The screen blinked, as if it were a giant eye. When it opened, it looked out on an aerial view of Japan.

“Here is Nippon, as it was on the evening of March twenty-eighth, twenty seventeen,” said Oshicora. He touched the screen, and they descended through the clouds until they were over the island of Honshu. “Here is Tokyo.”

The city sprawled around the bay, street after street. Piers jutted into the sea. Buildings rose up from the ground. Oshicora brought them down to pavement level, where the scene slowly rotated. Shops, brightly lit, filled with the goods of the world. Everything was as it had been, the day before the whole island chain started to turn into Atlantis. Everything, except the people.

“I get it,” said Petrovitch. “How detailed are you going to make this?”

“Perfectly so. Down to the feel of the silk on a kimono.”

“That’s ambitious. No wonder you need Sorenson. You want a totally immersive city.”

“I beg to correct you, Petrovitch-san. A whole country. Every tree, every blade of grass, every grain of sand. Mapped and reproduced from the memories of one hundred and twenty million Japanese survivors. Not just houses, but everything in them. Not just parks, but the scent of chrysanthemums. Cherry blossom will fall like rain once more. It will be exact. Our homeland will rise from the sea as if it had never fallen. The shinkansen will run again.”

Petrovitch wondered if his heart had skipped a beat. “Nu ti dajosh! What the hell are you running this on?”

“Below this building is a room. It is bombproof, fireproof, waterproof, electromagnetic and radiation hard. In it is a quantum computer. If every nikkeijin visited the simulation at the same time, it would still run flawlessly.”

“Ooh.” Petrovitch’s fingers tingled. He started to think about all the things he could do with such massively parallel processing, and broke out in a cold sweat.

“Petrovitch-san? Are you unwell?”

“No, I’m fine.” He rested his hands on the table. “Just taking a moment. That’s really very impressive.”

“I am happy. Now, I will leave you briefly in the care of Sorenson, while I attend to the other matter we discussed earlier. If you will excuse me?” Oshicora bowed and left the shrine, leaving the single chair unoccupied.

“Mind if I?” asked Petrovitch.

“Knock yourself out, kid,” said Sorenson. “So what do you make of our employer?”

“He’s not my employer,” said Petrovitch firmly, searching for the toggle that would give him a standard Roman keyboard. “I sort of bumped into his daughter this morning.”

“Sonja: I’ve seen her around, though I’ve been told not to talk to her. But I haven’t seen a wife, and he doesn’t wear a ring.” Sorenson looked around to see if he could be overheard. “Not that you have to be married to have kids. Not over here, anyways.”