"Mind being less cryptic?"
"You’re here, and in Sai Kung there are no secrets. It’s impossible, you see."
"So?"
"So if she wants to be found, you'll find her. Otherwise, you will leave the way you’ve come here: with no girl, and no answers."
You’re wrong, beautiful woman. Knowing more about these people and their mysterious Sai Kung colony that popped up in the middle of nowhere and remained off the radar for half a century on a planet in total disarray was the principal reason of my presence, and how I had secured an Earth-bound, expensive vessel in the first place. Whatever I was going to learn in my stay here would be way more than everybody else knew, on the Moon or elsewhere.
* * *
"You said your name’s Emil."
"Correct."
"What do you think of our little world, Emil Huygens? Do you like it?"
We were sitting under the shade of a banyan tree, looking at the sunset. A ravaged planet, but its sunsets are still the most spectacular in the whole Solar System, I was on the point to say. But I stopped in time. My host would have had probably no idea of what I was talking about.
The day had been good, no complaints about it. Since our arrival, Meilan had made sure I could explore the small community of Tai Long Wang at my own pace, and I was grateful for the opportunity. The place was as impressive as I had imagined it to be. Those one-story houses, all wood and pink marble, built on the slopes of the hills facing the mountain looked unlike anything XXIII century. They weren’t even old. They were vestiges of another age, remnants of a past the planet did not harbour any longer. I didn’t need to be an historian to know that kind of architecture belonged to the glorious Ming Dynasty of XVI century China, of which nothing had survived on planet Earth after the great exodus. It had been either demolished by earthquakes, submerged by water, or simply reclaimed by a mother nature rather pissed-off with her human children.
But then, nested in the primitive, enchanting landscape that was Tai Long Wang, there was a tiny yet highly advanced He3D fusion plant. I could also spot a bizarre structure in metal and graphene, probably a greenhouse for genetic manipulation. The differing images gave one the impression that they resided in a time warp, one that had past and future entangled in some multiverse experiments gone wrong.
“Your home was not what I had expected,” I replied cautiously.
“And what did you expect, young man?”
“It’s too old, and at the same time too sophisticated, technology-wise. How is this possible?”
"It might be surprising at first glance, I agree, but it makes perfect sense. We examined what we had at hand and selected what was appropriate for the colony we wanted to create. If you give it a closer look, you'll see that everything has a logical explanation." Meilan smiled. "Adopting the historical culture of this place was the most sensible thing to do. Using a low-impact architecture is advisable under any circumstance. It will help this planet heal now that the acidity level of the seas is slowly getting back to normal. You mentioned technology: with an ocean at a hand’s reach, a He3D represents the cleanest and most convenient source of energy. Do you need me to continue?"
“That's the point. It's all so rational,” I said.
“What's the problem with that?”
“It doesn't even look human.”
“Considering the way our species has handled this planet, you should welcome a different approach.” The voice came from behind, and I jerked back as if stung by a wasp. Dressed in an elegant sky-blue qipao, Yumiko raised her hand, a faint smile on her face.
* * *
"You look great," she said, caressing my hair as if nothing had happened, as she had done so many times when we were still in Mare Imbrium. We hadn't talked a lot in the latest twenty-four hours, and even now she didn't seem inclined to talk. She poured tea and looked outside the oval-shaped window.
“This makes quite a change compared to the lunar surface,” I said, not exactly sure where to start.
"It does, yes." She kissed my stomach, putting me down on my back again.
“Yumiko . . . stop.”
"I thought you'd miss me."
“Having a good chat seems more important at the moment.”
“There's nothing to say.”
Her eyes were as dark and pensive as I remembered them, but with a strange light in them. They were peaceful in a way they had never been when she was living in my world, no matter her successful career as one of the most brilliant young scientists of the Moon colonies.
“There's plenty. You went away without saying a word, only leaving behind that file with the coordinates of this place—”
“I shredded that data,” she interrupted.
"Data handling is my job; it was not difficult to put them back together. You know, I'm not here because of you, or not only. It's that I couldn’t believe what was in front of my eyes," I said, admiring a delicate dragonfly with transparent green-blue wings. "I wasn't even aware places like this existed on Earth. They can't be from XXI century; anybody still living by the coasts was evacuated to space colonies after the tsunami in 2097 that destroyed LA and most of California. It was one disaster too many," I continued. "Moreover, I wasn't alone to think things looked odd. I made a few inquiries, and not only among the Moon colonies; Earth-Lower orbit colonies knew little about Sai Kung Place, too. Where do these people come from? When exactly have they settled down here? Where in heaven and hell have they found the materials to build the place? And mind you, nobody even suspects the existence of a fusion reactor. The only thing the Upper-Asia orbiting colony—the one that has constantly monitored the region for the last one hundred twenty years—was positive about is there have been biosignatures for at least ninety years. Otherwise said, whoever they are, they built Tai Long Wang 2.0 when virtually everybody else fled the Earth's coastal regions. Now you tell me that they managed to survive and thrive in those conditions?"
Yumiko shook her head, as if she were listening to a petulant child.
"Does it seem farfetched that I’m looking for explanations, or for something I can live with?"
“No, but what would it change?” she said. “You shouldn't have come here, Emil.”
I stood up and got dressed. "If you don't reply, I'll ask Meilan directly."
“It’s going to be a waste of time.”
“You think she's going to lie to me?”
“These people don't lie.” Yumiko shrugged. “No, it's because you won't be able to understand, let alone believe.”
“We'll see about that.”
I walked away without saying another word, but I couldn't avoid looking back at her tiny cottage. The pink structure flowed graceful, harmonious, like a flower blossoming out of a bed of rocks.
* * *
"We have a gathering tonight," Meilan said, her white-blond hair fluttering around her face like a golden halo.
I brushed with the point of my fingers the silky skin of her shoulders, relishing their texture. I had gone to see her for an explanation, but she had taken my hand and invited me into her lair. Maybe that was their way to welcome visitors, as in some isolated cultures of Old Earth, I decided; in any case, it was not polite for me to refuse.
“A party?”
"If you want to call it that way. We have a good time, we say thank you for this happy place that allows us a good life, and we partake of herbal teas." She smiled. "These are not Chinese—you’d find them in the Mexican tradition.”
“Herbal?”
"Extracted from cactuses, to be precise. We synthesise and use them during our gatherings. You should try them." She adjusted her qipao dress. "I know what is in your mind, the answers you’re searching for, Emil. Have you thought that perhaps the right questions are all you need?"
"Not really. Which kind of questions are they?"
"The ones that make an answer unnecessary."
* * *
There were no artificial lights that night in Tai Long Wang, or in t
he whole of Sai Kung Place. I could only see small blue torches with a glimmering flame here and there, nested in the green canopies scattered around and placed on the stone staircase to the peak.
I drank my tea in silence with Yumiko in my arms and observed with wary eyes the celebration unfolding during the night—a meal, dances, and incense offering to the spirits of the wind, the earth, and the sea—while my sense of reality was progressively eroded by the alkaloids. Sai Kung Place’s inhabitants looked to me like one person with a thousand faces, all different and yet the same. Their shadows moved around like in some slow-motion movies, with their old-looking costumes, their qipao, their pale, handsome features and clear blue eyes; they were creatures of another time, a mythical one.
This place might just be not alive, I thought in a growing fear while following those surreal scenes. They're ghouls, emerged from the hell of climate change, or vengeful spirits of a planet we had killed with a monstrous science gone out of control. And they're going to exact revenge on my flesh. Or this colony doesn't even exist for real, a remote part of my consciousness screamed back. They're ghosts from a past we have somehow lost in the wrinkles of time the moment we’ve abandoned this martyred Earth to decay and oblivion. Under the effect of the psychotropic tea, I could see their shapes blurring away into a golden aura, their features evolving and displaying the familiar, reassuring features of bodhisattvas. Guanyin, Avalokiteshvara, and Kannon all stared at me with the aquamarine eyes of Meilan, like visions of regret, nightmares of guilt.
In a dreamlike haze, I walked down the stairs, reaching the seaside, smelling salt and iodine. I plunged my hands in the surprisingly warm water. The glimpse of a seashell caught my eyes. A pretty one, made of dark coral and a glittering, diamond-quality surface. Yet, its texture was tender and sweet where I could have expected metal and ice. I had never seen anything like that, in any of the colonies with Earth-like habitats I had visited. Some surprise, I snickered, with my head flying out like a kite in the sky.
I picked it up and held it tight in my hand, feeling blessed.
* * *
“Why did you leave the Moon for Sai Kung Place?” I said, admiring dawn with her in my arms. "The real reason, Yumiko. I can’t believe it was just scientific curiosity."
“Because the life I was living with you was the life of somebody else, one I didn’t like.”
“What was missing, Yumiko?”
"You’d better ask, ‘What was there?’" Her eyes were bleak. There was no joy or sadness, only a tired look, and not just for the sleepless, drugged night. I had a strong feeling I was the guilty one, to disturb her peace.
"How did you find out about them?" I said, changing the topic.
"I'm an exobiologist, Emil, one of the people who study the adaptation of carbon-based organisms in outer space. It’s important for my job to examine the way climate change mutated the ones still living here on Earth—the few who survived the sixth mass extinction. The reports we had received from this area didn’t make any sense. The sourcing missions of three years ago brought back living bugs and arthropods supposedly extinct for millions of years. The same variety you see here in terms of architectures and customs you can also find at a biological level, and more. It was not supposed to happen, Emil, not without taking the intervention of non-terrestrial creatures into account, at least.”
“Did you know they were alien settlers before coming here?”
“I had strong hints. Those samples I’ve mentioned, the stunning environmental recovery in this area, the radio-impulse broadcast out of the heliosphere . . . When I arrived, the first thing I saw was that He3D plant the size of a dollhouse, which gave me the confirmation I waited for.” She shrugged. “I came uninvited, but they let me stay, nonetheless. And in these months, I've learned to love this place—more, to worship it.”
“Are they really looking like what I see, or it's just a mask they've put up for our own consumption?”
“Who cares? They come from far, far away, where everything’s possible, even when it’s unlikely.”
“But why here? Why the Earth in the first place?”
“I haven't asked. I'm not interested. Are you?"
I glanced at her. She’d grown more alien to my eyes than Meilan herself. I walked out of her tiny house and cried.
* * *
I didn't say goodbye to either Meilan or Yumiko. I had nothing to say to the first, and with the other, we had run out of words—words making any sense, at least. In fact, Yumiko and I hadn’t shared words making sense for a long time. I had just not realised it until that moment.
Before leaving, I destroyed all physical evidence I had collected of the settlement, including recordings, imageries, and rocks. I let the little creatures I had carefully stored in my biosampling unit go their way free, unharmed and probably happier to stay there than following me to an unappealing lunar base. The outer colonies didn’t need to know about Sai Kung any more than they did, and they were not going to get it from me. In a way, Meilan had been right: I was leaving without my girl and without answers. Questions? Right or not, they were not important any longer.
I kept my treasure, though, the odd-looking artefact collected on the seaside—safe in my spacesuit. A souvenir of that eerie place, and a proof for the day I would be tempted to think it had been just a dream.
Walking down the stairs in marble and stone, I looked one last time at the happy colony of Sai Kung Place, at the pinkish low houses and its He3D plant by the blue sea. That place existed and thrived. Those gentle aliens made it alive with a power only gods and superior beings could handle. I knew now those amazingly handsome creatures were no ghosts of the past, they were messengers from the future or from an outer space we humans had only brushed but not understood yet, let alone conquered. Mighty and together sweet, made cautious by the weight of wisdom, they had chosen to inhabit our planet the moment we had left it to its destiny. In their civilisation endeavours they had mixed up cultures and species from different eras in the way humans combined garments as a fashion statement. They gave our old Earth a new life, out of a nature in tatters and a poisoned ecosphere.
I've no doubt you're going to do a much better job than us, my friends. I got inside the cockpit of the spaceship taking me back to the Moon, and I silently wished them luck.
Inconvenient Consequences
Holly Saiki
Editor: Be careful what you wish for, you just may get it—Chinese Proverb
Roger Melie’iki’e sat in his car, his stomach churning with nervous anticipation, his palm covered with sweat as he put the key in the ignition. Roger’s cult had brought about the prophetic arrival of The Many Arms of The Swirling Vortex. It had come crawling from its rainbow-hued portal, irradiating the world with occult radiation. The power turned most of the inanimate objects it touched into something out of a cheesy Lovecraftian novel; but the cultists had weathered the worst of it, absolutely smug in their certainty they would be the rulers of the newly changed world.
Instead, the Many Arms of The Swirling Vortex ditched its worshipers so it could chase an adorable ginger kitten walking in front of the cult’s church the minute its presence had granted all of the machines a bizarre sort of feral life. Roger and his fellow cultists had spent the rest of the day trying not to get killed by their own cars. He remembered the sheer humiliation as his own car managed to chase him all the way back to his own house. His out-of-shape body had been drenched in sweat as he pushed his burning, aching legs to run. He barely managed to shut the front door and activate the magical defense system. He then had to help his wife battle a very hungry microwave oven trying in vain to bite their heads off without any sharp teeth.
It had taken Roger five months to tame his microwave oven so it wouldn’t eat anyone. These annoying Eldritch problems made Roger begin to regret joining the cult and bringing about the apocalypse in the first place. Being in a cult promised the power to solve all of your problems but didn’t say you replaced them with a new, equall
y troublesome set. Roger lost track of all the times the refrigerator tried to mate with him until he put a restraining rune on the door.
The biggest problem he faced was getting his now sentient car to obey him. He and his wife lived in the suburbs. Cult headquarters were in the heart of the city. Roger couldn’t risk walking to the city these days as supernatural machines, happy to devour any human they encountered, infested the roadways. He had no choice but to rely on his car, who was also willing and eager to eat him.
Roger tried using magic to tame the car, but it invariably ended in disaster as the magic backfired on him. Roger’s body would temporary change shape, either sprouting slimy green tentacles out of his nose or turning into a fluffy ginger cat with dragonfly wings on its back. Next, he would try flattery by petting it on the hood and saying soothing nonsense. Other times, he would feed it a live animal or a gallon of human blood so it would be willing to cooperate with him. He even tried to take the damn thing out for an occasional walk, like a mechanical dog. He still found it galling he had to create an actual huge collar so the car wouldn’t try to escape and run him over.
If Roger had other means of transportation, he would’ve happily destroyed the car and danced on its corpse. Well, at least he didn’t have any more neighbors living nearby to laugh at his embarrassing failures.
A high-pitched shriek emanated from under the hood of the car as it came to life. Roger stepped on the gas pedal, not sure if the shriek signified a good or bad omen. His action just made the shriek louder as the hood of the car popped open, revealing a swarm of gelatinous, dark green tentacles frantically waving in the air. Roger gave out an exasperated sigh. His head sunk down on his chest in despair knowing the tentacles meant a bad omen, the car still viewed him as a tasty hors d'oeuvre.
It’s just my damn luck that I ran out of fresh corpses to feed it, he thought, swearing under his breath as he got out of the car. If I had known that joining the cult of the Many Arms of the Swirling Vortex would bring nothing but trouble, I would’ve punched the cultist who gave me that pamphlet.
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