The Rubble
Lai Wun Chi
here’s nothing new about the story I have to tell. A boy, a girl, a wall – nothing more. It is not
something that will keep you at the edge of your seat, not something that is novel, not something that
will twang the heartstrings. I doubt it is a story at all: more of an unvarnished shard of reality, a sliver
of truth that will slit like a knife. I don’t know why I am telling it. Why do I bother? I suppose this
story is a shout in the dark. It is a lighthouse sending out its hopeless message for help across the
impassable seas. It is a message to you, my reader, living in a better world.
,
Group 4: Fiction, Belilios Public School
T
It is a prayer that “you” exists. Commander Wong was a strict disciplinarian, a commander of the old
school - someone who obviously still believed in fitness training, which was a completely pointless exercise.
What soldier would still need fitness training in the twenty- fifth century? The lowliest soldier could conduct a
whole war on his own these days. All it took was a computer, a computer screen, a joystick and a keyboard. A
soldier could be obese, lame or even half-dead. Fighting is done strapped in a pod. The battleground exists
solely on the screen. Casualties, deaths, destruction of environment and whatnot have been completely
eliminated. Hundreds of battles are being fought every minute, even thousands, as soldiers work away at their
screens. The only scenario Liang could imagine of needing to use his body at all was if the enemy breached into
the control rooms. But that would never happen. The automatic gas pistons would kill them all. And if that fails,
there are always the automatic electric current shooters. And if even that fails, then the automatic atomic guns
will vaporize the invader the moment he tries to open the pod.
Conclusion: physical training is useless.
Liang walked laboriously up and down those endless steps, gasping, stealing sips of smog as he went
along. Why on earth was there a wall here? The whole thing was old, filthy and dilapidated. Honestly, yellow
brick was so out these days. Why on earth would anyone need a wall anyway? One of those horribly inefficient
and ancient atomic bombs would deal with them and raze the whole structure to the ground.
This was supposedly a punishment spooned out by Commander Wong for… what was it? Not keeping his pod
tidy enough. But Liang was enjoying the rare chance to see the outside world for a bit. He hadn’t been out of his
pod since… since… since… before his enlistment at five. He looked around at the smog-filled landscape,
wondering why he had ever missed it.
Not that the battlefields on the screen were anymore visually satisfying.
He strolled along, breathing easier now as he came to a flat bit in the gigantic structure. He ducked into
one of the little square boxes that littered the wall and sat down for a rest. It took him a few seconds to
completely get his breath back and a few more moments to realize that he was not completely alone in that
darkened square.
“
Hello.” A voice cautiously said in the dark. “Who are you?”
Liang didn’t trust his vocal cords to work. How long had it been since he used his vocal cords?
“
Liang.”
“
You are real right? Not some figment of my imagination.”
“
What is imagination?”
Silence. Something brushed him. After a few seconds, he identified fingertips and a hand. “Well, you
seem real enough.”
They sat there in silence for some time. The darkness enveloped them.
He cleared his throat. “Who are you?”
“’
I am Nobody! Who are you?’” the voice said, then made a sound he had never heard before. It made
him feel better somehow.
“
But I told you my name.”
“
Oh, you’re hopeless!” A repetition of that weird sound. “You are faking it right? You remember me?
You know who I am?”
He felt his watch dig into him, silently reminding him of the time. “I have to go.” He muttered and left.
He spent the rest of the week in a daze, analyzing that voice. It had sounded different from the gruff
voices he was used to hearing. It was a higher voice, almost like those of the new boys that came to the base.
Yet the hands that touched him were much larger than those that belonged to the little boys that newly arrived at
the base. And that weird, drawn-out sound the voice had made… he played and replayed the sound in his head.
He even tried to produce it himself in the dead of the night, alone in his pod as he shot down enemy after enemy.
And failed dismally of course. Yet even the attempts he made, made him feel better. “Happy…” he muttered, a