Consequences Unforeseen

Tokyo, Tuesday Night June 4th 1991 - the flight of the dragonfly

Tokyo, Tuesday Night June 4th 1991 – the flight of the dragonfly

 

The next hour was a complete blur when he thought back on it later.

On the screen in front of them, the image of St Andrews golf course was replaced in a nanosecond by a view of the dining room downstairs, seen from high above the diners.

Yoshikawa moved his fingers deftly on the Kyocera phone and the dragonfly moved lower and paused in the center of the table he had selected. Douglas watched as the mouth of one of the diners opened in a laugh and had to stop his own laugh as the view moved in ever closer until he felt he was actually in the guy’s mouth. At the last second the dragonfly moved back swiftly and soared instantly high and away, circling back downwards to hover beneath the tables this time and observe the hand of one of the diners move slowly up and down the inside thigh of his dining companion’s wife.

“For Fuck’s sake,” Douglas thought, ‘This is totally amazing. They can’t see this thing hurtling about right amongst them. I need to have a go with this damn thing.”

Yoshikawa seemed to sense this and he said, “Here Douglas san, come have a play,” and he set the device on ‘hover’ command, which left Douglas with a clear view of the room from above once more.

He continued, “You can use the screen on the phone or the screen on the wall, but you have become the dragonfly. You are its brain and it is your eyes. Take it where you will.

Douglas found the thing easy to manipulate. It was forgiving and seemed to sense the pilot’s intent. He weaved it in and out of the tables for several minutes, pausing at random to take a look at some papers here or an open purse there. It quickly became second nature to him.

Now Yoshikawa gave him a challenge. “Bring it home to us Douglas san, bring it here into this room.” And he glanced at Keiko giving her a nod of approval.

This was an interesting set of maneuvers to accomplish and he emptied his mind of everything but thinking like he was sitting there in the cockpit of his aircraft once more. In his mind he sat comfortably behind the dragonfly’s eyes and he steered it with skill and precision through the double doorway, up the wide staircase and arrived at the doors outside of the ‘Golf Room” as he had named it. The doors of course were closed tight. This all happened without him or anyone else being able to see the dragonfly itself. He truly had become ‘one’ with it.

He set it to hover and looked over at Yoshikawa, who was seated next to Keiko. Both of them had knowing smiles on their faces; like the Mona Lisa had.

Yoshikawa motioned for him to approach and said, “Give me control young man. I have one more demonstration for you before we make plans for our next set of moves. This is going to be expensive, but worth it I think.”

He took the phone back and began moving the dragon fly ever closer to the outside of the solid oak door. Douglas watched as it touched the doorway gently and here inside he heard a soft click as it did so.

He thought to himself, “What in God’s name can he do now. The doors are shut so that’s it, game fucking over!”

Yoshikawa guided the dragonfly backwards down the staircase to about halfway, pressed a couple of keys on the Kyocera keypad and then gave the device back to Douglas, motioning for him to watch the big screen on the wall.

What happened next amazed Bill Douglas more than anything he’d seen so far. In fact it happened so fast that he could not be sure if he HAD actually witnessed it. The outside of the door rushed at him on the screen above; it came so fast that he forgot they were watching an image and he almost ducked in the last tenth of a second.

There was a sharp smack from the right hand door of the room, and a small hole appeared magically in its surface. Perfectly round and he could see the light from outside shining through like a beam into the darker confines of this room.

Yoshikawa smiled over at him and said, “That’s what it can do to a solid oak door. You have no idea what it can do to a human target!”

Demonstration over, they did indeed play some golf, No one mentioned the dragonfly again during their game, but when he returned home later that night, Douglas had his own Kyocera phone and ten of the amazing dragonflies. All these billions of dollars worth of effort locked up in a small leather briefcase.