Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction

by Dominica Malcolm

  The Game showed signs of missing one of its key players. Nicky had pored over his notes about Hiro Yamada the previous night: reclusive celebrity chef, dubbed with the epithet “Sugar Samurai” after his signature trick of spinning threads of sucrose so fine they split when dropped onto a blade of a katana.

  After a series of world tours and talk-show appearances, Yamada was diagnosed with throat cancer, and retired to live at sea on his houseboat. He re-emerged into the gastronomic world after a three year hiatus, apparently fully recovered. What Yamada allegedly lacked in gustatory sense he made up for in visual and tactile innovation, drawing on his background as a biochemist. He opened a chain of concept ‘candy bars’ in Tokyo, New York, and Singapore. Glow-in-the-dark sorbets (using extracts from luminous sea algae), ‘pearls’ of white chocolate and wasabi made by dipping them into liquid nitrogen. Grenadine was one of Yamada’s favourite ingredients, but just another word to Nicky, who sipped his algae tea and subsisted on glass noodles as he did his research.

  The azure water beckoned to Nicky to take a swim as he leant on the chromed handrail of the Helix Bridge. Nothing lived in the water down there except for nanobots, tailored microbes and other synthetic scavengers. They sanitised the seawater to neutralise any lingering pathogens and odours and changed colour according to atmospheric conditions. Tonight the sea was programmed to turn silver in celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

  Nicky entered the hotel lobby, polished and lit to such extreme brightness he had to wear his sunglasses indoors. The press and media pass freshly tattooed in yellow and black ink onto his forearm still stung, as the lift sensors hummed and scanned his body for weapons and hitchhiking microbes.

  The lift stopped at the SkyPark on the roof of the hotel. Nicky did not know what to expect since his last visit to the hotel when he was a boy, before it added two more blocks and a subterranean park. Is the high tea buffet still open to members of the public? Do domesticated Mekong River dolphins still frolic with hotel guests in the extended infinity pool?

  A foreshortened slab of undulating scarlet water greets Nicky when he gets out from the lift—no dolphins or people are in the swimming pool today. As Nicky made his way out into the sun, the pool’s sheer length is enhanced by the levitating sun loungers and potted travellers palms lining the edge.

  Nicky walked halfway along the two-hundred and fifty metre pool before he squatted down to plunge his hand into the red water. In spite of the colour it felt like any other public pool—warm water undercut by cool currents. Nicky licked his fingertip and recognised a gamut of flavours from his early childhood. Sour tang then sweet aftertaste as it slipped to the back of his throat. Cranberry. The real stuff, not a cocktail of lab-developed simulants derived from seed bank extracts. The mixture was laced with preservatives to keep it from going off under the sun.

  So, the social underground media rumours were confirmed—Yamada’s sponsors paid for a new pool in any hotel he stayed and filled up its swimming pool with any sweet liquid of his choice. This extravagance was both publicity stunt and corporate rivalry. Who was footing the bill for this latest display?

  A skinny Eurasian girl in a gun-metal grey sheath dress descended from her perch on a nearby levitating sun lounger and strode towards Nicky with trademark PR impatience. She held out her left hand for Nicky to shake, perpetually crooked at the wrist from always checking the time.

  “Hi, I’m Chelsea. Congratulations, you’ve passed the test.”

  Nicky looked back from where he emerged from the transparent lift doors, checking for scanners or biometric equipment.

  “You dipped your hand into the pool,” explained Chelsea. “Mr Yamada refuses to speak to journalists who don’t possess an innate sense of curiosity.”

  Chelsea remained on the edge of the pool to show Nicky that she will not lead him to Yamada’s executive suite. “Mr Yamada will see you on Rig-One tomorrow morning.”

  “Non-Movers aren’t allowed on Rig-One.”

  “The Game moves as you play it.” Chelsea the publicist recited the catchphrase, but she could not resist a pointed glance at Nicky’s media tattoo, a mere temporary pass.

  “Any questions before you meet Hiro Yamada?”

  Nicky wipes his hand on his trousers, “How’d you get so much cranberry cordial to fill up the pool?”

  “Grenadine.” Chelsea corrected him and rolled her eyes at Nicky’s faux pas. She took her leave of him, but not before turning around and putting a finger to her lips, “Trade secret.”

  Chelsea left Nicky smarting from her aside by the grenadine-filled pool. He glimpsed his reflection dissolving in the red water. Enough to make cocktails for his neighbourhood in the Jurong West Sprawl, where his family lived inside the husk of an old shopping mall. The pool gave the illusion that the water extended to the horizon. In reality, the water spilt over the edge into a catchment area below and was then pumped back into the pool.

  In his ear stud, Nicky’s recording software entity beeped to indicate Nicky had left it online since he entered the hotel. Hence, all live audio recordings were auto-uploaded to a cloud.

  If he pulls off the Yamada interview the powers-that-be may offer him a better room than he is working in now, and Nicky will afford the deposit on the studio apartment in the Green Lace Aquatecture Belt along the old Sungei Buloh wetlands. The e-brochures offered artists’ impressions of cascading blue steel—frozen wavelike platforms, apartments and walkways suspended over the former mangrove swamps.

  Nicky looked off into the distance, and saw the Marina Financial District barricaded behind the Tide Barrier, overlooking the harbour. He went to the District twice when he was still fresh out of college but failed both job interviews.

  §

  Rig-One stood in the Singapore Strait, between Changi and Marina Bay. Nicky arrived early at the pier. Floating steel modules interlinked to form a floating covered walkway extended from Marina South Pier to Rig-One. The armed guards and police officers at the checkpoint admitted Nicky after he showed them his upgraded media tattoo. They reminded him to limit his RSE to audio recording setting at the guard-post.

  As Nicky strolled inside the modules, the support struts gave him the impression of walking inside the ribs of a gargantuan sea serpent. He peered out between ribs at the harbour scene beyond the tempered glass—no signs of sharks or other large fish. But there were long dark shapes attached to the underside of the walkway, visible through the glass floor, waving like prayer flags in the water. Nicky pressed his ear to the surface of the glass and listened to the rhythms of Marina South—clankings of construction accented by foghorn blasts of distant freighters.

  Nicky did not stop at the shopping arcade. He saw no reason to take in the monastic ambience, the place was empty except for cleaners and service staff. But the RSE was going into overload as it picked up humming, buzzing, and emanations of piezoelectronics in the cool dry arcade. The jagged coral outcrop replicas emanated menace while unnecessary signs floated around, warning non-existent shoppers not to touch the merchandise unless they intended to purchase it. Nicky wanted a bottle of distilled water. Perhaps being in the middle of the over-saturated sea has triggered his thirst.

  The shopping arcade was empty—tourists never ventured outside of Rig-One. Holographic light displays of scarlet twist in curlicues in front of Nicky. It is the symbol for Rig-One’s medical tourism, the hermaphroditic sea-slug known as the Spanish dancer. Nicky tried not to laugh; perhaps Hiro Yamada would announce a sex-change during his interview?

  Nicky progressed further inside another module, moved along by an extensive travellator that sloped downwards. The sea was murky outside the glass, but Nicky was disappointed to see nothing swimming in this area. Most seafood was harvested in designated catchment areas off Chek Jawa. More black pennants were attached to the base of Rig-One and it is suddenly clear to Nicky that Rig-One, like many marine artificial structures, is not what it seems.

  Rig-One was not based on standard oil rig design�
��an offshore platform built on top of legs secured to the seafloor. The pioneering headquarters of Malaysia and Singapore’s medical tourism industry was a compliant tower: a framed structure extending from the seabed to a position above the surface. The hospital and living quarters were distributed throughout the structure’s levels. If the tower should sway about its base in response to environmental forces, the rest of the structure would feel little movement.

  Alighting from the travellator, Nicky saw more compliant towers through the windows. There were more rigs, numbered from Two to Nine, were arranged in the distance like an approaching fleet of ships.

  Along the corridor were pockets of seaweed and algae arranged in neat glass displays. Nicky reached the visitor’s centre, which housed a ten-foot aquarium tank in the wall behind the reception. He recognised the scarlet fronds hidden among the coral as the hermaphrodite sea slugs called Spanish Dancers. Most medical tourists still flocked to Rig-One—the place for major operations and gender reassignment.

  The receptionist looked up from filing her nails, although she didn’t have real nails as Nicky saw chrome-plated talons. He showed her his media tattoo and the receptionist held a scanner over it to verify Nicky’s security clearance.

  “No need for that, he’s with me.” Nicky suddenly heard Chelsea behind him. Chelsea, donning a pair of fetching spiked earrings and a stretched smile, was accompanied by two men in white boiler suits. Both men were so tanned that their skins took on a purplish hue under the fluorescent light. One man had long scars scoured around his mouth whereas the other had neck tattoos creeping over the collar.

  “Hi again.” Nicky waved at Chelsea, “Are these two with you?”

  “Yes.” Chelsea pointed to Tattoo Neck, “They are Badjao. South China Sea gypsies. Mr Yamada believes in equal work opportunities.”

  Nicky reached behind his right ear to mute his RSE.

  “Keep your RSE on. You’re in luck. My boss is in the mood for an long interview today.” Chelsea ushered Nicky into a lift, followed by the two bodyguards. She swiped her hand over the palm reader and the lift began its ascent.

  The lift opened into a sparse suite with a window overlooking Marina South. Chelsea took up her position on a sofa near a window and began tapping away on her tablet.

  Nicky expected the hunched-over posture of a reclusive celebrity invalid, ready to fence with the questions. Yet the man at the bar looked more sunburnt and fit than his recent publicity shots. Hiro Yamada stood tall for his stature, enhanced by his gauntness after cancer treatments. Nicky tried not to look at Yamada’s neck but he smiled, as if it was the first time someone had tried to peek at the scar circumventing his throat. Nicky did a waist-level bow in return.

  “Drink.” said Yamada, not as an offer but a command. He slid a cocktail glass containing deep red liquid along the counter towards Nicky, Western-style.

  Nicky caught the drink just before it fell off the end of the counter. The glass stuck to his fingers and the liquid sloshed over the rim.

  “Cheers.” Yamada raised his glass. As Nicky placed his lips to the the rim of his glass he discovered sweetness and sourness clashing at the tip of his tongue.

  Nicky hazarded a guess, “Grenadine?”

  Yamada nodded while Chelsea raised a trimmed eyebrow at Nicky.

  “The glass is made out of sugar. A ‘Candy Bar’ favourite. It’d cost you $1300 at the Candy Bar on Sentosa. Triple that in Tokyo.”

  Nicky took a tentative lick at the sucrose coating his lips.

  “When a man who makes wonders with sugar wants to give you something sweet for free, you better listen.” said Yamada.

  Nicky unclipped the stud from behind his ear and set the device on the counter. He readied his list of questions. (“Ask Yamada if he remembers our interview back in 2018!” Nicky’s editor had emailed him last night.)

  §

  Yamada leant over the bar to talk to Nicky, and the spontaneous conspiratorial intimacy unnerved him.

  “This is my last interview.”

  Over on the sofa Chelsea gasped and ceased tapping on her tablet.

  “You’re bowing out of the spotlight? Again? Has your cancer gone into remission” asked Nicky, trying to stay focused.

  “I never had throat cancer,” admitted Yamada, pointing at his throat, “I’ve been living with the Badjao for three years.”

  Nicky heard Chelsea’s tablet clatter to the floor before she raised her voice. “The interview is now over!”

  Yamada looked over at Chelsea as if she had barged in, “We agreed to what I would say during the interview, but now I’ve decided not to conduct an interview. This is a confession.”

  Chelsea now stood in the middle of the room, caught between Nicky’s confusion and Yamada’s about-face. Nicky reached out to retrieve his ear stud but Yamada caught his hand. Nicky asked Yamada if he wanted to go off-record from this point onwards. Yamada then tightened his grip on Nicky.

  “Don’t you want my story for that editor bitch at your magazine, boy? Your first big break so that you can afford a shoebox on a floating habitat no better than the families in a Phuket sea ghetto? You and several thousand others eating shit recycled from the sea, while drugged up to your scalps with immunisations against the latest waterborne disease or marine parasites?”

  Yamada had a surprisingly strong grip for a recovering invalid. Nicky felt the tower sway, or he now felt weak.

  “Listen.” Chelsea said, the tower slightly swayed in the other direction while Nicky heard muffled thuds in the levels below.

  “The Badjao,” Yamada declared, “are ahead of schedule. Typical sea pirates.”

  Chelsea turned on Yamada, “This was not the plan! You said you could get amnesty for those who are now your bodyguards in Singapore or Malaysia. Don’t forget that I forged all those bodyguard permits!”

  Nicky listened out for more thuds above Chelsea’s raised voice and recalled what little he knew about South China Sea pirates, referred to by the sterile abbreviation ‘SCSPs’ by the media. SCSPs were still considered a distant threat, unlike the Straits of Malacca pirates recently repelled by the Malacca Straits Barrier Reef, not a natural wonder like the former Great Barrier Reef, but a mine-laden one created for maritime security.

  When Chelsea ran out of accusations, Yamada resumed his story: “The Badjao came at night when we were off the Anambas Islands.” Yamada looked far out of the window, beyond the horizon, “Just three boats and their mother vessel, a dozen men with machine guns.”

  Nicky noticed Tattoo Neck at the door, his index fingers permanently crooked from pulling triggers on many pre-loved AK-47s.

  “So we waited. The nearby governments wouldn’t intervene, and Japan was on tsunami alert again. My story got lost.”

  “Did the Badjao know who you are?” asked Nicky.

  “My creations were so delicious that one American critic declared ‘It’s like an angel peeing on your tongue!’.” Yamada gestured towards imaginary awards mounted on the wall behind him, “Fame counts for nothing out at sea. No, the Badjao spared my wife and I because I made ‘magic jelly’ for them.”

  Chelsea was holding her face in her hands, as if to plead, ‘Mr Yamada please don’t go there!’ But Nicky could not stop listening if he wanted to.

  “On my houseboat I experimented with flavours and micro-organisms, long used for food preparation processes, like yeast cultures for production of bread, alcohol, or cheese. I discovered the wonderful uses of the bacterium Xylinum. In a solution, it turns sugar into a cellulose-fibre—paper produced by bacteria!”

  Yamada produced a whisky glass from under the bar. Nicky saw a thin film that looked like beige papier-mâché clinging to the insides of the glass.

  “One day at sea I was so hungry I ate my xylinum cultures without getting sick. I discovered xylinum is so pure that if placed inside the human body, it is accepted by the body. The cellulose generated binds a lot of water. When the Badjao ate my ‘magic jelly’ they never felt thirsty a
nd rarely hungry.”

  “What happened to your wife?” asked Nicky.

  “A stray bullet from a faulty machine-gun hit her—here.” Yamada pressed his ring finger so hard onto the centre of Nicky’s forehead that it left an indentation.

  “So, I’m not sick.” Yamada said.

  “Physically—you look well.” Nicky conceded. “But you are profiteering. Are your latest ‘sponsors’ the various pirate groups you’ve befriended?”

  Yamada laughed, “How could I join them? Not that I lacked offers. Imagine; ‘Yamada’s Armada’ ruling the waves! The Badjao and other sea gypsies powered by Yamada’s magic jelly. Could your agency put a better spin on it, Chelsea?”

  Nicky picked up his ear stud and declared, “This interview is over.”

  A shiny object flew past Chelsea with a dry whooshing sound and hit Yamada. Upon impact, Nicky saw the machete embedded in Yamada’s chest.

  Nicky grabbed Chelsea and both ran into the lift as Tattoo Neck and Scarmouth went to the bar to make sure Yamada was dead. As the lift doors shut, Chelsea was too shocked to scream, and instead blurted out, “What is this shit?”