Free Age of Blight by Kristine Ong Muslim Page A

your elders claim that the tank is perfectly spherical because designing strong vessels entails the removal of corners and edges. According to your elders, corners and edges present the weakest points, and weak points have no place in containers whose sole purpose is to isolate. They also say that the spherical quarantine tank is propped on a giant tripod supported by tungsten struts and that it comes with a calibrated pressure valve, eleven downstream sampling points, and a pair of fouling-resistant heat exchangers.
    The quarantine tank’s drain pipe is said to lead to an inverted cone chamber housing the Great Beast.
    Outside the gated and fenced chemical plant, there is a red sign with white lettering. The sign indicates that the fence is electrified and that no plant operatorshould be held responsible for deaths resulting from failure to heed the warning. But you know better. Once upon a time, you ventured close to the electrified fence, carelessly touched it with the tip of your finger, touched the precious chain-link lure, all the while expecting a powerful surge coursing through your body but alas, the high-voltage warning was a sham.
    If you listen closely and if you position yourself downwind, you can hear a robotic voice announcing a countdown every fourteenth of the month. Then a clink, a metallic ping, sometimes a loud bang. Last year, a blaring alarm brought out a large group of plant operators in green hazmat suits. They disappeared quickly as they rounded the fake hedges lining the north side of the gray windowless building.
    As you help tend to your grandfather’s fields of lavender, your elders waste no time and take it upon themselves to lecture you. The elders tell of the uncoiling Great Beast made more robust by its noontime trashing while immersed in the temperature-controlled growth medium. The elders tell of what can happen in case the quarantine tank fails. They tell of the inevitability of mechanical wear and tear, of tensile stress limits, of an inattentive plant operator, of a redundant backup system malfunctioning at the most inopportune time.
    You tell your elders not to worry. You tell them what you have discovered regarding the electrified fence. The plant operators could be lying about a lot of other things, too, you say. I’ve been thinking a lot about the chemical plantthese days. There may be no quarantine tank, no Great Beast. Nothing in there but a bunch of guys protecting their interests by making it appear that they were keeping the world safe from the unkillable Great Beast. Maybe, we’ve been conned. Don’t you think it is better that way? Generations of men living safely right across the chemical plant designed to restrain and control the fabled millennial scourge—it sounds like a decent bargain, doesn’t it? There is nothing to fear. I also believe that it is best to act as if we are still afraid, to act as if we do not know the truth yet about the fence. Maybe, there is a bigger secret, a bigger lie .
    Do you remember what happened to the plant operators who orchestrated the Age of Semiconductors? Do you remember how callously they squandered resources in a futile attempt to produce wider sheets of graphene, because graphene is at its most usable when hammered into sheets, sheets with depth equal to the size of a carbon atom? Do you remember what happened when those plant operators tried to grow graphene in silver? They instructed us to prioritize the mining of silver ores and to leave our lavender fields to wilt. Now, there isn’t any silver left in the world. With the last of it, the plant operators synthesized twenty-eight sheets of graphene. Twenty-eight! I know I am not making any sense, and this business with the fence may not have anything to do with the past failures of the plant operators. But I believe that we should not take what they have to offer at face value. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, maybe it is us those plant operators