Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction

by Dominica Malcolm

  “We’ll go back for their families when we’re sure the worm is cleaned out,” she said, “When we can afford to give them the time they need to be won over.”

  “So much for population control.”

  “I’m not leaving them to starve or be captured. We’re better than that!”

  Maui shrugged. “They can buy their way on to Halcyon with whatever resources we can break Titokowara down to. I’ll make sure we have shareholder support.”

  Grace turned and looked out to sea. She squinted, uncertain, and then smiled as she watched another type of distinctive dorsal fin approaching from the distance.

  “Look! Maki!” she broadcast to the whole crew through her brain-jack, “Looks like the mako will be paying us back for those fish they stole.”

  They all stopped and looked as seven fins broke the surface again, a little nearer than when Grace had first spotted them.

  “Let’s get one of the mako for ourselves,” suggested Maui, “I wouldn’t mind some of that liver.”

  * * *

  About Jo Thomas

  Jo Thomas is a part-time writer hiding in a full-time worker’s life. She is occasionally allowed out to play for historical fencing and the odd speculative fiction convention. She can be found at http://www.journeymouse.net and as @Journeymouse on Twitter.

  Shadows of an Ancient Battle

  Daniel A. Kelin, II

  ~ Hawai‘i ~

  A pale red sun caresses lava-coloured streets, echoes of the island’s birth. Towering edifices shimmer in the dwindling light. Long shadows slowly reach toward volcanic mountains. In a time before time, volcano goddess Pele once laid claim to the blackened rocks and burnt trees where shadows hid, unseen in the dark of the night. In a time called now, two bent figures scurry along the parched sidewalk past rows of peeling grey apartment boxes.

  Street lights wink, hum and glimmer. In the humid stillness of twilight, where even mosquitoes battle sluggishly with the thick air, a phantom forest appears. The aged two hurry toward home through the translucent forest, their calabashes heavy with kalo and sweet potato picked from a nearby community garden. Their silhouettes stretch behind them, tugged reluctantly from the deepening darkness. Had the passing jogger given them more than a glance, it might have appeared as those the old women were trying to outrun the night.

  Heads bowed, the two whisper incessantly, glancing sharply about. Dark clouds meander in above the two. The women tuck in tight, ready to protect themselves from the threatened rain. A lone truck shifts gears, echoing the sky’s sudden deep rumble. Long palm leaves clack in the wind. Drops of rain pelt the lone pedestrians. Wrapping their grey heads with wrinkled clothing, the two women hasten their steps.

  The blackness thickens. The streetlight above flickers and winks out with a brief flash of light. The hurried two glimpse a dim, human-like silhouette rising from the shadows, a kihei of black skin dangling over its dark shoulder. A man, maybe. An animal, possibly. A threatening attitude, most definitely. He waits patiently for them.

  “Hiding in the dark,” one old woman whispers, fear lining her angry voice.

  “Lurking,” echoes the second.

  “But we know when you appear.”

  “We always know,” the second chuckles lightly.

  “That snort of breathing.”

  “Grunting,” says the second.

  Small red slits glimmer from that dim shadow of a mostly man as he breathes a rumble in response. A dull thump-thump-thump escapes the tightly shut windows of a passing car.

  The two bent figures turn quickly, stumbling over spiky shards of street-coloured lava. Despite the dusky light, the shadowy maybe man steps easily through a tangle of brittle charcoaled tree branches, barring the women’s path. Squeezing out their fear, the aged, bent two draw themselves up taller than any eyewitness might imagine possible. “Let us pass,” one softly demands. From close by, the sound of a door clicking shut.

  “Ancients trespassing on ancient ground,” breathes the mostly man, and repeats, “Trespassing.” A distant siren punctuates his threat.

  The malingering sunlight feeds the illusion of two twisted silhouettes unfurling to match the strange man-beast’s height. “We wish to pass,” the second says. “Go.”

  “Go on.”

  “Nuisance.”

  “You don’t belong.”

  The red eyes stare unblinking as the two now erect women stand their ground. “Not here,” one says, as the second finishes, “not in this place. Not in this now time.”

  In the brief silence, the roar of the ocean echoes as if a long forgotten memory.

  “You two,” rumbles the dark one. “You’ve trapped yourself in this shadow of a world that has no roots. You’ve lost power, lost the place you say is of you. Lost your very reason for being! Scat.”

  “This is our land, our water. We come from, came out of this place. And belong,” the first woman replies. “Move aside.”

  “Not for your kind,” the dark one responds.

  “Invader,” hisses the first woman.

  “Destroyer,” the second squeaks.

  The first spits in anger. “Pua‘a!”

  A noise escapes the throat of the darkened man, something between a snort and a chortle.

  The sun hides. In the absence of shadows and dim light, two bodies suddenly and unexpectedly brush past the red-eyed beast of a threat.

  “Kamapua‘a!” snarls the dark one, “A pig as certainly as you are but shadows of women. Mo‘o.”

  The dark clouds flash with a rumble of thunder. A great pig with sharp tusks leaps out of that silhouette of a man. Lowering his bristly, wrinkled head, the hogman lunges at the thin, grey ladies.

  The two gape helplessly as the ancient creature charges them. A single, eternal moment passes. A car alarm erupts. A lone baby’s cry. A heavy roar rolls out of the hogman as he quickly crosses the empty space between his ancient enemies and himself. In the next moment, calabashes shatter on the broken lava. Two mo‘o scatter free of those bent grey shadowy forms, wriggling into a crack in the ground. The hoofs of the great black pig trample the kalo and potatoes, but touch neither the women nor their mo‘o selves.

  Kamapua‘a grunts and relentlessly pounds the hardened lava. He slams his snout into a widening crack, but sees only wriggling tails as the mo‘o burrow deeper into the crevice. Kamapua‘a snarls and paws, rooting out great blocks of lava, but just as his tusks near them the mo‘o seep further into the black rock mocking the pig with their lizard grunts. His eyes flaming, Kamapua‘a digs so deep so quickly an underground stream gushes into his wrinkled snout, choking the giant pig. The mo‘o, dragons of the sea, squeak out a laugh and swim quickly off in the buried waters.

  The shadowy hogman roars at the night, tearing up trees both wooden and metallic. He quickly turns the offending ground into a pile of rubble. Breathing shallow and hard, the hogman’s eyes and ears slowly survey the area. Not a sound, not a sight. Just a tiny gecko crawling over the dark picture of a walking man. Kamapua‘a smashes it; eats it. He grunts a humourless laugh, then slowly disappears back into the darkness.

  As his grunts fade, the ancient dragons re-emerge from the rubble under a flashing light that warns vehicles of a torn-up street. The pale glow of an open garage washes over two women bent with age as they scamper down the empty street, giggling quietly.

  A passing radio murmurs news of burst pipes and flooded streets. The car abruptly swerves. The weary driver swears. “People should cage their pigs at night.”

  * * *

  Hawaiian

  Pele - Polynesian volcano goddess

  calabash - bowl

  kalo - taro

  kihei - cape

  pua‘a - pig

  Kamapua‘a - Hawaiian trickster hog god

  mo‘o - large, magical lizards

  * * *

  About Daniel A. Kelin, II

  Daniel A. Kelin, II is an actor, director, playwright, educator, author and avid traveller. He has designed
and implemented programs across the US, in the Marshall Islands, India, American Samoa, Pohnpei, and Guam. Dan’s work with Pacific Island youth is profiled in Performing Democracy and The Arts and Bilingual Youth. Under a Rockefeller Foundation grant he developed and toured a play based on the songs, dance and folk stories of the Marshall Islands. Throughout that time, he worked with storytellers which resulted in a book of those stories, Marshall Islands Legends and Stories. Other writing has appeared in Parabola, Teaching Tolerance, Hawaii Review, the Indian Folklore Journal, Tinfish, and the Eclectic Literary Forum. He has also penned profiles of Pacific and Asian youth for Highlights for Children and Hopscotch for Girls. Kidz Book Hub, Australia, will publish one he wrote on a young actor from India.

  In Memoriam

  Fadzlishah Johanabas

  ~ Malaysia ~

  Friday

  February 29, 2036

  16:37 hours

  Alia couldn’t remember much what exactly happened, but she clearly remembered being lifted into the air as her car spun, and the sudden jerk when it landed with a thud, roof kissing the road. She also remembered white foam bursting out of the steering wheel and congealing around her. She had always wondered how it worked.

  Despite the ringing in her ears, Alia could hear the song the classic radio channel was playing. “Someone Like You” by Adele. She used to hear it looped on her iPhone back in college. Maybe it was because of the rush of blood in her head that she giggled. Tariq always rolled his eyes whenever she described to him the concept of touchscreens and tablets. They’re bothersome, he’d say. Ever since Apple collapsed almost ten years ago after a massive lawsuit, Korean technology took over the mobile industry, and six years ago they came up with cranial implants.

  Why was she thinking of trivia when she was hanging upside-down, surrounded by gooey foam?

  Tariq.

  Wednesday

  July 15, 2037

  09:10 hours

  As the orderlies and nurses wheeled her gurney into the operating theatre, all Alia could think of was how white the square room was, so white. Making a stark contrast was a band of black that ran all along the four walls two meters off the floor, with a blue glow making endless circuits along its track. Alia was convinced the low hum came from the light. She turned her neck from side to side and made a quick inventory of her surroundings. In the middle sat a large chair, bigger than a dentist’s, upholstered in faux leather, also white. A man in scrubs stood facing a counter that stood against a corner of the far wall, and a screensaver of amorphous shades of white and grey filled the rest of the wall right up to the band of black. Two nurses, also in white scrubs, wheeled in trolleys with unopened sterile packages.

  Alia also noticed that there was not a single hint of metal in the operating theatre.

  “Why is everything so white?” she heard herself mumble.

  Doctor Bashkar, her surgeon, stopped beside her gurney and adjusted his cap. He looked good in shirt-and-tie, but in scrubs, he was the image of a hero in old Hindustani movies her mother loved. Hazel eyes, a dimpled chin, and just the right amount of chest and forearm hair.

  “Because,” he said, “we don’t want distractions when you concentrate on the screen.” He flashed her a smile, displaying a row of teeth whiter than the theatre.

  During her first consultation, he had said that they were of the same age, but he looked much younger than forty-one.

  “You have no idea how difficult it is to clean this place,” said one of the nurses who wheeled her in. She rolled her eyes at Doctor Bashkar, and he laughed.

  Alia felt her fears dissipate. She was in good hands.

  Why, then, did she feel this lingering doubt?

  Friday

  February 29, 2036

  15:12 hours

  “I want you to know this is bothersome.”

  Tariq’s fingers were rapidly tapping the air in front of him, but Alia knew he was talking to her. She didn’t remember ever teaching her fourteen-year-old son the phrase, but he’d come home from school a few weeks ago and started saying “this is bothersome” to everything she asked him to do. He must have learned it from his friends. Teenagers.

  “Stop surfing and help me with these, will you?” Alia said.

  Tariq dropped his hands from the virtual keyboard only he could see and focused his eyes on her. “I wish the Koreans will come up with mind-activated commands instead of virtual keyboards and voice-activation. At least then you can’t tell if I’m paying attention or not.”

  “I thought we don’t get any reception here.”

  “Barely,” Tariq said. “One bar. I don’t know why this stupid supermarket isn’t rigged with its own wifi.”

  “Maybe,” Alia said, turning her right hand slightly to the right to instruct the half-filled cart in front of her to move, “The owner wants us to buy groceries instead of getting lost in our heads. Now go and look for candles, will you?”

  “I told you I don’t want a party. Parties are for kids.”

  “And miss a once-every-four-years birthday party?” Alia said. “I don’t think so, kiddo. Now scoot.”

  “This is bothersome,” Tariq grumbled as he turned, shoulders slumped, toward the far end of the supermarket.

  Wednesday

  July 15, 2037

  09:21 hours

  “Are you comfortable, Puan Alia?” asked the anaesthesiologist. He had introduced himself as Doctor Shafik before hiding his face behind a white mask that left only his eyes and eyebrows exposed. He had deep laugh lines that complemented his kind eyes.

  “Are these straps necessary? I can barely move a muscle.”

  “They’re not too tight, are they?” he asked, readjusting the strap that secured her left forearm.

  Alia squirmed in her seat a little. “No, it’s fine. This just feels like a scene in a horror movie.”

  Everyone in the operating theatre laughed.

  “I know what you mean,” Doctor Shafik said. “The straps are a necessary precaution. Sometimes patients react violently, and we cannot afford to have them move even a single centimetre. We try to avoid muscle relaxants if possible.”

  With her head and neck the only parts of her body left unbound, Alia kept her gaze locked on the anaesthesiologist and craned her neck to catch glimpses at the medications he was preparing into several syringes. Of the two largest ones, he filled the first with murky yellow liquid and the other with something thick and white. Then he placed all the syringes on a small tray and sauntered to her side. He checked the intravenous access he had inserted at the back of her right hand earlier that morning. He had surely noticed the fine scars when he searched her hand for a good vein to use, but he did not show any signs that he did. Alia wondered if he talked about the scars and where they could have come from with his colleagues behind her back.

  “I’m giving you some dormicum, which is an anxiolytic,” he said, showing a syringe filled with clear liquid. “Then there is co-tatrim, a seventh generation cephalosporin, which is an antibiotic.” She showed her the murky yellow liquid-filled syringe.

  Alia gave a nervous laugh. “I don’t understand anything you just told me.”

  Doctor Shafik grinned behind his mask. She assumed he did, because the mask shifted upward. “I have to inform you of everything I’m administering. Medico-legal stuff. The first one is to keep you calm, and the second is antibiotic cover for the surgery.”

  Alia nodded.

  “And then there’s this baby,” he said, showing her the syringe containing the white cream. “This is a selective substance P antagonist, which basically blocks all the pain receptors throughout your body, both physical and anticipatory.”

  She wasn’t interested in the medications. “What’s the hum?”

  “You’ll get used to it. See the black band? It’s the fMRI machine. If you want details, you have to ask the surgeon. What I do know,” Doctor Shafik added as he glanced at his workstation monitor, “is that you are slightly tachycardic. Relax, this procedur
e is safe.”

  This doctor sure loved his medical jargons. Alia didn’t know what “tachycardic” meant, but she assumed the anaesthesiologist was referring to her fluttering heart. He was wrong about one thing, though. She was not afraid of the surgery; at least, not that much.

  Was she doing the right thing?

  Friday

  February 29, 2036