by Alex Garland
A passerby on the pavement stopped and turned, thinking he was being addressed. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t, and that the slight man on the steps of Legaspi Towers was talking to himself. Or to the black sky, which was the direction in which his face was turned.
“Light from our nearest star, ninety-three million miles away.”
The passerby started walking again, a little more hurried than before, as if alarmed by the statistic and the tone of extreme reverence used to speak it.
“Light from ninety-three million miles away!” Alfredo repeated loudly. He had seen the passerby in his peripheral vision, correctly guessed the nature of the man’s reaction, and been vaguely irritated by it.
“Traveling at an incredible one hundred eighty-six thousand miles a second!”
Cente, ask simple questions.
What is light?
Light is a wave of photons that travels at 186,000 miles a second, until it hits our retina. At that point, light is stopped dead in its tracks and converted into an energy impulse, which is then translated by our brains into an image. This is the one time that light can be seen at rest—when we see it. Although another way of thinking about light would be that it can never be seen at rest. Move as fast as you like, but you’ll never catch…
This is the problem, Cente. Some questions, even simple questions, have complicated answers. Some things are too complicated to be easily expressed.
Why street kids?
Alfredo asked himself this question as often as his colleagues, friends, family, or anybody else. And he didn’t really have an answer. Or rather, he had several answers that were neat and well argued, and perfectly rationalized, but were probably not true.
For example. It had been long acknowledged that there was a difference between Filipino and European psychology, in terms of social structures. Filipino psychology put a greater emphasis on the collective, whereas European psychology put a greater emphasis on the individual. Conveniently highlighting the difference, in the English language, lonely and unhappy were two separate words.
So some Filipino psychologists had argued that a direct application of European psychological practices would be problematic, and that a Filipino model would have to emerge from, and take into account, existing traditional practices. However, in the case of street kids, family and community structures could have been nonexistent from a very young age, which meant the kids grew up as alienated individuals, outside the group-emphasized collectives.
Here then, surely, was the answer to Why street kids? There was a gap in the academic studies of street-kid psychology, and Alfredo was filling it. Usually, when asked, this was the reason he would give as the motivation for his research.
Except it wasn’t his motivation at all. It was a reason his research might be useful, but it wasn’t what motivated him. The gap in research on Filipino street kids might have been comprehensively filled by every working psychologist in the world, but Alfredo doubted it would have interrupted his labors for more than a minute. So, Why street kids? remained.
An alternative explanation: Alfredo had grown up in Ayala Alabang, one of Manila’s wealthiest and best-protected sub-divisions. In a city where the gap between the rich and the poor was wider than just about anywhere else on the planet, that was saying something. Something, in this instance, about the way opposites attract. About positively charged and negatively charged human particles. About the upper-class fascination with what might have been, but for the hand of.
But no, that wasn’t it either. Too obvious, too pat.
Anyway, the real question wasn’t Why street kids?, it was Why Cente? Why was Cente always on his mind?
And the answer, Alfredo knew, was going to be hard to express. If at all, it was going to be found in the statistics of cosmic distances, as bound to complexity as the light from that evening’s sunset.
3.
Legaspi Towers was a tall building, thirty stories high, with a glass-fronted foyer, a polite concierge, and two express elevators. In the elevators the ride was often shared with late-middle-aged women with painted pink-white faces and gold jewelery. First three floors, shops and boutiques. Fourth floor, administrative. Fifth floor, access to an open-air swimming pool which observed a strict dress-code: no shorts or sandals. Sixth floor and above, the apartments, ranging from five-bedroom family flats to bedroom bachelor pads. The very top floor was taken over by a single penthouse suite. Alfredo’s home.
He walked quickly through the rooms, switching on lights, disturbing the stillness that had greeted him as he came through the front door. Once the whole flat was glowing, he went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of mineral water. Then he went to the living room, sat heavily on his sofa, and clicked the answering machine on. He had one message.
“Hi, Fredo,” said the machine.
“Hi, Romario,” Alfredo replied blankly.
“Romario here. It’s four in the afternoon, so I guess you’re still out and about. Doing your stuff. Call when you get back in.”
For the next five minutes, Alfredo didn’t move a single muscle, except to blink and breathe.
“So, first I just want to get a few facts about you. A name and an age to begin with.”
“Vincente. I’m thirteen. What about you?”
“Okay, Vincente. Are you sure about that age?”
“Fairly sure.”
“And can you tell me something about how you came to be living on the streets?”
“I came to Manila with my father, from Batangas, and he disappeared. It was about five years ago.”
“Disappeared?”
“I was waiting by some traffic lights, and he never came back.”
“You never saw him again.”
“No.”
“What did you think about that?”
“I wondered where he went.”
“You have no idea about where he might have gone.”
“No.”
“Or what happened to him?”
“No.”
“Okay…What about your mother?”
“What about my mother?”
“Uh, well, do you have any contact with her?”
“No. She’s somewhere in Batangas. I don’t know anything more than that.”
“Other family? Brothers, sisters…”
“No brothers when I left. Two sisters…I think. I’m not positive. Two or three.”
“Uncles, aunts, grandparents…”
“Probably, but it makes no difference. I’m just me.”
“You’re just you.”
“Yes.”
“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
“That’s the way it is.”
This is the way it is, Cente.
The sunlight travels ninety-three million miles, at 186,000 miles a second. As it hits Roxas Boulevard late in the day, it makes the sky a deep orange. Earlier in the day, scattered differently off the air molecules, it makes the sky blue.
Light can never be seen at rest. Move as fast as you like. Start running, and keep accelerating until you’re racing across the solar system at 185,999 miles a second. Then look at light. Far from having caught up, you’ll discover that light is still hurrying away from you at the same frantic speed it was before. Moreover, your brain will have slowed down, and, to an observer not quite able to match your pace, you will appear almost motionless, flattened, and rotated in space.
Return to Earth and check your watch. It will be set to a different time than those of your friends, family, or anyone you will ever meet.
Or maybe don’t return to Earth. Keep going. Nearly four and a half years later, you’ll reach Proxima Centauri, our solar system’s nearest star.
4.
Alfredo found himself in his study. Found himself, because he hadn’t intentionally walked in there, sat down, and switched on his computer. As far as he was concerned, he hadn’t moved from the sofa and was still staring into the middle distance with a bland answering-phon
e message echoing in his head. The dislocation became apparent only when the computer’s screensaver kicked in and the middle distance became a hypnotic swirl of colored Mobius strips—a vision too extreme to ignore or pass off as hallucination.
The study was a place where Alfredo spent a good deal of his time, and had been lit very exactly. A pool of warm light from his desk lamp, bleeding into the corner shadows. An open door, so that the brightness of the living room was close at hand. Open curtains, so that the moon, stars, and shining city windows could play a similar role.
The study was also arranged very exactly, though it would have appeared as a stereotype of academic chaos to a stranger. Books and papers on the floor, Post-it notes all over the walls, fat ring-binder folders that hemorrhaged their contents wherever they lay. But naturally, this sprawl of information had a delicate order to Alfredo, in which the slightest interference would have been quickly spotted.
In contrast to the clutter on the floor and walls, Alfredo’s desk was a model of neatness. Apart from the computer and the lamp, only four objects ever found their way onto its surface. The first was a pen, for final editing of printouts. The second was a tray for unedited printouts. The third was a tray for edited printouts. The fourth was a framed photograph of his wife.
It had been taken nearly ten years ago, the day of her nineteenth birthday, six weeks before their marriage. She was wearing a blue T-shirt with the Bench logo emblazoned across her chest. She had a cigarette in her mouth and was pulling a parodied expression of a sultry American movie star.
The two other important features of the study were its hi-fi and the shelves of diligently labeled, chronologically stacked tapes that sat beside it. The hi-fi was never switched off. All day, all night, the red and green digital displays were in a state of readiness.
Alfredo glanced over at the cassette deck. In the machine was the tape he’d been listening to that morning. One of the earlier recordings.
“I was hiding up a tree, and I had an Armalite rifle. I was waiting for my enemy to walk by, and then I was going to blow him away. A full clip, right in his head. Then I saw him, and he’d captured Josa.”
“Josa…The pretty girl who works at the Paradise pool hall.”
“Right.”
“You like Josa.”
“Everybody likes Josa! So, I couldn’t shoot my enemy because I’d shoot Josa, so I jumped down, and threw away my gun. He saw me, and tried to attack. We had a fight, but I was too quick, and I managed to escape. But he’d shot me in the fight, and my shoulder was wounded. Luckily I was still able to roll away from the rest of the bullets. This time I attacked him, and I won. I grabbed his gun and shot him, even though I was wounded in the shoulder. Then I rescued Josa.”
“Who was your enemy?”
“Some guy with a moustache.”
“But why was he your enemy?”
“He was dangerous. He was a kidnapper. A professional.”
“And what happened after you rescued Josa? You never really talk about that.”
“Nothing. That was the end.”
“You didn’t, say, kiss her, or…”
“Kiss her?”
“Kiss her, or whatever. Did she thank you, perhaps? After all, given how often you rescue her from peril, some kind of thanks would be in order.”
“I agree, but there was no kissing. Josa’s fairly respectable. Anyway, she dates the Paradise manager, so what are you going to do? The guy drives a car, for fuck’s sake. A Toyota. And he’s about twenty years older than me.”
“Okay…So…was that the only dream you had this week? Or were there any others, more like the ones we talked about last time?”
“Nope. This was the only dream.”
“I see…Do you think that next week, maybe you could try to…”
“Fredo, why don’t you like dreams about rescuing girls?”
“Uh…it’s not that I don’t like them…But, we’ve been talking now for six weeks, and my project is going to last at least a year. I’d just appreciate a little variety.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. Don’t you ever dream of rescuing girls?”
“We aren’t here to talk about my dreams.”
“We are now. Come on, do you or don’t you?”
“I’m not going to answer that question, Totoy.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for my project, it’s important that you…uh…don’t know too much about me. In terms of details.”
“How come?”
“Because it might affect our relationship. Even without your realizing it, you might adapt the things you tell me, according to what you believe I want to hear. Or don’t want to hear.”
“Hmm. You know, if this is about money, I can give you back one of the pesos you gave me, in return for your details.”
“That’s very reasonable of you, Totoy, but I have enough pesos for the moment…So look, I think you ought to try to bring me a different kind of dream next week.”
“And I think you ought to ask yourself why you don’t like dreams about rescuing girls.”
“Do you, now.”
“Yes, Fredo. I do.”
Alfredo tapped the keyboard, clearing the Mobius screensaver, and discovered that not only had he switched on his computer without realizing it, he had opened a file: C:docsPHDc1.doc.
At the top of the page, in underlined bold type, was the dissertation’s title: “Social Structures in Filipino Urban Juveniles: Conscious and Unconscious Narratives of Breakdown and Change.”
Beneath the title, italicized, were more personal words.
“Don’t just look at me, Fredo! Write me!”
Alfredo frowned. “Repetition,” he muttered. A few seconds later he changed the sentence to: “Stop procrastinating, Fredo! Write me!”
Rapid Eye Movement
1.
“The only way I know to disable the tanks is with this specially constructed grenade.”
Vincente looked into Totoy’s outstretched palms and saw a collection of nails. Then he looked over at the sluggish stream of cars turning into United Nations Avenue.
“We should choose our target carefully,” Totoy continued. “There’s no point in picking off troop transporters.”
“You don’t want to hit a jeepney.”
“Troop transporter.”
“Right.”
“Yes, forget about the troop transporters. We’ve got to go for one of their latest breed of attack vehicles.”
“An expensive car.”
“Tank.”
“Tank. Okay.” Vincente scanned the traffic jam for a suitable model. “What about a Toyota make of tank?”
“Mmm…No.”
“Daewoo?”
“Unh-uh.”
“BMW?”
“BMW? Jesus, Cente. How often do you see a fucking BMW? We’d be here all night.” Totoy stood on tiptoe, biting his lower lip with stern concentration. Then he jabbed a finger toward a red sedan. “No. There’s the target. Honda.”
The guy was deep in conversation on a mobile phone. He was in his early thirties. He had a pleasant, healthy, father’s face, and was wearing the kind of shirt that suggested he spent most of his waking hours in air-conditioning.
And yet he wasn’t using the car’s air-conditioning now. He had the window rolled down and his shirtsleeves rolled up, and his forehead was bright with sweat. A cigarette hung from his mouth. Judging by his relaxed posture and his expression of easy affection, he was talking either to his wife or to one of his children.
“Why him?” said Vincente.
Totoy shrugged. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just…why him?”
“You need to have a reason for everything?”
“Not everything.”
“So what’s your problem?”
“I told you, I don’t know. It’s like, this guy…he’s on his way home. He’s phoning home now, saying he’s stuck in
traffic. He’s on his way back to his family.”
Totoy studied the Honda and its driver. “Paré,” he said. “The guy is driving a tank, he’s radioing for battalions of reinforcements, and if we don’t take him out then his army will capture Manila.”
Vincente started laughing.
“You think that’s funny?”
“Uh…”
“You think Manila being invaded is funny, Cente! Thousands dead? You want that kind of blood on your hands? Because I can tell you right now…” Totoy’s eyes widened at the prospect of such terrible carnage. “I don’t.”
2.
“You little bastards! Sons of fucking whores! Get back here, you little…”
“Your family ma—” Totoy panted, limbs pumping furiously, fists balled, chin and chest jutting out.
A few moments later he attempted the sentence a second time. “Your family man has some temper on him.”
“Yep,” Vincente agreed. His longer legs meant that he didn’t find the sprint pace such an effort. “He’s pretty angry, all right.”
Vincente enjoyed running fast in Manila at night. It felt like the exercise of a skill worth having. Potholes, cracked pavement, open sewers, slippery canal banks, shanty side streets that shifted and rearranged themselves according to the spread or destruction of slums. Broken glass. Bits of sharp metal with rusted edges. Trip at speed and you could fall anywhere, be cut by anything. You didn’t run fast down dark Manila streets unless you were an expert or had no choice.
A couple of years ago, Vincente had been hanging around near Quiapo bridge, not doing much, when a man ran past. The type with a job and a briefcase, not unlike the driver of the Honda they had just nailed. For reasons that were not apparent, he was being chased down by a seven-strong gang. There was a gap of about thirty feet between the pursuers and their quarry.
Vincente hadn’t needed to witness the end of the chase to be sure that the guy hadn’t escaped. The uncertainty was whether he’d been killed or not. You had to feel bad for him.
But at the same time, you had to feel good for yourself. Vincente knew that if he had been in the man’s shoes, the thirty-foot gap would have given him a fighting chance of avoiding capture, and probably allowed him to get clean away.