Free LONTAR issue #2 by Jason Erik Lundberg (editor)

could you do that? You disregarded my feelings and collapsed into the amorphous blob I first saw at Blumberg Library. I remembered how the air around us had crackled with strange electricity, and somewhere in the distance, there was the low rumbling of thunder.
    "You...you needed someone to anchor you to this world. I know you love me. You have to," I said, desperate to re-attach to you. My hack was pole-axed, chomped, compromised. But still I persisted, still I held on to our tenuous umbilicus of words. "I needed someone too. We both got something out of this. Did you know this was going to happen? How did you break my semantic encoding?"
    I don't know who I am. I don't even know if I was a man or a woman, or if I was young or old. But I do remember random things. Before I was uploaded, I was in the middle of an identity crisis. Was I a Singaporean-Filipino or a Filipino-Singaporean? That was in my head when I 'died'. You cannot program over dissonance.
    "But I love you. Stay with me, please. You'll be nothing without me, nothing again, you hear?"
    You pathetic man, this love was entirely your creation.
    "Yeah, so I rewrote your history. So I reprogrammed your shell with my desires, so what? I truly love you. I can't live without you, not anymore. Don't you know we're entangled?"
    Then commit your version of me to memory. If you ever forget, the 'me' that you made will disappear forever. You said you would be my anchor, my witness. You are now El Testigo , this form's eternal keeper..
    "But...honey, baby, does that mean if I keep remembering, you'll come back?"
    Perhaps, you said cruelly, as you disappeared back to infinity. I'm like Schrödinger's cat, a wave function, a supposition of probabilities. I am neither dead nor alive.
    Outside, in my parent's living room, an old radio began to wail a sad golden oldie. It was Johnny Cash singing "Mean-Eyed Cat".
    I haven't stopped crying since.
    If I stop, if I forget, you'll disappear forever, and I don't think I could carry on.

The Floating Market
    Eliza Chan

    Eliza Chan (UK) has lived in Sapporo, Glasgow, Ho Chi Minh and Portsmouth. She likes to collect folk tales from her travels, shake them in a blender and turn them into something odd and new. Her fiction has been published in Fantasy Magazine and New Writing Scotland . She currently lives in London for postgraduate study, and spends her free time learning Japanese and baking cakes. Find her online at elizawchan.wordpress.com.

    Quyên should not have been on the river that day. Bà noi normally rowed the boat to the floating market at Cái Bè, but she was sick and Ba was working as a day labourer. Although she had only turned twelve last month, Quyên had sense enough to realise that the sweet-smelling basil they had harvested the day before would wilt and die in the heat. More than that, Quyên longed to trade for something to supplement their daily diet of white rice and greens. She craved for some candied nuts that old Auntie Long would give them for a handful of basil; and she hated being stuck in the hut, which was stiflingly hot and smelt of decay. Why should she be nursemaid when she was just as capable as her grandmother at steering a boat and bringing supper home for them all?
    Carrying her bamboo baskets like scales balanced upon her slender shoulders, Quyên headed down to the edge of the Mekong in the predawn grey. It was cool still before the sun thickened the air into hot clammy fronds. The trees grew dense along the sides of the narrow but well-worn path. Vines snakes all around. Her eyes were half-lidded so she did not at first see the water elephant barring her path. Droplets of water scattered all over her face and clothes, making her look up.
    The girl saw a long grey trunk poised above her head. The nostrils narrowed as it breathed in and Quyên caught the same smell that was on Ba's skin after he went fishing. "Elephant!" Quyên said angrily. "Get out of my way! I must get to the floating market