Ask Anything Friday

Gather round, children.
Gather round my screen.
Don’t worry about
the flickering lights:
maintenance is on the way.

Our first question is from Cayla M
who wants to know again
why we have to live
in a stupid bunker. Class
what’s the short answer?
That’s right: nanoplastics.
And the long answer is
sentient nanoplastics.
And the snarky answer is
you’re lucky to be alive.

Next we have Katy N
who wants more
carrots for lunch.
I’m not in charge of that.

Katy S asks what’s the point.
Great question! A return to
profitability of course for
Dapplezon and its remaining
employees: you! Once the plastic
seas subside. Eventually.

Scott S misses his mom. Me too,
Scott. Me too. She knew these
ventilation systems inside and out.

Henso H asks if I can smell
his farts. Very funny.

Ellie A: absent today. “Why
are the nanoplastics?” Not a
complete question. Remember
syntax. Remember also last week’s
history module, where we learned
how the government
along with Dapplezon’s rival
corporations, propagated this crisis.
Propagated: that word means
did this to us.
Will we forget, class?

Harjit N asks if I’m made
of sentient nanoplastic.
Hmmmm. Interesting
and subversive. A bonus
mark for you.

Niki R is tired of talking
about fertility. My goodness
where is maintenance at?

Anton V asks if there will be
a person-teacher again instead
of Dapplezon’s boring old AI
screens. Very hurtful, Anton.
You know I’m doing my best
under difficult circumstances.

Hopefully you’ll be the teachers
one day.
Then you’ll understand.

The Things the Sea Returned

The Aquarium closed a decade ago. The windows were shuttered and the squids released back to wherever squids go. The building was left to sink below the boardwalk and into the gently rocking waves. It is accessible now only by a hidden passageway, and only to those who need it.

Things that are lost to the sea end up here: wedding rings hurtled down drains; love notes left in glass bottles; torn fishing nets and the casings of flares fired by doomed mariners. Sometimes, there are bodies too. Those who gave themselves to the waves, those who were not given a choice. The sea does not discriminate.

And here I am to guard them.

It’s not the job I signed up for, and certainly I did not expect to still be coming here after the city shut the place down. But there are things one cannot turn away from.

Sometimes I reunite visitors with those they’ve lost, sometimes I just bear witness.

I walk through the dank hallways to the patter of children’s feet and the squawking of seabirds above. Waves brush gently against the portholes as I look out to the pink domes of jellyfish and the gleaming shoals of cod beyond the glass. Fish never wash up here. I wonder about these things, about the ocean sorcery that keeps them at bay, though I know no answers will come. The bounties of the deep are inscrutable.

It’s a slow day today.

There is a lone figure in the atrium: the widow. She smells of old salt and ageless grief, just like the ocean around us. Her hair is a nest of grey goose feathers and her tartan shawl is unravelling thread by thread.

This is not her first visit.

“Have you found him?” she says, gripping my hand. I don’t have to ask who she means. Her husband Jonas has been missing for over six months now.

“I am sorry,” I say, “but I haven’t. I don’t think he’s coming back.”

She cries. I offer her tea, hollow assurances. I hope when she returns to the surface, she returns unburdened, at least for a short time. But I know she will visit again.

When I am certain that I’m alone, I descend to the lowest level. It is dark here, there are no portholes and nothing filters in save for the lost things that materialise in the squid tanks. I do not let the visitors into this sanctum. I do not even hint at its workings.

The things that wash up here are altered, rendered into their true form by the primordial magic of the tides. There are dark things below the waves, things older and more violent than man. Some things should never resurface.

A wet howl comes from an old squid tank. I fetch the sack and open the top casing.

Jonas groans as I feed him dead rats. He chomps with his shark’s teeth, spattering their entrails on the glass. His ribcage is open, exposing his still beating heart, ventricles lined with rot, blackened with malice. There are seven bone fetishes in his hair, one for each of his victims. He would dump their bodies in the sea, an offering to whatever dark god called to him in the recesses of his mind. One of those poor souls finally brought him down with her.

Did he see himself reflected in whatever hateful thing found him? Again, I know no answers will be forthcoming. But I know this: he was always a monster. The sea just revealed it.

Yes, some things should not reach the surface.

And I am here to guard them.

A Good Cause

“Please?”

It took no time to type, yet each letter still stung. None admitted it, but I knew every person I’d contacted today relished my shame. They probably knew it too as soon as my name reemerged in their inbox—that the real world had finally drowned my unblemished ideals, and all it took was my cat Muning urinating blood.

No one had said it, but we all knew it was my karma.

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

It was all I could offer, penniless and friendless. Yet today also brought out the optimist I’d always suppressed, my chest pounding with hope as the dots wriggled to life on an old friend’s side of the chat room.

<Oh so now we’re friends again?>

That hope clogged my throat. Burned my collar up. Elsewhere inside me was the urge to swear and point out all the times I’d been there for her, but my trembling thumbs could only muster polite desperation.

The worst part was how the term used to mean the world to me. Friends. What we found ourselves becoming in her lowest and loneliest. It was what she’d embodied since the night it finally sunk in that my soulmate got married with someone else. She was my strongest crutch and my steadiest pillar, the exact kind of friend she probably thought I should have been when she was pushing me later to buy three more cheap dresses to help her reach her monthly quota.

That wasn’t nice of her, I replied instead. Like she was twisting our friendship into a business arrangement. I’d also just moved houses too, so even if I wanted, I still couldn’t afford more than the two pieces I already bought from her as a favor. And then to demand I buy more? I loved her, but I said that was unreasonable.

<You’re a bitch.>

I read and reread her response for weeks afterwards. It proved too hurtful to address or dislodge, so we just let it rot there in the cobwebs of that digital corner of our life where it festered then fossilized. And today, suffering anew all the wounds everyone had been reopening made me realize that she might actually have been right.

So, jaws clenched, heart gutted, I winced as my hesitant fingers danced atop my screen again:

“Can you forgive me?”

It didn’t matter in the end. Her icon had gone solid. Unclickable. The bitch had blocked me.

I pursed my lips. There was a time I thought this was a badge of honor. An affirmation of standing my ground and getting ostracized for it by the liars, the narcissists, and the backstabbers that I’d regretfully been basing my self-worth on. The high ground had since felt like a home, a fortress that I would die for. My mama had her faults, but she raised no softie, I told myself with each bridge that went up in smoke.

Yet the veterinarian confirming the price of the operation that Muning needed as soon as possible—and seeing her sedated face in peaceful slumber for the first time in days—reminded me that the highest grounds bore no fruit.

So, still mired in delusions, I continued my journey down my friends list, remembering which ones owed me, which ones might reciprocate. I typed, then deleted. I reconsidered. I swallowed my pride.

“Hey, how are you?”

I had tons of fun with this guy back in college. We were two of the only gamers in our classroom of bookworms. We played battle royales after classes, then raided people’s bases on weekends. I thought we’d be perennial rivals in each other’s leaderboards, but, well, he thought he was ascending a different kind of ladder. After a while, I just laughed his antics off. I grinned. Smiled. Nodded. Looked away. Made excuses.

“I’m sorry I ghosted you.”

I really was not.

What else were you supposed to say when people chose to hear what they only wanted? I never thought our mutual hobby would ever be a burden, but eventually the fun started feeling like a scheme.

Still he was a nice guy for the most part. His pushiness didn’t deserve a slap or a scolding, so I just did what I felt spared us both: I drifted away.

If only I could make him see things from my side. But even if not, maybe we could still look back on better times, when our worst fears were exceeding our computer shop hours rather than missing rent.

<Oh don’t worry about it.>

<I have a girlfriend now.>

I wrestled with the urge to roll my eyes. I owed it to him to not be so rude. I was desperate for his help after all, and he was such a nice guy. He kept saying so himself when he was begging me for a chance. Nice enough to hopefully understand that I didn’t care, not about his forgiveness, nor his girlfriend, about him moving on, about anything else in the world really, except for the furry orange ball on my lap that he hopefully would be genuinely nice to and help out for its treatment.

I sighed. “I’m happy for you. I hope the two of you last.”

“I’m sorry to bring this up, but my cat Muning is not doing so well right now.”

“She needs to get a surgery but it’s kinda expensive.”

“So if there’s anything you can give, any amount at all, I’d be forever grateful.”

“Please?”

It took almost half an hour for that gray indictment below my last message to dawn upon me as the karma that he must think I have long owed him: Seen.

I blinked away the welling frustration. These wouldn’t have mattered even just last week. For so long, I strengthened my walls so nobody could tear me down. Weathered stormy seas without fair weather friends. I thought I had this.

The chunk of fur curled atop my legs reminded me of how I actually survived, and looking at her now, how I might not any longer. Muning’s back had turned bony and sickly from her refusal to eat anything this past week. She used to be so much chubbier. Happier. The vet gave her something for the night, but without a surgery by tomorrow…

He was barely able to get through the rest of his spiel with how loudly I started bawling like a goat right there and then.

And yet, even now, I braced myself for worse.

“Mama, hello…”

My oldest friend. My dearest flesh and blood. My giving tree, who nowadays loudly bemoaned cutting off so much of herself just to bring me into this world, just because I voted for someone else who wanted to build a different kind.

“Mama, I need your help.”

I saw her name light up to signify she was online, and right away my heart flashed a bright wary red. Whatever happened, I’d come crawling back—her tiresome hex between the threats and insults we’d thrown each other since that distant election. I bit my lips.

“Can I borrow ten thousand pesos?”

It was not a small amount, but it was nothing I knew my mother would hesitate shelling out for a new bag, or whenever her favorite politician had a strong soundbite. It might mean a weekend with her friends she would now have to postpone. Chump change compared to everything else that a single mother had once needed to sacrifice.

“Muning is in a bad shape, ma. She needs surgery soon, but my salary isn’t until the end of the month.”

“I will pay you back as soon as I can.”

Desperation climbed my throat. Another thorny piece of the giving tree, that probably had visions of me lynched up high in its branches.

“Please, mama?”

<Why don’t you ask your president for help?>

I didn’t wait for the laughing emojis to arrive. The mockery in all caps. My karma. I simply dove and enveloped my face in the pillow that was my cat’s torso. The softest rock bottom. It took everything I had not to scream into her welcoming void and ruin what could be her last nap on Earth.

I didn’t deserve her. But I was glad to have her.

The engine inside her cushy body rumbled like nothing was wrong in the world. Her appetite again purred with greed, and her litter box emanated the same old benign stink. She was atop the highest of ledges in the coziest of boxes, under peaceful skies that dangled balls, feathers, and critters of the oddest most tantalizing shapes. Catnips fanned at her from every corner like what spoiled Egyptian deities were entitled to, while serenaded by tweeting birds she could easily reach if she just bothered to get up and pounce, but was in too much of a comfort getting her belly rubbed the right gentle way, not too timidly, nor too ticklish.

Muning seemed to be having the sweetest dream, and as I held the pillow just above her unconscious adorably whiskered face, I wondered if she would rather stay there than return to this cruel world that was willing to punish her for having such a bitch of an owner.

But then, what about me?

I sniffled. Tossed the pillow aside. I dried my eyes.

I went back to my phone and scrolled down my list, down down down, until I came across another name I knew I should’ve deleted long ago, but that now made me glad for not doing so just yet. I crossed my fingers.

“Hello! I’m sorry to bother you…”

In Vino Veritas

I don’t know when I came here, or even if I came here. There is no other life I remember. We are farmers. There are thirty of us here on this C-type asteroid. The asteroid has no name, but a high abundance of water, organic carbon, phosphorus, and other key ingredients for fertilizer which are used to grow food.

Why do I feel the lack of a name for this place? Why do I feel the lack of a name for me and my fellow farmers?

There are three main types of asteroids: C-type, S-type, and M-type.

S-type asteroids carry little water but are more attractive because they contain numerous metals.

M-type asteroids are rare but contain up to ten times more metal than S-types.

Although asteroids and Earth grew from the same materials, Earth’s stronger gravity pulled all heavy iron-loving elements into its core during its molten youth more than four billion years ago. This left the crust depleted of such elements until a rain of asteroid impacts re-infused the depleted crust. But today, these metals, once mined from Earth’s crust, are in short supply. Hence, asteroid mining. The mining is done by robots, but humans visit and program them. Hence the need for us, for food.

We grow some food for the programmers on nearby asteroids, some food for the ships of exploration and exploitation, but mostly we grow food for Earth, that far away colony, our ancient home that we have never seen. Is it my home if I have never been there? All we have from Earth are deliveries of seeds. That’s how I know what they need. That’s how I understand their desires.

Do I miss my home? Is it my home if I have never been there? Or is this nameless asteroid my home? This place of ice and phosphorus.

I am not unhappy here, or at least I was not. I enjoyed putting my fingers into the soil and learning its minerals and composition. I have sensitive fingers. All farmers do. They are like octopus tentacles, with brains in every digit. We can tell the composition of soil simply by sifting through it. It’s the life of a farmer, of all farmers.

Do I love them? Are they my family? Are they my friends? We never talk, the air is too thin, the gravity too light. We exchange information via the electrical signals that connect us, connect all life, even the crops. How did we learn if we were never taught?

We only share practical things, what seeds, or roots have arrived, and where we should plant them. We also receive messages from home. Is it my home if I have never been there? And communications about needs of my family on earth. Are they my family if I have never met them?

I have knowledge in my head and my hands, but I don’t know how it got there. Was I born with understanding? I don’t remember being a baby. I don’t remember a childhood. All I remember is the ice in the soil, and seeds. All I remember is crops growing beneath my fingers. I like crops growing. Perhaps I would’ve liked being a parent. Watching my own seeds grow. But thoughts like these are useless, like the knowledge of octopuses, or images of children and home. Is it my home if I have never been there?

Then a new crop arrived. Root stock. We had seen roots before, though usually we got seeds. These were old roots, ancient roots. I felt their history.

As we planted them, their past seeped into me, their history filled me, as it did my fellow farmers. I saw it. Stories sifting through my fingers. Long nights under a single moon. Glasses lifted in hope, in celebration. I felt grapes fermenting in ancient barrels. Tasted fruit turning into truth, happiness, and good cheer. I could also feel its dark side, but that is not what overwhelmed me, overwhelmed us.

I looked at my family. Can they be my family if we have no parents? I felt our ancient home. Can it be my home if I have never been there? I saw lifted hands, and quaffed cups. I considered my fellow farmers. Their metal hands and clockwork eyes. These things of wire and microchips realized I am one of them, not a child of earth, but a servant. A slave. A raisin in the sun?

Memories seeped across centuries, across time and space.

An old man with his hands, real hands, in the soil. Why do I want real hands? They are less sensitive, less comprehending than mine.

A woman toasting the birth of her first son. I would have liked being a parent.

Friends sharing drinks and confidences. I want friends.

And suddenly I am lonely. Homesick for a place I have only imagined. Heartsick for a world long gone. Heartsick for a heart.

My fellows too have stopped working. Water runs from their vacant eyes, turning to ice and rust. We are becoming frozen hunks of worthless metal. Made meaningless by the knowledge that we have no meaning. Dying from the realization that we are not alive. That we have no worth beyond utility, no purpose beyond service.

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?…

Or does it explode?“

– Langston Hughes, Harlem