At three in the afternoon, Tokyo first appeared beneath them as a problem in scale.
MJ had seen cities before. All of them had. Even the V’ren had stopped staring every time Earth stacked buildings higher than seemed sensible. Tokyo was different. It just kept going.
From the windows of the T-24, there was no clean edge where the city stopped and something else began. Buildings crowded against buildings, rail lines flashed between them, elevated roads curled through neighborhoods, and every open patch seemed to have been claimed by a roof, a garden, a sign, a solar array, or somebody’s carefully defended little piece of green.
Kevin leaned closer to the window.
“Jesus.”
MJ looked past him. “Very insightful.”
“I was going to say something profound.”
“You still can.”
“I have decided not to.”
Y’kem had been watching the city for several minutes without saying anything.
Finally he said, “There are too many people.”
“There are a hundred and fifty million people in Japan,” MJ said.
“I know the number.”
He looked down again.
“The number was less upsetting.”
The shuttle banked.
Somewhere below, a rooftop marked with a large landing circle slid into view between taller buildings. Production equipment had been pushed behind barriers around the pad, and several studio employees in bright vests were already waiting.
Maja looked through the window.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” MJ said.
“No airport?”
“No.”
“No customs line?”
“No.”
“No train?”
“No.”
Maja considered this.
“I could get used to being important.”
Rita, sitting across from her, adjusted the cuff of her jacket.
“We are not important.”
Maja pointed through the window at the people waiting for their spaceship to land on a television studio.
“Sure.”
The T-24 settled onto the roof with less drama than a delivery truck pulling into a loading bay.
The hatch opened.
Tokyo hit them all at once.
Heat rising from the roof. Wind curling between the buildings. The deep mechanical hum of the city below. Voices. Fans. Traffic. Somewhere far beneath them, a siren. Somewhere nearby, bells from a rail crossing they could not see.
And cameras.
Not many.
Enough.
MJ stopped at the top of the shuttle steps.
“Oh, come on.”
A photographer snapped three pictures before she reached the roof.
Kevin came out behind her.
“You knew there would be cameras.”
“I knew there would be cameras inside.”
“Apparently Japan has discovered portable ones.”
She turned around.
“I liked you better in Missouri.”
“You say that every day.”
“No, yesterday I said Korea.”
Chem emerged behind them, saw the skyline, and forgot the cameras existed.
He walked three steps toward the edge before a studio employee intercepted him with the gentle, practiced panic of someone whose job description had not included preventing an extraterrestrial teenager from wandering toward a rooftop drop.
“Please, this way.”
Chem looked at the railing.
Then at the employee.
Then back at the railing.
“I was only looking.”
The employee smiled with impressive professionalism.
“Yes.”
Maja whispered, “That means absolutely not.”
“I understood.”
They were moved inside almost immediately.
The rooftop door opened onto a stairwell that looked disappointingly ordinary.
That bothered MJ more than the cameras.
“You land a spaceship on the roof and this is what we get?”
Kevin looked around at painted concrete walls and emergency signs.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. More future.”
They went down one level and the future arrived with a vengeance.
The studio corridor was alive.
Assistants moved in both directions carrying tablets, garment bags, bottled drinks, cables, makeup kits, clipboards and things nobody in the youth group could identify. Doors opened and closed around them. Screens mounted along the walls showed different feeds from inside the building, advertisements, news, another variety program, their own rooftop arrival already being replayed on a monitor fifty feet from where it had happened.
Maja stopped.
“That was thirty seconds ago.”
A production assistant gently steered her forward.
“Yes.”
“You already have graphics on it.”
“Yes.”
Maja looked impressed.
“I respect that.”
They were split up before anyone could object.
MJ disappeared into one chair.
Maja into another.
Rita was intercepted by two women who immediately began discussing her hair between themselves.
Kevin sat down and discovered that surrender was easier.
The V’ren caused a brief crisis.
Not a serious one.
A professional one.
Three makeup artists stood around Sael under bright lights, examining his face with the focused concern of engineers presented with an unfamiliar machine.
Sael looked from one to another.
“Am I defective?”
The youngest makeup artist nearly dropped her brush.
“No!”
“That was quick.”
“No, no, you are very beautiful.”
Sael relaxed.
“Thank you.”
The three women resumed their conference.
Maja, two chairs over, watched in the mirror.
“They have no idea what to do with you.”
“I had determined this.”
“They’re terrified of making you less green.”
“I would prefer to remain green.”
Chem was already enjoying himself.
Someone had decided the solution to his hair was volume.
This decision had consequences.
By the time they were finished, he looked as if he had been exposed to a moderate electrical discharge.
MJ saw him in the mirror and started laughing.
Chem looked offended.
“You are next.”
“I have normal hair.”
The woman working on MJ stopped with the comb halfway through a section.
MJ saw her expression in the mirror.
“Relatively normal.”
The woman continued.
Kevin got foundation, powder, something around his eyes, something else on his lips, then watched another person clip a microphone to his shirt and run the wire beneath his jacket.
He looked down.
“I feel expensive.”
MJ was still laughing at Chem.
“You look expensive.”
“I normally look free.”
Rita, whose hair had been transformed with alarming efficiency, looked over.
“No one here believes that.”
They were offered food.
Almost everyone refused.
Then Chem saw the tray.
“What is that?”
“Onigiri.”
“What is inside?”
The assistant answered.
Chem took two.
Y’kem took one.
Sael took one because Y’kem had.
Maja took one because everyone else had.
MJ stared at them.
“You people are about to be on television.”
Chem peeled back the wrapper.
“Yes.”
“You’re eating rice balls.”
“Yes.”
Kevin reached past her and took one.
MJ looked at him.
He shrugged.
“You told me to learn Japanese culture.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is what I heard.”
By the time hair and makeup were finished, they no longer looked like people who had stepped off a shuttle twenty minutes earlier.
That was apparently the point.
They were moved again.
Another corridor.
Another set of doors.
Then the sound changed.
The walls began to carry the audience.
Applause first, distant and muffled.
Then laughter.
Then music.
The studio suddenly stopped being a collection of hallways and became the thing they had come for.
A producer gathered them near the entrance to the set and spoke while another assistant checked microphones one final time.
MJ looked through the gap between two curtains.
Bright floor.
Huge screens.
A curved desk.
Panel seating.
Cameras moving silently on tracks.
An audience packed into rising rows beyond the lights.
Hiro was already onstage.
So were Daichi, Shun, Noa, Emi and Rika.
Maja leaned around MJ.
“That is a lot more people than I thought.”
Rita said, “Do not say that when we go out there.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Kevin looked toward MJ.
“You nervous?”
“No.”
Maja looked at her.
“Liar.”
MJ turned.
“I am not nervous.”
“You are bouncing your knee.”
MJ looked down.
Her knee stopped.
“Traitor.”
Y’kem stood behind them, perfectly still.
Rita noticed.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“You look like you are about to fight someone.”
“That is how I look.”
Chem finished the last bite of his onigiri.
Sael stared toward the stage.
D’stan rolled her shoulders once and settled.
The floor manager lifted one hand.
Conversation stopped.
The audience beyond the curtain was laughing at something Hiro had said.
The floor manager raised five fingers.
Then four.
Three.
Two.
One.
The light above the entrance changed.
The curtain opened.
And for the first time since Missouri, there was nowhere in the room the eight of them could stand that wasn’t part of the show.
