On Such a Full Sea

On Such a Full Sea Read Free Page A

Book: On Such a Full Sea Read Free
Author: Chang-rae Lee
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Dystopian
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it seems that’s most places now! Our elders will say there used to be whole seasons in between of perfectly glorious days. Now, of course, those days are few, mere intermittent glimpses of what seems to us a prehistoric world, when the air was drier and clearer and more temperate, when the scent of turned earth or wildflowers or crisp dead leaves made one think of time as a kind, calm clock, rather than a sentence.
    Here in B-Mor, along the runway-straight blocks, we can’t avoid enduring the same extremes as in the open counties, but it is a blessing to note that we have numerous places to go for respite, like our indoor gymnasiums and pools, and the subterranean mall busy with shops and game parlors and eateries, where people naturally spend most of their free time. Because it’s rarely pleasant out of doors, we’ve come to depend on the atmosphere of seasonally perfumed, filtered air and the honey-hued halo lighting and the constantly updated mood-enhancing music that all together are hardly noticeable anymore but would likely cause a pandemonium were they cut off for any substantial period.
    Last year, in fact, the very thing happened for several minutes because of a power plant mishap, and while we had air and backup lights, there arose in the dimness a distinct odor of cave, which was not so awful as it was alarming, for you couldn’t help but realize that we were lodged in the innards of the realm. Eventually people stopped what they were doing and looked about, their mouths half open, awaiting an announcement. None came. Suddenly some people started running, the trigger unclear, and before you knew it, everyone was racing about, toddlers desperately yanked along, the elderly panting and trying to claw through the scattershot mobs, the young and fit sprinting as if the dogs of hell were chasing them. What panic in those corridors! What knife-in-the-heart terror! But then a great wheeze spewed from the ducts, and they rattled mightily, and then the banks of soft light revived and the old familiar songs that we never quite listened to reset us to the more tranquil rhythms of our souls.
    We’re no longer fit for any harsher brand of life, we admit that readily, and simply imagining ourselves existing beyond the gates is enough to induce a swampy tingle in the underarms, a gaining chill in the gut. For there’s real struggle for open counties people, for in a phrase the basic needs are met but not much else; the power is thready, constantly cycling on and off; housing is rudimentary, with shantytowns the rule; water is plentiful only during the wet seasons, and should be boiled at any time. And talking about smell! The system of sewers in the open counties (ours in B-Mor was redone as recently as ten years ago) dates from nearly two hundred years
before
our people arrived from New China, truly ancient times, such that after there’s a heavy rain and the wind blows from the southwest, you can pick up from our very block the sharp rot stink of human settlement, that undying herald: We are here! We are here! We are here!
    We know you are there, believe us.
    Maybe Charters can easily forget what it’s like out there, but we B-Mors and others in similar settlements should be aware of the possibilities. We shouldn’t take for granted the security and comfort of our neighborhoods, we shouldn’t think that always leaving our windows open and our doors unlocked means that we’re beyond an encroachment. We may believe our gates are insurmountable and that we’re armored by routines, but can’t we be touched by chance or fate, plucked up like a mouse foraging along his well-worn trail? Before you know it, you’re looking down at the last faint print of your claws in the dirt.
    But hold on, you might say. On our street, once called North Milton Avenue and renamed Longevity Way by our predecessors, who saw the nearly three-kilometer run of ruler-straight road and couldn’t help but think of wondrously extended, if not

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