Diane Joplihe afternoon in her hotel room surfing the Japanese sector of cyberspace. The hotel』s in-house Mitsubishi sole did a fairly good job of translating the Kanji on the fly. She pored through so many news stories aures related to the Yakuza and to Kenzo Yamamoto that she now sidered herself somewhat of an expert oopic. Several hours later, eyes tired from the stant stream of words scrolling down the s and the void iomach screaming for attention, she ordered room service.
Ten minutes later the bell rang and she opehe door, a bit self-scious since she was wearing only the white terry-cloth robe with nothing underh. There was no ohere except a room service robot, its sensors blinking rapidly. The trolley moved smoothly past her into the room and positioself at right ao the desk and the in-house sole. Xybo, sensing food, was on the alert, its tail wagging expetly. Diane wondered whether now that robots where doing everything, the people who used to work in hotels were now all making robots. The good thing was you no longer felt like you were pelled to tip.
She had opehe cover of the trolley and marveled at the exquisite artistic creations of sticky rid colorful slivers of raw fish and seafood. The blob of wasabi was carved into the shape of aic dragon plete with scales. She khat within the oblongs of sticky rice hid a generous helping of wasabi so she left the dragon intact while she ate. She had then taken a quiap after instrug the house puter to wake her up at 6.00PM. That was two ho.
Her father had appeared in her dreams, urgio be vigilant and to take care of herself. His face had been wracked with guilt and in the dream he had begged her tive him for leaving her all alohen he had asked her to search for the maker of sole and find out what it was for. Diane wasn』t sure whether she had subsciously ied her own will into the dream or vice versa but with Yamamoto dead there was not much more she could do. The e to Takahashi was too remote. Then her mother had also appeared in her dreams, face as white as the snow that was falling outside, tracks of dried tears trailing down her face, black with dislodged mascara. Her mother had spirited her father away without saying a word, just that look in her eyes that said she was sorry but at least now they were together.
And Diane, all alone, had cried in her sleep and woken up with tears streaming down her face. Her pilloarts of her hair that had covered her face as she slept were soaki. She』d showered and ged and spent an hour on the in-house sole searg for something very specific. She was about to give up after an hour when an obscure out-of-date ior relations site gave her what she was looking for. Kenzo Yamamoto sat on the board of Tokyu Nanoteology Corp., a start-up pany formed less than two years earlier to researd manufacture chips based on nanoteology. What was iing to Diane was who else was on the board of directors. One Akio Inoue, seventy five years old and the foremost mind in Japanese microprocessor design. Further searches on Akio Inoue resulted in something even more iing. Several news articles indicated that Inoue, a master sole builder, had been hospitalized just two weeks ago. He had suffered a stroke. One of the articles stated with authority that he was being treated in a private wing at the Tokyo Medical Uy Hospital. And that was also located in Shinjuku.
***
Diane emerged, through the revolving doors, from the relative calm enviro o