The Ultimate Enemy

Morikubo Kazuo, a graduate student in genetic engineering, has long suffered from unexplained physical dysfunction. After fruitless visits to doctors, he finally finds the psychoanalyst Asako Toritani and undergoes hypnosis. In the dreams induced by hypnosis, he experiences the long course of Earth's biological evolution firsthand in the first person, from the ancient oceans all the way to the birth of humanity—yet upon waking he finds himself blank on "what happened afterward." Soon a woman calling herself Rei Oki visits as a journalist, asking about his research on microorganisms extracted from a meteorite, and leaves him with the words "Charon is your companion." Kazuo is baffled at first, but as their contact deepens he gradually learns a startling fact: the amino acid ratios of living organisms on Earth do not conform to natural law, meaning some kind of will has been controlling the direction of life's evolution all along. Humanity's earlier genetic experiments accidentally triggered a switch, and an evolution aimed at destroying humanity has quietly begun. The purpose of the "Charon" organization is precisely to stop this evolutionary force from devouring humanity, and Kazuo is the key figure they have long awaited. Amid layer upon layer of mystery and a reality hard to distinguish from illusion, he must recover his true identity and complete his mission to defeat evolution and save humanity. The novel turns "evolution" itself into a conscious villain, blending suspense, adventure, mystery, and parallel-world settings; it is an early representative work by Masaki Yamada.