, and the burning cold logic forced through his mind. The pain and the unending work have ripped through that barrier that has always held Agito’s true desires back.

Watch now, this is a good bit.

Agito doesn’t run from the towering spires of the Wicked City into the labyrinthine streets below. He runs straight for the Middle Kingdom. His soul tears through the wall. It hurts, but his existence is pain. His ashes have been spread and he pulls them together along with the faded shreds of his higher soul.

His wind soul rests and recuperates deep in his mind, but the demon is free. And hungry. Agito has lied to himself all of his life, telling himself that he does not need other people, that he does not need love. He convinced himself that robots and computers could make him happy. it is the part of him that wanted him to be unhappy. It is that dark part of his being that wears his flesh now.

There is chi to be had. The Deceiver begins to hunt.

Popcorn?