The Plot of "Loop," written by Kouji Suzuki
By Clyde Mandelin (clyde_mandelin@starmen.net)

***** THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS EXTREME SPOILERS!  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! *****

The book starts with Kaoru Futami, the main character, looking out from his apartment
balcony at the night sky.  He's always been real bright, and real curious, and currently
he's 10 years old or so.  While on the balcony he gets the feeling that a thousand eyes
have suddenly popped up behind him and are watching him, but the moment he turns around he
gets the feeling they've suddenly vanished.

Kaoru lives with his mother and father in a high-rise apartment building in Tokyo.  His
father is a researcher at some big lab.  Kaoru takes after his father when it comes to
curiosity about science, curiosity about how the world works.  But in many ways they're
very different.

One day, Kaoru was on his laptop computer looking up something when he ran across a map
that showed the differences of gravity on the planet.  Because the earth isn't uniform -
there are all kinds of bumps on the surface and huge differences of what lies underneath
the ground.  By coincidence, at the same time, on the television there was a map of planet,
and on it, places were marked.  These marks showed where people with the longest life spans
lived.  Kaoru found something very intriguing by comparing the two maps - the people with
the longest life spans were in places with slightly less-than-normal gravity.  One of these
places was near the Four Corners region of the United States.

Kaoru gets excited and explains what he found to his parents.  They eventually decide to
go visit there soon, because Kaoru's father is going to New Mexico on business real soon
anyway.

But, as the date for the trip gets nearer and nearer, Kaoru's father gets sick, and his
condition continues to get worse.  He starts vomiting blood, and has to get taken to the
hospital.  A strange new virus has appeared, and is spreading throughout the world, a
virus called the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus.  To make things worse, the cancer cells
are basically immortal.  There's no way to get rid of them, aside from removing them
physically.  So Kaoru's father gets a lot of surgery done, and most of his major organs
are only a fraction of what they used to be.  He's in no condition to go anywhere. And
still the virus continues to eat away at him.  And it turns out that the virus doesn't affect only
people - it's affecting other animals as well.  It's even spreading to
plantlife.

Kaoru and his family never get to go on the trip.  Ten years pass.  Kaoru is visiting his
father one day when he sees a woman in her late 30s with her son.  Her son was also a
cancer patient at the hospital.  Since he doesn't have much time left, his mother asks
Kaoru to be a friend/tutor for her kid.  But things happen, and Kaoru falls in love with
the kid's mother, and they start having sex whenever they get any time alone.  Of course
there's always the chance she could be infected too, and that would put him in a lot of
danger too, but he doesn't care.

The kid catches on to what they're doing and jumps out of a window, killing himself.
The mother is pregnant again, and yes she is infected.  He hasn't been infected yet.
She doesn't want to continue living, but she doesn't want to kill the child inside her
either.  She's really confused.

Kaoru mentions what's happened to his father.  His father then tells about something
called "Loop".  He doesn't tell Kaoru the details, he instead tells Kaoru to go meet
somebody named Amano at the lab where he used to work.  Amano's the only person left
working at the lab - all the other researchers who used to work there have died because
of the cancer.

While Kaoru goes there he notices strange mathematical patterns in a printout of the
virus's DNA.  It really intrigues him.  When he gets to the lab, he meets a guy named
Amano, who then explains what this "Loop" thing is.

Now for the big spoiler.  "Loop" was a project in which a hundred or so (maybe it was 64?
I forget) supercomputer were hooked together, and a simulation of the real world was
created.  Everything was recreated exactly as it was in real life - they would bring in
scientists from all fields to help get every single detail right, from how atoms interact
with each other to how weather works to genetics.  The project was handled from the lab
in Tokyo and a lab in New Mexico.

So they had set up a complete recreation of the real world (I won't go into why).  But
no matter how long they waited, life wouldn't be born.  So the researchers decided to make
artifical RNA and planted it into Loop.  Life quickly exploded onto the scene, and it
evolved just like it did in the real world.  Dinosaurs came and died, and then mammals
showed up, then humans.  They created civilizations exactly like ours.  And unlike previous
animals, the humans were sending binary signals back and forth - they were communicating
with each other.

The researchers built a translator to understand what the people in Loop were saying.
Then, all of a sudden, something strange happened, and a virus called the "Ring Virus"
showed up. None of the researchers knew how - it was almost as if by magic.  It made no
sense.  In the end, the biological system of Loop came went to hell since all the organisms
were now comprised of the exact same genes.

Kaoru realizes this is exactly the same as what's going on in the real world.  He wonders
if Loop has the ability to predict the future of Earth, or if it was just a coincidence that
there was a devastating new cancer virus in the real world.

Kaoru wants to talk to any old researchers that might still be around, and Amano mentions
one in New Mexico.  But they haven't had contact in 6 months, so he might be dead.  He's
in a town called Waynesrock, which is just a real little ghost town now.

Kaoru then decides to go there, because he has a strange feeling that all the answers will
be there - including how to beat this cancer virus.  He convinces the girl he's in love with
to not kill herself for 3 months or so (maybe it was 1 month, I forget).  If he doesn't
come back within that time, she can't assure him she won't kill herself.

So off Kaoru goes to the U.S.  He eventually makes his way to Waynesrock.  There he finds
that researcher lying outside, dead.  But he had a little makeshift lab that ran on solar
power.  He goes into it, and into the basement.  In the basement is a real fancy computer
set up, with virtual reality goggles and a VR glove too.  Kaoru puts them on and all of
a sudden he's an Indian.  He's apparently replaying a part of Loop's backup memory.  One
of the interesting things is that you can replay things and "lock on" to certain people.
You can experience the sensations and senses the person inside "Loop" is experiencing. If
that doesn't make sense, try to think of it as taking over a Loop person's body.

Eventually the Indian gets killed by some army men, and his little show is over.  In Loop
he had spent several months, but in the real world he had only been wearing the goggles for
a short time.

Kaoru calls up Amano and tells him what's happened.  He now wants to see what this incident
with the "Ring Virus" was.  Maybe it will help him figure out what's going on in the world.

Kaoru then gets to see all kinds of stuff that happens in the first two books, from the
perspectives of the people in the first two books.  (This part of the book is really
awesome, we get to see the previous two books from completely different angles.  The best
comparison is how Back to the Future II showed BttF1 stuff from different perspectives.)

So Kaoru watches the scenes several times, but the scene where Ryuji Takayama dies somehow
intrigues him.  So he goes to play it again.  But he pays more attention this time.  Just
before Ryuji dies (remember, this is the book now, not the movie, the way he dies is
different), he is watching the videotape, and trying to call Mai Takano at the same time.
As the phone is ringing, the scene with the two dice rolling is playing.  It's ever-so-slight,
but the space around the television distorts.  Ryuji notices this.
The numbers the dice keep landing on also make a certain pattern, Ryuji notices, and he
lets out a cry of sudden understanding.  It all makes sense to him now.  He hangs up the
phone and presses the numbers that are showing up on the dice.

Suddenly, a phone rings.  Kaoru wasn't sure if it was in the VR world or in the real world
at first, but he soon realizes the phone next to the computer is ringing.  He picks it up,
and on the other end is, "Let me out, let me go to where you are."  In a sudden shock of
horror, Kaoru realizes it's Ryuji talking.  Talking from inside Loop.  Then, Ryuji keels
over and dies.

This freaks Kaoru out.  He talks to Amano, and after various discussion, it seems that the
guy in charge of Loop had taken a special interest in this event, when it first happened.
(Keep in mind Ryuji's wanting out had first happened maybe 10 years ago or so, what Kaoru
saw was just a replay of the backup memory.)  So much in fact that he wanted to grant
Ryuji his wish.  But there was no way to bring an artificial life form to the real world...

Then the head guy made a realization - if the DNA Ryuji was based on was based on real-world
DNA, he should be clonable, they'd just need to recreate his DNA in the real world.  The
technology for that exists (in the book, anyway.  And it's 2010-2020 I think), so that's
exactly what they did.  They needed to have the Ryuji DNA put inside a woman so it could
grow.  They kept this whole project top secret.

But, apparently they made a fatal mistake.  When they cloned the DNA from Ryuji, they had
taken the DNA from *after* he had been infected by the Ring Virus. Big uh oh there.
Somehow, the virus had gotten out, and mutated.  Mutated into the Metastatic Human Cancer
Virus that is consuming the real world.

Kaoru's mother this whole time was into all kinds of crazy new-age healing methods since
her husband was a goner, it was just a matter of time.  So she read all kinds of weird stuff,
one thing of which was a legend told of by Native Americans in the American southwest. It
spoke of a forest hidden in a mountain range type place where people would go, and when they
returned, they were completely healed of all illness.  Some guy in real life had done something
like that, and so Kaoru was asked to go look into that.  So now Kaoru goes to look for
this place. (My treatment of this part of the plot isn't so good, it's a lot more well
founded than I make it out to be.)

Kaoru has a kind of strange journey as he makes his way for this mystical place.  He gets
caught in a big storm while he's hiking in the forest/mountain area, and when the storm
finally lets up, he's nearly dead of hypothermia and exhaustion.  But some people in a
strange black helicopter rescued him.

He wakes up inside some strange lab, not a hospital.  An older guy comes in and tells him
he was the main Loop researcher, and that he's very happy to see Kaoru.  A lot of weird
eccentric old man stuff happens, it was pretty blah at this point of the book.

Basically the old man next tells Kaoru more about the details of Loop and the Ring Virus
incident.  Ryuji Takayama had called from the virtual world and wanted into the real world.
But the only way to do that was to clone him - he couldn't transfer concsiousness over.
He then asks Kaoru why he has always had a strange interest in the Four Corners area, and
how he knew where to go and why he was always so smart and inquisitive and philosophical.
Yes - that clone of Ryuji Takayama is none other than Kaoru himself.

Because of this, Kaoru held something important that nobody else had - immunity to the new
virus.  If they could figure out what it was in Kaoru that made him immune, a cure to the
virus could be created.  There was a new machine invented recently, a machine that uses
neutrinos to pierce through matter and record the information of that matter as the
neutrions came out the back.  With this machine, they could analyze Kaoru's body on the
genetic, even atomic level.  The problem being that doing so would cause each of his cells
to burst, meaning he would die.

Well, like any hero would do, Kaoru decides to, even though he won't be able to see the
woman he loves anymore.  "But you can still see her" the old guy says.  It turns out that
the old guy can also digitize Kaoru's cellular information as he's being analyzed/killed,
and recreate him inside Loop.  Because his neurons are also being analyzed, his thoughts
and memories would also be transferred over.  And with all the information Kaoru had
about the real world and about Loop, once he is inside Loop, he would be like a god.
But he also had a goal - to prevent the world of Loop from falling to cancer like it had.
They would start the project back up from right before the Ring Virus spread like crazy.
The old guy promised to get Kaoru's girlfriend to watch him sometimes from the real world
with the goggles, and the end of the book has Kaoru waiting at the appointed time, looking
up in the sky, where he senses she's watching him from.

--------------

There's a continuation of this story in one of the three short stories of "Birthday".  It's
pretty cool, because we get to see him actually walk around in a Sadako-filled world, plus
we get to see more new angles on the previous books, and we get to see how he decides to
get rid of the Ring Virus and all the Sadakos.

Thanks for reading my quick summary.  This was the whole story, but I think it will truly
be worth reading it in either Japanese, or in translation when/if it comes out. (I hope
it's a "when" question.)

---------------

Who I am: I do lots of translations of all kinds of stuff. I translated the entire "Ring"
novel in January 2002, but Kadokawa Shoten (the publishers of the original Japanese novel)
said they were already working on it. I'm currently doing a combination of freelance 
translation work and translation work for FUNimation, a company that localizes Japanese 
anime for Western audiences. I'd love to translate more Japanese novels in the future; I 
think I'll even translate the sequel to "Ring" just for fun sometime.

Sorry, I can't distribute my "Ring" translation. Since I don't have the translation rights,
I can't legally distribute it.