LONTAR issue #1 Read online

  LONTAR

  The Journal of Southeast Asian

  Speculative Fiction

  Issue #1

  Autumn 2013

  Founding Editor

  Jason Erik Lundberg

  (USA/Singapore)

  Poetry Editor

  Kristine Ong Muslim

  (Philippines)

  Publisher

  Kenny Leck

  (Singapore)

  Art Direction

  Sarah and Schooling

  (Singapore)

  Submissions

  LONTAR welcomes unsolicited fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and sequential art through our online portal located at lontarjournal.com. We accept submissions on a rolling basis.

  Distribution

  LONTAR is published and distributed by Math Paper Press in Singapore.

  For information about how you can carry LONTAR, please contact Kenny Leck via email at [email protected], or via post at BooksActually, No. 9 Yong Siak Street, Tiong Bahru Estate, Singapore 168645.

  Contact

  Please send any general queries to [email protected]. Do not send submissions to this address as they will be deleted unread; please use our submissions portal instead.

  Disclaimer

  LONTAR is not associated in any form or fashion with the Lontar Foundation. While we admire their ongoing work to translate Indonesian literary works into English, our mission statement is very different from theirs. We wish them well in their endeavors.

  All pieces copyright © 2013 by their respective authors

  ISBN 978-981-07-7171-3 (print)

  ISBN 978-981-07-9257-2 (ebook)

  This ebook edition of LONTAR comes to you DRM-free. "DRM" stands for Digital Rights Management, and is a method for "content providers" to control how you experience and enjoy something you have already bought, whether it is a DVD, a YouTube clip, a song, or an ebook, the main idea being that they can decide whether you have the ability to copy that file and pass it along to someone else. This also enables them to lock you into their digital architecture, so that you can only experience that file on the device of their choosing.

  We do not believe in DRM. We want the literature in this issue to reach as many eyeballs as possible, so we have placed no restrictions on copying this particular file. Which means we're placing a lot of trust in you. There's nothing to prevent you from just pasting the file onto a torrent site and setting it free, but we're hoping that instead, if you enjoy the fiction and poetry in this issue, you'll spread the word on where to acquire it legally.

  All of us—the contributors, editors, designers, and publisher—are artists in our own way, and trust that you'll support this artistic endeavour so that many issues of LONTAR will appear in the years to come.

  If you do receive this ebook and it has been locked into a DRM format, please email the founding editor at [email protected].

  Editorial: Etching the Lontar

  Jason Erik Lundberg

  Right away, I'll try to anticipate your first question: why LONTAR? Lontar is the Bahasa Indonesia word for a bound palm-leaf manuscript, which is among the oldest forms of written media, dating as far back as the fifth century BCE and possibly earlier. These manuscripts were used to record Buddhist sutras, law texts, epic mythic narratives, and treatises on a host of subjects such as astronomy, astrology, architecture, law, medicine, and music. The palm leaves were bleached of their chlorophyll, dried, trimmed, flattened, and polished smooth. Characters or images were etched into the surface with a sharp metallic stylus and filled in with a dark pigment to enhance the contrast and legibility of the script. In order to construct the leaves into a book, holes were drilled in both sides, and the stack was bound together with cord or string.

  This ancient form of writing is the perfect inspiration for the collation and curation of Southeast Asian speculative fiction. It was an early technology that revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge (it no longer had to be handed down exclusively in oral form), and it was used predominantly in India, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Indonesia. In addition, lontar were used as a vehicle for both epic and more mundane narratives, as well as an early form of graphic literature.

  So why devote a quarterly literary journal to Southeast Asian speculative fiction? Aren't there enough venues doing this already? It is indeed true that Western publications such as The Apex Book of World SF and Expanded Horizons have created friendly venues for SEA writers in English, and it is also true that anthologies published recently in Malaysia*, the Philippines**, and Singapore*** have addressed an increasing interest in speculative fiction in the region, I believe that even more can be done, especially for countries and cultures that remain under-represented within the field.

  LONTAR is my response. One-off anthologies, and anthology series, are fantastic for accruing a representative sample of works in a given year, but it is even more important to keep the conversation going all-year round. By providing a continual venue for this particular flavor of writing concentrating on this particular part of the world, it is hoped that 1) SEA writers working in the English language will have an ongoing platform in which to express their cultures, traditions, mythologies, folk religions, and/or daily lives, and 2) non-SEA writers will see Southeast Asia as a fertile ground for storytelling and move beyond the touristy exoticism that frequently pervades the minds of those unfamiliar with the region. Above all, LONTAR is engaged with publishing speculative fiction, non-fiction articles, poetry, and sequential art from both SEA and non-SEA writers, in order to spread awareness of this literature to readers who might not normally be exposed to it, and to celebrate its existence and diversity within the region.

  This premiere issue of LONTAR presents speculative writing from and about the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore, Laos, and Vietnam. Showcased are a post-apocalyptic Manila from Kate Osias, a utopian Kuala Lumpur from Zen Cho, a haunting military excursion down the Yellow River from Elka Ray Nguyen, and a reprinted novelette about a young Laotian journalist's place in the sensationalist future of news reporting from award-winner Paolo Bacigalupi; speculative poetry from Chris Mooney-Singh, Ang Si Min, and Bryan Thao Worra; and an unusual exploration of Philippine magic systems from Paolo Chikiamco.

  This venture would not be possible without the assistance of poetry editor Kristine Ong Muslim, the wonderful art direction of Sarah and Schooling, and the support of publisher Kenny Leck and Math Paper Press. Its continuance depends on the enthusiasm of its readers, so if you have bought this first issue of the journal, then you have already joined the conversation, and I thank you. Please spread the good word. Those wishing to contribute content for future issues can do so via the submissions portal at our website, lontarjournal.com.

  * Malaysian Tales: Retold & Remixed, ed. Daphne Lee, ZI Publications.

  ** Philippine Speculative Fiction 7, ed. Alex and Kate Osias, Kestrel DDM; Alternative Alamat, ed. Paolo Chikiamco, Rocket Kapre, Lauriat, ed. Charles Tan, Lethe Press.

  *** Fish Eats Lion, ed. Jason Erik Lundberg, Math Paper Press; The Ayam Curtain, ed. JY Yang and Joyce Chng, Math Paper Press; The Steampowered Globe, ed. Rosemary Lim and Maisarah Bte Abu Samah, Two Trees Pte Ltd; Eastern Heathens, ed. Ng Yi-Sheng and Amanda Lee Koe.

  Departures

  Kate Osias

  Kate Osias (Philippines) loves reality shows, cheap chocolate and diet carbonated drinks. She has won two Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the GIG Book Contest, and the Canvas Story Writing Contest, and has earned a citation in the international Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. She has stories published online and in print. Recently, she co-edited the sixth and seventh volumes of Philippine Speculative Fiction with Nikki Alfar and Alex Osias, respectively.
/>
  Time is different in Manila.

  This is the thought that occurs to her, even as something large and wet slams her to the ground. Random bursts of sensation follow, permeating the fog of her thoughts. The sound of people screaming. The feel of the hard, uneven stone against her back. The dark expanse of her sightlessness. The sense of drifting, leaving, fading from the present.

  When the last realization settles, a small flame of panic flares from deep within her, disrupting her mental lethargy. Fading is bad, she tells herself, and without understanding why, she's convinced. Time is different in Manila, she tells herself again, because her inventory of cogent thoughts is limited, and it's important to make do with what she has.

  There's a ground made of stone. There are people screaming. Fading is bad.

  Again and again, she repeats her meager list of things she knows to be true, until that which was distant draws near, draws even nearer still, draws so close to her that the noise blares against her ears with painful immediacy.

  She screams.

  The small flame of panic explodes into a chaotic conflagration. Still blind, she's scrambling onto her feet; running, tripping, falling; crawling away. Something growls, and she stills.

  Panic, at its zenith, lends her strength. She forces her eyes open.

  A large, scaled tentacle registers. Shadows flit in and out of her line of vision. Just beyond, a vivid blue sky pockmarked with symbols that hang low, like rain clouds. Remembered epiphanies come in bursts. Some of those symbols are there to trap. Some of those symbols are there to compel. Some of those symbols are there to make her forget.

  The angry distrust that rises in her throat temporarily alleviates the debilitating terror.

  I will not forget, she tells herself. I will not fade. She stands up then staggers, when the ground trembles. Various experiences erupt from the recesses of her subconscious, superimposing themselves upon the present:

  a gigantic eight-legged wolf's hairy hooved shanks, kicking people with focused violent force,

  a mud-colored dragon's foul breath, surrounding her in a burning green mist,

  an ivory serpent's shimmering underbelly, a few heartbeats before it falls on her.

  Another growl shatters the illusion of memories. She knows it's behind her, whatever it is. A part of her wants to understand it, to comprehend the futility against an insurmountable horror. But she's paralyzed by a sense of preservation that she struggles to shake off.

  When she's able to finally turn around, she sees a demon protruding from the stony pavement, taking over most of an intersection, tentacles whipping, pounding, slithering at odd angles. She sees human-shaped shades laying siege to the beast, using their teeth, their nails, the impact of their weight from a fall. She sees the deteriorated landscape—vine-crusted buildings, mangled street sign rods, shards of glass reflecting prismatic sunlight everywhere—an almost careless footnote to the confusion of events, but it's that, more than anything else she has seen, that triggers an important remembering.

  She's dead. They all are.

  Something gleams from the sky and she feels a weak impulse to fight the demon; but this is easily crushed by another remembered truth. This truth emerges and spreads from her mind to her limbs, amplifying her panic, imbuing her with purpose: there are worse things than death.

  Letting terror propel her into action, she runs away.

  *

  Everybody in Manila is dead.

  She finds her way to an empty alleyway, where the growls are muffled by walls and distance, where the shades on the street that the alleyway intersects are expressionless and inactive, where she crouches and tries to catch the breath she does not need.

  I am a rock in a storm. I am a mountain against the wind.

  Only when the world stops shaking, only when the distant sounds die down, only when the blaze of fear and panic have been doused by prolonged silence and an extended stillness, does she stop trembling.

  When there's nothing else to do, she moves.

  She stays close to the buildings, avoiding the other shades and the glare of symbols. She notices that not all shades are motionless; some move, aimlessly, some stop suddenly, as if something occurred to them in their wanderings. A few evaporate into thin air, but not before a light emerges from one of the symbols in the sky; not before the shade is illuminated by a welcoming glow; not before their lips form an enviable smile.

  Disappearing is good. Everybody in Manila is dead. Fading is bad. Time is different in Manila.

  She has a horde of disjointed memories now. A flash of light just before she died; the face of a man, smiling; the sound of a child laughing; the taste of chocolate; a plethora of demonic encounters; a dead man who is her friend, who is in Manila, who is her trusted companion, who is called—

  "Enzo."

  He appears in front of her, as though summoned. His eyes slowly become alert. When he finally acknowledges her presence, his brows furrow, his face grimaces. Eventually, he's able to spit out her name.

  "Carla."

  She remembers the deal: to hold each other's name, because names are important in the ghost city of Manila even if names are the first to fade, followed by a sundry of details that relate to their sense of self. But memories of another, these, they have found, these don't fade as easily. And so they secreted other things in each other as well.

  A flurry of words tumbles past their lips, as they try to fill up the blanks of their lives.

  "We're dead. We're in Manila. Stay away from the demons. You like guavas and beer."

  "We don't belong to Manila. The Catastrophe was unexpected, instantaneous. You love coffee. Don't eat crabs."

  "You love Leslie. She wasn't in Manila. She hates roses."

  "Outside, you have a husband and a son—Mark and Joseph? Or is it—?"

  Suddenly, Enzo is bathed in warm light. He looks at her, and Carla looks at him, and in a moment, a memory of a conversation resurfaces. Just before he disappears, she reaches her hand out to him; he takes it, then pulls her close into a tight embrace.

  *

  The tunnel that is not Manila but is not not-Manila is called the Outer Rim.

  She and Enzo appear in front of one closed, square panel. The tunnel that is the Outer Rim is barely lit—one small yellow bulb caged in metal to illuminate several yards of space, just enough light to show various symbols on walls that are peeling paint. There are no chairs, no tables, no other furniture except the yellow light bulbs, empty spaces, and silence.

  Carla barely moves, aware that her presence is forbidden, terrified of the unknown, unremembered consequences, if they're found out. But they have done this before; she knows this. She remembers the first time when she (or he) curled up into the smallest possible of seemings and came with the other as an illicit companion. She also knows that it used to be impossible, and then difficult, and now, just uncomfortable to perform such a feat. And she thinks, we are diminishing, because there was a time when they were too large and couldn't fit, back when the walls were not crumbling in decline, back when the symbols in the sky hung higher than clouds. But she does not say this to Enzo, who is about to put his hand on one panel.

  Instead, she says "time is different in Manila," because beyond the Outer Rim is a petitioner who remembers them—oftentimes loved ones, sometimes family, rarely friends, and people change.

  Enzo nods. But she knows he still hopes; expectation lines the ghost of a smile on his lips. When the panel opens, they see an old woman, seated on the other side of a dirty sheet of glass.

  The old woman speaks, before either of them can react. She speaks slowly at first, her syllables drawn out and measured, as if her words have been considered and are being reconsidered, even as she utters them. The old woman punctuates her phrases with heavy coughing that wracks her body; later into the monologue, she starts slurring her words, as if she is simultaneously trying to clear her throat and speak.

  Despite this, Carla and Enzo understand. They've heard most o
f it before. This is what the old woman says:

  I'm not Leslie. I'm not your mother, your sister or your cousin. I'm a woman your parents hired, thirty years ago, to remember you.

  There was a Catastrophe. You died, along with an entire city. But you and the city did not move on. Instead, you have remained, and there are many attempts to determine why.

  (You had your own theories before, but in the fifteenth year of my service, you told me to stop enumerating them to you. 'It doesn't matter anymore,' you said.)

  There are portals in the ghost city of Manila, where monsters come out, which you fight, to keep the world outside safe. Do not go into these portals. You have seen friends lost in the world beyond those gates. You have seen them suffer.

  (You told me that, should you ask for their names, to refuse to give them to you. Remembering is a different sort of pain, you said, and you insisted that any version of you will understand that.)

  Your parents are dead. You have no siblings. Leslie is married, with grandchildren. She doesn't want to see you. She wrote you a letter, which your mother read, which I've never read, and things between you and her were over, before I was even hired.

  This is the last time I will visit. I'm very sick. I know you don't even remember my name, but in the years that have passed, you've become important to me. You are my responsibility, my burden, the one constant in my life.

  I've come to say goodbye. I've come to say I love you.

  My name is Natalie.

  The old woman coughs again, and does not stop. She starts heaving, spittle dripping down the sides of her chin, blood splattering against the glass.