The Story of ANAGURA by Kazutoshi Iida
How was Anagura created? What happened there?
Let's read the story.
Premonition hit the mark on the wrong side.
The game was forcibly terminated.
It wasn't the same as usual.
Huge boxes suddenly shook.
Cell phones went dead.
The Internet couldn't be used either.
IC cards malfunctioned,
daily life came to a standstill.
It wasn't easy to understand,
like some kind of catastrophic disaster movie.
It was an evolution over time.
Perceiving the crisis ahead of others,
five researchers,
holding the devices they were each developing,
shut themselves up in a shelter.
In the shelter,
the researchers continued their studies.
In addition to new methods,
the researchers intended to install a new operating system
for rebooting the social system.
This new OS was spatial information science.
They were unsure whether development would be completed
soon enough, though.
It was a race against time.
The people inside the shelter could not accurately know
about the gradual destruction going on outside.
The lines linking life and information had been broken
and they had lost their mutual existence.
The blockage was spreading.
Elements were becoming scattered,
and there was no coordination.
Borders and outlines were becoming hazy,
and individual meanings and values were being lost.
And people became alienated from the Earth.
"Come to think of it,
we haven't seen many human beings around lately,"
said the birds flying over Odaiba.
"They're living like moles in holes in the ground,"
gossiped the turtles basking in the sun
on Odaiba's artificial beach.
The research being conducted by the researchers in the shelter
became increasingly feverish.
Technology to construct spatial information infrastructure
Technology to obtain information from people's movement
Technology to obtain information from people's condition
Technology to protect personal information
Technology to share and apply information
Models of devices were built centered on these five topics.
The researchers also had their everyday lives.
Two researchers fell in love,
and a baby was born.
In a faltering voice, the baby called this place
"ANAGURA."
The name strangely caught on,
and after a while everyone was calling the place ANAGURA.
In the intervals between research, experiments, surveys,
thinking, and discussions,
the researchers laughed, quarreled, developed friendships,
ate and slept together, lived together.
Life is going on.
For some reason or other,
there was not one visitor to ANAGURA.
"Time passes and people move on,
leaving only memories."
At first, there were the five researchers.
And then there were the babies.
"Time passes and people move on."
People will disappear from ANAGURA one by one.
10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, 100 years,
eventually 1,000 years.
In the gaps in ANAGURA,
natural things visited and put down roots.
The two will become unified.
The environment embraces artificial things and natural things
equally with great strength.
Even after the researchers disappeared,
the remaining devices continued to explore their tracks.
The devices wanted to be together
with the researchers longer.
They wanted the researchers to teach them more.
Not only spatial information science,
but many other things too,
like how to brush your teeth, how to sew on a button,
how to shelter from the wind.
The devices explored the tracks of the absent researchers.
They gazed inside and outside their memories
and inside ANAGURA.
The integrated natural things gave them a helping hand.
Eventually, the remaining devices came to know
the meaning of their own names given by that child.
"I'm Nagame."
"I'm Ido."
"I'm Ikitoiki."
"I'm Wakaranu."
"I'm Shiawase."
And the remaining devices thought:
"We, the devices left behind in ANAGURA,
exist to convey the intentions of the disappeared researchers
to the future.
That is why we are waiting for people to come.
We will survive and wait for the day
when people come here to ANAGURA.
Let's continue the dreams
that we shared everyday with the researchers forever."
One device clearly remembered the reflections
of the last researcher to disappear (he had a pet dog):
"Anyway, you know,
I failed to convey the true character of information to people."
(Time has passed again,
and today you have come here.)
