Transition and Restart, book one: Arrivals

Aftermath and Prelude

Prelude, 2040

Nakagawa Akio sat outside the tent in his foldable chair. As a man in his mid thirties he shouldn't be in charge of handling arrivals from a transition, but early April 2040 wasn't a normal event.

"Sure they'll transit this year?" the woman to his left asked.

Nakagawa nodded. "Last year's arrivals said they planned to gather everyone originally involved for a midsummer's party in Sweden."

He stared at the hillside ahead. A few more minutes and he would know if he had interpreted the planned party correctly. Always the same time shift, he thought. Transit late June and arrive early April.

"Seems awfully early to me. They'll be around forty years old. Wouldn't they have children to care for?" The female voice from his left recalled him to the here and now.

And there was that of course. Those who were parents couldn't blithely transit and leave their children behind in an upstream world. As far as scientists knew the transition event only allowed for downstream transitions.

"I wish I knew," Nakagawa admitted. "Of all the arrivals since they broke the code I guess I'm the one closest to them." He sighed. "But I can't really say I was that close. By the time I transited I was retired from active service." He grinned and turned to look at her. "Seventy years old, you know and they were university students so there was a minor age gap so to say."

She shuddered. "It's not natural. Well, I guess it is, but it doesn't feel natural." She looked at him with a question in her eyes.

"Almost twenty years ago. I arrived here 2021," he answered. "So I'm almost 90 subjective age. What about it? I feel like my 35 objective. You get used to it after a while." Nakagawa smiled at her. "You know I was the principal of Himekaizen?"

She nodded. "Yeah, in the upstream world. You never existed in this one. Said it wasn't natural." She was visibly sulking by now. "I know you're called Principal Nakagawa out of courtesy, but there's never been a Principal Nakagawa of the Himekaizen Academy here."

Nakagawa rose from his chair and enjoyed the spring breeze for a few moments before he sat down again. "I could apply for the job, you know. I know the school after all." He reached for a cup of tea and sipped it a little while he waited for the event.

A bit below them a lone sakura bloomed its promise of a restart as befitted the occasion.

"Well, I arrived here close to twenty years ago," he said when she kept her silence. "I wouldn't know which of them are parents now. They've lived those years upstream and the arrivals we've had since my transition didn't have any information about their family lives."

Nakagawa rose from his chair again. It would happen any moment now. "I've staked my reputation on this," he continued, more a monologue now than anything he needed to tell the woman. "I refuse to believe they'll go to such lengths without a reason. The upstream world is almost identical to this one and you don't move a lot of people from Japan to Sweden late June just so that you can have an obscure party a continent away." Especially not that close to the transit point.

The voice of a government agent reached him from his right. "Sensei, we have incoming arrivals!"

Nakagawa grabbed his binoculars and scanned the hillside. One, two, no five bodies materialised on it.

"Incoming! I count five arrivals. Move vehicles and collect them!" the agent said.

Yes, I was right! I know at least one of those faces. They look so young!

And they should. All of them fourteen years old objectively, no matter how old they were subjectively. Nakagawa knew that, but it still surprised him to see the kids pop into existence on that hillside even though he had spent the entire day waiting for it to happen.

"Agent Carlfeldt, I'll join the ride and welcome them personally. After that we split them into different middle schools and gather them together in Himekaizen next year." Just like in the old days. In the upstream days.

The transition event had occurred. Now the arrivals had a restart waiting for them. Nakagawa and Hammargren had finally agreed on that, even if it took some head butting first. The age reset was just too great to allow a fourteen year old child to take his or her place in society as an adult, no matter the subjective age.

A transition had to be followed by a slow reintroduction to society.

Ulf, you really coined a good expression for it. Transition and restart.

***

Midsummer's eve, 2040, preparation of the traditional garden party

Ulf fastened the last line. "Like this." he said.

They were erecting party tents. For shade; there would be no rain this evening.

He looked at the other five. This was their own moment, the six of them together before the guests arrived.

"It's April over there," Kyoko said. At forty she'd gained a little weight, but he could still remember her face from when they became friends.

"Feels strange, doesn't it?" Ulf gazed at the sea glittering in the afternoon sun. The June afternoon sun. "I wonder if he knows."

"He knows." Ryu looked up from where he sat on his feet fastening a line of his own. "I made certain last year's transits knew we planned to gather everyone here this year."

Ulf smirked. He might have misunderstood, but Nakagawa was a sly and calculating bastard.

"He knows," Christina said. "Ryu," she looked at the man who slowly got back on his legs, "can be very convincing. He probably filled them with thoughts about how unusual it is for a bunch of Japanese people to travel all the way to Sweden this time of the year." She turned her head and looked Ulf straight in his eyes. Fifteen or forty, it didn't matter. She was still the most beautiful woman he had seen in his entire life.

In response Ryu grinned, and a handsome grin it was. A quarter of a century had done nothing to his good looks and charms. Ulf knew how women turned and stared after him, just like they had done back then when they were high school girls.

"Let's hope this midsummer's party turns out better than the last one," Ulf said. He shuddered silently. That one had been a disaster.

He was rewarded with guffaws from all five of them. Even Noriko allowed a slightly hysterical laughter to escape from her lips.

"Summer of 2016. Yep, best forgotten." Then she laughed again. Her small body carried a surprisingly strong voice, but then it always had.

"And now?" Yukio asked.

Ulf turned and looked at his best friend ever since they met as school kids. "We party, I guess."

"For a week?"

"For a week," Ulf agreed. A week was all they had. After that the six of them would be separated by a chasm a world apart.

"I wonder if the sakura is blooming."

Ulf looked at Noriko. Sakura were months behind them, in this world. "Maybe," he said. "Let's hope they do, to celebrate new beginnings." New beginnings in that other world, where it was still April.

"To think it all began in high school," Kyoko mused.

"Actually," Ulf began, but he fell silent. With something like panic in his mind he sought confirmation in the eyes of the others. When they nodded he found strength to continue. "Actually," he said again, "it began earlier than that."