Surrogate Protocol Read online

  — PRAISE FOR SURROGATE PROTOCOL —

  “Memorable characters, great evocation of a sci-fi-cumeveryday reality, exciting plot twists, philosophical insights into human psychology and the nature of eternity: a thrilling ride from start to finish!”

  —Cyril Wong, author of The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza

  “A very ambitious novel, able to successfully blend science fiction and contemporary drama, with a narrative covering almost two centuries. The setting is Singapore, but with a twist – places and journeys are familiar, yet we also encounter a historical Singapore skilfully created as a refreshing perspective.”

  —Haresh Sharma, Resident Playwright, The Necessary Stage

  ALSO FROM THE EPIGRAM BOOKS FICTION PRIZE

  WINNER

  The Gatekeeper by Nuraliah Norasid

  FINALISTS

  State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang

  Fox Fire Girl by O Thiam Chin

  2015

  Now That It’s Over by O Thiam Chin (winner)

  Sugarbread by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! by Sebastian Sim

  Death of a Perm Sec by Wong Souk Yee

  Annabelle Thong by Imran Hashim

  Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam

  Altered Straits by Kevin Martens Wong

  SURROGATE

  PROTOCOL

  Copyright © 2017 by Tham Cheng-E

  Cover art by Cho Zhi Ying

  All rights reserved

  Published in Singapore by Epigram Books

  www.epigrambooks.sg

  Published with the support of

  National Library Board, Singapore

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Name: Tham Cheng-E, 1979–

  Title: Surrogate Protocol / Tham Cheng-E.

  Description: Singapore : Epigram Books, 2017.

  Identifier: OCN 973573437

  ISBN 978-981-17-0091-0 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-981-17-0097-2 (ebook)

  Subject(s): LCSH: Longevity—Fiction.

  Amnesiacs—Fiction. Singapore—Fiction.

  Classification: DDC S823—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition: April 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Sandra, who has always been there

  Life can only be understood backwards;

  but it must be lived forwards.

  —SØREN KIERKEGAARD, JOURNALEN JJ:167 (1843)

  1

  KILLING LANDON

  SINGAPORE ISN’T STERILE like everyone says. It’s full of secrets. Take me, for instance. I’m an anomaly and I think the world ought to know this. But I don’t know if it’s a good thing because if the world found out, I’d probably be cut open.

  Maybe being cut open is better than hiding in the shadows.

  Did you know that déjà vu is prophetic?

  I do. I’ve lived long enough to know that déjà vu is a glimpse of an unchanging future, however you live your present. So do yourself a favour and live it well. That’s something I’d offer.

  So says Landon Lock.

  The old house sits like a crypt; the light from streetlamps filters through the murky panes and floods its interior with a sepulchral glow. Every night he comes home alone and confides to an imaginary interviewer in an imaginary interview he’d want to give if only the world accepted who he is.

  Life has been bland but not necessarily bad. He isn’t given to making friends because friends often do more harm than good to his kind. Some old gaffer would stop him on the street insisting they had been acquainted fifty years ago and that it was impossible he should look so young. A hunch would tell him the person was probably right. Still, he would have to walk away.

  Truth is, Landon Lock doesn’t die and doesn’t really live either.

  He just sort of…exists.

  Longevity is a bizarre affair because it makes you crave death at one point and be inordinately terrified of it at another. The notion of death is at once edifying and fearful. So he observes it from afar, like a child watching a cavorting clown.

  Presently, he leans against the peeling door frame of the lavatory and watches a dying gecko twist its way up the wall tiles. The lavatory is set inside the kitchen—a shabby little appendix behind the old house. Its nooks and crannies carry a depressing degree of gloom, from a shelf made out of bricks and rotting planks to the row of archaic stone stoves.

  Guilt steals into him. That gecko had emerged from behind an earthenware vat and given him a nasty scare. But that wasn’t just cause for death. It would’ve been better if it had put up a fight instead of running. Landon sprays more insecticide into the creature’s face—a lingering, gentle mist—and prays for a swift death. But the poison delivers only a slow, agonising torment. The toxins are corroding its flesh and dissolving its consciousness, and the little greying creature thrashes wildly.

  Someone once told him the closest you can get to observing Death is to poison a common house gecko with insecticide and watch it die. It was a long time ago when the world first saw DDTs in FLIT spray pumps.

  Now he believes every word of it.

  When he can take no more of Death, he leaves the kitchen and abandons himself to a couch. The living room, cavernous and mouldering, is immured in century-old wallpaper that flakes like plaster. He reaches over and turns a lamp on.

  A dusty fan hangs from a mould-mottled ceiling, spinning and creaking on a long wobbly stem. A wire leads from it, down a wall and into an old timber-backed breaker panel with rows of black Bakelite switches.

  Landon stretches his legs, and the cold surface of the green terrazzo feels good against his bare heels. He unbuttons his uniform—a black collared tee with a yellow brocaded emblem bearing the name of a café: FourBees—and drops his head over the edge of the backrest, pretending to be a corpse, as if someone might enter a week later and find him putrefying in this posture.

  Perhaps I’ve forgotten my kind.

  You see, my memory works like an old bulging scrapbook. It is one thing to be assured of the fact that it holds everything, and it’s another to be able to find in it what you’re looking for. Memories of my recent past span days, sometimes a week. They never used to be like that. I’m finding it progressively harder to retain them. They leave me easily—like sand from an eroding shoal. Memories of a distant past I retain better. But only in fragments that hold little meaning. I don’t remember people very well. That’s a problem.

  I remember coffee better than people.

  My doctor said a point in the past might have caused it—maybe something that gave me head trauma or the like. And events that occur after that point work like quick-fading polaroids in my head.

  No, I don’t recall this point in my life. Unfortunately.

  You know how it’s like, don’t you? Sometimes my existence feels ethereal, disembodied. A good half of my life had been excised, perhaps more.

  I’ve never felt complete.

  I remember, though, the day mother died. There was no pain. She just slipped away and went cold hours after we spoke for the last time. But I’ve lost her face. I remember only the sallow, waxen skin and sunken cheeks. I don’t recall a heartbeat monitor or an oxygen tube. They didn’t have such things then. Most of my recollection comes in bursts; a red and white metal bedpan, a sooty kerosene lamp, valance skirting the bedposts quivering in a breeze, the gentle sway of a gauzy mosquito net in the hot, dusty air of the late afternoon.

  Late afternoon is a terrible time to die, when the world is winding up for th
e day. I was sorry that I had to leave her in her bedroom. Memories work better with senses. I remember little else but the subtle stench of decay. Though nascent, it already felt like an intrusion of something foreign and malevolent that was beginning to overpower the familiar scents of balms and ointments of her bedroom.

  When did the ageing stop? When I was thirty, thereabouts. Maybe younger.

  How young do you think I look?

  Like I said, I don’t recall that point in my life, so I can never tell.

  When it comes to looking my age it’s really hard to find the sweet spot. It isn’t a good thing to be looking too young or too old. Every fifteen years I start a new life as a new person. Passing off for a young man is easy with the way I look and the job I do. People hardly ask your age when it comes to making coffee. But I’ll be in trouble if I’m overdue. It’s more difficult explaining how I’m looking thirty when my registered age is sixty.

  My real age? I think I’ve lived decades.

  Or has it been centuries? I don’t know. My journals will tell.

  Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not a vampire.

  Vampires are crappy creatures once you strip them of their pearly skin and sex appeal. They’re rabid in a way, much like wild dogs and zombies. I find zombies more appealing because they waste less: they gobble up everything, blood, bones and all. And if they don’t eat you up good enough you turn into one of them.

  Sickness? I don’t remember the sensation of being ill. I wake up every day with this blandness that tells me nothing changes and nothing ever will. My breaths are clear and deep. There is the same strength and litheness in my limbs.

  No, I’m not complaining. It would be an unpardonable sin to complain. But you have no idea how lonely it gets.

  I often wonder: if Death doesn’t come knocking, should I go to it?

  Throwing myself off the roof might do. Perhaps walking into an oncoming truck; lying across a train track, or maybe lots of poison…

  Landon stops. When it comes to this point, the soliloquy feels juvenile and stupid. If he had the courage, he would’ve done it already.

  Death is easy and tempting. But it worries him because there is something intrinsically inane about wanting to die. It feels like there is a consequence to it—one more terrifying than Death itself.

  He returns to the lavatory and rushes through his shower because the dead gecko is staring at him from the rusted grating. Then he climbs an old squeaking staircase that winds up to a hallway on the second floor.

  In one of the four rooms, the wan light of a naked bulb reveals an antiquated bed of carven teak bedposts and brass hooks from which a mosquito net used to drape. The windows are shuttered and have crusty latches of oxidised bronze. There is a wardrobe with an elaborate architrave and misaligned doors; a profusely-decorated dresser with its mirror missing; an old bronze lampstand, its wires fuzzy with dust; a damaged phonograph; a flatscreen TV perching precariously on top of a rusting treadle sewing machine; a low cabinet, its glass doors misty with age, containing a tired-looking collection of old ointment bottles and snuff cases; disused pipes; little rusting tin boxes; a pocket-watch; and a monocle with its chain still attached.

  A chalkboard reads: “Dinner with Cheok on Monday, 2100.” By a window there is a jelutong writing table flecked with scratches. It has a top that can be opened and four drawers fitted with elaborate ring handles of brass. Nearby, a headless tailoring mannequin stands erect, dressed in a high-collared cheongsam of red silk.

  Landon produces a thick roll of cash from his bag and stores it in a biscuit tin he keeps in one of the drawers because he holds no bank account. Having a bank account is suicidal if you are already having trouble keeping up a legitimate identity.

  Then, on a fresh page of his journal, he pens the usual opening line.

  My name is Landon…

  He finishes the entry and lights a kerosene lamp by a nightstand. The flame produces an orb of warm light and dances with curves like a woman’s body. For a long time he lies on his bed watching it.

  Tomorrow he will begin the process of killing Landon.

  Slowly, he lowers the flame and snuffs it.

  / / /

  In the waiting lounge of an expensive hospital, visitors drowse on leather couches, their limbs drawn against the pre-dawn chill. The large glass panes out in front are frosted over with condensation, and beyond them one sees nothing but one’s reflection against the darkness outside. Behind the counters, arriving receptionists shiver and pull in their jackets.

  Landon is kept awake by the prospect of committing a crime. The carbon paper of the Notice of Live Birth crinkles pleasantly in his hand. He commends himself for having been astute enough to pilfer a piece of it from the pad just a week earlier, when a flustered nurse left it at the counter in one of the delivery suites. He even snatched an Identity Card belonging to a lady who had used it to reserve a table at a food court while she tittered her way to the stalls. It was clipped to a lanyard, along with her office pass.

  Thievery is low business. But no one ever told him that procuring an identity would be this hard. If he botches this attempt, he exposes himself, and if he doesn’t, the loneliness might kill him anyway. Either way, the future isn’t going to be rosy.

  The number ticker buzzes. He checks his electronic queue slip and bolts forward, clumsily clutching the documents to his chest.

  “Birth cert, sir?” a petite Malay lady behind the counter requests in a sprightly voice.

  He hands her the Notice of Live Birth. She takes it with both hands and scans it. “A son? Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. A daughter would be just as nice.”

  “I need the ICs of you and your wife.”

  He slides them over the counter. His countenance is still, but his heart is racing.

  “How’s mummy?”

  “She’s doing well. I highly recommend the epidural; it lets you enjoy the birth.”

  “Thanks for the tip.” She hands the ICs back to him. “I’m only just engaged.”

  “Your turn will come.”

  The lady hands him the certificate. “Check the particulars, sir.”

  “Everything’s perfect.”

  “Adam is a nice name.”

  “Thank you,” says Landon, the knot in his guts unravelling slowly. “I like names beginning with ‘A’.”

  The lady points to another spot. “There’s the birth certificate number. Remember, it’s going to be different from the passport number, so take note when you make one for him.”

  Landon manages a laugh. “That’ll be a long way off.”

  “I have three nephews. Children grow up in the blink of an eye.” She laminates the certificate and presents it to him with both hands. “Check it again, just in case.”

  “Flawless.”

  In fifteen years Landon will be dead, and Adam shall walk the Earth.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”

  Landon slips the certificate into his folder and zips it up. “Can’t think of anything.”

  / / /

  It is only 8.15 and Landon feels so light and sprightly he could sing to the soft warmth of the early sun. There’s the day to spare, and the freshness of morning washes away whatever traces of melancholia that remain in him. He is early, and he can read for an hour at the civic plaza before heading up to the bookstore. A nice slow breakfast at Café Kinos will be a good start, then he’ll browse the morning away before catching a film at Shaw. Afterwards, he’ll have tea and cake and read through the afternoon. Then it’ll be dinner—a light one. He’s thinking Italian, one with an antipasti bar. Or tapas maybe.

  And then his day will end. And another will begin.

  He has all the time in the world and little to live for. And he can never decide if it’s a good or a bad thing. But for now it is good. He is happy.

  At the centre of the plaza he finds a black marquee. Air-blown streamers flutter beside giant speakers wrapped in black polypropylene
. He squints at the event boards. Something about fashion, football and fund-raising. Throngs of teenagers gather. The speakers blare and a clichéd medley of party music thumps away like there’s no tomorrow, drawing in the exuberance of youth that passes him.

  An hour later, Landon finds solace in an air-conditioned interior and its scent of fresh books. He goes to the café and picks a window seat that overlooks the mall and plaza, where the event host delivers a muffled, incomprehensible speech in an insufferable attempt to sound eloquent. Music pounds on dully behind the thick glass panes.

  He orders a frittata with grilled tomatoes, slow-poached eggs and a side of spinach dressed in oil. He flips the menu page and adds a couple of blueberry waffles with crème and syrup.

  “Send them after the frittata, please,” he tells the waitress.

  “Any drinks, sir?”

  He scans an insert and settles for a pot of Hawai‘ian Kona. “It’s going to be a quick brew so grind the beans fine. Don’t burn the grinds, and let the coffee steep three minutes before plunging. You use the French press?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, use that, not the drip. Better still, just pour in the water and bring me the press. I’m very particular about my coffee.”

  The waitress flashes an obligatory smile and departs. Landon detects displeasure in it and justifies to himself his fastidiousness over coffee. It takes only a hair’s breadth of inattention to foul up a good pot of Kona.

  He sips his iced water and waits. It pleases him to see the store filling up. At the religion section, a scholarly old man reads with his glasses propped over his brows. Nearby, an elderly couple, probably Australian judging by their accent, discusses a title. A woman, Senegalese from her gaudy, tie-dyed, starchy boubou and headdress, haunts the politics section.