It seemed like the world, having been bored with my normal and unexceptional life through the first fifteen years of my existence, was tossing all the impossible things it had at me at once. I had just become accustomed to the silent but powerful alien, the shy and clueless time traveler, and the smug, talented part-time esper. Haruhi… well, nobody ever gets used to Haruhi. But this… a phone box Koizumi knows is there before it is there? Which he couldn’t see until I told him what it was? And which was like no phone booth I’d ever seen as a kid, or in the movies, or on television, or anyplace at all?
Yet this dark blue box had the words- in English, even stranger yet- POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX in large plain letters above the doors. It was too small to be anything else other than a phone booth… except, I mused, for the portable toilets they used on construction sites, but this was obviously too ornate and decorative for that. My brain would doubtless have continued to gnaw and worry at the strangeness if the doors hadn’t chosen that instant to open right in my face.
For a moment I had a glimpse of a white interior, of a space much larger than could be accounted for by the box itself. Then my view was obstructed by a large, oddly dressed form stepping into the doorway- much taller than I was, possibly approaching two meters in height, wearing a hodgepodge of overcoat, waistcoat, shirt, slacks, large floppy hat, and an immense scarf that seemed to have an independent life beyond its wearer.
“See, Sarah?” the man said over his shoulder, speaking loudly enough that for Japan it would be a shout. The man could give Haruhi lessons on confidence. “The chameleon circuit might still be broken, but the perception filter works absolutely perfectly!” Only then did he turn fully forward, which fortunately saved him from stepping straight into me. “Oh,” he said, just barely nonplussed at my presence. “How do you do?”
Now in what world would I ever have been able to give an answer to that?
“Good afternoon,” Koizumi said, speaking up. “I am Itsuki Koizumi, and this is Kyon.”
Am I cursed with that nickname forever? At least allow me the chance to introduce myself and let other people make up their own minds.
“Nice to meet you. I’m the Doctor.” He reached out a hand, and without hesitation Koizumi took it into his own and shook it.
A head managed to slide out of the box around the Doctor’s body. “Hello!” she said. “So, the ‘perception filter’ works perfectly, does it, Doctor?”
“And this is Sarah Jane Smith,” the Doctor said, stepping out of the doorway to allow a woman about the same apparent age as the elder Asahina, but slightly taller and nothing like as voluptuous, to emerge.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said. “Now: what’s a perception filter?”
“Well, according to the Doctor,” Sarah Jane rolled her eyes dramatically, indicating that any claims he made needed to be taken with a large pinch of salt, “it’s a psychic technology that amplifies the human tendency to ignore things which are out of place.”
“The more out of place the thing, the easier it is to conceal,” the Doctor agreed. “Some civilizations have duplicated the technology, calling it a Somebody Else’s Problem field.”
“Supposedly, nobody was supposed to see the TARDIS materialize. We spent several minutes hovering here while he tried to fix the thing.”
“And it worked,” the Doctor asserted. “Just look around you.” He gestured to the people walking past on the sidewalk. Sure enough, everyone was walking by without so much as glancing over at us. A few walked past Koizumi close enough that winter jackets brushed against his blazer, and yet no one so much as noticed. One person walked straight up to the phone box, took two steps sideways, and then continued forward as if nothing had happened.
Oh, brother. I always knew we Japanese had a talent for ignoring things that didn’t conform to the expected, but this was getting out of hand.
“Oh really?” Sarah Jane seemed amused by the Doctor’s unshaken confidence. “Then how do you explain these two?”
“Well, the perception filter’s not one hundred percent effective, even on Earth,” the Doctor said. “The psychically talented can see right through it, of course.”
So that explained why Koizumi had acted so strangely. His esper powers were normally limited to sensing Haruhi’s mood or dealing with issues in closed space, but apparently he had just enough sensitivity to sense the filter or field or whatever it was.
“Also time travelers, or those with enough constant exposure to temporal emissions, can sense other time travelers and their equipment, perception filter or not.”
Was that what Asahina (big) had meant about being able to see things others overlooked?
“And then there are non-humans like myself with either more advanced or radically different brains, who simply aren’t affected by perception filters.”
So Nagato would also be able to see the phone box, if she were here.
“And finally, of course, once somebody knows there’s something to see here, the perception filter loses its effect on them. It’s not true invisibility.”
“Then why all the bother about turning the thing on, if it doesn’t actually work that well?” Sarah Jane asked pointedly.
“If this was your Earth, your time, Sarah,” the Doctor said, “I wouldn’t have bothered. But this is an entirely different universe. The charged vacuum corridor threw the TARDIS across dimensional barriers. We’re not even in the same universe as our own anymore, so I thought it would be best to be circumspect.”
Circumspect? Wearing a set of clothes that looked like a blind man grabbing at random from a closet the size of a commuter train, this constitutes circumspect?
“I beg your pardon,” Koizumi asked, “but did I hear you correctly? You come from another universe entirely? That raises interesting philosophical questions, beginning with the basic premise. After all, the concept behind the word ‘universe’ implies that the universe is everything that exists, or that can exist.”
“Well, that’s a basic failing of human languages,” the Doctor grinned. “Unfortunately I don’t have the time for a deep philosophical discussion just now.”
How I wished, on many past occasions, that I’d had some excuse to avoid Koizumi’s frequent plunges into philosophical ramblings.
“Look, let’s keep this simple,” Sarah Jane said. “What is the name of this planet?”
“Earth.”
“All right. What country are we in?”
“Japan. Kobe, to be more exact.”
“Oh? I’ve always wanted to visit Japan.”
“And what year is it?” the Doctor asked. When Koizumi told him, he smiled and turned to Sarah. “Only twenty-five years ahead of your own time, Sarah, give or take. And based on technology, culture, and other appearances, I’d say this Earth is a very close parallel to your own. Say!” The Doctor flashed a grin that showed more teeth than I thought existed in a human face. Fortunately for my imagination they were the normal kind, just very large. “That’s an idea. Is there a local library? It’s possible that the historical differences between this world and our own might hold a clue to why we were pulled off course. Could you look into that, Sarah?”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got to see about repairing the TARDIS. The passage through the charged vacuum corridor shook her up pretty badly. We’re cut off from the Eye of Harmony, so the girl’s running on emergency power. To a certain extent she can recharge from the C. V. C. or any other dimensional or time-space rifts in the area, but I don’t think we can rely on more than one opportunity to get back to our home dimension.”
“You mean we might be stranded here?”
The Doctor smiled again. “Well, I certainly don’t intend to be stranded anywhere. Off you go! I’m sure one of these young men will be glad to show you the way to a library nearby.”
Don’t we get to participate in this conversation? Little things aside, if Haruhi were to catch either Koizumi or myself with a strange Western woman, there’d be hell to pay.
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(Posted Tue, 07 May 2013 17:06)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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