Not Out* (Part 2)
(Part 2 of 3) An absurdist documentary looks into a well-known and broadly accepted conspiracy theory involving Fujitsu air conditioners.
Original absurd, satirical and funny fiction. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Adams, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).
Before we kick off
Please read Part One first if you haven’t already, available here:
https://profitron.substack.com/p/not-out
For those who have read Part One, here is a recap of what we learned:
Bruce Grey, a Salvation Army code breaker, discovered a conspiracy involving the Fujitsu Corporation and is retelling the tale to a documentary film crew.
Bruce found out that Mark Taylor, an ex-Australian cricket captain, is communicating worrying messages about Fujitsu via morse code blinking.
Bruce mentioned that someone named Makoto Matsumoto is somehow involved, though we don’t yet know who that is or the nature of his involvement.
Now For Not Out* (Part Two)
In January 1995, a Japanese tourist named Makoto Matsumoto was sitting on a sizzling seat on the Sydney Cricket Ground wing. A glob of meat pie was about to fall and burn his bare leg, but Makoto didn’t care. His attention was fixed on the spectacle before him: the third test of the biennial Ashes series between Australia and England.
The match was delicately balanced. In the first innings, the Australians had been dismissed for a meagre 116 and were now batting again, chasing 448 to win. However, they were really seeking a draw, because this is cricket and sometimes a draw is a win.
Unlike most foreigners, Makoto was not baffled by the alien cricket logic. He understood the stakes straight away; this was survival.
So, each time the bowler failed to destroy the batsman, Makoto joined the crowd’s collective sigh. He became the murmur between deliveries, the eager bystander to fate. Cricket, he understood, was pure summertime bliss, a sport that meandered at the pace of some deep, biological meditation - more life than sport, more life than life.
It was this sense of awe and bliss that the now-tanned Makoto tried to convey to his superiors at Fujitsu upon his return to Tokyo. Back then, the young Mr Matsumoto resembled a Japanese Don Draper. He was athletic, had a dimpled smile, and for many reasons was the envy of his male colleagues.
That afternoon, he stood at the head of the boardroom next to his revolutionary Fujitsu ad copy: a poster of the Australian cricket captain wiping his sweaty brow beneath the Fujitsu corporate logo. To the entranced audience he said:
“Life is more than survival. We must also live with dignity.” He pointed at the poster of the Australian captain, Mark Taylor. “In Sydney, I watched this man survive. He fought gallantly for his country, and when he achieved personal success on the way, do you know what happened? Wind. An almighty breeze climbed the stands and caressed his face. Wind… wind is the reward for a life well-lived. Fujitsu Air: a summer’s kiss.”
After the presentation, a senior board member took Makoto aside. In private, he squeezed Makoto’s shoulders like a proud father. He believed the young marketing executive was destined for greatness, that he had the potential to become anything.
What Makoto became - several years down the line - was a drunk. His nights were now spent at a steady rotation of Golden Gai bars, where he stacked his finished pint glasses and glared at his own warped reflection. Then one night, a tourist sat next to him in the tiny bar, and Makoto wrapped his arm around the unsuspecting stranger.
“You… Australian?” he asked, his face red and swollen.
The man nodded and the conversation moved, guided either by Makoto’s subconscious or some other force, to cricket. Makoto told the man that apart from a long-gone woman named Aiko, cricket was his one true love. When the Australian asked Makoto to name his favourite player, Makoto simulated pulling his hair out.
“That is too hard question,” he said.
“Not for me.” The tourist stared into Makoto’s glassy eyes. “Mine is Mark Taylor.”
All Golden Gai bars are small, but that bar suddenly felt as spacious as a Fujitsu 7.1kw reverse cycle unit. It felt smaller again when the tourist gripped Makoto’s arm.
“My name is Bruce Grey,” said the man. “We need to talk about Fujitsu - in private.”
“Makoto Matsumoto was skittish like a bruised pup,” said Bruce Grey to our cameras all those years later. “That night he shook free of my arm, ran straight into the glass door and knocked himself out. Two Japanese businessmen fanned him with their briefcases until he woke up. Then he bolted a second time. I wasn’t bothered. My time in the Salvation Army taught me how to track people in hostile urban environments; Tokyo in the summertime was a piece of piss.”
Three days later, Bruce tracked Makoto to the Howzat Bar in the Yokosuka dockyard district. Despite Bruce’s extensive CQC training in the Army, the eery Tokyo dockyard past midnight gave him pause. Industrial machines creaked in the night. As he walked, Bruce felt the decorative samurai sword handle press into his side, the blunt blade running down the inside of his trouser leg.
The Howzat Bar had no sign, and the windows were blacked out. A CCTV camera tracked Bruce’s approach and before he could knock, the door opened. The man in the doorway was armed.
Bruce explained he was there to meet an old friend, Makoto. Tense Japanese words followed between the armed guard and someone inside. Bruce held the sword handle, ready. It could have all ended there with a white corpse or dozens of bludgeoned Japanese men. Fortunately, he was simply let in.
Inside was hazy from cigarette smoke. Japanese men surrounded a pool table in the centre of the brick room. Paul Kelly played on repeat (a song called Shane Warne). There were dozens of men singing along, all dressed in cricket whites, most wearing cricket pads and thigh guards and gloves and helmets and, Bruce assumed, boxes to protect their genitals. The men playing billiards drank VB and instead of a pool cue they used the handle of a cricket bat. That’s when Bruce realised the man at the door was not ‘armed’ per se; he was just a member of the Tokyo cricket sub-culture.
In the corner of the bar, Makoto sat in a private nook, chain smoking.
“The first thing Makoto says to me,” said Bruce, looking back, “was ‘you get used to the sweat.’ That bar was the hottest, smokiest place on Earth, yet those blokes wore woollen cricket vests and thermals. Makoto told me it reminded them of Australia, even though most had never been.”
“Thanks for not running again,” said Bruce in the Howzat Bar, his unbendable right leg with the samurai sword dangling out from the nook.
“Thanks for nothing,” said Makoto. A projector on the wall played Shane Warne’s Gatting ball. Mike Gatting is taking off his glove, looking confused. “I knew this day would come.”
“Tubby’s being blackmailed by Fujitsu. Tell me why.”
“Tubby.” Makoto looked disappointed. “This is bigger than Mark Taylor. This is about air conditioning.”
“I’m Salvation Army Special Forces, I know all about-”
“You do not.” The men playing pinball turned to the sound of Makoto’s raised voice.
Makoto rubbed his palms on his zinc-covered cheeks. He took off his baggy cap and whispered so the men by the Dennis Lillee pinball machine could not hear.
“Air conditioning. Not conditioning the air but conditioning through the air.” After an eye-watering drag on his cigarette: “Mind control. Fujitsu control mind through air. But to control your mind, they need you inside house. How to do this? You make planet hot. If planet is too hot, people go inside. What else you do? You make outside bad. I go to Ashes test in 1995. This was best day of my life. Australian never go inside while cricket exists. Unless…”
Makoto fiddled with his cricket stump lighter. The new cigarette failed to catch. Were there tears in his eyes?
“Unless cricket becomes bad,” he said. “Unless someone makes T20 cricket.”
Like an abrupt channel change, a flash of T20 cricket entered Bruce’s mind: loud pop music, fireworks, players commentating, batsmen flailing like armed meth tweakers in a divorce hearing…
“Wait,” he said. “Wait… You’re saying Fujitsu created climate change and T20 cricket?”
Makoto nodded. “One to destroy the planet, the other to make it really hot.”
Toyota and Mario and Gundam Wing and bento boxes and ramen noodles and sumo wrestling and Pokémon... Makoto went on to explain that some of Japan’s largest cultural and consumer products pay Fujitsu for ‘airtime’ in Australian homes. To assist, the Japanese Government provides select corporations with covert grants and parallel subsidies to expedite and control the airborne advertising campaigns. And yet, as crazy as that sounded to Bruce, apparently it was just the iceberg’s tip.
“There are no rules now,” said Makoto. “This is just the beginning. This is new Japanese Imperialism, revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is airborne psychic warfare. That’s why they get away with… it.”
“With what?” asked Bruce.
Makoto lit a cigarette. He stared at its tip and then faced Bruce. His lips quivered, eyes darting left and right before he whispered even quieter. “With using the octopus.”
To be continued…
Thank you for reading Not Out* (Part 2 of 3). Please subscribe below to receive Part 3 direct to your inbox and discover:
what the octopus refers to.
the fate of our heroes, Bruce and Makoto.
the thrilling conclusion to the Fujitsu-Mark Taylor conspiracy.
Profitron contains absurd, satirical and funny short fiction and prose. Literary influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut and Norm Macdonald. That’s all we have time for, folks.
Hilarious.