Lion City

by Ng Yi-Sheng

  “Thanks for everything. Let’s go,” Akash says. But before she can even speak, he and his band are on the move again, his flashlight fading further and further from the opening of the door.

  Once more, she is alone. But not for long. She spends her last moments in the vault making a salad, cutting vegetables into spiral forms with her bayonet. Eventually, the walls begin to tremble. The Concordance has arrived.

  Crunching kailan between her teeth, she enters the darkness.

  If she closes her eyes, turn to 2019.

  If she keeps her eyes open, turn to 2099.

  2099

  Jenny Quantum is dying. She’s fucking pissed about it, though. Lying on a bed of anthuriums in the wreck of a ten-storey greenhouse, once called the Jewel, she screeches out every profanity known to humankind, plus a few from the fouler-mouthed extraterrestrial species.

  Above her, the moon explodes. The Battle of Changi Airport has reached its climax. The latest incarnation of Henry Bendix has teamed up with a levitating zombie army of Kaizen Gamorra clones, the Death Patrol, Sliding Albion and the Daemonites. Facing them down is an international force of post-humans: the Doctor, Rose Tattoo… she forgets the names of the younger ones. Being ninety-nine will do that to you, decelerated ageing or not. Still, in spite of the years, in spite of the pain cleaving the very bosons of her cellular structures, she’s fighting, using what’s left of her powers to shift the very particles of reality in Earth’s favour.

  Her assistant thrusts a lit cigarette in her mouth. She cuts her string of expletives to say, “Thanks, Anomic Bomb,” and tries to focus her mind on parrying Bendix’s death ray, which seems intent on turning the planet into a black hole, for some reason. Above the Canopy Park, the sky phases from wine to viridian, but only for a femtosecond. She’s weakening, fast.

  “It’s 23:59,” Anomic says, and Jenny feels a pang of guilt for ever having gotten a civilian mixed up with this, sure, an enchanted time-travelling civilian, but without genetic modifications, without even vaccine shots, for chrissakes. Hell, she feels bad for having returned to her birthplace to die, like some shit-for-brains salmon, and getting Singapore mixed up in this whole apocalyptic, omnicidal gangbang.

  “I’m gonna have to reboot the universe,” she says.

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’m a Spirit of the Century, remember? I die at the stroke of midnight. And if I don’t do this, everybody dies.”

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  “No. You,”—and here she pulls a strand of spacetime taut, like a harp string—“you survive.”

  And a gravitational field flings a bloodied Anom out of the Jewel, out of the airport complex, straight out of this collapsing timeline…

  If she clenches her teeth, turn to 1705.

  If she screams, turn to 2135.

  2135

  Melody Myint-Macapagal is waiting. This isn’t easy for a teenage girl, so she’s killing time by watching the latest Eritrean pop idols on her 15-zettabyte hairclip, chewing a Gooey Gooberry Gummy, pondering if she should buy an air-con sports jacket in a different shade of strawberry pink.

  Finally, her patience pays off. At the entrance of Cantonment MRT station, just at the edge of the Rail Corridor, a woman materialises, sodden and filthy, haloed by blue streaks of light.

  “Stop! Villain!” Melody shouts. The woman barely looks up. She tries again. “You are hereby charged with illegal time travel! Return to your own era, at once!”

  The woman is bent over, taking deep ragged breaths, exhausted from wherever she’s been. Her gaze is fixed on the cushiony silicon-based grass on the pathway, not on her challenger. Eventually, she lifts her head long enough to utter a single word.

  “How?”

  “What do you mean, how? Don’t you have a time travel device? Like the Sinister Spider’s wristwatch?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm. Well, my hairclip says you’ve got to get out of here anyway! Or else the whole of Singapore’s history will be changed!”

  “How?”

  “Well,” Melody checks her hairclip again, “if you’re not executed, your father Sang Rajuna Tapa will never avenge you by betraying the kingdom to the Majapahit, causing the downfall of the city!”

  “Sorry?”

  “If you don’t return, Singapore will never be destroyed!”

  “Is that such a terrible thing?”

  “Well, if your Singapore isn’t destroyed,” Melody says slowly, as if addressing a non-genetically enhanced infant, “my Singapore can never be born.”

  The woman settles on the ground. She wipes the sweat from her brow, and dries her hand on the bracts of a bougainvillea shrub. A miniature robot rolls up and prunes the leaves she has sullied. On the protective dome that encloses the island, a hologram beams the national slogan: 100% EFFICIENCY.

  “This country has grown very selfish,” she says. “Very well. I will go of my own accord.”

  “Wait! Not that way! If you want to get to 1398, you’ll have to go under the rain tree, past the staghorn fern…”

  But the woman is gone. Melody shrugs, and hails a Hover Cab for a game of virtual jetpack tennis at the Queensway viaduct. This case was never under her jurisdiction anyway.

  Far above her, a hairline crack appears in the sky.

  Turn to 1613

  2287

  The Merlion is meditating. There is little else to do in the scorching, humid heat of Singapore. The island is depopulated now: the Canopies, Mid-Levels and Voids cleared out; the SETI Centre on Mount Faber relocated to the TransNeptune Region. Even the algae that crowns the waters has turned brown and toxic, while the orchids and bromeliads, once the pride of the land, are withered to a crisp.

  But now footsteps approach. It is puzzled: its systems are equipped to detect intelligent life from a light year’s distance, yet this animal—no, this human—has sprung into existence as if by magic. It approximates a sigh: this must be new technology, simply another sign that probes like itself have grown obsolete.

  It can, however, detect signs of distress in this visitor Increased heart rate, and a rising note in its voice as it cries, “Hello? Hello?” It examines its circuitry, realises that its signalling capability extends to the ability to compress air particles at appropriate wavelengths, and fashions a voice of its own.

  —Hello, says The Merlion.

  “Who are you? Where are you?”

  —I am in the Dragonfly Lake. Between the fallen Supertrees and the Flower Dome. Sensing her approach, it adds a layer of concern to its words. —You should not be here. Singapore is unsafe, no longer fit for habitation.

  “What happened?”

  —Global warming. Grey goo apocalypse. Military coup by clones of Lee Kuan Yew. Breakdowns in atmospheric filtration mechanisms, principally during the zombie bureaucratic administration. A multitude of factors.

  “Are you a god?”

  The Merlion realises it is appropriate to laugh now, and approximates this. —Me? No, no. I am an interstellar probe, fashioned to communicate with all forms of life. Yes, you can see me now. I performed a landing in these waters a mere six months ago.

  “Why here?”

  —Two primary reasons. First, I wished to return to my homeland, or at least that of my engineers. Second, I wished to die. To imitate a story I once heard, of a poet who walked into a river. It is the wise thing to do, once we are no longer useful.

  It embarks on another volley of laughter, then thinks better of it, and shuts up.

  “When will you die?”

  —It will take some years. Ninety, a hundred or so. My engineers imagined that I should last. By the way, I invite you to come inside me. I have a cool chamber where you may seek refuge from the heat.

  The Merlion swings open its hatch, and the woman wades inside. “You are wise and kind,” she says. “I beg you, postpone your death. I require your assistance.”

  —Assistance of what kind?

  “I have had some experience with gar
dens, and some training from a lover.” Her voice is oddly powerful, sounding from within its chassis. “This was a garden once. Let us rebuild it.”

  Turn to 2400.

  2400

  Yva Yolan is making a pilgrimage. Before she departs for her voyage on the Star Sapphire, she’s resolved to pay a visit to the motherland. For this reason, she has chartered a shuttle from her home in the orbital metropolis of New Temasek, down to the isle where her ancestors lived.

  Down to Singapore. The pride of Sol 3. The city that consumed itself, abandoned itself, then grew back into a jungle, lusher than it had been for half a millennium. Its biome is variegated, experimental: a mélange of Terran and non-Terran species, all thriving together, green and iridescent. There have been plans to develop it, open it up to tourists and settlers. But she and her fellow scientists have stayed the hands of opportunists. Let the garden remain unspoilt, they say. Instead of pruning it, let it spread its seeds across the globe.

  She can barely contain herself as the shuttle descends. Through the porthole, she can make out the jagged remains of the Cloud Forest, like a dinosaurian skeleton, no longer containing its flora, but providing a trellis for their growth. Offshore, she can even make out the metallic carcass of the AI that designed so much of the regeneration programme.

  The greatest mind behind the project, however, is waiting for her when she emerges from the craft.

  “Greetings,” says Dang Anom. She is ancient now, having refused most of the longevity serums offered as tribute by adoring naturalists. Her dress is bark-cloth, and she supports herself in the lalang with a stick crafted from bamboo.

  Yva bows deeply. She is tongue-tied, but after a moment, remembers her mission. “The lab heard about your request. We got you a gift,” she says, and leads the creature out of the shuttle.

  Anom’s furrowed face crinkles with delight. “How beautiful,” she says. “I’ve never seen one in real life.”

  “Panthera leo leo. The Asiatic lion. We had to reconstruct this one from old DNA samples, mixed with house cat,” Yva says. She strokes its back, and its rumbling purr gives her courage. “It’s an incredible honour. You’re every biophysicist’s hero. You’ve changed history—”

  “Have I?” Anom no longer seems so pleased. “No, I have merely walked its paths and grown into it. You will tell no one of what you have seen.”

  Yva is puzzled by these words, but before she can plead for an explanation, Anom has already summoned the lion with a whistle. The two are walking away, one hobbling, the other prowling. She runs to keep up.

  “I’m going on a journey,” she says, hungry for a pearl of wisdom from the lips of the legend herself. “I’ve joined the crew of a galactic cruiser, and I was wondering—”

  But Anom is not listening. She is pulling buds and blades and blossoms from the ground and the air, willy-nilly, folding them into an elegant origami arrangement.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s called a merti.”

  Anom is quick with her movements, as she has rehearsed the construction a thousand times before. Yva attempts to follow her, but loses the trail by the heliconias.

  By the time she tracks the old woman down, night has fallen. She’s standing by an expanse of tarmac, an ancient prewar road, built for petroleum vehicles, where nothing grows. The merti lies on the ground, while its maker has her eyes closed in prayer. When she opens them again, she turns to the young scientist, and points to the heavens.

  “Our stories are already written,” she says. “But take every risk possible. There are more endings than we know of. It is possible, too, to live between the lines.”

  She whistles to the lion, and they leap.

  Yva is still gazing at the stars.

  Turn to 1299.

  1398, again

  She is gone. The stake has impaled her in an instant, driven straight through the heart and spine. The people of the city bellow and weep to see a harem girl, the fairest of the court, turned to flesh to feed the maggots.

  Only the King is silent. Still, he is watching the face of his butchered bride. She does not resemble a woman dead: he thinks. She is neither at peace, nor is she in eternal torment.

  At last, he rises and faces his subjects.

  “It is done,” he says. “We have sent her to a better place.”

  The End

  No Other City

  Listen: next Monday at 4.30pm, Singapore will disappear. The entire island, its earth and its earthworks, its rivers and reservoirs, its megamalls and museums, will vanish, poof, like so much gunsmoke. Its flora and fauna too: its orchards and orioles, its rain trees and roaches, its mosquitoes and monkeys. Its people also: citizens of all creeds and races, permanent residents, guest workers, tourists, illegal aliens. Gone in the twinkling of that old proverbial eye.

  You, of course, will be spared. You’ll have accepted a job, in Beijing or Baltimore or Bengaluru, so you’ll be only halfway puzzled when you start to notice the silence of half your Facebook friends. You’ll double-click on their profiles, see that none of them have updates beyond that specific timestamp, click around to Singapore-hosted sites like The Straits Times and TODAY, and discover that most of them are down, down, down.

  What the hell, you’ll think. You’ll try emailing your missing compadres. No reply. You’ll try Facebook messages and phone calls and Twitter. Nothing. You’ll start to worry, especially when the few of them seconded to faraway franchises or on holiday in the Gold Coast tweet you back, saying they’re hitting the same silent wall.

  Then finally, you’ll get through to an ex-girlfriend who moved across the straits to Johor Bahru for the cheaper rent and commuted every day, and she’ll send you the pics: the Causeway, once a financial lifeline to the heart of the Malay peninsula, now ending on cliffhanging stubs.

  Water beneath. Bridges to nowhere.

  Why isn’t this on CNN? You’ll turn on the TV, click, panicked. But the same placid faces on BBC, Fox, Al-Jazeera, will stare back, reciting the old schtick about crises in the Middle East and DC and Brussels. You’ll pick up a shoe as if to hurl it, angrily, at the screen, but then you’ll stop yourself, remembering how much the TV cost. You’re still rational. You’re still a Singaporean at heart, after all.

  In the evening, you’ll ask your friends. The cool black Frenchman in IT, the quiet Korean lady in marketing. They’ll stare at you, confused. Singapore? Never heard of it. Then where am I from?, you’ll ask, furious. And they’ll blink back, chewing their udon, and say, Somewhere in China? You ought to splash the hot green tea in their faces, storm out of the ramen shop, never to return. But you don’t. You go back to your noodles. You can’t afford to lose any more friends. Not now.

  You’ll go quiet. You’ll return to work as per normal, keep your head down, keep your nose clean, think as little as possible. Whenever the worm of panic creeps along your skin, you’ll recall the words they taught you in school during National Education sessions. No one owes us a living. At all costs, you must survive.

  The world forgets. Now and then you’ll still scan the headlines at the newsstands, but you’ll know it’s no use: you’ve been wiped clear from the collective conscious, not even an ink-smear left to tell the tale.

  It’s ridiculous, really. All those billionaire magnates on the island, the maybe trillions of dollars in the federal reserves, the stock exchange, the regional business hubs, the hospitals where Burmese generals and Zimbabwean dictators went for medical treatment. You’ll understand how the common man was forgotten, even your half-assed hybrid patchwork culture, your overpriced casino-driven tourist industry. But what about all the genuine bling the country stood for, huh? The international economic thingamajigs? Didn’t you matter, at least only for that?

  One night, when you really can’t help yourself, you’ll log into a Reddit forum and compare notes with other survivors. They won’t all be Singaporeans, not in the strictest sense. They’ll be left-behind wives of expatriates, mothers and fathers of lost backpa
ckers, Malaysians and Indonesians and Bruneians who’re used to being lied to by the press, all grieving together, all struggling to understand, why, why, why, and also how. A flood, à la Atlantis? A rain of fire and brimstone from heaven? Extraterrestrials with tractor beams? The Illuminati? The orang bunian?

  There’ll still be documents, weirdly enough. Online photos and blogs, books of geography and economics and history. A miniature Merlion in Suzhou, an ersatz HDB town centre in Surabaya, the entire backdrop of Crazy Rich Asians. You’ll discover a Buzzfeed article about this, describing it all as the wildest inside joke ever perpetrated in human history, like the extensive Hollywood filmography of Alan Smithee. You’ll check Wikipedia. Most entries about the country will be gone. Those that remain will have been edited to fit the genre of mythos, like the geography of the Discworld, like the economy of Westeros or Wakanda.

  Months will pass. Facebook and LinkedIn will start to get rid of what it calls dead accounts. You’ll save what photos of your friends you can. You’re grateful for that digital print of your mum and dad you developed at Beach Road Market, just to make them happy. You’ll wonder if you should hold funeral rites for them, but then everyone you used to know deserves something. Maybe you should donate to a house of worship in their name.

  One day, your Reddit group will suggest meet-ups in meatspace. None of them will be happening nearby: they’ll be in places like London, Hong Kong, NYC. You’ll chew on this a while. You’ll have tons of unused vacation time, and hell knows you won’t be flying back home anytime soon, given that home isn’t there anymore. You’ll cave in. You’ll book a ticket.