Kokura by Mary Kim Arnold and Matthew Derby is despite its apparent linearity a complicated text. It draws on three hyperlinks, namely:10010101,01101001 and1101011,to describe three different points of view on the nuclear issue. The time sequences that pevade10010101 and 11011011 are rather similar although one of them is marked by a set of dates which seem to correspond to entries in a diary.

This part of Kokura deals with past and present intermingled and there occur sentences that recur throughout the sequence of text as leitmotivs and give the discourse a dimension of  timeless thought.

11011011 tells us about the experience of a dedicated anti-nuclear activist whose dedication has dwindled by the 1990's into a suburban lifestyle with his wife Y. It seems to tell us about the disturbing effect of  a man who is not at home with his present.

The whole of 11011011 is written in the present tense, in 1998, but it often makes references to his past as an activist and especially to the relationship that flowered and then dissipated like a dream in the course of anti-nuclear demonstrations in the U.S.A. During the 1980's.

The Hyperlink 11011011 takes us directly to what must be the present of this man, whose mother is dying at a hospital.

It is not difficult to notice that now and then, a sentence is inserted in the text by itself, giving the reader the definite impression of a recurrence in the feelings of this man's life.

In no more than 42 pages consisting of  a paragraph, sometimes only a sentence,11011011 there is a summing up of a man's past life, his present and his future, which seems to be of no concern to him except for what he seems to desire:”to pray for an end of the world”.

 

10010101 is the first hyperlink that appears in the sequence of the three hyperlinks. This link presents us the sequence of thoughts that make reference to the present of a woman, probably of Japanese descent. This sequence of thought has unlike 11011011 more characteristics of timelessness, sprinkled with some reflections on the woman's daughter Z.

10010101 starts with a remembrance of “the things you left behind” and keeps the trail of thought on a remembrance of the past. In this past she ,woman, keeps track of her experiences during her days as an activist  by recalling her relationship with a man during the anti-nuclear demonstrations mentioned in 11011011 in the 1980's where she was literally dumped, “lying there amid the debris, against the brown of sand and the grey of sky”

The text of woman, 10010101, is hectic with time references, and seems to run parallel with the man, 11011011 text, in its retrievals from the past, its references to the present and its hopes for the future; but it contains quite different proposals. The helter-skelter text of woman indicates a much more hopeful and unregretful visualization of reality. This part of the hypertext is poetical and reveals the attitude of a woman who seems to hold on to her principles.