Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 456

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.