location, where she again changed her mind. After that, my master and the woman exchanged several words. I remember they talked mostly of money. After the woman promised the next destination would be the final one, my master set out once more. The woman’s abuses gained in ferocity. None of what she said to him was at all true, and yet on she ranted. She even called him a lousy listener, and said that’s why he was stuck as a common taxi driver. Finally, she noticed his ID display card beside the meter and began berating his very name. At this offense he seemed no longer able to remain silent. His mother was endeared to his name, because it shared one kanji with his, and he had lost his mother at a very young age.
When, without thinking, he spoke out in protest, the uncharacteristic ferocity I heard in his voice was no trick of my imagination. This I know because of what happened next. He stopped the car in an unpopulated area alongside a dam and insisted the woman prove she could pay her fare. She roared with laughter, and beaming with delight she announced, “I have no money. I just wanted to see how long I could trick some stupid driver.” Without warning, as the Predecessor was stunned in shock, she punched herself in the face and shouted, “If you don’t take me back to the city for free, I’ll run to the police and tell them you beat me!”
The Predecessor looked at her sadly and said, “All right.” He took the road leading back to the city, but when he turned onto a side road, I knew he was up to something. This paved road appeared to be a major highway, but in fact had been hastily laid down to supply access for construction crews, and eventually narrowed, winding up the mountainside. The highway would naturally have provided the shortest course into the city; I had offered him the route to the bypass, a suggestion I was sure he had understood. Unable to grasp his intentions, I could do nothing but watch.
Suddenly, he stopped the car, got out, and circled to the rear passenger-side seat. The woman started into her cursing, but he silenced her with a single blow. From my place beneath the front seat, I sensed him strike her and heard her low moan. He dragged her out from the car and took her, disappearing into the darkness. After roughly an hour, he returned. The Predecessor slumped his head onto the steering wheel, exhausted, and remained that way for a time. When he lifted his head, I was comforted to see an untroubled look of relief had replaced the severe expression so unlike his mild-mannered nature. He marked me with the tip of a screwdriver, leaving an X right in the center of my page, in the forest twenty meters to the north-northwest of where we were parked. I felt searing pain as he pressed the tool into my paper. The mark was wet, a liquid I perceived as not all that dissimilar in composition to his sweat—only this stuff was red.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said.
Can you believe it? The Predecessor spoke to me. My master, a human, spoke to me, a mere map! And not out of jest or drunkenness—he spoke to me square-on. What fortune, what an honor! The act was without question one of the reasons I decided to follow him from that point on. These emotions, along with the mark itself, changed what I was.
My thoughts, which I’ve been taking the liberty of expressing to you, were not always so active. We maps typically operate at a much slower tempo than humans do. This is generally believed to be due to differences in the perception of time between species. Most humans’ lives end in less than one hundred years, and their memories are restricted to their individual lifespans. But we maps can pass down our memories. We believe this ability stems from the age-old process of tracing and copying our pages by hand, continued to the modern mass production of prints. Each map’s knowledge is restricted to the geographical region under his or her charge, but every map carries the accumulated memories
When, without thinking, he spoke out in protest, the uncharacteristic ferocity I heard in his voice was no trick of my imagination. This I know because of what happened next. He stopped the car in an unpopulated area alongside a dam and insisted the woman prove she could pay her fare. She roared with laughter, and beaming with delight she announced, “I have no money. I just wanted to see how long I could trick some stupid driver.” Without warning, as the Predecessor was stunned in shock, she punched herself in the face and shouted, “If you don’t take me back to the city for free, I’ll run to the police and tell them you beat me!”
The Predecessor looked at her sadly and said, “All right.” He took the road leading back to the city, but when he turned onto a side road, I knew he was up to something. This paved road appeared to be a major highway, but in fact had been hastily laid down to supply access for construction crews, and eventually narrowed, winding up the mountainside. The highway would naturally have provided the shortest course into the city; I had offered him the route to the bypass, a suggestion I was sure he had understood. Unable to grasp his intentions, I could do nothing but watch.
Suddenly, he stopped the car, got out, and circled to the rear passenger-side seat. The woman started into her cursing, but he silenced her with a single blow. From my place beneath the front seat, I sensed him strike her and heard her low moan. He dragged her out from the car and took her, disappearing into the darkness. After roughly an hour, he returned. The Predecessor slumped his head onto the steering wheel, exhausted, and remained that way for a time. When he lifted his head, I was comforted to see an untroubled look of relief had replaced the severe expression so unlike his mild-mannered nature. He marked me with the tip of a screwdriver, leaving an X right in the center of my page, in the forest twenty meters to the north-northwest of where we were parked. I felt searing pain as he pressed the tool into my paper. The mark was wet, a liquid I perceived as not all that dissimilar in composition to his sweat—only this stuff was red.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said.
Can you believe it? The Predecessor spoke to me. My master, a human, spoke to me, a mere map! And not out of jest or drunkenness—he spoke to me square-on. What fortune, what an honor! The act was without question one of the reasons I decided to follow him from that point on. These emotions, along with the mark itself, changed what I was.
My thoughts, which I’ve been taking the liberty of expressing to you, were not always so active. We maps typically operate at a much slower tempo than humans do. This is generally believed to be due to differences in the perception of time between species. Most humans’ lives end in less than one hundred years, and their memories are restricted to their individual lifespans. But we maps can pass down our memories. We believe this ability stems from the age-old process of tracing and copying our pages by hand, continued to the modern mass production of prints. Each map’s knowledge is restricted to the geographical region under his or her charge, but every map carries the accumulated memories
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