"Interlude - Eden's Apocrypha I"

Summer 2025. The counties of eastern Oregon seceded in favor of joining neighboring Idaho. The Oregon National Guard mobilized in response. Secessionist refugees fled from the Guard into Idaho, which announced its own general mobilization. The Idaho Guard air wing hit the Oregon Guard base at Klamath Falls. Washington mobilized in favor of Oregon; volunteers from Montana and Wyoming flooded the Greater Idaho ranks. Oregon and Idaho guardsmen stared each other down across the Snake River, the country at large holding its breath as negotiators wrangled in neutral Reno in Nevada…

It was under these circumstances that Jackson Mississippi and Doc Rooney arrived in Tokyo. Their Cushing College co-op in the spring on the micro-synthetic polyethylene project left them with a boatload of money. The Doc was there to try the food; Jackson was there to find an old Zen master (and to help repopulate the country if his services were required, heyooo!)

The Sen no Shinjitsu no Shakai no Michi (lit. Way of a Thousand Truths Society) was said to have been founded during the Sengoku period over five hundred years ago, though if the rumors were to be believed, they went farther back, perhaps to the Heian, or even the Yayoi, before Christ was born. This sect of mountain warriors believed there was no objective reality, for we are limited by the senses. Each man has their own truth, their own interpretation of reality. Hence, the thousand warriors held a thousand truths.

The Sengoku warlord Oda Nobunaga accepted only one truth - a unified Japan under his rule. The Shinjitsu-kai rejected his demands, so he marched his army up into the mountains and slaughtered them to the last. Legend says there was only a single survivor - a small child left to drift down a river in a basket of rushes. A thousand truths from each sect member had been tattooed across his back.

If the rumors are true - this child re-established the Sect in secret and became an underground force in the growing Edo, his new warriors serving as assassins, scholars, priests, rulers, philosophers.

And if every rumor is true - and perhaps they are, for there are a thousand truths - then Starlight Cafe in Shibuya was a front for the modern-day Shinjitsu-kai. Jackson very much wanted to meet them.

Jackson and the Doc arrived at nightfall, stepping under the red curtain. The izakaya was typical - big wooden bar where everyone sat, kitchen in the back. The only other customer was a snoozing geezer, empty sake bottles and nutshells in front of him.

“Irasshaimase!” greeted a college-aged chef as she emerged from the back kitchen. Jackson lost himself in her doe eyes, the way her black hair shone down the small of her back.

“Gyatt damn, I’m hungry!” exclaimed the Doc as he pointed at pictures of sushi, noodles, sashimi, fish on the menu. Jackson got two orders of sake.

Doc made an excessive spit noise - something like ‘hawk-tua!’ - as he spat out his gum.

“One more year at Cushing,” Doc supposed. “Then we graduate.”

The sake arrived. Jackson drank slowly. “What do you think you’ll do afterwards?”

The Doc slapped his belly. “Gonna create a national food-bank start-up. Support the existing banks, cover what they can’t. Hunger sucks, man. Nobody should go hungry. I’d like to feed the world one day.”

Jackson smiled. “Well, you got the talent to do it all. Coding, accounting, administration, not to mention cooking. How’s your pie design going?”

“Straight fire. If my calculations are correct, incorporating imaginary numbers into the formula should let me cook a pie as big as a city, but with the same amount of ingredients as a normal pie. Similar to how we micro-synthesize polyethylene." 

Enticing aromas drifted from the back kitchen.

“Fire indeed,” Jackson mused. “Too bad your calculations tend to go sideways.”

“Ha. I’m confident in these ones. What’s really too bad is that we don’t got the technology for it yet.” Doc drank sake and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But hey, one day we’ll have dyson spheres and supercomputers. Maybe then we’ll get pies the size of cities. And maybe we’ll get your…waddya call your project?”

“A-Polymer.”

“How’s it work again?”

As the chef brought over two plates, Jackson finished his sake. “In theory, you use the micro-synthetic polyethylene as the core for a material I call X-Polymer. This material would be strong enough to harvest dark matter, with which we could then create A-Polymer. And then the universe is ours. Light-weight, flexible, vacuum-resistant, aesthetic. It’ll bring about the end of history.”

The chef paused as she set the plates down.

“Careful, Jack!” Rooney said. “When you get that techno-overlord look in your eyes, you’ll scare away the fyne shit.”

“I’m not shit,” the chef answered with a serene smile, speaking flawless English.

Jackson and Doc glanced at each other.

“Sorry, sorry.” Doc wiped the sweatdrop off his forehead. “But my friend thinks you’re fine, no doubt.”

Jackson grew scarlet, tugging at his collar.

The chef giggled. “I’m very curious as to what your friend thinks. How would it bring about the end of history?”

Jackson collected himself and leaned back in his chair, having practiced his elevator pitch many times before. “A-Polymer would give us the ability to ensnare stars, harvest planets. We could expand infinitely. Become a Class III civilization soon after, the whole galaxy at our fingertips.”

“That would not end history,” the chef countered. “Time would still go on.”

Jackson tented his fingers in thought.

“Metaphorically,” Doc Rooney, wingman extraordinaire, suggested. “If we could access the resources of the whole galaxy, we could solve scarcity, pollution, even war. If history is just a series of sad events, then we could end history in that sense.”

The chef looked doubtful.

Jackson leaned forward now, glancing at Doc for a second. He hadn’t told the Doc about this part yet, since he himself wasn’t sure if he believed the math. He looked into the doe eyes of the chef. “If my calculations are correct, then A-Polymer would be strong enough to support some sort of…warp gate, that serves as the entrance and exit to tachyon particle pocket dimensions.”

“Faster than the speed of light?” Doc realized. “A-Polymer would have the ability to mess with time?”

“It might even be able to stop time entirely,” Jackson said. “Thus ending history.”

Doc and even the chef were impressed. But Jackson had more to say. “Manipulating time means humanity has the ability to alter the laws of physics. And if that’s the case, then one day, we could supersede all the natural laws with one grand, overarching principle - the Law of Man. All natural laws would only exist with our consent. And if that’s the case, the universe would enter a new epoch entirely. There would only be one truth, the human truth.”

The Doc whistled. Jackson and the chef stared at each other for a long while. The dam broke - her face changed into a warm smile.

The geezer shifted from his chair. Bushy-bearded, more eyebrow than eye, he stood and made slow steps for the door. “Do you know how painful it is,” he murmured. “To have a thousand truths etched across your back? It’s the same pain of humanity, as the simultaneous existence of a thousand truths can only cause brother to war with brother. If there was only one truth, then we would know peace.”

He turned off the exterior lights. “Daughter, we’re closed for the evening. But keep cooking for these men. We have much to discuss.”

The chef squeezed Jackson’s hand. She seemed excited. As if a generational burden would be perhaps lifted thanks to Jackson’s work.

The geezer kept his back to Jackson and Rooney. “To eliminate the Thousand Truths and establish One Truth. That is the new goal of the Shinjitsu-kai, ever since the sole survivor arrived in Edo. Look closely, you two. For these are the scars the head of the Shinjutsi-kai bears, a reminder of the pain caused by a thousand truths.”

He lowered his jacket, revealing a thousand truths tattooed down his back, a tradition stretching across generations, and would continue to stretch into the future until the One Truth is created, and then there would be no more pain.