Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020 | Page 48

Fiction – Group 3
“Maybe next week,” one of the workers replied. “We’re still working on getting it out.”
I nodded, biting my lip. The fountain never gets clogged. Something’s fishy about this. Makonga
had a lot of advanced technology, including anti-clog systems. They sounded weird, but they
were useful. There were also leak detectors and solar towers, wind turbines and committee
machines. There were a lot of things. Complicated things, but also simple things. And one of
those things was a foolproof anti-clog system for the fountains.
I kept walking. Away from the dysfunctional fountain. Away from my fibs. Away from
my mother’s need to cling to her motorcycle, to cling to the past, which I had already
abandoned but couldn’t quite shake.
The thing was, I also tended to cling to the past. And I’d never liked it. I’d tried to move
past it multiple times, but to no avail. It was like a boomerang. You threw it and it always
returned. I kept feeling nostalgic of the few days I remembered from before Makonga, before
all of this.
Of course, that was not to say that they were great days. All I remembered was struggling.
It was the only thing I was old enough to remember. But there were joys to be found in
pain. All the factories would suspend work and we’d be released from school whenever the
chairman visited. On those days, I could enjoy seeing clear blue skies and empty roads. In
Makonga, the chairman never visited. Instead, there were drones that would fly around to
videotape the city once a year. Clear blue skies were an everyday thing there, but having no
school was what I really remembered enjoying about when Makonga didn’t exist.
There were times, however, that things felt no different than how they’d felt before.
I went to school with the same kids. I had the same friends. They were exactly as smart as
before, some more than others. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different.
Nothing was new.
We had just taken a region and given it a name. We’d added advanced technology, but
that didn’t make it a whole new place. Makonga, I realized, was the same as any other place
when you looked closer.
Everyone’s lives were the same. Friends, homework, stress, health problems, politics.
Every interaction stayed the same, every good deed immortalized, just like anything that
would happen in Canada, the Himalayas, the United States, Switzerland. Anyone could
see the façade of the busy, rushed city life. It took some thinking to see the happiness and
bonding that took place within the steel-reinforced boundaries.
The Greater Bay Area wasn’t just greater. It was very similar to everywhere else,
anywhere else.
I stopped walking. It was incredible how much I could realize in one stroll through the
park. All this because my mother wanted to fix an old motorcycle. I wondered whether she’d
made any progress while I’d been gone. Part of me doubted it, but the other part of me, the
quiet, less assertive part. was hopeful she’d succeed. After all, we always needed memories of
the past to realize how consistent our lives had been.
Suddenly, I heard the unmistakable sound of water starting, then the quick increase
in speed as it began splashing down onto the stone surface. I smiled in spite of myself. The
fountain was working again.
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