Sofia and the Utopia Machine

by Judith Huang

  Father Lang motioned towards her. “Can we come in?”

  The man grunted, and opened his door wider, revealing a dimly-lit interior. Sofia and Kirk scrambled in gratefully.

  “We need a boat,” said Father Lang after they had dried themselves and each been served a cup of hot, weak tea. “This is Rui… She’s running from gahmen. It’s very important for her to leave the mainland asap.”

  The man’s face softened. “Don’t worry, you’ll get away one. Father Lang…he’s a very smart man. He’ll get you out of here, no problem!”

  Sofia looked at him gratefully. His face was weathered like old leather, but right now it was lit up with something like compassion.

  “You can use my boats,” he said. “But only today. And you must never see me again. I dowan extra trouble,” he added brusquely. “Where you going?”

  “Pulau Ubin,” Father Lang replied. A thrill ran up Sofia’s spine.

  Pulau Ubin! The outpost of the Resistance—or so it was rumoured. She had heard only the worst things about the offshore island—that it was home to dangerous elements, and how it was an abandoned waste now, yet the island held a special significance to her, something to do with her father. And Kirk seemed to think they could get help there, perhaps from those very dangerous elements.

  It was the rumoured source of a strange power that lay buried at the heart of the island. It seemed an appropriate place for her to begin her exile.

  A mysterious, superstitious silence surrounded the place. Sofia had never thought she would ever go there. Some said that ghosts and old spirits haunted the jungles, that howling could be heard at night from the kelongs and the beaches. Others dismissed this as technological trickery by the mysterious inhabitants, but now Sofia would be able to verify it first hand.

  But first, they would have to get on boats. Sofia had read about such things. She had flown high in the sky in superjets and escapods, and been sped past whole continents on the high-speed rail, but she had never travelled on water. There was never any need to, in the Midlevels. Thinking about it made her nervous. She wasn’t even sure what a modern boat would look like. Surely not something with sails, like the tall ships in the old holos.

  Of course, boats were also associated with pirates. With a sudden jolt, she wondered if this man whose roof she was under was a pirate. It wouldn’t be far off, she thought, watching him spoon his food into his mouth roughshod, and picking his ear with his little finger.

  “That will have to do,” said Father Lang uneasily. “As early in the morning as we can.” Then he bowed his head and blessed the food in front of them—plain broken grained rice, with a little protein supplement and a few fried fish.

  “How is Mei?” he asked, when they had finished.

  The man lifted his chin towards the stringed beads that separated the front room from the back. Father Lang bowed, and disappeared inside. The sound of a woman coughing had been emanating from it since they entered the shack but Sofia only noticed it now.

  “She says you can come.” Father Lang’s head poked out of the beady curtain. “She wants to bless you.”

  Sofia and Uncle Kirk inched forward respectfully. A single mat made from bamboo took up almost the whole room, except for a battered shelf in the corner. A woman lay on it—she looked very old, but her face was young. Her skin was shrunken and grey, pulled back from her face, as though her skull were fighting to get out from under it. But her bright eyes sparkled with humour and intelligence. When she opened her mouth to speak, with a shock, Sofia realised she was probably no more than 25.

  “Don’t be scared,” she said kindly, as she held her hand out to Sofia. “It’s not contagious.”

  Sofia took her hand. It felt like a loose bag of bones, her skin somehow papery, but not unpleasant.

  “Lord, keep this girl safe,” she said simply.

  Sofia was afraid of her. How could anyone stand to live like this? She looked around at the room—the walls and ceiling were lined with a thick layer of darkmould, glowering down at them.

  “We thought, at first, it was a gift,” said Mei, following her eyes. “It grew so fast, and spread so quickly, and it looked so much like hei mu er.”

  “Did you eat it?” asked Sofia, her heart hoping to hear no. She had heard so much about the darkmould that it had shaded the Voids in her heart with a sinister darkness…

  “I did. But it was a gift,” said Mei.

  “I don’t understand,” said Sofia. She was repulsed. “How can this be a gift? The government should do something about this! This is terrible! How can they let people suffer so much and do nothing?”

  “It was the government who developed it,” said Mei softly. “It was their gift to us. They designed it at Biopolis. It is fatal, but it kills slowly. It weakens us.”

  Sofia was disconcerted. How had a farmer learned how to speak like this? Her English was impeccable—at least Midlevel class.

  “I was like you, you know,” laughed Mei. “I lived in the Midlevels too. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I was helping on the Biopolis project, just for research points in school, when I followed Father Lang here, and then—”

  “You fell sick? And they booted you out?” Sofia was indignant.

  “No—I fell in love. With this man. Ah Tan, outside. I wanted to bring him with me to the Midlevels, but there was no way my parents would accept him. So I moved down here. Unfortunately, that was the year of the Second Revolt. That was when they released the spores. After that, no one had any use for me up there anyway.”

  A growing feeling of nausea was building up in Sofia’s stomach. How far did this go? she thought. Neglect was one thing—or was it? Didn’t these moulds and viruses come about naturally anyway? Didn’t they serve a logical biological purpose—to weed out the weak?

  Sofia looked at the woman. Mei is not weak, she thought. This woman is stronger than I ever will be, blessing those who take to the boats, while those things eat her lungs out. Who was she to say she was weak?

  “I know about the darkmould because I was working on it. I know exactly what will happen to me. In a way, that’s good.” Sofia felt herself shudder as she listened. “I started wondering if I could prevent the stuff from going down here, and that was my first project with Father Lang. Then I realised that there was no incentive to prevent it from growing here—it is far more effective than deliberate purges. That was when I knew I could never go back,” she said simply.

  “You need to rest more,” Ah Tan said from behind them. They hadn’t noticed he had slipped in until then. His voice was filled with such tenderness that Sofia felt a surge of envy—yes, envy—for Mei.

  “We set off for Ubin as soon as we can,” said Father Lang.

  “You’ll be fine,” said Mei gently, patting Sofia’s hand. “You’ll all be fine.”

  Chapter 18: The Island

  “Karang guni,” said Ah Tan proudly, by way of explanation.

  Apparently he had got his kayaks from a rag-and-bone man who had scavenged them from somewhere along the Sembawang coast, where the people used to rent them for the day and paddle around for fun a long, long time ago. Not exactly sturdy transportation, thought Sofia, as she prodded one of them with her toe. They had been yellow or orange once upon a time, and the fibreglass was cracked in places. But it was the best they could do on such short notice.

  Sofia removed the tarp that partially covered the kayaks. She brushed some sand off them, watched the way the pine trees were reflected in their yellow bodies, slightly distorted by the various scratches on the surface. She stared down at her own reflection, a smudgy dark yellow blob on the surface of the boat.

  “We’ll take these down to the beach, and then set off for Ubin from there,” said Father Lang. “It’s the most direct way.”

  Sofia understood. With all the notices for her and Kirk’s biometrics, it would be suicide to remain on the mainland any longer. Better to risk it on the kayaks. The only trouble was that she had never been in one before. />
  Time to learn, she thought grimly. Ah Tan had disappeared into the shack, which she now saw was almost at the edge of the beach—the beach had been so strewn with rubbish it had looked exactly like the rest of the Voids, and so she had missed it. Now he emerged with four rubber lifejackets, faded to a very light red or orange. “Nah,” he said, tossing one to Sofia.

  “Well, I guess we should get going,” said Uncle Kirk with a tinge of regret. He didn’t know the next time he was going to be on this island that had so ignominiously ejected him after a decade of his residence.

  The sea was grey-green and pretty calm for the most part, and Sofia admired the rays of sunlight playing upon the waves. However, Father Lang noted that there were dark clouds on the horizon.

  Sofia put the life jacket on. Ah Tan handed her a paddle. “You scoop water, like this,” he said, demonstrating. “Then the same, other side.”

  Sofia practised a couple of times, as did Uncle Kirk. “Girl, Lang Mu Shi,” he said, indicating the front and back seats of the nearest kayak.

  Obediently, Sofia scrambled into the front cockpit of the kayak. Father Lang got into the back one and pushed it across the rubbish and into the sea. Before she realised it, Ah Tan had pushed them off the sandbank and into the sea. The bottom of the kayak rasped as it scraped against the ground, which gave way almost as surprisingly to a smooth, clean glide. Sofia felt the salty seawater lapping at her legs inside the kayak. It was cool, even pleasurable.

  Sofia dipped the paddle into the water experimentally. It rippled, forming little swirls like the tops of ionic columns in the water. The sunlight skipped across the ripples like flashes of gold. A shudder ran up her spine, as though someone had touched her at the small of her back—as though she were remembering an old love, or an old myth, transformed to water centuries before. After a few wobbly false starts, she got the hang of paddling.

  Father Lang was steering expertly from behind. It seemed effortless, a far more elegant mode of transport than any she had ever experienced—perhaps because it was she herself who propelled it. It was a powerful feeling, to watch the open ocean part before the bow. The morning sun bathed her face, and the air smelled new and fresh after the dank mouldiness of the Voids. Some of the old pines on the beach had survived the floods, and she drank in their fragrance gratefully, as well as the oily, salty smell of the sea.

  Sofia felt a surge of exhilaration at pushing off from the mainland. She was leaving that world for good, for better or worse.

  Their route would hug the coastline, though they would try to paddle as far as possible out of sight of the coast. It felt easy, with the wind at their backs and the grey-green sea calm and pliable. Sofia felt like singing—a nameless song welled up in her heart, like something out of an old dream.

  They were cutting cleanly across the rippling water, and the tide was low. It was the perfect time of day to set off on a journey. Although Sofia was worried about her mother, she was infinitely happier now that Uncle Kirk was with her. He was like family to her. And he would understand what to do with the new world. With these thoughts in her mind, she paddled determinedly and evenly, never letting up for a second, even as her muscles started aching dully from the strain.

  Her forehead, still healing from yesterday’s operation, stung from the salty sea spray. She was netbox-less now, or she would have looked up the journey on a map. But Father Lang seemed pretty certain of the direction they were going, and she was happy to let him steer.

  They stopped several times to eat the food that Ah Tan and Mei had packed for them, and to rest as the hot sun sapped their energy. Sofia had been on the run for so long now that her old life, back at school and at the flat with Clara, felt like a distant dream. Her little-used arm muscles were complaining from the strain of paddling. She bit her lip and pressed on after they had drifted for ten minutes for a water break. She had to hold on; she just had to.

  When, hours later, the fine droplets of rain started falling upon her, she felt them as a bracing wetness, cleansing rather than drenching. Then the wind started rising.

  The droplets grew larger; big, fat, wet things that smacked her face, which was raw from the sun and wind. It was no longer possible to see where they were going—a curtain of rain fell over the landscape in every direction. They were caught in the middle of a full-strength tropical storm.

  Rain pelted down on the two little boats as waves rose, tossing them to and fro. Sofia lost her sense of the horizon entirely, as the water made them bob up and down, up and down, cresting over wave after wave without ceasing. She felt nauseous and wished she hadn’t eaten as much as she had.

  “Are you okay up there?” called Father Lang to Sofia.

  “Yes,” she yelled back. “I’m just feeling a bit sick…”

  Sofia felt her stomach lurch. She leaned over the side of the boat, trying to keep the vomit down. But it was no use. She regurgitated her lunch, and probably her breakfast as well, over the side.

  “Hang on, I have some medicine for nausea,” said Father Lang from behind her. “Stop paddling. I’ll give it to you.”

  Obediently, Sofia laid her paddle to rest and reached backwards for the pill Father Lang passed her. She washed it down with water from her bottle that was rolling around in the belly of the kayak. She was grateful for the water that washed her mouth of the taste of vomit. All the while, the rain plastered her hair against her face, washing it clean but also drenching her to the bone.

  “How much farther are we from Ubin?” she yelled over the sound of the rain.

  “Just keep paddling,” came Father Lang’s voice. “Just keep going… Not far… Not far…”

  Sofia’s muscles were burning with lactic acid. She had possibly never exercised them this much. Her waist ached from the twisting and turning motion of paddling, and so did every part of her neck and shoulders.

  “Do you need to rest for a bit?”

  “No!” she yelled. “Let’s keep going! The sooner we get there, the sooner we can rest for real,” she said, uncertain whether Father Lang could hear her or not. Uncle Kirk’s boat was a speck to her left.

  “Do you think Uncle Kirk is okay?”

  “Don’t worry! I can still see him,” said Father Lang. “Let’s try to get closer to him so we can check.”

  Straining against the sea and the wind, they paddled valiantly until they were within earshot of Uncle Kirk’s kayak.

  “Kirk!” yelled Father Lang. “Kirk!”

  Uncle Kirk’s hair was now flattened like seaweed clinging to his forehead. His glasses were covered in raindrops, his nose red from the wind.

  “This is some storm, huh?” yelled Uncle Kirk.

  “Sofia got seasick!” yelled Father Lang. “Are you okay?”

  Uncle Kirk stretched his paddle over to their boat so they could float side by side.

  “Sofia, are you okay?”

  “It was nothing,” said Sofia, irritated by their solicitousness. She didn’t want them to think she was a weakling.

  “What time is it? How long have we been paddling?”

  “About three hours,” said Uncle Kirk. “We should be reaching it by now.”

  “Look!” yelled Sofia, excitedly.

  Rising out of the rain was a sudden sash of land, lush green above the dirty grey of the roiling sea. The water pelted at their eyes, sticking their clothes onto their backs, the raindrops large and hard like liquid bullets hitting their flesh. On the grey surface of the sea, the pinpoints of raindrops formed little black diamonds. Sofia had been beaten into fatigue by the alternating glare of the sun and lashings of rain, but at the sight of the island she was galvanised once again.

  To their straining muscles it seemed they were not moving, but they were—sweeping, plowing, plunging up and down the crests of waves, nearing that dark sash with every stroke. The sash grew bigger, grew perceptibly nearer, no longer a ghost but a real thing. Sofia bit hard on her lower lip and pulled and pulled, her every muscle screaming at her to stop, but h
er mind overruling them with every stroke.

  And there it was—a small, bright beach, white against the gloaming of the mangrove, white like the pristine glimpse of paradise that could have seized a prince so many centuries ago, a brightness that leapt to the eye like a long-lost love. And then it was dulled again by the driving rain, blurry, dark, but unmistakably there.

  Just a little more, she said to herself, gritting her teeth against the pain of her muscles.

  Sofia grabbed the nearest mangrove root as the boat crashed suddenly onto land, her hands still trembling from the exertion, holding on to it for dear life. The rich smell of the swamp filled her nostrils—a mix of mud and leaves and rain. Between them they steadied the craft. She stumbled out of it, water streaming from her hair, her clothes, her legs rubbery and her knees weak like some newborn deer’s. She would have collapsed on the island right then and there, but they still had to secure the boat, and so, with one last burst of strength, she lifted the kayak off the water until it rested roughly on the shore.

  They were here at last: Pulau Ubin.

  Part 3

  Chapter 19: Ha’shan and the Star

  The terrible truth is that we all carry within us the seeds of hatred, and Sofia was no exception.

  When she created the new universe, and when she created the angels that were the caterwauling things that spun out into the galaxies of that world, the part of her that was her hatred spun off also, and it was among the many spirits that filled her universe.

  This particular caterwauling thing fell from the heavens like its peers, but instead of flying, it decided to fall. It became something like a beast, like the Leviathan said to dwell beneath the sea. But it was also greater and grander than even that. It was a caterwauling thing of immense proportions, stretching lengthwise and timewise at the same time, and quite incomprehensible to the human mind.

  And this thing had a name—the Lotan.

  It decided to be heavy rather than light. It decided to fall rather than rise. It decided to plummet down out of the light of the big bang that began the universe. And the Lotan was made of the pure kernel of Sofia’s hatred—the very hatred that had once made her want to destroy her holosheet city, and which still lived in her now, when she could destroy real cities. It was pure evil.