Game Over

Chapter 60





NO BETTER PLACE to find salt and water than in the ocean, right? I headed out to the beach at Shirahama, a not-too-touristy surfer beach south of Tokyo on the mighty Pacific. It was a cool day, and only a handful of surfers were out trying their luck in the rolling surf, including the legendary Japanese wave rider Katsu. I looked on jealously, but I had homework to do.

Instead of a wetsuit and board, I materialized a beach umbrella, chair, and a three-foot-high stack of chemistry textbooks. I needed to identify and understand the nature of all the chemicals and the reactions that Kildare had written down for me.

The first thing I figured out was why organic chemistry is used as a weed-out course in so many advanced science degrees: it’s a subject so difficult that to make it through you have to be really smart and really dedicated. Something told me if I hadn’t been up against what I was right then, I would have been weeded out myself.

Still, I was making some progress—that is, when I wasn’t busy dwelling on scary and depressing thoughts, like:



How my father had told me from the beginning to give up and leave Japan because I wasn’t ready to face this challenge.



How Number 7 and Number 8 could take on any shape they wanted because they were composed of billions of intelligent parts.



How my best nonimagined friend in the whole world had just been consumed by his parents.



How my enemies had apparently been aware of my every move thus far.



How these greedy, cannibalistic murderers were about to turn all the video-game addicts of the world into raging machines of destruction…



And how I had no idea why all the surfers had just left the water and were now racing up the beach, screaming their heads off in sheer terror.