The Cabinet

by Un-su Kim

  A track meet in which that traitor the Flash never comes. The hare and the Moon are about to race in the 100-meter dash.

  “Are you ready?” asks the hare to the Moon.

  “Just a second! I need to warm up before running.”

  “Warm up all you want – you’re not beating this hare. Haven’t you heard of the story of the tortoise and the hare?”

  “What’s that?”

  “What a shame. That story, that’s me. I’m the hare of legend.”

  “Congratulations on becoming a legend. You keep doing that. I need to warm up.”

  But the Moon who went to warm up didn’t return for an entire month. Enraged, the hare went looking for the Moon.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing? If you’re afraid of losing, just say it. You can’t keep a busy bunny waiting forever.”

  “Hey,” said the Moon as it languidly moved its body, “I’ve only just finished stretching my left hip. Wait for a minute, will you? I just need to do the right side now.”

  It wasn’t a misunderstanding. The problem was time. The problem was they exist in a universe in which time is fundamentally different for everyone. This cosmic order shows us an important lesson: no one can erect a Clock of Babel and demand others follow its fascist ticking. This isn’t because freedom-seeking humans will always rebel against fascism (of course, if that were the case, it would mean that fascism would never return; sadly, I don’t think humans are such infallible beings). No, it’s because everyone has their own clock. Existing complacently beneath a Clock of Babel, our bodies start to itch: something doesn’t fit, something feels off; you make frequent stupid mistakes. It’s not because we’re fundamentally stupid; it’s because our clocks don’t match. Fascist order can never be kept, no matter how hard we try to follow it. As long as everyone possesses their own clock, we will never know true order.

  “Man-made, forced orders don’t work,” the universe tells us. “Just go on silently enduring the inner order that was given to you. I gave each of you a uniquely tuned clock. Why don’t any of you use it?”

  According to this cosmic teaching, the only time an individual can perceive is its own. It is less that we lack empathy and more that we never could understand each other in the first place. The Flash can’t understand the Moon, and the Moon can’t understand the hare, and the hare can’t understand the Flash.

  The fact that some of us age faster; that some of us get hungry faster; that some of us fall in and out of love faster; and that some of us can cry all night after a breakup with a dearly loved partner and wake up the very next day to fall in love with yet another man is a fact that we cannot ever hope to understand. All we can ever say are things like “Why don’t you love me like I love you?” “How can you not love me anymore?” and “I didn’t do this to you, so how can you do this to me?”

  Not long ago I gave counsel to a man who received his PhD in economics in the U.S. only to come back to Korea to sit in front of a 486 PC for ten years playing FreeCell. He told me he played FreeCell for twelve hours every day for ten years. While everyone else was getting hired and promoted, buying apartments, getting married and sending their children to their first day at school, he had shut himself in his house to play games all day. And, of all things, he chose a game that only involves matching numbers and suits. You might think he was stupid. But he was actually highly intelligent. He did, after all, receive a PhD in economics from a prestigious American university with top marks.

  “But why?”

  Indeed, this is the usual order in which people ask questions. But there is no why. He was just that way. While for other people it was time to chase promotions, perhaps for him it was time to play FreeCell. After graduating top in his class with a PhD from a prestigious university, he simply shoved that diploma in his closet and played FreeCell for the next ten years. Nothing more, nothing less.

  But we can’t accept that people can have different lifestyles than our own. We can’t understand that they created that order, despite its apparent absurdity and foolishness, because it was the only way they could make it in this world. Not only can we not understand it, but we also don’t even try to accept it. So, we look at them with pity and warn them:

  “How about not playing FreeCell anymore and focusing on something a little more productive?”

  When I tell people he would probably kill himself if you took his FreeCell away from him, people scoff at me as if I were joking. But it’s true. Because he knows no other way outside of FreeCell to bear this tedious and overwhelming world, he really might take his life without it.

  To be honest, before rummaging through the files in Cabinet 13 and coming to know these strange individuals, even I had not fully grasped the number of different ways to live life. I had never tried to understand it, and I lived just fine not understanding, too. But there are people who live lives that I could never have understood with what I knew then, with the world view I had. “So what? What do you want me to do about it? The world’s a big place. Of course, there can be all sorts of strange and incomprehensible people living in places like the Congo or Gabon or the Amazon. Who cares about them? I have enough to worry about as it is.”

  But sometimes things of no concern to us show up in our living rooms to stare us straight in the face. Whether we want it or not, we are stalked by foreign things. We mix with these people inside the chaotic Erlenmeyer flask that is the world. I’m not preaching beautiful solidarity, or anything like that. I’m just talking about the human condition.

  There is a fascinating story contained in the 1998 annals of the Brooklyn Police.

  On a subway train bound for Brooklyn, a kid was counting hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. This naïve kid had just received his first ever paycheck. But counting money on the New York subway is an extremely dangerous thing to do. Suddenly an old woman approached the kid. The woman, who had illegally immigrated to the US from Mexico, said that her granddaughter was dying in the hospital because couldn’t pay the 750-dollar hospital bill. To prove that she was telling the truth, the old woman took out a hospital bill for 750 dollars and said, “If I don’t pay, they’ll stop giving her treatment.” The kid cocked his head to the side as he listened to the old lady.

  “Let’s say what you tell me is true, lady. I have 800 dollars, just enough to pay your bills. But why do I have to give you my money?”

  “You’ll get hundreds of paychecks, hundreds throughout your life, but my granddaughter only has one chance. Please think about her precious life.”

  “Lady,” the kid said as he scoffed, “we just met on this train by chance.”

  The kid was stabbed to death in a back alley in Brooklyn not far from the subway station. And all for only 800 dollars. He was murdered by a group of thugs who saw him take out his wallet on the train.

  “Today’s my lucky day,” said one of the thugs as he wiped the blood off his knife. “You picked the wrong train to count your money.”

  Those gang members were apprehended by police thanks to the old woman’s descriptions. What she said to the police was simple: “I saw those thugs on the subway.”

  I was curious about what happened to the woman’s dying granddaughter, but the report ends there. So, what’s the moral of the story? Don’t take out your wallet on the subway? Criminals must be punished? Don’t turn your back on a neighbor in need?

  To be completely honest, I agree with the kid. In a colossal city of more than ten million residents, it was only coincidence that he and she would meet on the subway train during rush hour. Asking for someone’s hard-earned paycheck to save your granddaughter, whom they’ve never met, is a bit much to request of a stranger. I’m just an average citizen of this city, and the feeling of solidarity with its ten million other average citizens is weaker than I thought. All I need to do is ignore you once to keep my wallet fat for a month. And the probability that I’ll bump into you next month is one in a million. Besides, a month’s wages are barely enough to survive in this
city. How long could I last here if I up and quit my job today? There is no moral to the story. We always look for the moral of a story or some nice adage, but morals and adages never changed anyone’s life. That there is no moral of the story – that’s the moral of the story.

  “We’re all riding the same subway train!”

  ALIEN RADCOM

  The group Alien RADCOM sent radio communications to exoplanets. Its members included law clerks, janitors, truck drivers, pianists, plumbers – people with no relation to each other socially or occupationally. For six to twelve hours every day, these individuals would send out radio signals to exoplanets using large antennas and high-powered amplifiers that they set up in their yards or on their roofs. Did they get replies from aliens? Do you even need to ask? I think it’s safe to say there’s no way they got replies. But they thought the replies were on their way.

  Alien RADCOM was slightly different from your average radio club. First, the members of Alien RADCOM never exchanged messages with people on Earth. If someone else started using one of their frequencies, they would quickly change channels. And they never exchanged messages with each other. Ironically, even though radios were made for human communication, they refused to communicate with other humans. They found their own unique frequencies and busied themselves with sending radio signals to the far reaches of the universe, where there might have been no one listening. In my opinion, they would have gotten the same results if, instead of expensive radio equipment, they took empty cans of tuna and whispered into those.

  It takes a lot of money to send something into space. Be it satellites, missiles, or even a screw or a crumpled beer can, sending things into space is never a simple task. There isn’t a single person or object that could easily free itself from the stubborn pull of this planet’s gravity. Radio waves are no exception. In order to transmit radio waves outside of the Earth, you need expensive equipment – in fact, the farther you wanted to send them, the more money you need. The cost of the parts of the radio equipment I found in Ko Dushik’s room alone totaled 400 million won. But because he assembled it himself he was able to save a lot on the cost. For the last twenty years Mr Ko had worked driving a refrigerated truck for twelve hours a day, every day. Then he would take his salary and send most of it to the aliens, so to speak.

  Why did they waste their time and money on such foolish things? They didn’t make money from sending signals to exoplanets, nor did they ever get replies. I asked Mr Ko this question. He leaned in close to my ear and whispered in a quivering voice, “Don’t tell anyone. We’re not from Earth. We’re the descendants of aliens.”

  I was so surprised by this answer that I accidently exclaimed, “Oh!”

  According to Mr Ko, the members of Alien RADCOM may have looked like Earthlings, but they weren’t. They were descendants of aliens from planets outside the Milky Way who were long ago banished to Earth. What did I think? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? They received appendectomies; they completed their compulsory military service; and they had babies just like the rest of us. An alien who has their appendix removed? I didn’t think such a thing was possible. No matter how you looked at it, they were human. My conclusion was that Alien RADCOM was nothing more than a group of humans who lived with the delusion that they were the descendants of aliens.

  The members of Alien RADCOM got up every morning and went to work in the big city. Ostensibly, they needed to work because they had little to no remaining inheritance from their alien spaceship. Their workplaces included accounting offices, trucking companies, piano stores, and the like. They faithfully did the work the city had allotted them. They tuned piano strings; removed underwear and stockings from drains; and they transported frozen tuna caught while chasing a school of Pacific saury near the Tropic of Cancer. Work that anyone might do in the city. If there was one difference between the members of Alien RADCOM and the rest of the citizens of this city, it was that, instead of paying back the loans on their apartments, they spent their hard-earned money on high-powered antennas, modulators, and other expensive radio equipment.

  They worked in fields that didn’t require them to have complicated personal relationships or talk much. As such, the members of Alien RADCOM almost never went to karaoke or office parties or to drink with old friends at school reunions. Unsurprisingly, neither were there ever events for the members of Alien RADCOM to get to know each other. They only ever talked to each other about technical problems concerning radio communications – and even then, only through online forums. I asked Mr Ko: if they weren’t going to be friends with Earthlings, didn’t they at least want to be friends with each other?

  “We all come from different home planets.”

  Indeed, that would make it difficult. Being from different planets, they were themselves aliens to one another. Just like asteroid B612 and the lamplighter’s planet from The Little Prince were alien worlds to one another.

  The members of Alien RADCOM worked quietly but diligently at their workplaces. They waited for the complicated daily events in this chaotic and incomprehensible city to pass. And when night silently fell, leaving them in solitude, they would eat a simple meal, shower, then sit in front of their radios. They turned on the power and increased the output. They sent radio signals outside the Earth for as long as time allowed. They were sending radio messages to their home planets somewhere in the Milky Way.

  One member would lean into the radio and sing their anthem; another member would rant about the most annoying customer they met that day. One would talk about how planet Earth was the by far the worst planet of all the planets harboring life and that it was cruel punishment for their ancestors to send them and their descendants to live here. They would go on and on about the difficulty of such a theatrical life in which they needed to pretend to be Earthlings, and sometimes they would even tell their radios embarrassing secrets. And yet they never forgot to say Merry Christmas on December 25. One member would mutter incomprehensible gobbledygook into his radio. According to another member, the language was from his home planet.

  The members of Alien RADCOM all had issues with communicating and maintaining personal relationships, big or small. Even during mundane daily conversations, they would feel at a great disadvantage. They stuttered and sweated. Sometimes, they even panicked or had seizures while talking to people. Conversations made them frightened, and when the conversations were over, they would feel terribly ashamed and depressed. And some even felt the fear of death. So, they protected themselves with silence and rejected all the pretense and fake friendships that approached them disguised as courteous yet insincere language.

  “Earthlings are strong. We could never win in a fist fight. Humans come toward us acting friendly, but deep in their bellies they are hiding wicked intent. I am frightened by this. I can never guess what will happen. So every night I send radio signals to my home planet begging them to rescue me from this hellish penal colony.”

  There were members who could carry on basic conversation easily, and there were members who felt great difficulty in carrying on basic conversations. They spoke as little as possible, avoided people when they could, and looked for work they could do alone and in peace – they didn’t care about low pay. They lived in this city talking with a stutter, like immigrants speaking a foreign language.

  The members of Alien RADCOM didn’t break their backs to achieve success on Earth. This place was neither their home nor where they wanted to build a life. Earth was nothing more than an alien planet to them. Just like we humans would never waste our time trying to become famous among a group of monkeys, they felt no need to do so here on Earth.

  A life of exile on Earth. A life without a home. They tried their best just to survive on this penal colony named Earth. Every day they dreamed of escaping this planet. Perhaps that’s why they bought powerful radios capable of sending radio signals to the edges of the universe.

  Even tonight, their lonely radio signals which they sent to their home planets somewhere far
away, are racing past the dark side of the Moon toward the edges of the universe at the speed of light.

  Why couldn’t they live as human beings? Why couldn’t they identify with Homo sapiens? They diligently paid for health insurance, they paid all their taxes, followed traffic lights – so why did they believe so ardently that they weren’t human?

  I really can’t say. But when I think about this tedious and trite world in which it’s impossible to find even one human soul I can talk to, it’s not like I am totally unable to understand what they meant. If I had a radio that could send signals beyond Earth, I would probably say something into the radio, too. But all I would say is that the only aliens I know are E.T. and the Teletubbies.

  “Frankly, I’m sick of this world too. What’s it like talking with more aliens than humans?” I asked.

  “Lonely,” said Mr Ko.

  THE GIRL WHO EATS BENEATH A DUSTY FAN

  There was a company cafeteria beneath the research center. Today we were going there for lunch. As we walked to the cafeteria, I wondered to myself why it was that we were eating at this frustratingly poor company cafeteria when the world was filled with so many good restaurants. Why was it that we were eating at this cafeteria, with its single-item menu where they treated customers like homeless people, when out there were countless restaurants with long splendid menus where they treated patrons like kings. I wanted to think it was because this cafeteria was much closer than other restaurants; because this cafeteria was so much cheaper than other restaurants; because we didn’t have to worry about who was going to pay or how we were going to nudge absent-minded Department Head Song toward the register because we all had our own meal ticket. Indeed, every time we left a restaurant, every time we had an office party, we would always furtively push poor Department Head Song toward the counter as he tied his shoes and looked for a toothpick. But Department Head Song had three children dependent on him, the oldest of whom was going to college this year. So I wanted to think that it was because our conscience had finally got the better of us. I wanted to think that we were eating at the company cafeteria for humanitarian reasons.