The escalator lifts me out of the train station, propelling me forward to fall into step with other commuters. Our avatars brush past one another bearing our faces, our features relaxed, even placid. We smile at one another as we leave the public transport system. We walk into orange panels of light cast down from the sky, broken up by void deck pillars. Central Air System (CAS) vents mark the walls like the teeth of mouths pulled into awkward smiles.
My legs move briskly even as my head turns to linger on the light. I feel an itch just under my sternum. As I give up on the sunset and pull my gaze back into pace with my legs, I reach to touch that bone between my breasts. I give it a scratch even though I know the itch is too far in.
Rain sounds play through the chips in my ears, broken up intermittently by soft beeps that mark new messages. The album, produced by OpenSpaceX and backed by scientific research, is designed to keep the listener serene (“emotionally-equipped to face an ever-changing world”). Last year, SMRT ran trials where this album was played in trains and stations as a way of curbing rising cases of physical altercations amongst commuters, but the results had not been shared with the public, and the album was never played again.
I listen to the pitter-patter and smile. As thunder rumbles softly in the distance of the soundtrack, I steer out of the void deck to look up at the sky.
A Grabbot is already at the door when I reach. It’s lined up along a row of others, each parked in front of a housing unit. There are gaps here and there where deliveries have already been collected by the residents — a security concern. After being passed through the National Report & Vote (RV) process, the issue had been quickly addressed by Grab in its latest notifications. We apologise deeply for causing anxiety and distress. We will resolve this very soon. Until then, we ask for your patience and understanding.
I open up the bot and take out the tiffin carrier, turning the bot’s red LED light green. As I step into my home, the pink wash of light that had been flooding the living room turns a soft orange. The house system beeps: “Grow mode off.” I slide back first onto the sofa, hugging the carrier against me with one arm. I open up my Grab app to watch the route replay of my meal.
Multiple animated figures in green walk cheerfully across a darker green map, each representing the movement of an ingredient from its point of harvest or death to the nearest hawker pod and finally to my home. As the green figures meet at the hawker pod, they fuse into a single figure which then, in Transformer-esque choreography, folds into the silhouette of a compact Grabbot. All parts contained in one efficient entity.
Our proof of sustainability, now made accessible for you. Grab had been scrambling to revive consumer trust since the leak of the Grab Logs in 2029. Their solution was to hop aboard the blockchain train by collaborating with NEA, SFA and GovTech to develop an app that would trace the movement of produce on a digital ledger on the blockchain. Currently appended to the existing Grab app, these functions were expected to become part of a standalone, national app for information and notifications about the statuses of produce in Singapore. All part of the government’s efforts to manage citizen anxiety over food shortages, alongside community farms in every GRC and the monthly SingPass tally of all goods and produce purchased by your household.
I thumb through the news as the heat from the tiffin carrier continues to spread against my belly, lulling me deeper into post-work fatigue.
GovTech and Alibaba to develop app together under new Sino-SG Commons Agreement / New fleet of Grabbots to serve eldercare centres / Possible revival for extinct SEA lizard species / Are we on track for the end of the world? / Singapore Literature Prize revamped / Overnight queue on the blockchain for Cai Guo-Qiang NFT / …
I sit up, open the carrier and pull out the Community Cutlery that’s been packed just under the lid, a slim metal device which works simultaneously as fork, spoon, knife, chopsticks, straw and can opener. The idea of community-shared utensils had lost its charm again with the recent norovirus outbreak, but I don’t mind, especially since we have a sterilizer at home.
Like I promised Eddy, I put on the latest episode of Tech Rezeneration, his latest podcast where a Zen Buddhist monk interviews people from the tech industries. I send him a message as the opening jingle plays in my ears.
> listened 2 rezeneration! u did such a gd job congrats
> Thanks so much! Super appreciate it
I fork and spoon the food into my mouth as the chatter begins, the sounds washing over me. I look out the window at the rows of residential lights, small bright squares that stretch along every axis for as far as the eye can see. The night sky above us is quiet, devoid of any bird, or cloud, or star. Even the moon is nowhere to be seen.
“So, this new type of lettuce you’re designing,” the monk is saying. “It provides a full daily portion of vitamins within a single head?”
“Yes,” the interviewee replies. “102 percent of your daily recommended intake, to be exact.”
“It reminds me of golden rice, the beta-carotene thing.”
“I was inspired by it. I think that’s what food science should be doing, designing foods to combat nutritional deficiencies and world hunger. I know that’s a big ask, but that’s just how big the problems we’re facing are, too.”
I press the button on my ComCut, which beeps the temperature of my food: “38.2°C.”
“What about the continued protests against genetically-modified produce, which have gotten more fervent over the last decade?” the monk asks.
“Look, I get where the fear is coming from. And I understand that it’s not just about whether the food is safe for us or not, but also ecological balance. At the same time, there are people dying of hunger and nutritional deficiencies.” The interviewee takes a deep breath. “Besides, aren’t most of these protests led by rich people who can afford organic, non-GM food?”
My ComCut beeps: “38.0°C.” I didn’t press anything on it though. I give it a little shake. It beeps again: “38.0°C.” No error message on screen.
“Do you feel like we have to choose between the two? Between taking care of the Earth and taking care of ourselves?”
“It feels that way.”
“37.9°C.” I try to pick at the tiny catch which keeps the battery unit in place. No luck.
“Don’t you think the two things are really the same thing?”
“Are they?”
“Earth and human being — same thing. Just like you and me, us and them — same thing.”
“37.9°C. 37.9°C. 37.9°C.”
I run the reset keys on the ComCut. The screen turns black.
***
I have my arms wrapped around someone’s waist, my cheek pressed against their back. We’re on a motorcycle, charging across the Cross-Island Autonomous Expressway (CIAE). The wind rifles through our clothes and long hair which flows out from our helmets. The wind is searching us. For what, I don’t know, but I feel its vehemence.
We’re going so fast because we’re late. Someone is waiting for us to get to them, but there was a delay of some sort and now we’re taking longer than we said we would.
Another motorcycle appears behind us. Its high beam punches our shadow out ahead of us, a stretched mass we seem constantly about to run over. We speed up to outrun the newcomer. I lock my arms even more tightly around the other person. Their body is hot and stiff as it hunches over the front of the machine.
The speed is making me dizzy. I close my eyes. The wind, finding me off guard, begins to tug hard at my shirt as though trying to remove it entirely. Despite its force, I feel beads of sweat forming on my scalp, my face, my armpits, my torso, my groin. The body I’m holding on to seems to be growing hotter by the minute.
The body begins to scald me. My eyelids flutter open in panic as my arms let go and my body flies backward off the bike. In the split second as I fall, I see that the rider I thought I was holding onto is gone. In their stead is a tiffin carrier the size of a human torso, hurtling forward in a cloud of steam.
I feel a bop on my head.
“…a different way of imagining and eating the future,” the monk or the interviewee is saying, through my ear chips.
“You should go to bed,” someone next to me says.
“…so important that we have a shared vision of what that looks like, so we can get there together.”
“I’m not done with my work,” I mumble, not opening my eyes.
“It’s high time you were,” that someone replies.
What time is it? The chip in my temple beeps: “11.03pm.”
“Like I said. Time for bed.”
“…where equality and compassion are at the forefront of the work that we do. That’s how a better world becomes possible for all of us.”
I lift my head off my work tablet and open my eyes to see Melissa. A sweat-soaked t-shirt clings to her body like a second skin, her ponytail nearly done sliding out of a loose hair tie. She has one hand holding on to a tiffin carrier, the second one curled around a bundle of leaves, and the third one holding her phone.
“There’s a mark,” she laughs, poking a spot on my cheek where the tablet’s centre button has left an imprint.
“You’re not even trying to hide it anymore,” I counter, pointing at the leaves in Melissa’s hand.
“I prefer to steal in an honest manner.”
“…more so since the shift toward Web 3.0 an d the initiation of WorldHealth.”
“I wouldn’t call it stealing,” I say hesitantly. “I guess it’s just… not governmentally-approved.”
“They won’t miss it anyway.” Melissa drops her backpack down on the couch, then comes over to sit next to me.
“…the last time we touched food with our hands? I’m not even talking about farm to table stuff. I mean even preparing a meal by hand — washing, cutting up and cooking the ingredients on our own.”
“So what did you get this time?” I ask.
“Snakeweed. Want some? They taste like spinach.” Melissa swings the bundle around and extends it toward me like a bouquet of flowers.
“I’m okay.” I press my palms together and interlace my fingers.
“...ever the since the Hygiene Act was put in place to outlaw eating with our hands.”
“How’s your asthma?”
“Better now that the city’s lungs are fixed up.”
“Good. Though I still don’t get why we need a central system for something that was already shared and all around us.”
“I guess it helps with the viruses.”
“Sterilizing the air until our immune systems don’t learn to handle foreign or harmful particles doesn’t help shit.” Melissa says this in a light voice, but I hear her old anger seeping in.
I reach to give her a gentle pat on the head. “You should eat. It’s late.”
Melissa opens up her tiffin carrier. No Community Cutlery. She closes her eyes and leans in to smell the food. She picks up a piece of tofu with her right hand, brings it up to her mouth and sucks it in like a piece of candy. She breaks off a bit of the mock meat patty and licks the dripping sauce before tossing it into her mouth. She pulls up strands of noodles with her index and middle fingers and slurps them. She pushes vegetables around in search of a mushroom.
I sit there watching her eat, noting the glossy surfaces of her hands and lips, even her eyes. Melissa looks up and spots me. I wait for her to say something. She looks at me for a while, then looks back down at the food.
“One of the questions you seem to be asking is also: to what extent are care and protection needed, given that the body requires manageable levels of stress and shock to its systems in order to learn to fortify and strengthen itself?” the monk says.
“Yes, and I don’t mean that food should stress our bodies out. I’m just thinking about back when we had to gather, hunt or farm so we could eat. Besides keeping us active, it meant that we didn’t just eat the same things every day, though of course there would also be days when we didn’t get to eat much at all. But the ecological and biological balance of that makes sense to me.”
“This reminds me of something Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote. Early in his book about antifragility, there was something about a man who doesn’t want to carry his luggage up to his hotel room, but then goes to the gym to work out. It was something about blindspots, where we isolate certain actions and logic to certain areas of our lives.”
“Yes, I guess it’s something like that. Like, why have we separated all these parts of our lives and redistributed them? Instead of growing, preparing or transporting our own food, we have hundreds of people in between to do that for us.”
“Most people would tell you that it’s just more efficient that way.”
“Sure, yes, I see that. But in order for your meal to be super efficient, to arrive in a box on time so you can eat and discard the box within half an hour, there are hordes of people whose every waking hour or entire life is spent growing, preparing and delivering food.”
“And you consider such a life a bad life?”
“I think everyone should get to live more varied and restful lives, to do different things and see more of the world.”
“We each sacrifice a lot for the visions of a few.” The monk pauses. “In our pre-show chat, you talked about a dream you had recently, which I found fascinating. Could you talk about that?”
“Sure. It was quite an odd dream,” the interviewee replies. “I was riding a motorcycle, with someone riding behind me, their arms wrapped around my waist. We were delivering food in one of those boxy thermal bags from back when companies still employed human delivery riders and drivers. I don’t know why there were two of us doing this together, but that’s what it was like in my dream.
“We were late for our delivery, so the app was flashing a notice on my phone screen. I didn’t want to go too fast, but another motorbike started tailgating us. Somehow, the rider knew our names and was shouting them at us. I should have caught the name of the person riding behind me at this point, but I can’t remember it at all. Anyway, I sped up. I felt the arms around my waist tighten.
“As we pulled up at our destination — some condominium building — those arms slackened and slipped away. I climbed off the bike and took my helmet off. When I turned around, the sight before me made me freeze.
“The thermal bag is gone. Instead, what’s attached to the motorcycle is a vast plot of land that stretches beyond the horizon. It’s covered in lush, green grass, with grazing milk cows and oxen. A pair of foals amble along a riverbank. No trees. Looming in the background is a tall mountain which disappears into clouds. Even the sky above the plot seems to have been pulled here with everything else. The sun planted at its centre pours hard light down upon us, making everything gleam.
“That’s when I hear a commotion behind me, where the condominium is. I turn to see a boundless mass of people slowly flooding toward this plot of land like condensed milk. Their feet fill every inch of the ground, their heads bob atop the viscous sheet of flesh they have formed together.
“It becomes clear to me that every single person who is alive right now is here, pouring out of the building toward the grass. They smile and laugh with joy and relief as they clamour forward. Those who pass me shake my hands, pull me into a hug, even kiss me on my cheeks. Some of them are crying, overcome.
“By now perched on the seat of my bike, I watch them all like a little god — observing, unmoved. As they cross the border marked by my motorbike, they fill up the land, body by body, until the grass underfoot disappears completely…”
