Spirits Abroad (ebook)

  hugestjeb: he let you go out there n get slaughtered!

  tman: That was part of the plan, Jebat!

  tman: It was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the team!

  tman: You don't get the importance of teamwork.

  hugestjeb: wat r u talking about, im like d biggest team player out there

  tman: More like player full stop! How could you hit on Sultan's girlfriend at the LARP session?

  hugestjeb: wat to do, d girls cant resist this giant jeb

  tman: That's another thing, we're all sick of you using "Jeb" to mean "penis".

  tman: It was funny when we were 16. Not now we're 30.

  hugestjeb: big words from a man who spends his nites pretending to be a goblin

  tman: At least I'm a goblin with a Guild.

  hugestjeb: i know wat this is about

  hugestjeb: u luuuuuv sultan

  hugestjeb: ur trying to impress him~

  tman: Whatever, man.

  hugestjeb: watever u homo

  tman: You shouldn't use words like "homo", it's homophobic.

  hugestjeb: ur homophobic

  hugestjeb: ur mom is homophobic

  tman: Well, she is, actually.

  hugestjeb: i bet she is

  hugestjeb: i bet u n her are homophobic every nite

  hugestjeb: IN BED

  tman: I'm gonna block you now, man.

  You will no longer receive messages from hugestjeb.

  "I tried to avoid this," said Tuah.

  Jebat couldn't get the notice to make sense no matter how many times he read it. He and Tuah had set it up so they couldn't get fired, even after Mansur had bought his 30% shareholding. There was no way Mansur could force Jebat to resign — unless Tuah had been in on it.

  "We built this company together," said Jebat.

  Tuah shook his head. "You shouldn't have pakat with Siam Berhad. What were you thinking, trying to force a hostile takeover?"

  "I did it so we don't need to take hand-outs from Mansur!"

  "Mansur was the one who believed in us in the first place," said Tuah. "If not for his investment we'd still be selling rusty keris in Amcorp Mall."

  "He untung what," said Jebat. "He's a rich man now! And after all you did for him he still has the nerve to reprimand you because some useless fella went gossiping to him. What kind of guy is he?"

  "He's the boss," said Tuah. But he wasn't there for a discussion. The decision was made. He stood up, already looking at his BlackBerry. "We'll keep paying your salary for the next three months, but Mansur wants you to clear out your office today."

  He paused.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  This was our dream — but Jebat didn't need to say it. They'd been friends since they were kids. Tuah knew, and that made it worse.

  The fight choreographer had taught them how to fall, but Jebat could never get the hang of it. This time in dying he hurt his shoulder and yelped, ruining the take.

  "Can we take a break?" said Tuah.

  He helped Jebat up, no trace of reproach in his smile. Tuah was perfectly cast: the frank gaze and dimples that had helped him win Idola translated beautifully to Zaman Kegemilangan Melaka. His personality lived up to the face. In every respect he was the perfect Malay male.

  Keep it clean, Jebat. Jebat's sexuality was an open secret in the industry, but every once in a while he thought he'd like to host a cooking show or try being a pop star, so he could never quite make up his mind to come out. As long as he had plausible deniability he could keep having dinner with his parents every evening.

  "Sorry," said Jebat.

  "We're all tired already," said Tuah.

  That smile again! Who wanted to be a celebrity chef anyway? There were other things to do. Other countries to live in, where men could hold hands, get married, adopt tiny little children —

  "Bro!"

  Tuah's face brightened. "Eh, Mansur! Thought you're not working today?"

  "Arsenal playing Man U today, remember? We all going mamak." Mansur jerked his asshole head at his asshole Porsche. "Belum habis ke?"

  Tuah's shoulders slumped. "Still shooting lah, bro." He looked like a little boy who's been told he can't go to the zoo.

  Mansur looked at Jebat as if he suspected it was his fault. "Call me when you're done lah."

  Tuah watched, all shiny-eyed, while Mansur drove off.

  "Those two bromance betul," remarked a dayang-dayang.

  "Who asked you?" snapped Jebat.

  Nobody'd really believed Tuah would shoot. A stunned silence descended when the glow of his phaser faded.

  "How can?" Lekiu burst out abruptly.

  Jebat's body lay limp on the floor. Kasturi dropped to his knees beside him.

  "You agreed to be part of the execution force what," said Tuah, in a toneless voice. He powered his phaser off and holstered it.

  "The sentence was wrong!" said Lekir. "You know Captain bribed the judge. Jebat was just trying to protect this planet."

  "Jebat killed people," said Tuah. "That's a breach of the Intergalactic Code. He's not the guy we knew in starship academy anymore."

  "Even a criminal deserves due process," said Lekir. "What more our friend."

  "The Tuah we knew in starship academy wouldn't have killed Jebat," said Lekiu.

  "He didn't," said Kasturi.

  Lekiu and Lekir shut up. Kasturi looked up, his eyes round.

  "There's no pulse," he said. "But my med-scanner's registering brain activity."

  Tuah looked alarmed for the first time. "Shit, really? I put him in slow-time! Damn the fella, even at a time like this must be difficult. Why can't he just go down easy for once?"

  "If he's really in slow-time, brain activity should be fading out soon," said Kasturi. "Sometimes it takes a while — ah."

  The jagged line on his med-scanner went flat.

  Tuah blew out a sigh of relief.

  "OK, settle," he said. He looked at his colleagues — friends, comrades whose faces he still remembered round with baby fat.

  "You all are right. The trial was rigged. But Jebat did wrong too. It doesn't matter if he killed those officers to protect this planet. Mutiny is a crime. Murder is a crime."

  He bent over his oldest friend. Jebat's face was already going grey in slow-time, a state so similar to death it required cutting-edge technology to tell the difference. Technology they didn't have anywhere on the planet, or even anywhere in the solar system.

  "Why couldn't you just go to the press like all the other activists," Tuah muttered. He straightened up. "But he deserves a fair trial. Not to be shot down like a dog. There's no way he'd survive in this political climate. But if he can wait it out 10, 20 years, we can make sure he's judged fairly then."

  "You got slow-time pod to keep him in?" said Lekir.

  Only the fabulously wealthy could afford the luxury of life extension. A slow-time pod cost as much as a starship. Without it a person put into slow-time would die within a few days.

  "I sold Captain's antique keris collection," said Tuah.

  Awe fell on the assembled group.

  "You're definitely not the Tuah we knew," said Lekiu.

  Tuah grinned. "Eh, even Tuah can change, OK."

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  The Fish Bowl

  Content notes: self-harm. Click here to skip to next story.

  Su Yin was hiding the first time the fish spoke to her. It was three o'clock on a Thursday and she was at Puan Lai's house for Maths Teras tuition.

  She did not have strong feelings about Puan Lai, but she liked the house. Between the entrance and living room there was an expanse of cool white marble floor that would have been a hallway in a normal house. Puan Lai had dug out a hole in the floor and filled it with water. The pond was rectangular, like a swimming pool, but the water was green, swarming with koi and goldfish.

  It had never been explained why they were there.

  "Probably she rear the
m to sell," said Su Yin's mother. "Koi are very valuable, you know."

  Puan Lai hadn't provided an explanation herself. As a teacher her style was direct and unfrivolous. She bombarded her students with exercises, leaving scarcely any time for questions, much less idle conversation.

  For the past three Thursdays Su Yin had sat in an alcove by the pool while waiting for class to start, hidden from the front door by an extravagant potted palm. She passed the time in watching the koi, golden and white and black, like splashes of paint curling in the water.

  If she stared long enough she could feel her thoughts take on the measured glide of the fishes' bodies through the water. She felt as weightless as they must feel.

  This mysterious peace was disturbed when the fish spoke.

  "Eh, listen," said the fish. "I got secret to tell you."

  Su Yin jumped. The voice had sounded clear and small in her right ear. She looked down into the water and saw a white koi, missing one eye.

  "You want to hear or not?" said the koi.

  Su Yin was going mad. Finally her mind was giving way. It was not as frightening as she'd thought it would be.

  "Whether you want to listen or not, it's not my problem," said the koi. "I'm not the one missing out."

  The koi's mouth opened and closed, an intermittent surprised O. Its white skin was so smooth it seemed scaleless. It would feel like silken tofu if you touched it. Seen from above, the fish's one eye looked heavy-lidded and wise.

  "Are you a magical fish or a door-to-door salesman?" Su Yin whispered.

  "Wah, still know how to joke people ah," said the koi. "You're correct. I'm magical. I can grant your any wish. That's my secret. Good or not?"

  Su Yin no longer read much, but she used to like books. This was not unexpected.

  "OK," she said. "So what?"

  "You don't have to whisper," said the koi's voice in her mind. "You don't have to open your mouth. I can hear you screaming."

  Su Yin got up, knocking her elbow against the potted palm. She walked to the living room, her face stiff.

  That wasn't funny, she thought.

  At this point she still thought it was her mind doing it, showing her magical talking fish. She thought it was the tiredness speaking.

  Su Yin's parents went to bed at 11.30 every night. At midnight Su Yin put on a thin cardigan and walked soft-footed downstairs to the computer.

  She used to play RPGs, but even with the volume turned down she worried that her avatars' thin battle cries and the muffled roaring of the dragons would reach through the ceiling and pierce her parents' sleep. And you had to save your game, and her younger brother played it as well, so the evidence of what she did was there, ripe for the picking if he ever felt like betrayal.

  These days she made dolls. There were hundreds of doll makers online, on different themes. Doll makers for every movie you could think of, for bands, for books and TV shows. It was a simple pursuit, but you never ran out of variations.

  There was something reassuring about it. You started out with a naked, bald body, featureless and innocent. Then you built it up into the approximation of a person, adding hair, eyes, clothes, shoes, a smile or frown.

  When Su Yin was done she saved the graphic in a folder she'd squirrelled away inside five nested folders named things like "Nota_Bio_Encik's Cheah's class". She gave each doll a name: Esmeralda for a green-eyed girl with wild red hair; Jane for a quiet-looking one in a gingham dress, her eyes cast down.

  When Su Yin finally went to bed her back was stiff and her feet were cold. From her bed she could see the glowing green face of the clock. It was 2.20 am. She would not sleep for at least another hour.

  Wednesday was usually a good day. She had two tuition classes in the afternoon, but in the half-hour gap between them, her dad drove her to a nearby coffeehouse. They sat at a sticky enamel table and she ate her way through three plates of siu mai while Dad watched a Hong Kong variety show on the TV.

  She never felt sleepy in the kopitiam, despite the dozy mid-afternoon feeling of the air and the somnolent hum of the ceiling fan. It was only when Dad had dropped her off at Puan Rosnah's and the lesson had started that she began to droop.

  Su Yin no longer tried to fight it. She crossed her arms on the table and dropped her head.

  Puan Rosnah was a nice older lady with a soft creaky voice and a smile that crinkled the skin around her eyes. She never complained about the naps. She was not an especially good teacher, and tended to drone. It didn't matter because Su Yin also attended another, more effective BM tuition class. She didn't question why she had to have two classes for the same subject: she'd got a B in BM for UPSR four years ago.

  After class the students milled in the garden outside Puan Rosnah's house, waiting for their parents to pick them up.

  "Wah, relaxed ah you," said Cheryl Lau to Su Yin.

  There was no decent way to fob Cheryl off. She insisted on talking to Su Yin. They'd used to be friends, back when they were rivals for top of the form. Now that Su Yin was out of the running she avoided Cheryl when she could, but Cheryl still sought her out.

  "Can nap in class also," she said. "You study finish for the test already, is it?"

  Su Yin's heart clenched. She said, "Hah? Sorry, didn't hear."

  "You know, Puan Sharifah's test," said Cheryl. They were in different classes, but they shared teachers for a couple of subjects. Puan Sharifah was one of them. She taught History and was known for her total lack of mercy.

  "Our class had the test already," said Cheryl. "Damn hard, man. Study like siao also still didn't know how to answer."

  Su Yin couldn't ask when her class was going to have the test. That would show she hadn't been paying attention for weeks, maybe months.

  "Is it? When was it?" she said.

  "Tuesday," said Cheryl. "Sucks, man. Have to study the whole weekend. Your class test is on Friday, right?"

  Su Yin dug her fingernails into her palm.

  "Yah," she said. "I think so."

  One day was not enough to study for a test, especially not one set by Puan Sharifah. The next day at school, Su Yin's classmates confirmed that it was going to be on Friday. Puan Sharifah had announced it three weeks ago. It would cover the five chapters they'd already been tested on in the last round of exams, and an additional three they'd studied since then.

  Su Yin hadn't looked at her History textbook in months.

  During the drive to Puan Lai's house, her dad said,

  "Why so quiet, girl? Thinking what?"

  Su Yin came out of her bad dream.

  "Nothing," she said. "Thinking about school only."

  "My girl is so hardworking," crooned Ma.

  "Don't need to overthink one lah," said Dad. "Do the work and listen to the teacher enough already. With your brain, like that can pass already."

  Su Yin was half an hour early and none of the other students were there when the maid let her in. She crawled into her hiding place.

  Remembering the conversation in the car made her want to hurt herself. She was ready when the fish said,

  "Change your mind ah?"

  It was the white koi, floating up out of the dark water like a ghost.

  She said, "How you know?"

  The koi clearly thought it beneath itself to answer such a stupid question. It waited in the water, silent.

  "Can you make me pass?" Su Yin whispered.

  "Cheh, that only? Very easy," said the koi.

  "Not just pass," said Su Yin. "Do well. Get good marks."

  "You want to get hundred?" said the koi.

  That was pushing it.

  "Seventy lah," said Su Yin. Even that would be a disappointment to her parents. It would be an improvement compared to what she'd got in the last round of exams, but her parents didn't know about those.

  "Can," said the koi. "I get you seventy exactly. No need to worry. Puan Sharifah won't think you cheated. She'll be very happy. She'll think you buck up after the last exam."

  Su Yin didn
't ask how the koi knew she'd been worrying about that.

  "One thing only," said the koi. "My payment."

  "What is it?" said Su Yin.

  The fish's mouth opened and closed. It was toothless like the mouth of a hungry baby, or the mouth of an old man chanting a mantra under his breath.

  "I'm so hungry," it said.

  Su Yin nodded.

  "Put your hand here," said the fish.

  Su Yin dipped her right arm into the water, flinching at the cold. The fish blinked its one wise eye and swam up to her. She closed her eyes. The sharp, sharp teeth closed over her flesh.

  It had to be true that the fish was magic, because it stole her voice. She felt the scream tear her throat, but there was no sound. It didn't so much as ripple the water.

  She snatched her arm out of the water, clutching it to her chest. The fish had bitten out a chunk of her forearm about the size of a fifty sen coin. Blood ran down her arm and dripped onto her shorts. She held her arm, shuddering.

  The world went fuzzy. The separate leaves of the palm merged into a green blob, as if she was seeing them through tears.

  "Wait first," said the fish. "I'll take the blood away." Its voice in her head sounded drowsy, contented.

  Answering her unasked question, it said, "No. It doesn't work without the pain."

  By the time class started, the wound was already scabbing over, and her shorts were dry. The flesh of her arm felt raw and wet. She had to keep looking down to convince herself of the scab.

  It was dark red and ugly on the inner side of her arm. The guy next to her flicked his eyes at it and looked away hastily. Unease pulled the air around him taut.

  But Su Yin felt calm. The tension that had been lurking at the back of her head for months, ever since she'd seen the report card, had dissolved. She felt safe. Even sleepy. As if it was her who was cradled in the dark cool water, enjoying the peace of a full belly, dreaming of blood.

  At first Su Yin thought it hadn't worked. She opened the test paper and her mind went blank. The words on the page did not mean anything. Panic rose up from her belly.