At the blacksmith’s there was a basket overflowing with Suma-phones and Ai-phones: he was tossing them, one after another, into the fire. They had all been confiscated from ordinary citizens. These devices, so that they wouldn’t feed the people misinformation, were now prohibited. But the blacksmith didn’t leave them to burn; after a while he took them out again, putting them one by one on his anvil and pounding them flat. Then a dragonfly in welding glasses placed the flattened phones on a tray and flew them to a factory far to the back, where they were seen being made into metal helmets. These were not ordinary helmets, though: once they were put on, they attached themselves firmly to the human skull and could never be removed.

Now people were taking off their shoes. When they were barefoot, they slipped their jackets off, along with their trousers, and stuffed them all into large hempen sacks. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re giving our clothes to the soldiers,” they said. “We want to give them everything. We’ve given them our clothes, our shoes, and all we own.”

“But how will you live without your clothes?”

“We’ll be fine, for our hearts have truly been washed clean.”

“Were your brains washed as well?”

“Our brains, too, are clean. We are now blank slates once again.”

I looked up at the sky and saw several huge metal flies circling overhead. Soldiers lined up and aimed their guns. They were so perfectly aligned they looked like the teeth on a zipper. They simply couldn’t be human. I came back to myself with a start to find myself staring at a fly perched on the zipper of my handbag. When I slid the zipper open, the fly disappeared, leaving only the darkness inside.

“Really?” I heard a voice say in Japanese. That trendy young guy, straight from Shibuya, was standing beside me. “You gotta be kidding,” he said. His eyes were narrowed in a forced smile with fear quickly spreading through it. Apparently, a soldier had told him that since he was so crazy about their military planes, he’d take him for a ride in one. “No thanks, I’m just fine, right here on the ground.” I couldn’t tell if this was his normal way of talking, or if he was trying to be funny. “Really—please don’t go to all that trouble. I don’t need to fly. Just my pics’re plenty good enough for me.” The soldier’s eyes were hidden under his helmet; all I could see was the nervous trendy kid, trying to fend off this sudden invitation: “Like I said, I’m fine. Take someone else for a ride.”

But the soldier wasn’t going to give up that easily. “Didn’t you hear me? I said I don’t want to go up.” Now he was getting irritated. He was mild-mannered at first, but he knows just when to get angry, I thought, strangely impressed, while at the same time frightened at the change in his voice. “Lay off,” he said, “and quit trying to cram this military stuff down my throat. What’s that? Duty, you say? You guys may be soldiers, but you’re paid by a private corporation, aren’t you? So what gives you the right to talk about duty? What? You belong to a government organization? You can’t be serious. You’re joking, right?” A storm seemed to be brewing. Spouting Shibuya slang, he told them he was just an anime-crazed kid, useless in wartime. Trying desperately to get away, wiggling his hips, he edged slowly backward as he rattled off excuses. “I mean, like, gimme a break—I don’t even have a driver’s license. A pilot’s license? You gotta be crazy—nobody I know has a pilot’s license. What? Training? Honest, I’m not cut out for that kinda stuff.” His last step backward sent him tumbling silently into a huge hole that had opened up behind him.