THE CITIZEN
We walk unseen in the two metre deep drains along the BKE. Tan Vee Bun in front, me in the middle, still gagged, with my hands tied, and Robert Sebastian Cheong guarding me from behind. It’s noon, and we’re all sweating and exhausted. In front of me, Tan Vee Bun douses his head with water, turning back to do the same to me and Robert Sebastian Cheong. I notice Robert Sebastian Cheong bob his head vertically, pushing his neck forward to like he’s gulping a spoonful of air down, just like an iguana.
Tan Vee Bun is being led astray by the enemy, by the machinations of Robert Sebastian Cheong’s homosexual agenda, all somehow connected to Joanne’s sudden reappearance as a cyborg. My fight will have to take this into account.
It’s already mid-afternoon by the time we return to the camp, which is in a state of disrepair. The curtains have been torn, the roof now sports a hole, the living area is flooded. The kitchen, meanwhile, is burnt to a crisp. Tan Vee Bun looks heartbroken. He paces around the ruins, his posture hunched over, Robert Sebastian Cheong holding his hand. I’m too shocked to want to run -- his home, their home, our home, now a shell of what once was, presumably desecrated by the higher powers that govern this cursed land. I hear a wailing come from the bedroom, and I shuffle inside, where Tan Vee Bun is on his knees weeping, Robert Sebastian Cheong’s hand on his shoulder, both in front of the untouched bed save for a gigantic lump of shit sitting square in the middle.
The couple decide to untie me. There’s not much more harm anyone can do, says Tan Vee Bun, his voice despondent. Robert Sebastian Cheong remains cautious, but judges from my reticence that whatever spell has befallen me earlier in the day was gone.
They pull out from under the bed a mahjong set, and place one single mantou in the middle, around which they shuffle the mahjong tiles. The click-clacking of the tiles goes on for what feels like a full five minutes, the two men concentrating on the mantou, their brows furrowed, their mouths silent. And then they pick up the mantou and throw it at me.
The mantou flattens against my nose and falls to the ground. Tan Vee Bun picks it up, examining the pattern of the dent my face made in the bread, while Robert Sebastian Cheong continues to fiddle with the mahjong tiles. An interminable number of minutes pass by, till the two of them look up from their analysis, sighing.
Tan Vee Bun walks up to me, laying his hand upon my shoulder. He says, “you are no longer the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew.”
“What? That’s nonsense. So who’s the reincarnation now?”
“We don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s all of us,” says Robert Sebastian Cheong.
What a fucking bastard asshole fucker. He can take his news and shove it up his you-know-what. There is no such thing as me not being Lee Kuan Yew. The mantou said so. The future which should have been set in stone after the destruction of the nodes of control the previous night.
“Impossible,” I retort, “don’t be stupid.”
Simply put, I’ve had enough of this Robert Sebastian Cheong. I spit on his face.
Tan Vee Bun watches, as his boyfriend looks to him for support.
“Get out,” he says.
A simple phrase. A typical Singaporean. I glance at Robert Sebastian Cheong and catch a glimpse of his eyes turning from lizard yellow to chinese black. I think to say something, and realise that there’s nothing I can do. No matter what, I have no more allies. No more Tan Vee Bun. No more Robert fucking Sebastian Cheong. I get up and exit the shack, making my way back towards the expressway, my head buzzing.
The destruction of the mantou brought about an unforeseen change in the 八字 for all of us. Before, it was relatively simple -- I was the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew, and there were plans to create a controllable clone of me through the harvesting of my DNA. That plan was destroyed when I infiltrated the lizard bunker. But it started up anew with my capture -- that robot, and that infernal machine -- forcibly milking my semen as the lizards molted around me. But I recovered, and through sheer resilience and determination and grit, I pushed forward with Tan Vee Bun and Robert Sebastian Cheong to destroy the root of all this evil, the computers running the machine learning algorithm changing all of our destinies.
We thought this would bring us freedom, and it did. In the six hours as one version of history turned into another, that zone where wrong is right and right is wrong, and no one really cares about anything -- the territory of the Ah Gong Temple, the dancing construction worker, the glowstick raving Cai Shen, and the momentary peace between Robert Sebastian Cheong and I -- before everything shifted. Before Robert Sebastian Cheong became a lizard.
It’s check-mate. And I suppose since I’m no longer the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew, none of this has any point any more.
Except for the soul of Singapore. I must find out who is the new Lee Kuan Yew, and I must judge if he is worthy.