Free Age of Blight by Kristine Ong Muslim Page B

are afraid of? But it really does not matter at this point. I don’t care. The plant operators can run their chemical plant the way they see fit. Wehave our lavender fields, and they are beautiful, pristine. Nothing matters after that .
    Since you are the first to touch the chain-link fence long believed by many of your kind to deliver a fatal jolt, you see awe in your people’s eyes. The children, who are not yet allowed to make contact with the fragrant lavender flowers, have been bringing you offerings—their toys, tufts of grass, morsels from their rationed food, their black-and-white drawings of rainbows. You know that they have simply mistaken your recklessness for bravery, but you like the attention. You have dreamed of this moment. You have dreamed of being seen in a different light, to be deemed unique, to be considered a cut above the other generations of farmhands looking after your grandfather’s vibrant fields of lavender. So, you graciously accept all the offerings. You thank the children for their gifts. The inedible gifts you arrange like trophies on the plank that serves as the railing of your bunk bed.
    One time, an elder asks you why anyone would do that, why anyone would make up a story about the Great Beast. He points out that the ancestors know of the existence of the Great Beast accessible only through the drain pipe of the quarantine tank. There is no way , he says, no way that the ancestors will lie to us. They must have seen the Great Beast .
    They did not lie , you say. They were simply fooled. They were fooled just like all of us. It is easy to assume, for instance, that what looks metallic is made of metal. But what if it’s just a shiny stone bereft of its striations? What if it’s just a trick of light?
    Oh, how the elders propose many reasons for the failure of the electrified fence. Some say you touched it at the same time the plant operators cycled the generators, that you were lucky to be alive. Some argue the existence of a conspiracy. Some accuse you of lying, of trying to make a name for yourself. Some say the sham of an electrified fence that doesn’t electrocute does not mean that the Great Beast is not real. Only one resorts to blasphemy: that the ancestors may have been a gullible bunch, that the ancestors may have been easily swayed by the sheen of metal surfaces. But nobody is willing to verify. Nobody wants to touch the chain-link fence. Nobody dares to enter the premises of the chemical plant. Nobody dares to confront a plant operator.
    So, for years and years, you still cannot smell whatever comes out of the chemical plant and its rows of squat, windowless buildings. Right across the chemical plant, your world is replete with the scent of lavender. Because you and your people are safely ensconced in your part of the world, you do not care about anything else. And in your part of the world, you can see farmhands and a landscape teeming with purple flowers. You can see the sinewy bodies of working men cultivating the lavender. You can see children being trained to care for your grandfather’s fields of lavender. You can see the dogs taming their feral handlers, and sometimes they stop for a drink from the lagoon. You can see the rough beasts of summer languish among the trees, their horns silvery in the dwindling afternoon sunlight.From afar, the forest looms.
    Sometimes, an alarm blares inside one of the buildings in the chemical plant. And just like before, the sound brings out the plant operators in green hazmat suits. They disappear quickly, rounding the fake hedges lining the north side of the gray windowless building.

The First Ocean

    T heir unblinking eyes urged me on. They had so much faith in me that I found it difficult to disappoint them. It was impossible not to lie. There was nothing quite like it in the history of the planet,” I said. “The waves battered the shores during rough weather. Once the storm was over, the carapaces