Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 475

Dream, If You Can
Singapore International School (Hong Kong), Cheng, Yi Shien - 14
Dreamer.
He wakes, startled, the single word hanging on his lips.
Staring at the dark ceiling closing in on him, he doesn’t understand. For a moment, he forgets where he
is. Who he is.
Then the bed senses his stirring and rises, the blinds unfolding streams of sunlight by the dawn. So this is
how the day begins. His mind drifts as he presses his fingers to the window, and it seems as if the word is painted
over the dreamy bronze-blue sky, but the thought is soon dismissed. Everyone was dreaming nowadays. It was a
world of opportunity, after all, living here in the Greater Bay Area, a golden region spanning Southern China,
Macau and Hong Kong. The cutting edge technology and new lifestyle, the convenient communications and
innovative population, the healthy eco-friendly hub striving for progress… and so far as the eye could see, a Bay
that transformed the land and marked distinct civilization.
It is an opportunity for him too, today. The opportunity to explore this city, Shenzhen, and make the
most out of a day.
He hovers down the street in a transporter, gliding on the circular plate, processing everything through
his eye lens. There are plenty of new strangers everywhere, their little IDs hovering above their heads like tiny
thumbtacks. Of course, the lens shows more, with flashy advertisements popping up as he walks past stores,
displaying the weather - it was a dry region since Climate Change made its impact.
Everything’s personalised now. Projectable outfits that reflected your mood, AR worlds where people
could create a fantasy of their imagination, robots that served to your every command and were sleeping subjects
to the numbing world around them. Dare to dream! That was the slogan of the New Future.
He roams these streets alone in the ocean of people, feeling empty. You’re afraid, he whispers to no one
in particular. You’re afraid of interactions and relationships and people. You don’t understand.
But he is a wanderer, and he must go on.
He happens by an eco-friendly sharing park, catching two children over a conversation. They wore the
look of the advanced students - ever since personalized education took ahold of trends, students studied at their
own capabilities and pace, specialized in their interests - with the familiar white hoodie and e-badge.
“Life maintenance here is expensive, alright. But it’s a beautiful place, I’ll give you that.”
“Stressful. With innovation, competition is intense! Weekends, weekdays, holidays, you know we have
to work. It’s worth it, though.”
“It’s progress. And it comes at a price. Our effort… it’ll pay off, won’t it?”
Children, he thinks, intellectuals but children in the mind, children at heart. They don’t know.
Progress? It walks ahead, proud in its march, leaving all in the dust of its dreams. And all these people, they’re
trying to catch the moments but they never have the time for life, trying to find some fulfillment. Perhaps
humans are all lonely.
“Mei mei, when I was your age…” Yet he still sees some old folk stories, the legendary stories of the
first innovators who founded the Greater Bay… “Ba! Back then when they still used cash, those heavy