Chapter 20

TINA CATALINA MET US AT THE DOOR WEARING SWEATPANTS and a pajama top covered with Japanese kids' characters - frowning penguins, happy octopuses, and a certain kitty whose first name is a common salutation.

"New hair, Hunter?"

"Well spotted. You remember Jen, right?"

She blinked sleepily. "Oh, yeah, from the focus group yesterday. I liked what you said, Jen. Very cool."

"Thanks."

Tina squinted. "But didn't you have... like... more hair?"

Jen's fingers skimmed her scalp, and she grinned. "I got bored."

"So you buzzed it." Tina stepped back, taking in my black-tie getup and Jen's gigantic dress. "And then went to the prom? Do they still have those?"

"A launch party, actually." I fingered my torn thousand-dollar sleeve. "It's been a long day."

"Looks like it. Are the purple hands a retro-punk thing?"

"Yes, they're a retro-punk thing."

"Cute, I guess."

Tina led us into her kitchen, which had pink walls and brutally bright lighting. Character-themed cooking gadgets and porcelain good-luck cats filled the counter space, and the small kitchen table was heart shaped.

Tina yawned and flicked on a coffeemaker in the form of a smiling frog.

"Did we get you out of bed?" Jen asked.

"No, I was up. Just about to eat breakfast."

"You mean dinner?"

"No, breakfast. I'm in jet-lag mode."

"Tina's an air-mile addict," I explained. "She lives on Tokyo time."

Tina nodded in sleepy agreement, pulling eggs out of the refrigerator. Her job took her to Japan every few weeks, and she was constantly juggling night and day, shifting into or out of Japanese time zones. She structured her life around jet lag. The light that bathed the kitchen came from special full-spectrum bulbs, which fooled her brain into thinking that the sun was shining. A big chart on the wall tracked the convoluted maneuvers of her sleep cycle.

It was a taxing schedule, but cool hunting in Japan could pay off handsomely. Tina was famous for having been the first to spot a new species of cell phone, one that was just beginning to catch on here in America. Part phone and part electronic pet, the device required that you feed it (by dialing a special number), socialize it (by frequently calling other pet-phone owners), and play thumb-candy games to keep it happy. In return, your phone would occasionally ring and deliver messages of love in a sort of meowing language. Even more addictively, all registered owners were ranked in a nonstop global competition, updated by the minute, the highest achievers receiving free minutes with which to supplement their obsession. The whole system had been hacked together by users in Japan, but here in the States the big corporations were taking over, and Tina was getting a percentage.

Besides the professional payoffs, Tina loved all things cute and big-eyed, which the Japanese have a mortal lock on.

Her rice cooker, which was pink and in the shape of a rabbit, said something in a high-pitched voice. Probably that the rice was done.

"Hungry?" she asked.

"I ate at the party," Jen said.

"Actually, I"  -  Tina's idea of food was freeze-dried snow peas and heavily salted seaweed cakes, but I was close to fainting - "am starving."

She doled out rice into two bowls.

"So what's up, Hunter-san? Spotted any pet phones at school?"

"Uh, it's summer. We don't go to school in summer here in America."

"Oh, yeah."

"You haven't heard from Mandy, have you?"

"Since the meeting yesterday?" Tina shrugged. "No. Why?"

"She's missing."

Tina thunked a bowl in front of me and sat down. I looked down to see a raw egg staring up at me from the bed of rice.

"Missing?" Tina poured soy sauce on her own raw egg and began to stir the whole thing into brown mush, adding red-pepper flakes. My stomach growled, indifferent to how the rest of me was reacting to the sight.

"We were supposed to meet her downtown," Jen said. "All we found was her phone."

"Oh, the poor thing," Tina said, meaning the phone. She looked like she'd seen an abandoned puppy on the roadside.

"We haven't been able to find her, but a lot of strange things have happened in the meantime," I said. "There's one you could help us with. At this party tonight there was this weird ad that gave us headaches."

"Pardon me?"

"Well, they were flogging this shampoo... which was really purple dye." I waved a retro-punk hand. "I mean - "

"What he means is this," Jen said, pointing her Poo-Sham camera at Tina. I barely had time to shut my eyes. The familiar flicker penetrated my eyelids like a drill.

When I opened them, Tina wore the Poo-Sham-dazzled expression.

"Whoa. That was weird."

"Yeah, everyone at the party thought so too," I said. "And I remembered some urban legend about a Japanese kids' show. It gave people seizures or something?"

"That's no legend," Tina said softly, still dazed from the flash. "That's episode 38."

"You asked to see this," Tina said. "So don't blame me if you die."

Jen and I glanced at each other. We had relocated to Tina's living room, where there was a VCR and where I was discovering that rice, raw egg, and soy sauce all stirred up actually tastes good. It does if you're starving, anyway. According to Tina, it was what Japanese kids ate for breakfast, which was roughly what time it was in Tokyo right then. Maybe I was having some sort of trans-Pacific psychic moment.

"If we die?" Jen asked.

"Not that anyone really died, of course. But six hundred or so kids went to the hospital."

"From watching TV?" Jen asked for the tenth time. "And this actually happened?"

"Yeah. December 16,1997, a date that will live in infamy. You should have seen all the Japanimation-bashing that went on."

"And you've actually watched it yourself?" I asked. "Willingly?"

"Sure. I had to see it, you know? Besides, we should be safe. Only one in twenty viewers actually had a bad reaction. And it was mostly kids who were affected. I mean, younger than you guys. I think the average age was about ten."

That made me feel somewhat better.

"But it was a kids' show," Jen said. "Maybe it affects everyone, but not that many adults were watching."

That made me feel less better. I wanted my protective bangs back.

"The scientists who've studied it don't think so," Tina said. "After the first bunch of kids went to the hospital in the afternoon, the killer segment got shown on the national news that night."

"They showed it twice?" Jen said.

"Anything for ratings. So anyway, people watching the news are all ages, but again it was kids who went to the hospital. Mostly kids, anyway. They think it's because their brains and nervous systems are still developing."

"But there weren't any children at the Hoi Aristoi party," Jen said. "And nobody had a total seizure. They just talked funny and then started acting crazy."

"Huh," Tina said. "Sounds like what you've got there is a totally new thing: an engineered paka-paka sequence."

"A what?"

"Japanese animators use flashing colors a lot," Tina said. "They've even got a word for it: paka-paka. What happened with episode 38 was an accident: they stumbled on exactly the right flash rate to put kids in the hospital. They weren't trying to, though."

Jen nodded. "But if someone at the party was using paka-paka intentionally, maybe they've been testing it. And learned how to make it work on older people."

"And get everybody, instead of just one person in twenty?" Tina looked dubious.

"That's a lovely thought," I said.

"So what does all this have to do with Mandy, anyway?" Tina asked. Jen and I looked at each other.

"We don't know," I said.

"The people who do know invited us to this party," Jen said, "But we have no idea what they're up to, besides messing with people's heads."

Tina held up the remote. "Well, episode 38 falls into that category. You want to see it or not?"

Jen nodded. "I'm dying to."

"Nice choice of words," I muttered.

Tina turned on the TV. "Just don't sit too close. Supposedly it's worse the closer you are."

I took my rice goo and scooted back to the couch. Jen stayed where she was, ready to ride the wave. Like I said: Innovators often lack the risk-assessment gene.

On the other hand, maybe it was simple disbelief. It was hard to comprehend that TV could hurt you - it was like finding out your old babysitter was a serial killer.

"So," said Tina, "this is episode 38, also known as 'Computer Warrior Polygon. "

The screen jittered to life, with the fuzzy quality of a copy of a copy of a bootleg. I hoped the low resolution would give us an added layer of protection.

An English title appeared:

Warning: NOT for Viewing by Children.

May Cause Seizures.

I moved back as far as I could.

The cartoon started, typical anime: a bunch of shrill-voiced characters screaming in Japanese, a certain well-known brand of evolving monsters familiar from toys and trading cards, no image lasting more than a half second.

"I'm having a seizure already," I said over the noise.

Tina fast-forwarded ahead, which didn't help.

After a couple of minutes in hyperdrive, she brought the chaos back to normal speed. "Okay, our story so far: Pikachu, Ash, and Misty are inside a computer. An antivirus program is about to try to delete them by firing missiles."

"Do antivirus programs frequently use missiles?" Jen asked.

"It's metaphorical."

"All," Jen said. "Like Tron, but on too many Frappuccinos." (It was a good line. I'll allow the product placement.)

Among the careening images I spotted missiles being launched. Then Pikachu, the yellow, ratlike protagonist of the franchise, burst forward to unleash a piercing battle cry and a bolt of lightning.

"Here we go," Tina said.

I squinted and hoped Jen was likewise chickening out. As Pikachu's electric bolt struck the missiles, the screen began to flash red and blue, flickering off the apartment's white walls inescapably for six long seconds. Then it was over.

A slight headache, nothing more. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Those were the same colors as the Poo-Sham ad," I noted.

Tina nodded. "Red causes the strongest reaction."

"But it wasn't nearly as intense as at the party. Did it feel the same to you, Jen?"

She didn't respond, her green eyes trained on the still-frantic images of the cartoon. Had she gotten caught up in the plot?

"Jen?"

She slumped forward, rolling over onto her side.

Her eyelids were fluttering.