Make Shift

by Gideon Lichfield

  2

  Little Kowloon

  Adrian Hon

  I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD WHEN I LIVED THROUGH MY FIRST PANDEMIC. THE RULES were exciting at the start, like a new game to be navigated. No touching the mail, wearing home-made masks like bandits, assembling miniature mountains of rice and flour in the cupboards. But the weeks and months dragged on, and I got headaches staring at my friends through the cracked screen of a tablet. I’d cry with boredom during our walks to the same park and along the same roped-off playground every day.

  My boredom was accented with the fear of being near others. My brother had asthma and my mum didn’t want to take any risks. “If they get close enough, you lose a point,” she said. That kind of game wasn’t as fun to play. For one thing, she never told us what would happen if we ran out of our unspecified points, although my brother and I agreed we would probably die.

  Some called it a dance. Even as a child, this struck me as yet another cheerful evasion, one of those romantic lies adults tell children and themselves to elide the awfulness of our new reality. A dance should be joyful, something entered into voluntarily, not forced upon you.

  Most dances have rules. This dance had only one.

  THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL STUBBORNLY REFUSED TO BE POSTPONED OR CANCELED. It was all my friends could talk about during those early months of the second pandemic, barely a decade from the first. No one understood how the festival planned to safely corral thousands of visitors without breaking the law, but damn it all—they promised the show would go on.

  “That means it’s in VR. And if the festival’s in VR, it’ll be shite. As if they can compete against Epic and Disney,” said Cindy, warming up a safe two meters away. We were in Holyrood Park for our daily exercise appointment under the crags encircling Arthur’s Seat. Cindy had joined North Point the same year as me, which meant we’d been furloughed at the same time. Even though the company worked its artists hard, the job was nothing compared to the twelve-hour days she’d once pulled in Hong Kong.

  But if work was a cakewalk for Cindy, furlough was heaven. She had dug up the garden in front of her flat, excited about swapping herbs and vegetables with the rest of Little Kowloon. She was determined to make the very most of her enforced holiday. In comparison, I’d been playing games and watching TV all day, every day. The closest I’d gotten to being productive was starting an augmented reality course in learning Cantonese.

  I was stuck in a loop, reliving the worst year of my childhood. I hated having no control over my life, hated not knowing what would happen tomorrow. I was a planner and now nothing could be planned. Rationally, I knew H1N3 wasn’t COVID-19 again, but the lockdown felt the same.

  “It won’t be in VR,” I said. “I saw Reuben’s name on the festival organizing committee. They wouldn’t bring him on board for something completely digital.” As I jogged backward, my glasses gave off a low warning buzz to remind me there was a runner approaching.

  Cindy slung an easy pitch at me, the augmented reality ball catching fire moments before I switched to a catcher’s mitt. I peered down the line in my glasses and flung the ball back.

  “No one gets around the lockdown, not even the festival,” shouted Cindy. “I’m calling Reuben.”

  I sighed as I saw Reuben Leung’s avatar appear between us. I’d never gotten along with posh kids, especially ones educated at boarding schools like Fettes. Rumor was that he was close with Scotland’s “first daughter.” That would’ve been before he was suspended for vandalism and sent to Cindy’s school in Kowloon as punishment, before they both became involved in the Umbrella Movement.

  Cindy demanded, “Is it true?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” replied Reuben. “Some of us have to work for a living.”

  “About the festival,” I snapped.

  “The big announcement is tomorrow, so I trust you two will keep this to yourselves.” I rolled my eyes. “But yes. We just agreed it with the government. The festival will go ahead in augmented reality. Nothing to touch, nothing for the virus to be transmitted on.”

  “Sounds boring. And they don’t know anything about AR,” said Cindy.

  “We don’t have to. We’re setting up marquees for the most important theaters and troupes and groups, and they can stage whatever they want, as long as they do it safely. There’ll be one here, a few in the Meadows, a couple in Inverleith, one each in the Botanics and Princess Street gardens, the usual places. Six weeks to prepare, four weeks open to the public.”

  “PR bullshit!” said Cindy. “As if people will buy tickets to walk through an empty tent.”

  Reuben laughed. “We got the Treasury to pay for everything, through the business continuity scheme. All the tickets will be free. Yes, it’s PR. What’s wrong with that? This country is built on tourism, and we’re putting on a show so people will remember to come back next year.”

  “Spoken like a true politician. Who decides which groups get to use which marquees?” I asked.

  “Oh, I can guess,” said Cindy.

  “It’ll all be announced tomorrow,” replied Reuben. “But I made sure there’ll be a Hong Kong marquee. Cindy, Elaine, you should volunteer.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Cindy said, skeptically.

  “They’ll need people who know AR, not a bunch of old folk with too much time. I don’t need to tell you how important this could be for Little Kowloon. For the whole diaspora, actually. We need to show we’re fitting in,” he said, before vanishing.

  THREE YEARS BEFORE H1N3, MILLIONS OF HONGKONGERS LEFT THEIR HOMES forever. Having lost their struggle for self-governance, having being spurned by an America in turmoil, they’d been granted a pathway to citizenship in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK—and in the newly independent Scotland.

  I was at the airport to meet the first arrivals, press drones buzzing about in agitation. Of course, there were bagpipers. I explained over and over, no, I wasn’t from Hong Kong, I was born in Inverness, but yes, my parents are from Hong Kong. Thank you, my accent is lovely, isn’t it?

  Then the gates opened, a stream of tired and elated and anxious and scared faces coming without end, as if a portal between our cities had opened rather than a 787 touching down every thirty minutes.

  They bunched up in the arrivals hall, accepting their welcome boxes, posing for photos, registering with volunteers, taking interviews, waiting for their trams and buses. I spotted Cindy’s family, friends of my mum from high school, and threw thick coats around their shoulders. It’s colder than you think, I laughed. You’re staying in Leith? That’s near me, we’ll be neighbors! We teetered between mania and trepidation. I wondered when someone would start crying. No one could tell if this was too much, too soon.

  The bagpipers paused, catching their breath. The energy seemed to evaporate into the dry, cold air. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe it was all too little, too late.

  “Heung gong yan, ga yau!” shouted a young man.

  “‘Su ge lan yan, ga yau!’ Hongkongers, add oil! Scots, add oil!” I explained to the confused Scottish staff. Add oil–it means “go for it!” Or maybe, keep going.

  So maybe it would work after all. It’d better, with a quarter of a million more Hongkongers on their way.

  I WAS A LITTLE NERVOUS WHEN WE VOLUNTEERED FOR THE HONG KONG TEAM. Technically, it was the “Little Kowloon Cultural Delegation,” but everyone called them Hong Kong, much to the Chinese ambassador’s irritation. When I confessed this to Cindy, she told me to stop being ridiculous and no one cared where I was born. We were hoping our gaming experience would earn us accordingly important positions, but we were firmly told those roles were filled. We were welcome to apply for the logistics crew, though. I was about to send an indignant reply when I saw who’d sent the email: Celia Chan.

  I spotted her the next day, when the thirty-strong Hong Kong team gathered in their marquee in the Meadows, erected overnight by PPE-swathed builders directing a fleet of construction drones. The technical specifications showed every marquee as ide
ntical: ten meters wide, thirty meters long, and a generous three meters tall. Festival teams were permitted to modify the interiors as they wished, within a set budget and adhering to strict health and safety guidelines.

  The festival’s level playing field, an artefact of funding and pandemic regulations, led to unsavory talk of an “Arts Olympics.” Most teams publicly rejected the comparison, but Cindy wasn’t alone in joining the social media smack talk about who would get the biggest audiences and best reviews. The fact that audience numbers were being reported in real-time, as per health regulations, heightened the sense of competition.

  Awaiting Celia Chan, we shuffled into a circle in the center of the marquee, gingerly testing how closely the social distancing software in our glasses would let us get to each other. Light streamed in through transparent panels in the ceiling, with a brisk breeze flowing through vents. Someone had set up high-resolution atmospheric sensors inside, feeding data to the physical distancing protocols on our glasses. As the wind dipped and rose, our circle expanded and contracted, a living, breathing diagram of viral transmission risk.

  Scotland had been spared the worst of H1N3. After COVID-19, the public backed a swift and complete lockdown: security cordons across the border at Berwick, rapid antibody testing at the airports, overwatch and intervention drones to enforce physical distancing in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, and Aberdeen.

  The Hongkongers, some of whom had landed only weeks earlier, handled the pandemic with grim determination. What were a few months of wearing face shields after years of struggle? They ignored the Scots grumbling about hospital beds being taken up, about the virus breeding in the cramped temporary accommodations of Little Kowloon. They shrugged off the rumors and leapt into the fight with the gusto of the newly converted, volunteering in their thousands as doctors and nurses and social workers. One group of students even helped set up the country’s biggest mask-producing factory.

  But there was a worry in Little Kowloon that they were being a little too exceptional. The problem with being a model minority is that you’re still a minority. How, then, to be more normal, they wondered? How to become Scots as well as Hongkongers?

  The Edinburgh Festival was the opportunity: the jewel in Scotland’s cultural crown, the world’s biggest arts event, somewhere Little Kowloon could contribute and distinguish itself. Among us, I spotted Doug Yau, an acerbic standup comedian with millions of followers; Tricia Lee, the hotshot architect named as the next Hadid; Chen Xi, darling of the Venice Biennale for his living sculptures; and Angela Cheng, whose latest play had been booked for Broadway. I was surprised to see them here rather than in the warmer diaspora destinations like Australia. Someone had twisted a lot of arms to assemble this artistic dream team.

  Celia Chan finally arrived and clapped her hands. “Thank you all for volunteering your time for Team Hong Kong. I realize you all have other priorities in combatting H1N3 and helping our community become established in Scotland, but we shouldn’t treat this opportunity lightly.”

  She turned slowly as she spoke. “We cannot be complacent just because we’ve been welcomed here in Scotland. We aren’t citizens yet”—I looked away, feeling out of place—“so we need to prove our worth, and remind our hosts and the whole world who we are.” Chan was an odd choice to be kicking off proceedings. She was one of Hong Kong’s most famous names and a programming genius, but not the type to be working at the festival.

  I wasn’t used to this kind of tub-thumping speech from her, and neither was anyone else, judging by their rapt attention. “Let me cut to the chase. I’m not an artist. I can’t claim the faintest experience in staging a play or doing standup or, I don’t know, anything to do with dance. What I do know is how to develop technology that can give others an advantage.” Everyone knew what she was talking about: Chan was the technical lead for the Diaspora Project that helped millions of Hongkongers emigrate safely with their physical, digital, and financial assets intact.

  Tricia Lee stepped forward, an unmissable presence in her trademark black jumpsuit. “After I first learned about the new festival format, I reached out to Celia. We’ve been working together on a new dynamic distancing protocol, developed with the Public Health group at the university. We’re going to adapt it so we can host the largest audience in the festival, but still give them more intimate experiences than any other team.”

  “What’s dynamic distancing?” Cindy asked, messaging through her glasses.

  I sent her a video I’d unearthed. The idea was that you could reduce the safe distancing requirements for respiratory diseases to a fraction of the usual two meters by predicting the exact movements of respiratory droplets that might carry the H1N3 virus. We were already using a crude form in the marquee by accounting for wind, but true dynamic distancing would allow people to get within centimeters of each other—especially if it adjusted for masks and face shields, speech patterns, sneezes, and everything and anything else that could affect droplet spread. The concept had been floating around ever since COVID-19, more as a thought experiment than a practical technique. The sensors weren’t good enough back then, and even now, the computational requirements were scarily expensive.

  As Chan described the technical details, my mind wandered. I didn’t need glasses to imagine how she could fill the marquee. Dynamic distancing coupled with augmented reality would let us route audience members right next to each other. There’d be no flashing alerts or social distancing walls—if one person ventured too near another, the performance they were watching could adapt to pull their attention and control their movements, but otherwise they’d have the freedom to walk wherever they liked. The new protocol promised a lockdown experience like no other.

  “Other teams will use the same old social distancing protocols that make it feel like you’re queuing at a theme park,” said Chan, summing up. “But here, you won’t have to. Here, our artists won’t have to compromise. Here, it will be as if there were no virus.”

  “The audience won’t forget that,” Tricia added. “We talk about how the Hong Kong diaspora needs soft power to survive. This is what we’re talking about.”

  Fierce nods and proud smiles all around. I raised my hand gingerly. Tricia frowned at me, her glasses no doubt itemizing my insignificance. “Um, as I understand it, the computational expense required for dynamic distancing rises exponentially with every additional agent. At least, that’s what Disney’s research group found.”

  Chan nodded briskly. “I’ve read Mathy’s paper. It’s good. But there’s a way to scale the expense linearly. You can simplify the problem using moving cells, so you don’t need to model the particulate spread across the entire space. It only works in smaller controlled environments like this one, which is why it doesn’t work in a theme park. It’s not impossible, but it’s very, very hard.”

  “We can do ‘very, very hard,’” said Tricia.

  “I’m told China is sponsoring a venue,” said Chen Xi, the elderly living sculpture artist. “Ours will be better.”

  CINDY JUMPED BACKWARD AS BOULDERS ABRUPTLY TUMBLED DOWN THE ESCARPMENT toward her, almost losing her balance. “Whoa!” she laughed, taking off her glasses.

  “You don’t think it’s too sudden?” I asked.

  “I thought that was the point?”

  I sighed. To make dynamic distancing work, we needed the ability to trigger the audience to move at a moment’s notice, but not at the risk of injury. Cindy flopped onto the marquee floor, grinning. One of the logistics volunteers looked down from his ladder and shook his head in mock disgust. They’d been working for days on end painstakingly stitching AR localizers and laser arrays into the ceiling, and Cindy had gotten the day off to help me test the system. I was glad she was enjoying herself, but I’d already logged a dozen bugs and was dreading what the afternoon would bring.

  As amazing as Chan’s technology was, wrangling the artists’ work into a format that would play nicely with it was proving almost impossible. Half hadn’t worked in AR
before and the other half didn’t welcome being dictated to by me, a mere technician whose mysterious elevation they’d witnessed just a month ago. Barely a day after I’d questioned Chan’s approach, she’d taken me aside, peppered me with probing questions on my games programming experience, and unceremoniously announced my promotion to “Technical Liaison” between the artists and her tech team.

  I was exhausted. My throat ached from explaining why they needed to design triggers that the dynamic distancing protocol could invoke to move audiences around, and my head ached from doing this as diplomatically as I could manage.

  “Your land sculpture is sensational, it’s so evocative of the chaotic climate that our old and new homes share,” I’d said to an impassive Chen Xi. “I realize it’s inconvenient to add trigger elements for the marquee, but I think they could complement or even enhance your work.”

  “What would you suggest?” he asked.

  “We could add weather effects. Rain clouds and thunderstorms could steer people along a path.”

  He nodded. “My granddaughter told me about such a thing she’d seen in Hong Kong. She enjoyed it greatly.” I smiled encouragingly. “It was at Disneyland.”

  “Well . . . that’s just one example. We could try something else. Perhaps a wave of—”

  “I understand what you need,” he said. “You need to move people. Leave it with me.”

  The escarpment with its falling boulders was what Xi’s team sent. On first glance, it was perfect, an organic part of his land sculpture, its programming fully synced with Chan’s dynamic distancing protocol.

  But it was all too dramatic. After a few of these surprises, the audience would figure out how they were being herded between artworks. Doug Yau’s standup set had Cindy and me in stitches but the dynamic distancing trigger was literally him yelling at us to get out. Not the most subtle of transitions.

  As I tweaked the parameters on the escarpment and ran Cindy through another simulated AR crowd, Chan’s avatar appeared. “These things you’re filing aren’t blockers for opening,” she said.