Member-only story
Greetings from Instant City
1.
She looks out the floor-to-ceiling window of this luxury penthouse that is now her home at the distant sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean under a mid-morning sun. She normally tries not to wallow in her past — the unfortunate itinerary of her life’s journey — but whenever she gazes out at that beautiful but troubled body of water, certain flashes of memory float to the surface. Two memories in particular are making themselves known.
The first is very general in nature, and that is her childhood curiosity about someday seeing the Indian Ocean for herself. (How that curiosity first embedded itself in her internal universe has long since been lost.)
The other memory is far more specific, and plays simultaneously on her mental split-screen as a cruel and ironic counterpoint to her early curiosity. The memory is of her first time travelling on the Indian Ocean, hidden in a large metal box on a container ship with a large group of other adolescent girls. At least two of them didn’t survive the trip. She recalls how she distracted herself from the stench and claustrophobia by speculating in her mind as to whether they had left the Isthmus of Kra behind, and whether the Strait of Malacca had yet become her beloved ocean.
