LONTAR issue #1 Read online

  Several things occur to Carla in the confusion of the moment:

  the old woman is dying,

  the defenses aren't as formidable as they once were, when she and Enzo had first tried to escape,

  there's a place other than Manila, other than the Outer Rim, a place where demons don't protrude out of intersections, reeking of violence.

  Carla looks at her companion.

  "Do it," she says, because Natalie is his.

  When Enzo turns to face her, she doesn't see excitement. He seems even less now, dimmed and shadowed. His stillness is saying there's nothing left for me out there and slowly, even the despair in his eyes drains away, as if even that is fading.

  There's nothing left for me out there. There is nothing left. There's nothing.

  Carla feels a spark of irritation that quickly turns into urgent anticipation. She doesn't hesitate. She reaches out again, this time to the old woman, then imagines herself small, smaller still, then as tiny as she is able.

  I am a grain of sand on the beach, she says to herself, I am a teardrop on the glass, and this time, she knows she's being foolish, but the foolishness helps her focus.

  There's only a barely audible pop, accompanied by a sudden heaviness that must be the sense of loss for Enzo and everything he must have been to her, and then she's out. And just when the old woman draws her last breath, Carla takes over Natalie's body.

  *

  Carla staggers out of the wooden enclosed space.

  At first, Outside Manila seems like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle of mismatched parts. The trees are in the sky, the ground is an endless blue, a dark wall becomes the ceiling becomes the floor and becomes the wall again with each blink of the eye, and the unforgiving sun is everywhere, making everything too bright. Carla's instinctive response to confusion is to get away, because demons (or monsters, or beasts) are always lurking in the spaces created by chaos. Carla forces the body that is not hers, that is heavy and exhausted, that sometimes still coughs, that moves too slowly, to go forward and away, just away from Manila.

  It is so odd to be alive. So odd, and so painful.

  When the world finally makes sense—when the trees find their place on the ground, when the blue returns to a sky unblemished by symbols, when the dark wall disappears into a thin outline in the horizon—Carla is beset with another type of assault.

  Memories come in relentless waves, most of them about her time in Manila, some of them about her life before she died. Because of the volume, the memories are nearly indistinguishable from each other and the quality of information she's able to obtain is vague and imprecise. She only knows she's been dead for some time. She knows Enzo is important. She knows there are others with them who are lost, attempting an escape from Manila through the portals. She knows, even if she doesn't remember their names, they mattered. She knows there is a Husband and there is a Son, though she can't even determine which one's Joseph, which one's Mark. She knows there were arguments that grew out of hand; trips taken or forgone; routines and schedules and an ever expanding grocery list. She can glimpse fragments of conversations, tail ends of tantrums; the comfortable and uncomfortable types of silences; all indications of an imperfect happiness.

  She doesn't know if Husband and Son ever visited. They must have, she tells herself. They must have come and she must have let them go, as she imagines someone who loves deeply would have. If they're still alive; if they're both well; if she sees them now, will she be magnanimous?

  The words that come to her mind are far from noble:

  Where have you been? Why haven't you visited me? Why have you forgotten me? Help me.

  The hubtrain complex that materializes in the distance anchors Carla against the deluge of her past and the emotions that come with it. Though it is large and smooth, when she expects the complex to be less sprawling and sharp-edged, Carla recognizes it, in the same way, she supposes, one would recognize a parent in a child. When a symbol gleams on its façade, she stops.

  That's when Carla notices the other paths that are running parallel to hers and how all these roads will eventually converge. On these paths are a handful of people, most of them gray-haired and thin-boned, sweating and slow-paced, smelling of an unforgiving heat and confined spaces, all of them coughing. They walk, unperturbed, toward the hubtrain complex. Carla reminds herself that not all symbols are there to entrap. Carla reminds herself she's no longer in Manila. Carla reminds herself that for now, she's alive.

  The memories pounding in her head make the decision for her. They're all screaming, asking to be recognized, demanding that she make herself whole. The hubtrain complex is one step toward that goal because it is a place to go to other places where everything she remembers will somehow make sense. With nothing more than fragile hope, Carla follows the other people to the imposing monolith.

  *

  The hubtrain complex is air-conditioned and bright with artificial light.

  There are digital billboards, flickering, shifting, screaming their importance in white against black. Crowds of commuters are going up escalators, turning corners, coming out of elevators, obscuring painted symbols, drowning out announcements made on shattered speakers. The whole complex throbs with impatient energy, as if trains and people and data cannot wait to depart or arrive or move on.

  Carla disrupts the intricate choreography of commuters going up and down, in and out, to and from, when she stands still in the middle of a crowded tunnel, then on top of an escalator, then just before the bend of a narrow corner. Most people make space for her; others push her in annoyance. Carla barely notices them. She's wading through memories, trying to fish out a place that is somehow connected to the hubtrain complex, that is somehow very important to her, but is somehow blurred by the ceaseless ebb and flow of crowds.

  You must be my home, she tells the hazy image in her mind. Where are you?

  Carla abruptly starts walking again. She bumps into one of the commuters who pushes her back; she staggers into someone else who shoves her away. When the crowd settles again, Carla finds herself engulfed in a sea of dark shoulders, expressionless profiles, words dropped without context as an overheard conversation drifts away from her, momentary blasts of music from curiously shaped headphones, a miasma of different smells—sweat, mint, cigarette smoke, deodorant, smog—making Carla feel as if she's so small and irrelevant, tinier than when she slipped past glass. She gasps for breath, coughs, panics then coughs some more.

  I am a leaf in the wind. I am a lily on a river.

  Carla is pushed out of the throng.

  She leans back against a cold, tiled wall. After the coughing fit subsides, she starts feeling through her pockets, compelled by an instinctive general wariness of pickpockets and thieves that thrive in the hubtrain complex chaos. She finds a rectangular laminated piece of plastic, with an intricate emblem embossed in gold in the corner. In bold letters, it tells her what it is: HUBTRAIN CARD.

  When a list of stops starts scrolling down the card, she almost drops it.

  The surprise turns into fascination, as stops on the schematic blink in concert with the names. And then a familiar string of letters brings a smile to Carla's borrowed face.

  Carla finally knows where to go. She's going to Ortigas. She's going back home.

  *

  Ortigas gleams in neon lights, despite the afternoon sun.

  Carla can hear singing in the distance, vendors shouting their wares, flyers being thrust upon her by people wearing ill-fitting suits, and Carla thinks, maybe not everything has changed. And then she sees egg-shaped vehicles zoom and hover at intersections, dirty, mechanical golems bearing the logo of the police casually marching alongside pedestrians, while buildings shimmer symbols and advertising and propaganda. She feels foolish for even momentarily believing that some things have remained constant.

  Carla's memories weave in and out of the present, providing outdated, contextual information:

  a street's name and its applicable traffic laws: le
ft turn only here, u-turn slot there, a stern traffic enforcer always behind a particular tree,

  a favored street food vendor, selling the most delicious fried squid balls, three corners from where she stands,

  a parking place not known to too many people, behind a large building two blocks away.

  None of the memories that come tell her how to get to her home.

  Carla takes a deep breath and cautiously steps onto a tiled pavement. Something appears beside her, and Carla nearly screams.

  The hologram starts talking about insurance.

  "Thank you for stepping into MetroFil Insurance today. My name is Holly, and for just a few minutes of your time—"

  Carla has a vague recollection about holograms. The holograms in her memories were static-ridden, with limited range. She remembers thinking how wonderful the holograms were; how exciting. The hologram in front of her is crisp, leagues away from what she remembers it to be. The image is that of a cheerful young woman, wearing a blouse with a large ornate logo, nearly indistinguishable from a flesh and blood human.

  "—we have a host of different benefits to suit your needs—"

  For the first time in what seems like ages, Carla laughs. At least she can count on insurance spiels to remain unchanged. Carla suddenly remembers having to memorize one and she thinks to herself, I must be an insurance agent which doesn't quite fit and she amends it by telling herself I must have been an insurance agent in my youth and that feels more true, so she laughs because she feels she's claimed one more piece of information about herself.

  Carla is still in good spirits several meters afterwards, even with Holly the hologram still tailing her, trying to enumerate the benefits of financial protection, when a man offers her tasters of a particular drink.

  "Are you real?" she asks the man.

  The man laughs, because he sees Holly, and Carla laughs again some more, because it is the first conversation she's had, that she initiated, and though brief, she feels all the more alive for it. Carla tries to think of something else to say as she picks up a cup from his free samples tray and takes a sip.

  It's a chocolate drink, mildly cold, somewhat sweet, a little too watery. But as the liquid travels down her throat, it triggers, in the irrational way the Carla's memory seems to trigger, an image of a kitchen, where the fridge door needs to be closed gently, where the tap water is too strong, where tiles don't match the cabinets, because it was too expensive to change the tiles, after the cabinets were replaced, where an oven sits, old but in good condition, a relic passed down from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law.

  And then the image explodes into a house, into a street, into series of roads, into a map, startlingly clear in Carla's mind.

  Carla drops the cup and tries to run.

  *

  When she finally arrives at the gatehouse of the small community where her house is, where her kitchen is, where she irrationally believes the oven she inherited still sits, she looks more bedraggled cat than human. She's been scrambling, walking, avoiding swerving hovering cars that she does not recognize, contending with a landscape that has become unfamiliar to her. The coughing fits come more frequently now but somehow, despite her trials or perhaps because of it, the weight of the body has eased.

  I am a pebble in an avalanche.

  She's hurtling to her end, propelled by an image that becomes more glorious with each labored breath. Memories taunt her, pull at her, urge her forward. The road she walks is the road of her past, the houses that she passes by are the houses she knew, the trees that loom like leafy sentinels are smaller, thinner, younger.

  Carla does not even notice the security guard who waves her on—perhaps deciding she's no threat, perhaps recognizing her desperation—she just keeps walking, as quickly as the body that is not hers, that is still dying, that is tired and light and weightless, is able.

  This is where I live, she tells herself. This is where I will die.

  And she tells herself she's happy.

  One memory becomes even more prominent, as she walks closer to her home. The memory is of Carla, fixing a tilted, framed picture on the wall, picking up the keys on a side table, locking the door twice. There was a seminar in Manila that she had to attend; it was important for her career. And so she left early in the morning, while Husband and Son were still asleep.

  It has taken her a long time to make it back.

  The house that is Carla's house, regardless of who thinks they own it, looks remarkably the same. It is a narrow off-white structure, two stories high, gated with red metal. The sameness of it jolts Carla out of her euphoric determination. I must be remembering it wrong, Carla thinks, because the off-white is still the same shade of off-white in her memories, and the red, same shade of red, and things don't stay the same, because time is different in Manila, and people, and things, and places change, even if insurance spiels don't.

  There is the sound of a door closing; footsteps; someone struggling with iron that needs oiling; then the gate swings open. A gray-haired man stands half turned toward the house.

  "We're going to be late!" says the gray-haired man. Someone responds from inside the house, which satisfies him. He turns around.

  The impact of seeing him brings Carla to her knees.

  There's no reason to expect that he is still here, that he hasn't changed houses, that he hasn't moved on. But he is here. He is different, and yet the same. And he is coming closer and saying, "Are you okay?"

  Carla is drowning in memories, gasping for breath. Through the blur of tears she sees his face, lined with age, bearded where it used to be smooth, gray where it used to be dark. But his eyes, the shape of his lips, the size of his ears—it's all him, so him that Carla laughs, then coughs in the attempt.

  This is what Carla wants to say:

  I remember you.

  I don't remember what we last said to each other on the night before the morning of the day I didn't come back. I don't remember if we fought, or if we laughed, or if we said something meaningless but truthful. But I remember that you like your coffee sweet in the morning, your eggs barely cooked and slightly salted; sometimes, you smoke; when you're tired, you snore.

  I remember you like running your hands through my hair, and I like running my hands down your back, and we like running our hands on each other a lot. I remember the way your eyes would squint when I'd say something you don't understand, the sharp edge of your voice when you're upset. I remember how you looked the first time you saw our son.

  I have to believe that you're happy. Just as I have to believe that our son is alive and happy. I have to believe that you've moved on, and you have to believe me, when I say that this belief brings me happiness.

  Now I know that not all things fade. I love you, Joseph.

  The body that is not hers cannot comply. Her borrowed lips can barely move; her borrowed voice nearly inexistent. It seems like the more Carla struggles, the more difficult it is to focus. Joseph is saying something; that much she can discern. But the words themselves are lost in a waterfall of memories. Joseph morphs into other Josephs, all of them laughing, as the pasts layer themselves upon each other, obscuring the present:

  Joseph, saying you are the rainbow in my sky, after she teased him about his lack of romantic verbosity,

  Joseph, saying you are the mango in my fruit salad, to which she replies there are no mangoes in fruit salads (to which he then replies, there should be),

  Joseph, saying you are the pickle in my cheeseburger, because Joseph loves pickles with his cheeseburgers, and Carla is genuinely flattered.

  Carla coughs as the pain in her chest intensifies. In the reflection of his eyes, she can see the body of Natalie, dying all over again. With all her remaining strength, she reaches up to him and whispers, "I'm home."

  Love in the Time of Utopia

  Zen Cho

  Zen Cho (Malaysia/UK) is based in London. Her short stories have appeared in publications in the US, Australia and Malaysia, including Strange Hor
izons, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and the Selangor Times. She was a finalist in the Selangor Young Talent Awards 2011 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find out more about her work at zencho.org.

  Feisal found out about his heart when he met Xinya. The lesson was unexpected. He met her at work, which was such an unsuitable venue for intimacy.

  Like everyone else, Feisal had attended the classes in right thinking and right feeling at school. He knew feelings were creations of the mind. Armed with a proper understanding of their true basis, one could create appropriate feelings where they should exist, and snuff out inappropriate emotions when necessary.

  But when it happened, love was like a tsunami, or a bird dropping on the head. It struck him unawares out of the bright blue sky.

  *

  The small branch of the regional cosmetics business where Feisal worked was only beginning to extend its scope to research. Xinya was the first biologist they hired. She was young, only a couple of years older than Feisal, with a round pleasant face and narrow eyes that gave it a look of friendly cynicism.

  Her hair was mostly hidden by a scarf, only a few brown curls escaping to frame her forehead. This confused people, who thought she was a Muslim despite the eyes, until she explained she was a Latter Day Izzahite.

  This was accepted without surprise. It was extraordinary how these cults that had sprung up in the wake of the Crisis had become so respectable—though he should not think of them as cults, Feisal reminded himself; that was hardly affable. The new religions were no longer proscribed, as they'd stopped attracting dangerous enthusiasm. These days there were as many indifferent Izzahites as there were half-hearted Catholics and lackadaisical Muslims.

  Apart from the minor eccentricity of professing a religion, there was nothing out of the common way about Xinya. It was easy to be affable with her—she didn't push to make space for herself in the conversation, but asked Feisal questions about his work and listened with apparent interest.