The four men walked on in silence.
They had left the Nostalgia District and were now walking down a main avenue of the Protozoan Quarter, an area so named because of the amoebic structure of its buildings which—despite maintaining a design, fluid-like and smooth on the outside—were held together by interlocking networks of microtubules that converged on and connected to thick cylindrical structures that projected upward from the ground at each building’s center. The materials from which these buildings were constructed were, in fact, themselves, living Protozoans of the subphylum B2C-89 (according to the newly-devised nomenclature).
These organisms—having undergone a patent-pending process of genetic modification for the purposes of playing prescribed cooperative roles, related to structural, respiratory, and cytokinetic functions, among others—had been bred to reproduce at rates functional to the support structure of these buildings, effectively eliminating the need for manual maintenance, repair, renovation, or extension. They had also been made receptive to stimulation at specific frequencies so as to allow the cellular architect or any team of affiliated structural microbiologists to, by way of medium-wattage transmitters, further manipulate their allocations and densities according to the specifications of their clients.
These exact controlling frequencies were kept confidential, by law, and could only be accessed readily by a select few individuals, in order to prevent cases of vandalism, terrorism, and, most importantly, insurance fraud. This last issue was of primary concern to the Morellan Intercultural Settlement Housing Authority; and thus, it had been at their urging that the building owners, themselves, were not allowed access to the controlling frequencies for their own buildings. Naturally, the preventative measures undertaken by the Housing Authority served to be a source of reassurance for the buildings’ numerous residents and commercial tenants.
And yet, despite the safety provisions enacted and the functional strengths of the materials used, the buildings’ fluid design had its downsides as well. For one, it had a tendency to bend incoming light rays, so as to create the appearance, both inside and out, that the inhabitants had been stretched to bizarre proportions that could only be perceived two-dimensionally. In addition, each window in these buildings was circular and despite being sealed shut, did not block the passage of sound into and out of the building. Neither, unfortunately, did the doors nor walls, which were, themselves, transparent. This, of course, did little to maintain the privacy sought by the residents and workers, and so, many buildings imposed a ‘no talking’ policy in order to minimize disruptions among tenants. However, despite their best efforts at the enforcement of these policies, it was difficult to keep the inhabitants completely quiet, especially when the office or apartment in question had a resident practical joker, who despite the ‘no talking’ policy had the ability, through a series of gestures and contorted facial expressions, to cause his or her fellow inhabitants to erupt into a chorus of uncontrollable belly laughs.
To make matters worse, each building had a paging system installed, consisting of a long rope hanging down from the circular windows to street level for the purposes of allowing visitors to announce their presence to the specific party that they wished to call upon. The ropes were connected to a bell above each window, encased in a glass capsule, further encapsulated by B2C-89 protozoic substance. Normally, this would have seemed a rather convenient way to call upon someone, until one considered the hassle caused to the other tenants as the bells’ reverberations often initiated a hum that resounded throughout the structure of the building itself, resulting in a seemingly interminable sound similar to that of a tuning fork. Long-time residents claimed to have grown accustomed to the sound, but first-time visitors were often shocked and annoyed by its loudness and ceaselessness.
A resonant hum now radiated between the buildings. Bunnu could hear the chorus of tens of thousands of tiny frogs, calling from the trees lining the street, in response to the sound.
Apparently they thought it was some kind of mating call.
The branches shook with the calls and chirps as the more masculine and self-confident among these frogs attempted bizarre and hyper-erotic mating dances. The trees themselves creaked and groaned with the movements. Bunnu stared at the flailing branches and couldn’t help but think of the Dancing Spider-Tree Orchards back in Bahlia. Their memory brought a smile to his face.
“Ottoman-13…the name does sound familiar,” he finally said after a very long silence. “Maybe I have heard it. I just can’t seem to place it though. Rather unusual name!”
“Yes, it is unusual…isn’t it?” Ottoman-13 replied faintly, as though having lost interest in discussing their past acquaintanceship. Ottoman’s arms were still at his sides, leaving Bunnu completely unsecured. Bunnu realized that he could make a dash and try to escape now if he wanted, but part of him felt like staying, if for no other reason, than because he now felt somewhat obligated to his captors.
He couldn’t leave now. Not with the conversation being left where it was. It had clearly caused an uncomfortable silence that now seemed to gnaw at him. Ottoman’s expression was difficult to read, but it was quite possible that the man was truly disappointed by Bunnu’s lack of recognition. Bunnu suddenly started to feel slightly guilty for having hurt the man’s feelings.
“Sorry if I was rude earlier,” Bunnu finally said with a half-smile.
Ottoman-13 looked at him wistfully. His face suddenly drained of its previous energy, he said, “No…no. Don’t worry about it. I brought the whole thing up at the wrong time. Surely, you would have other things on your mind. You know, being under arrest and all.” He nodded slowly. “I understand that the timing wasn’t good for a reunion with one another. Really! I…I feel terrible about it, now that I’ve had some time to think about it. I just thought that…you know, after all we’d been through together, you’d have at least remembered something about me.”
“Well, the thing is-“
“My friends and fellow actors tell me that I have very unique personality. My mum used to tell me that I had an unforgettable face. She never really told me I was handsome…but at least, she said that much.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Listen… I’m sorry you have to see me like this. I just…I-I’ve never been forgotten by someone before.”
He sighed as he looked back at his men who still appeared to be following in silence, their eyes staring down at the pavement below, which was in a horrible state of disarray, having become littered by street trash, feces, and irremovable stains of indeterminate cause. The smell was suffocating; that is, once one was able to get past the very sight of the rubbish, to say nothing of the various vermin scurrying through and around it, occasionally brushing past one’s feet, if they weren’t otherwise making a cheeky attempt to crawl up one’s pant leg (or, in the case of Drawans, up one’s sarong, which despite its seeming lack of plausibility, occurred often enough to warrant the posting of signs around town in the Drawan dialect, replete with graphic images, warning of the dangers of letting one’s sarong hang too close to the ground).
“Well,” Bunnu said, “Your friends are right. And so is your mother. I really must say, when I saw that mustache, I knew you had to be the leader! For what it’s worth! It’s just…well…you know…maybe if you jog my memory a little, it’ll come back to me…”
Ottoman-13’s face brightened as he looked at him, as though suddenly energized by this concession. A smile spread across his face, but he remained thoughtfully silent.
The sound of rushing water could be heard all around them. They were making their way into the Dowa district, which lay to the west of the sacred river Placenta-C, the universally-acknowledged border between the Morellan Intercultural Settlement and the neighboring Melic territories. The untouchables of the Dowa district, despite their proximity to the river itself, were not allowed to approach its banks, but had the privilege of watching from the steps leading down as others of higher castes purified their
essence in its blessed waters by tucking their legs in and floating for a few brief moments in the fetal position. According to Morellan scripture, the waters were said not only to cleanse one’s soul of its wrongdoings, but also to allow one the opportunity to merge briefly, yet infinitely with the pure reason of the Boddhisatva, initiating a kind of spiritual rebirth.
The people of this district were a mix of Morellans, Drawans, Kaiibans, Gautamans, in addition to some communities from various islands in the Melic archipelago, most of whom were the descendants of comfort women from religious wars centuries earlier. Straight ahead, an untouchable boy of seeming mixed descent, who was wearing no shoes, crouched down amidst the rubble of a demolished building on little brown toothpick legs and used the sharp edge of a stone to strike at a bolt that held two sections of exposed metal water pipe together.
Behind him stood a group of three Melic half-breeds, laying one of their own to rest upon a stained white sheet that one of them had likely borrowed from one of the households he did odd-jobs for. They bowed their heads. Eyes welled with tears that seemed to freeze in the chill of the cold winter air. Moist breath came out in tiny swirling clouds as they chanted a requiescat.
The deceased man had leathery, sun-damaged, brown skin, pinched by wrinkles into webs. His pants were those of a tattered kurta pajama, stained by the dust kicked inadvertently in his direction by the foot traffic of passers-by. From out of his ears and mouth overflowed beautiful and vibrant orange flowers that, for some reason, looked particularly aromatic, if such a thing were possible. A rodent scurried up and stole one of the flowers just as the untouchable boy cracked through the water pipe.
Brown water spurted out, as the two sections of pipe came apart, washing away the rodent along with some of the flowers that had been scattered about the sheet next to the man’s body. The three Melic men turned to look at the boy with a smile of approval as one of them picked up a metal bowl that he’d borrowed for the funeral rites and filled it with the water.
“Hmmm…Crafty little fella, isn’t he?” Ottoman –13 remarked in seeming mock admiration. His mustache contorted as his lips soured and eyes narrowed, a shroud of bitterness descending over his heretofore gentle, inoffensive face. His voice said faintly, “The boy’s still young and oblivious to his circumstances, though. He’ll learn his place among the sweat simians soon enough. Or else, someone will make sure he does. The boy is, likely, young and curious: obsessed with possibilities, but he must eventually face up to the cold, hard truths of the world. But don’t get me wrong, one can’t help but admire his spirit—one might even be inspired by it. The young mind stirs with wonder at the world around him, but invariably it shall slow with disappointment. At the flush of curiosity, he shall be veined with cynicism, doubt and despondence, bowing to a role circumscribed for him by Time Immemorial. His skin shall drag until bones rattle in discomfort. He shall be an effigy of Karma to which all our sins are beholden. You know how it works.”
Bunnu felt a hand squeeze his arm again.
“A debt remains unsettled, after all,” Ottoman continued in an intensifying rumble, “A debt that we few had to bear…and no combination of curiosity, exuberance, or possibility could have ever hoped to cancel it out. I say we, because I was once like this boy. I once lived in the Dowa Districts amongst the sweat simians. I was once the bearer of karmic debts unpaid—pursued relentlessly through crumbling alleyways and disease-infested, muddied streets by the Parasitic Superego.”
Bunnu found himself nodding with each squeeze. This arm-squeezing could very well have been some kind of persuasive technique or method of suggestion directed at the subconscious. In fact, Bunnu found himself unwilling to exert any effort in an attempt to curb his acquiescence, as the more he listened, the greater the weight of each word’s implications came to bear upon him. It was conceivable that he was beginning to understand the message intuitively on different levels, but he couldn’t seem to process in distinct terms what specific elements were present beneath the surface that were lacking in the verbal message itself. The squeezes could have been giving these words a different context by which they would be interpreted, thus affecting Bunnu’s response to their meaning in such a way as to correspond with Ottoman’s will.
“Emerging from the lifestyle, of course, was no easy task. It required the initiative of one possessed of a sense of entitlement, which is something you don’t find often amongst the sweat simians. To have a sense of entitlement, one must know privilege first-hand. The constructs of these people’s reality are such that they would never even have an inkling of what their aspirations ought to be. I guess you could say that my childhood experiences instilled me with a sense of entitlement that set me apart from the others. That’s why I was able to emerge. As for the others: those who never scrambled for higher ground, well…that’s why they still bear the debts of Man.”
“I couldn’t even begin to-“ Bunnu started to say.
“What I mean to say is that I had not always been an untouchable, but came to take on the lifestyle as a means of survival. And eventually…I managed to emerge from it with the help of your family.”
“My family?”
“Yes, that’s right. I must say that I’m rather surprised you don’t remember any of this.” Ottoman-13 sighed in frustration, “OK…it’s a long story, but we still have a long walk ahead of us. So, Mr. Bunnu, if you don’t mind…”
“I’m all ears.”
Ottoman’s Story
Migrations, Volume I : Don't Forget to Breathe Page 7