"There's no time left." I hear a voice say after some time, but it wasn't my mother who spoke.

I turn around and there's no longer a Chitose Maeda. Instead, a man sits in her place. He's smiling. Tall, lanky man, grey wisps of hair like barbed wire, skin pockmarked and wrinkled, a large oversized nose. He wears thick-rimmed glasses and a messy suit. Half of his face is in shadow, as if it is eating him up from the inside.

My hand grips the survival knife in my pocket.

"Who are you and what have you done to my mother?"

"Your mother?" He pauses. "You wanted to see her?"

"She was here a moment ago."

"Was she? Where I was sitting, yes?" He looks at his fingernails. "I was under the impression you had no interest in the woman who had raised you-"

"Listen, if she meets any sort of ill fate, I will sniff you out like a hunting hound and gut you."

He smiles broader. I see his yellowed teeth spreading like a wad of bills. "Oh, Mr. Maeda, believe me, I do enjoy a good hunt every now and then. The hunter and the hunted sometimes aren't so different from one another, wouldn't you say? It's ultimately a thrill for both isn't it, Mr. Maeda? But unfortunately, there would be no need. I guarantee that no ill fate will befall her. Mrs. Maeda is merely giving you time to think as you had requested. She has probably left already." He stops and his words hang in the air with a peculiar unresolved note, like a dissonant chord on a guitar. Unfinished, unsaid. There's no indication of how she could have left. It's as if she had never been here in the first place. Coupled with the tone of his voice, it leaves an unpleasant sensation, as if I had just come across a sickeningly obscene graphic. While it carries much charisma, it feels like a dramatic reading of some irrelevant text.

It's definitely the same man I had spoken to in the metropolitan library, the man with the old newspaper. The same man who was known as Morikawa according to my classmate. The voice of the man who was on the phone Christmas Eve. Maybe the same man I had met at another time, at anothher place. He must have disguised his true voice somehow when he spoke to each time, but there is no doubt now. I had met him many times.

"What the hell do you want?"

He coughs and clears his throat. "Well as you're likely aware, we've met before but I haven't had the pleasure of introducing myself properly yet."

"I don't care for your highbrow inessential peripheral bullshit."

But he continues anyway, "my name is Morikawa. I am your consultant from the Emoto Research and Development Agency. I've taken over your case from my predecessor, who is now promoted into the upper echelons, I can safely assume. I do hope he is living well. Maybe gorging on delicacies at five star hotel restaurants. One after another the fittest rise to the top. Or so we think. But there are too many factors to determine the value of a man and where he will end up. I am sitting here talking to you because I am of this value, and you are of this value and our values happen to match." I don't follow. "Regardless - I tend to enjoy a good conversation, so pardon my idiosyncrasies - it is tremendously nice," he emphasizes nice, "to formally meet you at last, Mr. Maeda."

I ignore him. "Say what you need to say."

"The rain is coming."

I cross the room, throwing the door open. "Get out."

"That's not very polite of you. Surely, your mother taught you better."

"Get out, if you're not going to tell me what I need to know."

"It's hard to get out of my own cabin."

He calmly spreads his hands when I don't reply. A toothy grin. "You enjoy it here don't you? I can let you stay here longer. Any time at all. I'm here to help you and provide you with a rational alternative, help you choose the right path, and the good life. Perhaps I'm not incorrect in assuming you'd like to live as a free man?"

"Actually, I am not particularly concerned if I'm dead or alive. I don't know what's real or what's right anymore. And no man is truly free."

"Oh?" He raises his eyebrows, "why do you say that?"

"We all exist within a construct, a system, within the flow of a great river, influences of all kinds, left and right, since the moment we are born, we are under the conditioning of our parents, then of our school teachers and peers, our books, our movies, television, advertisements, material wealth and social status, responsibility and expectations, the need to survive, to reproduce, to belong, to achieve, it's all manufactured and fabricated and engrained over time. Even our perception of the trees around us is all human construct - so much structural framework they aren't individual beams of alloy, strands of wool or layers of compressed rock we can sit down to record and observe. It's like the air we breathe, like everything around us intensely saturated and condensed into a continual mucous substance - there is no freedom. As I stand here, I am being patronized by you, being played into your hands at your whim."

"It depends on how much freedom you would like," he replies, "is it truly being free if you have no boundaries? In that case, there is no reference point and no understanding of liberation. Without regulation and structure, you can't exist outside of it. Without right and wrong, the human being can't have free will - there's nothing to choose between. One cannot exist without the other. No, Mr. Maeda, it cannot exist. But you do have something special after all: the free faculty of the mind, commodity which many may envy you for, or even despise you. You choose what to believe, what to ponder, what to see - some don't have that luxury, I'm afraid. Regardless of the construct that exists outside of you or will seep into you, the forces that push and pull, your mind and creative intellect, young Mr. Maeda, are worlds themselves. I'm sure you've experienced this, correct? You exist within your own world - surely you know? You don't need to consider the external world, because you have the internal world. Our duty is to help preserve this inner domain and its functionality. Just like a plant, it will bear fruit if you grow it."

I stare out the door for what seems like a long time. Ten minutes it might have been. Then I sit down in front of him. His words flood the room with such conviction and earnestness, I am compelled to be curious, to consider - no, I am obligated to accept his proposition. He is without a doubt the same man that night on the telephone, bending and projecting will with expert hands, with such powerful persuasion it becomes a mysterious physical force and I've lost my own stature. My shoulders betray me and I sag. I sit and he smiles. As if he knows. Once he deems I'm ready, he slips his ragged hands into his jacket pulling two stacks of paper from the darkness within. He sets them onto the table. One to my left, one to my right.

"To put it simply, though it's always hard to put things simply, we get to business. I know you're interested in business."

I don't speak and listen.

"The deadline to renew our contracts is in three days." He folds his hands over the table. "The contract doesn't expire until August, but there is a transition period needed for everything to be filed away, hierarchical levels bypassed and approvals received, the process completed respectably. If you don't renew the term, as soon as the contract expires in August, you'll find yourself in the hands of the establishment you have been trying so hard to resist and escape from. If you wish to renew the contract, I suggest you read through these packages now and ask if you have any questions. If you wish to terminate any contract, you can terminate either one, but you must choose between them. You have three days to think it over."

Both contracts have the same title: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ACQUISITION TERMS & CONTRACT, Transfer of Ownership and Management of Rights. One is the very same one I've been given, written on my behalf, the Assignee purchasing I.P. from the Assignor, the I.P. that I produce but don't own, that I've never owned, and on the other is written Shizuka Kaneko.

"What does Shizuka have to do with this?"

"Ah, she signed another contract with us not too long ago."

"When?" I don't bother to read it.

"Seems like the middle of November."

When she had approached me in the coffee shop.

I read through her contract quickly. And then mine. It must have taken an hour. It's at least seventy pages each, forming a thick stack full of bewildering elitist jargon and technical terms, punctuated with small italics and insertions as arcane and cryptic as Sumeric cuneiform or complex classical orchestra notation I couldn't read. If I look from afar at the pages, they appear to move and crawl along the paper, grow and shrink, marching like little bugs. The text is in MS Mincho like the first page I had received but the longer I stared at them, the smaller they seemed to be. At the end, each page has become moist with my sweat. I throw them down and make another tea with trembling hands. I almost drop the cup. I don't even have the courtesy to provide him with one. My mother's unfinished cup sits in the middle of the table.

I take a look at the coffee plant, ever still and unmoving, as if it could give me some sense of comfort to wash out the immense disturbance inside me, like a brewing storm over tropical waters, but it stands aloof, aside from me. All of a sudden the room feels hot and stuffy. Outside, it's just as silent as before. I wonder if the rabbit is still there somewhere.

The whole time, the man watches me with a slight smile.

I close my eyes and rub my temples.

"Do you have any questions," he asks.

"I don't understand."

His smile widens. "That's what I'm here for."

"Why," I try again, "why is Shizuka signing over her intellectual property to me?"

"Ah," he taps his long skeletal fingers on the table three times. As though it's code language for something arcane. "Ms. Kaneko hadn't spoken much but from what I understand is that she has an incurable disease."

"What?"

"A terminal illness."

"Like cancer?"

"No, not quite. You see, as you know by now, people undergo something called Processing. Like the crash of waves eroding and shaping limestone. In the eyes of the ones above, who have engineered and sanctioned this process, it's a good thing. It's all about perspective. They believe in eroding citizens into a round sphere with no edges and irregularities. That way these spheres can roll along and function in its proper way. Sitting jagged rocks aren't very useful you see."

He pauses. He's digging for something in his pocket. "Do you mind if I smoke in here?"

"Do as you please," I say.

He lights up a cigarette from his jacket pocket with a match. One quick strike and it flares up, well practiced and oiled motions. A cloud of smoke descends on us and filters my vision. He appears to waver like an apparition. He continues, "Ms. Kaneko is a special one after all - those who are not affected by the Process because of their natural relationship to the Collective as 'espres', as we call it. But Ms. Kaneko realized she had broken the set of Etiquette the espres must follow and had triggered their version of the Process in herself."

My head throbs. So does something within me. "So you're saying this whole time, she's been losing herself."

"Yes, perhaps you can say that. Parts of her slowly evaporate."

"How long does it take before she becomes an Image?"

"Not too long for espres."

"How long?" My voice is impossibly strained. It cracks like plaster.

"Half a year to a year from case studies done. However, there aren't too many cases. They are rare creatures after all."

I count the number of months and realize it's not too far from now.

"Where is she now?"

"Mr. Maeda, rushing things will get you nowhere. You've come a long way and had made all the necessary steps, one after another to reach this place where we can finally meet without interference or outside eyes prying."

"Tell me where she is."

"I don't know where she is. I'm not holding her captive, Mr. Maeda. Emoto, nor I, have any part in this. But you may know where she is after you've first decided what to do with these contracts."

I breathe out in exasperation. "So, if she's transferring her IP to me as an espre, what kind of IP is this?"

"Well, perhaps you've experienced something already, yes? You may catch glimpses of esperic experiences that she has and you will attain her memories and feelings and various other cognitive tendencies. These will be cumulative with your own, you will share an intimate connection - certainly, a pleasant notion, no? Furthermore, because Emoto has ownership of your IP, it will all be kept and recorded in a safe place, like a bank account. It is beneficial for all parties."

"Basically, she is piggybacking my contract and using me as a host for her intellectual data, using me as a vessel for herself."

"That is perhaps one way to put it." He surmises.

I stare back at him in silence.