The Sea Is Ours

by Jaymee Goh

  “Chalerm, your first time for me right? Don’t fuck up.”

  Chalerm grinned and chuckled. “Can, boss. Can. This spider,” he flourished, “I catch myself. Put in my special container. Confirm win.”

  ~*~

  Dai Ji heard the knocks. Thrice, twice, then thrice again. She checked her watch. It was one-fifty. Someone was just in time. She returned the pattern with a chair-leg, tapping sharply against the metal of the hatch, and then tapped twice. The almost-latecomer repeated the pattern, and Dai Ji reached out to open the padlock. The lock slithered open as she pulled its threads aside, and a lean, sweaty Chinese boy eagerly clambered up. She scowled.

  “Oi, Rotan. What time already?”

  “Dai Ji, one fifty only! Still got time lah.”

  Dai Ji sighed and waved him in, watching him disappear into the crowd. Towgey was running from one person to the next collecting bets. The first half’s fighters were gathered in the middle of a circle of children and teenagers, parading their casings. There was a couple, two young Nanyang Forces officers on home leave; Chai, the cocky fifteen-year-old with a tiny, badly-done dragon tattoo under his left armpit; Margaret, the Eurasian convent-school girl who wore a jacket, even in the heat, to cover up her pinafore; and Aminah, who helped Shape Ridzuan’s spider-containers and was pretty handy with casings herself. The match-list drawn up on the board pitted Chalerm’s “Kiet” against Margaret’s “High Spirits” as the first match of the day. Kiet was heavy and energy-hungry, but fast and optimized for short, fluid movements. High Spirits, in contrast, was light, slim and covered in cockroach-based sensor hairs, designed to outlast its opponents and whittle them down.

  Dai Ji checked her watch, then rang a bell. The circle quietened as the Chong twins brought out a large folding table from behind a cistern and opened it in the middle. Chalk lines drawn breadthwise marked the distance from the centre, and two chalked semi-circles on either end were labelled “spider here” in Chinese, Thai and Jawi. A cardboard barrier down the middle shielded each side from view of the other. Chalerm and Margaret laid their empty casings in their semi-circles.

  Kiet opened with a pneumatic hiss at the touch of Chalerm’s hand. Chalerm removed a container from his bag, a jam jar with holes in the top nestled within a slightly larger jam jar filled with water and sealed with waterproof skinfilm. The spider inside seemed rather lethargic as Chalerm tapped it out into his hand, but livened the moment it touched the warmth of his skin. Blowing gently, he coaxed it onto the spongy padding in the casing’s head. It stopped moving as the padding enveloped it. Kiet’s lateral lines, lifted directly off a mackerel, iridesced blue and green as it stirred. Chalerm stroked its abdomen, feeling the threads fold in around the spider and its mind settle into the casing’s circuits, and it raised its forelegs in response. Taking a small phial of sugared water and a needle from Towgey, he pricked his finger, squeezed a drop of blood into the phial and poured the mixture onto the padding. Across the table, High Spirits was fuelled up and ready to go, with one of Margaret’s favourite spiders inside and preening itself with a hairy foreleg. Chalerm tapped Kiet’s head, and it hissed closed.

  Dai Ji made one last call for bets. A small group of Malay children, no older than ten, ran to Towgey with a total of five dollars between them to put on Aminah for later. Towgey looked around briefly, saw nobody else and nodded at Dai Ji. She announced the contestants and their casings, then rang the bell. The two challengers stepped away from their corners. She rang the bell twice again, and the barrier was lifted.

  ~*~

  Kiet and High Spirits spotted each other immediately and threw up their forelegs. Kiet strode towards the centre in smooth, measured steps, waggling its abdomen in the air, and tapping its long, thick forelegs on the ground. High Spirits made a zigzagging advance, darting from side to side, and suddenly leapt forward when less than a chi remained between the two; Kiet thrust its face forward to meet the charge, clinching High Spirits’ fangs with its own before the latter could dart back. Dai Ji stole a glance at Margaret, whose lips were tightly pursed. As High Spirits attempted to jump, Kiet snapped its forelegs shut around its pedicel and tugged in the opposite direction. There was a small crack, and High Spirits’ second left leg fell off. Steam puffed from the wound as it sealed itself, but High Spirits was already in motion, leaping not against the pull, but into it.

  Kiet reared up onto its hind legs, balancing against the push. Its chin resting on High Spirits’ fangs, it marched forward on its third and fourth pairs of legs, forcing High Spirits to support its weight while pinning its jaws open. High Spirits’ fangs were stuck in Kiet’s chin, trapped in the tough carapace. It wrenched its body, trying to topple Kiet, but the heavier spider shifted its weight in time with its opponent’s movements. Both spiders staggered around the arena, searching for a weakness.

  The crowd was shouting; most of them had bet on Margaret’s seasoned spider trouncing the new tester who had paired Dai Ji’s casing with a spider unused to it. The few who had bet on Chalerm were cheering loudly. High Spirits’ fourth left leg snapped and buckled, and it slipped. Taking advantage of the situation, it pushed off to the left with its right legs, sliding free of Kiet. It was leaking steam in a few places, its carapace cracked and its fourth left leg dragging uselessly on the ground. It retreated, hampered by the damage, towards the side of the table. Kiet waited, forelegs open, in the middle, as its defeated opponent surrendered. Chalerm glanced at Margaret, his mouth curling into an apologetic smile.

  As High Spirits crawled under the table, Dai Ji rang the bell. The cardboard barrier was lowered. Chalerm and Margaret retrieved their casings and bowed to each other before switching them off. Margaret opened her casing and gently shook her spider free; it limped around uncertainly for a moment, then hopped with glee back into its box. The sugar water drained out of High Spirits’ rear end in a thin line onto the ground. Kiet’s reserves were almost dry; with a little prompting, there was a brief stream, then nothing. Chalerm’s spider slipped back into its jar, where it curled up in its leaf. The fight was over.

  ~*~

  As Towgey distributed the winnings, Rotan sighed. He looked at his new casing, Heavy Jumper. Its neural circuits, built from scavenged chicken heads and the brain of a macaque that he’d found killed by a roadwalker, sang at his touch, but he didn’t know if their construction was anywhere close to Kiet’s in complexity. If he managed to win enough, he’d save up for one of Dai Ji’s casings.

  The air roared. Rotan felt a wave of heat wash across his back, and he almost dropped Heavy Jumper in surprise. He ran to the edge of the roof, peering over to see what had happened; below him, the wet market had caught fire. A plume of dark smoke was rising from a crater in the ground, where the butcher once was. Several shop-carts close to the explosion had been shredded, their contents scattered burning on the ground together with the bodies of several shopkeepers, while the survivors fled the burning market on foot. Already, the Nanyang Fire Corps’ sirens were wailing, and their red, armoured elephantines thundered out of the nearby Jurong District Fire Station.

  Rotan screamed in Malay, “Bomb! Bomb! Downstairs got bomb explode! Run!”

  ~*~

  Five seconds after the blast, Dai Ji was already in motion.

  The rooftop access hatch was wide open, lock smashed by the twin officers. She skittered across the rooftop on her walking-chair, looking for her crew. She sent Ridzuan to watch the hatch and keep people moving in an orderly fashion, and then jabbed Towgey, cowering on the floor, with a chair leg. She shouted just to be heard. “Go! Help them get out!”

  Dai Ji grabbed Chalerm and Margaret, who were standing shell-shocked, and shoved them towards the exit. Rotan ran past her, a pale-faced Chai clinging tightly to his hand, while Aminah led the crowd of Malay children who had bet on her ahead. Towgey picked kids older than he was off the ground, sending them scurrying for the access hatch. The crew who laid out the table were busy folding it up and keeping it behind the cistern. Dai Ji
ran past them with a curt nod. She found a boy, barely seven, hiding behind a vent, and screamed at him.

  “Want to die is it? Then? Don’t hide here, go! Go!”

  Her fury shook the little boy out of his fear, and he ran. She made a final tour of the rooftop before heading for the hatch herself. Her walking-chair reclined all the way back as its legs latched on to the rungs of the metal ladder; she descended vertically, strapped in, into the top floor of the Reconstruction Trust block.

  Forty-odd children, young men and women waited in the lobby. Dai Ji looked at them, and they looked back expectantly. She shouted, “Oi! Stand here for what?”

  The crowd scattered, heading down the stairs. Dai Ji waited until they had gone before she began to make her way down. Her chair-legs quivered slightly; noticing this, she focused, steadied her grip on the threads of the walking-chair’s brain and forced it down the stairwell.

  [III]

  Dai Ji sat in her room. Her homework lay blank in front of her. Mathematics, Chulalongkorn-Ministry of Education Joint Advanced Level. Normally it would have been done by now, but she had merely scratched the paper with her pen. Her radio played the latest chart-toppers from China and the Sultanates. The Nanyang band Gwei Ngeow was on, and the crisp guitars dislodged her.

  There had been military men at the wet market after the blast. She had seen them as a pair of medics looked her over. Police officers, manning the cordon in their neat brown fatigues, had waved them through. They had been unarmed, but wore thick, segmented armour with the Nanyang insignia but without a unit crest. They picked through the remains of the butcher stall, fishing out a rodentlike which leaked green fluid. Dai Ji saw two of them pass an organic wand over it, and then drop it into a skinfilm bag. They lifted a large, red object out from beneath the rubble and attempted to transfer it into a second bag. It was slippery; one of them dropped it on the floor, and it shattered, spilling grey matter and green fluid. Dai Ji turned away to vomit. A medic caught it in a bucket and wiped her mouth with a clean cloth. She watched a team of medics load body after body into an ambulance; later, she learned that there were twenty-seven dead, the bomber included.

  Keys caught in the front door, and it opened with a creak. There was a rustle of bags. Dai Ji’s mother dropped her packed dinner on the dining table and rushed into her room in a tight embrace.

  “Siew Gim…”

  Dai Ji returned the hug. She breathed in the smell of her mother; river and rust, barely hidden beneath sharp medicated oil and the dull stink of her Civil Utilities Board uniform. Her father’s heavy boots came off at the doorstep and he walked in, gave them both a squeeze, and headed for the shower, saying nothing. Gwei Ngeow continued to riff in the background.

  ~*~

  Dai Ji could not sleep. She’d been allowed to take a day off from school; her mother had called her form-teacher Mrs. Oon to explain the situation. Lifting herself from her bed, she lowered herself into her walking-chair, parked next to it. She felt its straps, specially designed by her brother, automatically cinch around her waist and the three stumps attached to it. She could feel it bleating, and realized she’d forgotten to refuel it earlier.

  “Shh.”

  She grasped for its mind, found it, and twisted the threads she felt there, calming the goat-brain and silencing its bleating. She popped open the cap on its left armrest with a flick of her fingers, pouring in the sugar-water she kept on her nightstand, and it vibrated a little. Taking hold of its reins, she headed for the kitchen. If she could not sleep, she would work.

  There were chicken necks in her personal cooler, as well as a small reticulated python she’d bought off a gardener the day before. Dai Ji removed the snake and a pair of chicken necks, checked them for freezer-burn, then returned to her room with a scalpel, a chopper, a spoon, a sheet of skinfilm and a bag for the scraps. She switched on the nightlight and shoved her homework to the side, spreading the skinfilm and her materials across the newly-cleared workspace. Inspecting the scalpel, she drew the edge several times along a small whetstone and tested it on the chicken neck. It fell away easily to reveal the spine. Satisfied, she started to work.

  She started with the chicken necks. She felt for the threads she knew were there, bringing them into view and rubbing them between her fingers to assess their viability. The material was relatively fresh, and would stand up to reconstitution well. Dai Ji carefully separated the head and spine from the rest of the chicken flesh with her scalpel, unmaking the stubborn bits of tissue and vein that clung to the spine into raw cell-matter. She defleshed the skulls with a hard pinch of her right hand, liquefying the eye but saving the optic nerve. Merging the muscle scraps into a clay-like lump and discarding the fat, she broke the skulls with the flat of the chopper, pulled out the brains and set them aside. Cracking the spines, she extracted the nerves within and discarded the bones.

  Next, she moved on to the python, which she gutted and reduced to spine and skull again, before extracting the nerves and brain. The skin and eyes she kept intact, as well as the tongue and Jacobson’s organ. She’d use those to build sensors. Her brother had installed the same kind, made from the heads of several mangrove vipers, a few years back so her walking-chair wouldn’t bump into things; he’d playfully refused to teach her that trick, so she’d gone through his university notes and figured it out herself.

  From a cupboard on the desk, she removed a block of cartilage plastic. This was the basic building block of a casing; her hands tingled with anticipation just holding the thing. She could feel the threads extending in a uniform grid pattern, waiting to be shaped. She traced the outlines of the parts she wanted with her fingers, liberating them from the block one piece at a time. Soon, she had in top and bottom halves an abdomen, a cephalothorax with a hinged lid and a pair of thick fangs, the pedicel joining the two and eight hollow, multi-jointed legs. The rest of the block she coaxed back into shape, leaving it next to the chicken and snake parts. She carved channels into the casing’s outline, where she’d put the muscles later, and pinched out holes for the casing’s eyes and lateral line. Inspecting her work, she carefully set the top and bottom halves of the casing together and persuaded them to join at the seams.

  The next step in building the casing was filling it in. She loved this part, working intimately with the flesh and blood of her components, feeling each cell sliding into place and knowing the intended purpose she had given it. She started with the snake muscle; liquefying and spooning the cells through the hinged cover of her casing’s cephalothorax, she animated it, guiding the little muscle-worms to their destinations individually and convincing them to settle down, organically fusing with the cartilage plastic. Next, she reconstructed a venous and arterial network that would keep the casing alive and mobile without her intervention, coaxing the cell-matter to shape itself into the blood vessels it once remembered. This required some prodding, stern jabs and a little thread-pulling where the cell-matter was stubborn or not entirely present yet, but Dai Ji could feel the blood vessels branching and spreading throughout the casing. She grinned as she felt a flicker of life taking hold. Taking the snake tongue, she briefly merged it with the Jacobson’s organ in a brown-and-purple slurry, then Shaped it into dozens of delicate purple hairs, each as long as an eyelash and complete with follicles. These she implanted along the lateral line of the casing, integrating them into the existing circulatory system. The snake eyes, kept intact, she placed behind protective cartilage plastic coverings in the eye-holes. The casing was pretty much done, with only its brain remaining to be constructed.

  Dai Ji sighed as she brought the snake and chicken nerves and brains together. She felt calm now. Separating out cells from each, she gently laid a network of inter-species nerves that connected each of the muscles to the casing’s eyes and sensors, and tied the network together in a spongy padding at the centre of the spider’s cephalothorax. This was the brain, where the spider would go, taking control of the casing with its augmented sensing and cognitive abilities. Dai
Ji sealed the casing again and layered snakeskin on top of it, bonding it to the cartilage plastic. She used her scalpel to peel off errant scales, sweeping them into a corner of the table, and reapplied the snakeskin in layers each time. When she was done, the casing resembled a tarantula, with scales instead of hair and the cold, yellow eyes of a baby reticulated python.

  She swept the remaining raw material and skinfilm sheet into the scrap bag, save the snakeskin and the cartilage plastic she hadn’t used. Sighing, she let the bag of flesh and bone fall down the rubbish chute in the kitchen, listening as it clanged against the sides on the way down, loud at five in the morning.

  [IV]

  Dai Ji woke up at eleven, flopped into her walking-chair and stumbled to the bathroom. Towgey had gone to school, and her parents had left for work hours ago. She brushed her teeth, scrubbing the staleness from her tongue.

  The newspaper that day had Nanyang President Li’s face on it; tearful and furious, he raged, open-mouthed, against the Federation’s crimes in black and white print. Dai Ji pushed it off the table to make room for breakfast.

  There was one egg left in the kitchen. Dai Ji boiled some water in a kettle, poured it into a large porcelain mug and then dropped the egg in. She grabbed a cold mantou from the refrigerator and shoved it into the steamer while she waited. After a couple of minutes, she fished the egg out with a spoon and let it cool in a saucer. The steamer dinged, and she lifted the mantou out with Shapable wooden tongs. A large crow landed outside the open kitchen window, eyeing the meal hungrily; Dai Ji closed to arm’s length, brandishing her tongs, but it refused to back off. Scowling, she searched for its unsecured threads, pulled, and at once rent a handful of new feathers into black fluff; the crow took flight, alarmed. Dai Ji looked at it, flying towards the next block, and turned to crack the egg into the saucer. She tore the mantou in two, dipped it in the egg, and took a bite.