Red Dot Irreal (13 page)

—Do you think the Undine knows?

—It is possible. She knows many things. I suppose I never really considered the question before now, content to do my work. Perhaps I shall ask her.

You pass the next minutes in silence, staring out at the verdant landscape, Wayan stolidly operating the controls. The flight brings you parallel to a wide river that runs the entire length of what used to be Singapore, a vast blue bifurcation in an otherwise field of green. In the distance, at the river’s source, rises a gigantic waterfall at least a thousand feet tall. The spray is visible even at this distance, powerful in its magnitude. And the
déjà vu
hits you, and you know you’ve been here before.

Something about this place, it gnaws at your guts, at your cullions, an importance. Ming Liu says the Undine has all the answers, but it’s more than that, more than just the promise of knowledge. It is the feeling of inevitability, as if you were meant to come here, that this is somehow
right
.

Wayan maneuvers the zeppelin to a landing platform at the waterfall’s cliff, discharges the mooring cables, extends the flexible gangplank. The hummingbird flaps slow and slow and slow and stop. He presses more buttons and the airship sighs, as if the trip has exhausted it. You look back to Ming Liu, yawning and stretching in the bean bag.

The three of you disembark, the warm mist making the air heavy, hard to breathe. Underneath the cross-hatched metal platform: a spiral stairway, stretching down, all the way down, the bottom obscured, disappearing into mist and distance. Ming Liu takes the lead, and the three of you start down, the steps slippery from condensed vapor, every inch of handrail and stair and support covered with rust. You briefly wonder about the stability of the structure, whether it will hold your combined weight, but as you progress you hear no groans, no straining metal, and it’s entirely possible the rust is the only thing holding the stairway together.

You walk for nearly an hour before stopping to rest. Your clothes are saturated and Ming Liu’s short spiky hair is plastered to her skull. From several hip pockets, Wayan produces bean paste balls, seven-treasure dumplings wrapped in banana leaves, and bars of tamarind candy: sweet, salty and chewy. Munching without words, the roar of the falls preventing conversation, and after finishing, the descent begins again, down and down and down. You lose all sense of time, as if you have been walking these stairs your entire life, the step-step-step a hypnosis, a trance, down the spiral forever, the aching in your calves and quadriceps always there. Haven’t you reached the center of the earth already?

A few close calls, wetness on the steps or handrail, a brief vertigo, a momentary slip but a quick recovery. No one loses his or her balance, grabbing for the handrail, the bolts coming free, eaten away by rust and time, as he or she plummets end over end, a wordless shriek, disappearing into the mist, swallowed up by the natural world. You almost prefer something like that to this endless walking.

And then, abruptly, you stop. You’ve reached a wide landing, cross-hatched with moss and clover and bird droppings, though you’ve seen no birds in the vicinity, with a plank that leads behind the waterfall, perhaps to a cave in the rock. Ming Liu smiles at you, squeezes your hand, says something you can’t hear.

You don’t want to go inside. This place curls up in your stomach and scrabbles like a bag of rats. Happily, you’ll stay on the landing, getting wetter and wetter from mist and spray, skin wrinkling and puckering, a meat statue for all time, ossifying, calcifying, an everlasting reminder of cowardice, but then Ming Liu and Wayan nudge you gently from behind, propelling you onto the plank and beyond the waterfall and into the cave.

Only, it’s not a cave. The roar of the waterfall is gone, and your ears ring in the sudden silence. You stand in a vast ornate chamber, lit by candles in sconces along the walls and in holders on tables, decorated with paintings and complex tapestries. Upon turning around you see no evidence of the entrance through which you passed, no waterfall, no walkway, just solid wall, wooden, or something like it. It is a chamber of royalty, intimidating. The floor is constructed of black and white tiles, constantly moving, forming new patterns, shifting, moving, fluid art. At the far end of the room is an intricate fountain, three layers of marble animals spouting water from mouths and cisterns and other orifices, and on the top sits the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, made entirely of water.

—Welcome back, Dane, she says. —It is good to see you again.

She hurts your heart, her beauty a palpable thing in the chamber, a gravitational well, drawing your attention and fixing it. The dim light from the candles bends to flatter her every curve, while simultaneously reflecting off of her liquid form, throwing wavery patterns onto the walls and the floor. You feel an intense urge to kneel before her, to pledge your undying loyalty, but you remain standing.

—You know who I am, she says.

—You are the Undine.

—That’s correct. Partially. I am the water goddess and the ruler of this place. I was there when the world cooled and the elements formed, springing to life from the natural magic of this new existence. As were you.

—I was?

—Yes, Dane. You are my brother, and I am your sister.

The Undine stands, and an arc of water trickles from her position down to the floor at your feet. She steps into the arc as if it is an escalator, and travels the short distance to directly in front of you, her water conveyance disappearing into her form, reassimilating into her body. The barest touch of her fingers on your cheek and you are sobbing, though you can’t think of why. Her smile is beatific. You cannot imagine being a sibling to this goddess.

—I know, she whispers, a susurration that reverberates throughout your body, and all at once you feel exhausted, and the only thing you want to do is sleep in the presence of this beautiful woman, this creature who fills you with longing and shame. You sink to your knees and close your eyes, feeling her hand on your bald head as the world slips away and you sink into the darkness of dream.

~

You awaken in a large bed of silk sheets, surrounded by pillows, in a room decorated with Chinese characters and delicate watercolor artwork. It feels as if you have slept for days, your mouth gummy, your eyes crusted at the corners. Yawn and stretch, and there is a tureen of water on a table next to the bed which you drink from, greedily. You stop for a moment, suddenly struck with the notion that you are drinking the Undine, that this is her sleeping place, and you find that you don’t care, that you would drink her down completely if you could, in order to feel closer to her.

You roll out of bed, the tiled floor cool on your bare feet. The clothes you were wearing are stacked neatly next to the bed. You dress quickly, not bothering with the hiking boots, happy to feel the cool floor with your toes, and then step out of the bedroom and back into the main chamber. The Undine is nowhere to be seen.

Next to the fountain is a dining table for one, adorned with a shiny red tablecloth and laid out with an unusual meal of cooked fish, a lychee bunch stuffed in its mouth, and next to it a glass of pale wine. As you get closer, you identify the fish as one of the amphibious weasels swimming around in the swamps of Jurong. A slice has been cut and displayed on a bone china plate, the food still steaming, and the smell makes your stomach clench with hunger. Saliva springs into your mouth as you sit down to the table.

You alternate between pieces of the weasel and the golf ball-sized lychee, a mixture of fishy and sweet tastes that dissolve on your tongue. The wine is in actuality a type of mead, a powerful concoction with all the flavors of springtime, honeysuckle and jasmine and flowers in bloom, and you stop at half a glass, wary of becoming drunk on the ambrosia. After finishing the weasel and the fruit, leaving nothing but the head and bones, you sit back in the chair, pleasantly full, content. Happy.

Movement from behind you, delicate footsteps, and the Undine appears at the side of your table.

—Feeling better?

—Yes. Thank you.

—I suppose you have many questions. Let me start by saying that I wish your amnesia had not been necessary. Hurting you is the last thing I wanted to do.

—You did this to me?

—Yes.

—Why?

—You had become obsessed with the nature of this place.

—Jurong?

She nods. —You could not handle the reality of the situation, that Jurong is a prison, a fictive imagining. After an eternity of folly and trickery, it is my punishment, and yours as well. We were sent here by a man you and I both wronged, one I had seen die with my own eyes. But he was just the agent of retribution for a hundred thousand acts of pain and ruin.

—This is a prison? Is there any way out?

—No, and this is what drove your rage. I still see this rage within you, still burning, ready to leap out and consume us all.

You breathe slowly, but she is right, you can feel the frustration and humiliation rising again, like a living thing.

—And I take most of the blame for our being here. You always followed my lead, obeyed my commands, like a trusted lieutenant. But I was the one behind all our schemes, our reign of amoral terror, done for my amusement. If I had not ordered you to kill the one who sent us here, we never would have been enslaved in the first place.

You smell smoke, burning cloth, and realize you are scorching your own clothing. It is her fault that you are here, trapped in this jungle setting. Who is she to take your memory, to rob you of your identity?

Between gritted teeth, you say, —How long have we been here?

— It is impossible to tell. Time moves strangely in this place. Many years, if not centuries.

You explode.

The Undine throws up a protective shield of water, but it evaporates in seconds. She screams, a multi-harmonic shriek that would shatter glass, the sound ringing in your ears as her form is completely transformed into steam. The walls of the Undine’s chamber burst outward, and you see the waterfall in front of you, and it boils and evaporates with the power of your rage. Your feet lift from the ground and you pass through the hole in the chamber back into the outside air, your heat melting the spiral stairway on which you traveled, turning the rust and metal into slag, the anger unending now, expanding outward in all directions. You are a supernova, a hundred nuclear bombs, the Big Bang. The energy of your wrath sears the landscape, turns to ash any living thing in the Park, the trees, the plants, the birds, the insects, the fish.

Before you, the scenery becomes a wasteland, a charred and scorched destruction. You drift down and down, to the bottom of what used to be the waterfall, now nothing but blackened rocks and ash. You scream yourself hoarse, you sob uncontrollably, the tears misting as soon as they leave your eyes. Your muscles contract to the point of pain. It isn’t fair. The screams of protest carry to the skies, but there is no answer.

You sit, alone in your misery, emptied out, the ash of a million million trees drifting around you. You are immortal, and the only thing you want right now is to die.

Out of the smoke, nine figures emerge. The Undine, Ming Liu, Wayan, Kadek, and the five other Indonesian brothers.

—Well, says Ming Liu, —that was certainly unproductive.

You shiver, suddenly, uncontrollably.

The Undine puts a hand to your shoulder. —It is fortunate that I have some command over this place. Jurong will regenerate, and I can bring back all the plant and animal life, though it may take some doing.

—What will you do to me? you ask. —Will you erase my memory again?

—No. This clearly did not work last time. And punishment seems to be out of the question. Instead, we will help you.

—How?

—We will teach you to accept, to see beyond the reasoning of events, beyond the fairness of the universe. To understand that things happen, such as our imprisonment, and that it is not for us to obsess over why, or to dwell on it, but to move on. We will teach you to live.

~

—Like this, Kadek says. —In through the nose, filling up your lungs, and out through the mouth. Good. Better.

You sit on the ground at the base of the newly grown Mother Tree, learning to breathe, to meditate. More and more mynahs populate the Mother Tree every day, mocking Kadek with their taunts. But he shows a vast amount of patience, not accepting their provocation, treating them with respect even as he stuns them with his sonic weapon, stores them in a canvas sack, and relocates them to other sections of the Park.

You have noticed a change in yourself as well, a feeling of increasing peace. Your mind relaxes and the memories slowly return, not stolen but buried, hidden away until you were prepared to deal with them. The actions of your past shame you, the lies, the pain you caused, the countless lives affected by the actions of you and your sister. With this gradual recollection, you can appreciate more fully the person you were, and the person you wish to become.

The meditation over, Wayan slaps you on the back and smiles. He hands you the bag of groundskeeping tools, and you follow him to a northeastern area of the Park, the home of tens of thousands of flamingos. The Park becomes more familiar every day as you reacquaint yourself, the paths no longer quite so labyrinthine, the heat no longer so intolerable.

At Flamingo Lake, you trim away dead foliage, you plant new strains of lily, you dig a new pool for the specialized nursery, where the flamingos can raise their young away from the other birds in the park. You dig, the shovel solid in your hands, each thunk a verification of existence, the moistened soil and plants filling your nostrils with life, you dig and your thoughts of how to escape such a place vanish, and your worries about the nature of your imprisonment evaporate, you dig for the feel of the tool in your hands, for the productivity of it, you dig, you dig, you dig, and you are alive.

Notes

“Bogeymen” was published in
Subterranean Magazine
in October 2011, but saw print for the first time here. “Lion City Daikaiju” and “Paper Cow” appeared in their present form in
The Daily Cabal
, February and May 2009; “Dragging the Frame” and “Ikan Berbudi (Wise Fish)” appeared in condensed form in
The Daily Cabal
, March and June 2009, and have been drastically revised and updated for this collection; all four stories were published collectively (along with “The Crying of Kopitiam 419,” not presented here) as “The Red Dot Pentaptych” in
Quarterly Literary Review Singapore
, vol. 9 no. 2, April 2010. “Hero Worship, or How I Met the Dream King” originally appeared on the Speculative Fiction Writers of Singapore group blog in September 2010. “Taxi Ride” was originally published in
Quarterly Literary Review Singapore
, vol. 10 no. 1, January 2011. “Coast” appeared in an anthology of the same name in October 2011, but saw print for the first time here. “In Jurong” was originally published in
Quarterly Literary Review Singapore
, vol. 8 no. 4, November 2009. “Bachy Soletanche” was first published in
Scheherezade’s Bequest
, no. 16, September 2012. “Kopi Luwak”, “Big Chief” and “Occupy: An Exhibition” are original to this collection.

Note on “Bogeymen”: I have taken considerable liberties with the nautical and geopolitical history of Singapore, Malaya, and Indonesia of the early to mid-1800s, though the actions of the characters above are based on actual historical events. James Brooke, the White Raja, did in fact exist, as did Captain Kennedy, and they were both legendary for their fiery tempers. More about the real men can be found in
Latitude Zero: Tales of the Equator
by Gianni Guadalupi and Antony Shugaar (Carrol & Graf, 2001). A comprehensive history of the region, as well as of the Bugis, Captain Henry Keppel, and the use of betel nuts, is available in
The Land of the Sultans: An Illustrated History of Malaysia
by Ruud Spruit (The Pepin Press, 1995). Any factual mistakes are of course my own.

Note on “Hero Worship, or How I Met the Dream King”: Neil Gaiman, author of the graphic novel series
The Sandman
, the novels
American Gods
and
The Graveyard Book
, and many many other things, was in fact a guest at the 2009 Singapore Writers Festival, and I did get to talk with him there. It is up to the reader to decide which parts of this meeting actually happened.

Note on “Kopi Luwak”: Though this story may seem to stand out in a collection devoted to Singaporean
fantastika
, it is still related thematically and geographically. Singapore takes pride in being “A Little Red Dot,” a tiny island on the world map at the tip of the Malay Peninsula that is often indicated with a red dot that obscures the totality of the country, boasting economic prosperity despite its miniscule size. Bali, the small Hindu province within the enormity of Muslim Indonesia, could also itself be considered a little red dot; it is hoped that the reader will indulge my tenuous definitions herein.