Free The Tesseract by Alex Garland Page B

gel. Almost crystallizing in the gaps between the gunshots,splintering, then reconstructing itself. Each reconstruction a little quicker and more efficient than the last.
    Green and blue .
    Jungle around him, blue sky through it, and a clearing ahead.
    In the clearing, an almost ordered scattering of slabs and boxes. A group of men in black suits and women with black parasols, gathered around a building.
    A large building for the provinces, though small for a city, doorless and windowless, whitewashed stone, ringed by an iron fence.
    In this gap between the gunshots, hot sun on the back of Jojo’s neck.
4.
    The Chinese mausoleums were spectacular. Huge and ornate, covered in flourishes and inlaid marble—as opposed to thigh-high boxes, rain-stained, with little inscription beyond a series of dates and names. But spectacular though they were, there was another that put all of theirs to shame. Don Pepe’s: the size of a small church, positioned in the very center of the graveyard, surrounded by free-standing statues of chubby kids and the Blessed Virgin, and ringed by its own exclusive cast-iron fence.
    Within the stone walls of the mausoleum, generation after generation of Don Pepe’s family. Behind the cast-iron fence, an army of ancestral spirits, seething in the still air around the tomb, peering out of the statues’ eyes and impregnating the clipped grass under their feet.
    Sweating in the tree line that bordered the cemetery, along with the rest of his family and everyone else from the
barangay
. All of them invisible, Jojo guessed, to the cluster of elite mourners that stood by the mausoleum’s gated entrance. Black-suited, stiff silhouettes around Don Pepe’s coffin, apparently so grief-stricken that they were beyond screaming or crying.
    Which was eerie. Jojo had never seen such a quiet funeral. And he wasn’t the only one to find it uncomfortable, because when the priest had begun talking, somebody had let out a short wail, “Ay-ay-ay,” bursting out of a clump of ferns to Jojo’s left. Probably Tata Turo’s wife, judging not by the wail’s startling loudness but by the way it had ended. A muffled yelp as Tata Turo grabbed his wife by the throat and clamped his hand over her mouth—a noise that most in the
barangay
had heard before.
    Jojo’s mother sighed , shifted her weight from one leg to the other, and wiped at her face with a handkerchief. Her shirt, brilliantly white that morning, was now clinging to her back and stuck all over with leaves and small twigs.
    He looked up at her and she smiled. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
    Jojo nodded.
    “Not too hot?”
    “No.”
    “Not too tired?”
    “No.”
    “A little bit hungry?”
    He thought for a moment. “No. Really.”
    “You’re being very patient. The funeral is nearly over now. If you can hold out a short while longer…”
    “Yes. I can.”
    “Good boy,” she whispered, with the faintest note of surprise in her voice. Then she wiped the handkerchief over her face again. “Good boy.”
    A low amen drifted across the headstones, then rippled around the tree line. The priest had finished his speech, and Don Pepe’s coffin was being carried through the mausoleum’s doorway.
    Suddenly, Jojo felt his father’s hand on the small of his back, propeling him forward. Not understanding, he dug his heels into the earth.
    “Move forward,” his father hissed, and pushed harder.
    “Why?”
    “Move forward!”
    Jojo continued to resist. They had been hiding in the leaves for hours—since long before any of the elite mourners hadarrived. Over all that time, no one had spoken a word above a whisper or made a movement any more violent than brushing away a fly. It made no sense to now burst out of that hiding place, into the bright light.
    “Why?” Jojo repeated, turning to his mother, appealing for help. But she had the same look of urgency as his father. She motioned with her arms.
    “Go on, Jojo!”
    “I’ll be seen!”
    “Yes!” said