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The relationship between Drs. Sakakibara and Akedera would become rather strained after this.
    Dr. Akedera wished to continue his research by extending his stay yet again, but Dr. Sakakibara judged that further analysis would prove difficult and believed, furthermore, that if the current specimens were to die, freezing them whole rather than preserving tissue fragments served as a safe exit plan.
    There is some basis for believing that what motivated Dr. Akedera’s research was a fear of death.
    “What are these feelings of superiority and inferiority that the living choose to harbor regarding the dead? Words like ‘extinction’ and ‘death’ betray the self-centered logic of the living. It would seem that simple death is all that there is for the dead, and even if genetic material is left behind, even if cells are left behind, it does not equal leaving behind living descendants thatresemble the self. Individual memories disappear, and seeking the self’s latent existence in descendants is almost materialistic. Probably all that remains to humans who have no religion is such materialism.”
    Similar disquisitions on life and death occur everywhere in Dr. Akedera’s journal. Meanwhile, essayistic passages bearing on the experiments and observations themselves grow sparse with the passage of time. Likewise, the log kept at the research lab begins to limit itself to factual observations, with extremely few analytic entries.
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    Of the personnel who were involved, only Drs. Sakakibara and Akedera seem to have been present at the precise moment the winged mice became extinct. The pair’s deaths were so sudden that by the time Mr. Tamura, the other staff members, and Mr. Miura came running, the dissection of the animals had already begun as though to underscorethe bizarre turn of events.
    Mr. Tamura recalled, “There had been no particular change in the weather, so perhaps there was a problem with the food or water, because they suddenly started to grow weak. In a very short time Ponta and Ai stopped eating almost entirely. What was strange was that they weakened in the exact same way even though they’d been separated, with even their food and water coming from different sources.”
    Mr. Miura also had detailed memories of the conditions at the time of the mice’s demise. “I had a phone call from Dr. Sakakibara at eight in the morning. By the time I arrived, the winged mice were no longer in their cages. Both Dr. Akedera and Dr. Sakakibara were in the pathology lab. The winged mice lay dead on the dissection table. Incredibly, with Ai in particular, all of the organs including the brain had already been extracted, leaving only the skin. The organs, cut up to harvest cells and steeped in saline in plastic Petri dishes, no longer resembled their original forms.”
    The foremost concern of Mr. Tamura, ultimately responsible for whatever happened at the center, was how to break the dire news.
    “The worst-case scenario, I thought. I’d never expected both of them to die at once. To be honest, at one point I considered covering it up, for the time being. If we arranged things so that the mice had died, say, a week apart, people might be more accepting. Since this was early autumn in Hokkaido, there was a possibility that a flaw in our air-conditioning system or some such accusation might be leveled at us” (Mr. Tamura).
    Indeed, the passing of rare small animals that have attained a degree of popularity is not always reported in a timely manner. Confusion is cited as the reason, and holding a press conference only after a postmortem has confirmed the cause of death is considered acceptable by that industry.
    In the end, however, as soon as Dr. Akedera’s procedures were completed, local newspaper and television staff were summoned for a press conference.
    Mr. Tamura also touched upon the surrounding confusion as follows. “Although the consensus was that the deaths were natural, since the details would be beyond