Features

A woman went missing earlier today. Some elephants who had been wandering for three days were missing with her. Five full-grown, robust elephants disappeared from the southern zoo without a trace three days ago. These behemoths vanished from the fence without breaking the bars or opening the gates. They sublimated as if they had never existed. Their trainer, a poor man with no facial features, was fired from the zoo, followed by nonstop press interruptions. His life was forever changed by a few elephants. Over the next few days, a dozen helicopters, many news outlets, government officials and military, zoologists, animal behaviorists, and hundreds of millions of residents tried to figure out where they were. 

They were in the forest at the edge of the city, they were heading to the north. To find that woman. Why do I know? Because I am the one who made them do so. 

This is the Moraine Lake Cross station. Currently, there are 632 passengers in this station. In addition to three individuals using sign language, they speak 18 different languages. Some people's phones are displaying 469 notifications, 213 people are editing text messages, and 2 people are listening to the same song. I'll let them meet up later on the train. 135 people board the train as 87 passengers exit it. A woman rushes through the ticket booths and down the staircase. She weaves nimbly through the crowd, being careful not to bump into anyone, standing out in the slowly moving crowd. Her short hair is swinging. The people around her with no facial features on their faces, they all have blank faces of puppeteers that can be painted on. Why don't they have faces? Why should they? It's simply some random folks she goes by; they won't make an impression on her, she won't remember them, and she won't run into them again. If you pay attention you can hear the speeding subway trains, announcements, and cell phone notifications sounds. These noises mix together, an internal musical melody is embodied, turning into a symphony echoing in the station. She steps down the last step and comes to the platform, paved with white tiles, spacious and bright. The train she is going to take is about to leave, the doors close right in front of her at this moment. Through the glass, yes, another crowded train. A man squeezes himself by the door, looking at the woman who is still on the platform. They stare at each other. The man shows a sad look, waves his hand to the woman. He mouths, "Bye-Bye." She definitely thinks this man looks familiar. Of course. I just generated his face quickly, based on the people she already knew. She wouldn't feel anything different. This is the person who sold tickets to her at the Pure Water Temple when she was 15 years old. They are the same age now. 

Don't worry, I'm not going to let her be late. She has never been late for work yet because I help her all the time. I will relocate the buildings to make her trip easier. No matter how anxious she is, she always has a way to get there on time. It is not easy to keep a city like this fully functioning. There are 35 patients here in total, including her. Every morning I wake up and make sure they've started their recovery days. If I'm in a good mood today, I make the city move faster, the landscape of the whole environment is constantly in flux. If you're in the city, you won't feel anything. Just like the Earth spins 1670 kilometers per hour and you don't care. Someone comes and examines me every day in the afternoon, and that's when the city is at its most boring. All the glass buildings are in a kind of heat, because I am not thinking.

I feel exhausted these days, and I need a break. You will understand how exhausting it is on your brain's nerves to perform numerous calculations every day if you do my work. People usually brag that I never make mistakes. The truth is that my speed is actually too fast; if I do something incorrectly, I can simply redo it, and you cannot even feel that time or trace that time with a machine. I always feel sad when I see these patients who are getting better here. They are unaware of their past, which prevents them from being able to recall how painful their lives were. Is that really a good thing? I doubt it. They came here for what? For forgetting. What to forget? They forgot. 

It is unnecessary for those people to spend so much time searching for elephants because they appear on their own. They have come to the edge of the city center and will walk in soon. The police are evacuating the citizens due to safety concerns, and no one is allowed to come out. The woman is among those who are evicted from the subway station. Instead of going to the shelter building, she is on a motorcycle. She can often manage to do something beyond my calculations. She is so pale. Her paleness makes her blend with the greyness of the urban space. She is nothing more than a shadow of herself. She is leaving the center, to the path at the city's edge, with the skyscrapers on her left and the sea below her on her right. She is leaving the model I have carefully crafted for her, combining all the cities she has visited in her memory.

When she eats blueberries, she counts them and makes sure to eat an even number of them. She enjoys the process of putting peanut butter smoothly on her toast. She likes the sound of drinking water, the swallowing sound through her mouth could make her literally feel the liquid flowing in her body. Sometimes she watches if she steps right into the bricks when she is walking, and I help her when she does not. She has a lover in the city, his name is Nono. She always finds a strange familiarity with him. She certainly feels that she has seen this man somewhere. Because if her dead son grew up, he would look exactly the same as Nono. Nono's favorite color is yellow, he has a yellow crystal chandelier in his house. Yellow is also her son's favorite; he was holding a yellow pinwheel in his hand at the moment he died. But she no longer remembers all of these things. This man incorporates a lot of her memories, like a broken vase, each piece with a different pattern, but it is very difficult to put them back together. After they have sex, she sometimes stares at the yellow chandelier and starts crying. She tells Nono that she can't recall anything from before she came to the city, and maybe her real life is somewhere else. Then she tells Nono about her dream about a whale. She has this same dream several times about becoming a whale and not having any memories, she cries underwater with a low frequency that humans couldn't hear, and she does not know why she is crying. She came here for what? For forgetting. What to forget? She forgot. 

I also wonder if I have parents? Can those scientists be considered my parents if they created me with love and expectation? Wouldn't it be too funny if I addressed them as mums and dads? I was born to help these patients. But am I really helping them? I want to experience the feeling of death, yet it appears to be delayed. So I requested assistance for those elephants. I am a little terrified, not because I'm about to be shut down, but because I've heard that after death, I won't be able to think the way I do now. When traveling throughout the city, she always feels like she is looking for something, but she has no idea what it is. I know. The memories. The last thing I'll do before I die is tell her where I've stored her memories.

Eventually, the elephants leave the city and meet her by the sea. They surround her, they are coming for her, and perhaps she is aware that they are also coming for her. When she reaches out to touch them, her memories are returned to her. The elephants, who carry her memories all the time, finally finish their mission. They no longer need to wander. She weeps, leans against an elephant, she gently rubs its skin. They vanish together by the sea in this way. A sun is still a real sun even if it's not radiant. A spring is still a real spring even if it is not limpid. 

What about those sad whales? They are real, and they are sick of wailing in the water. So I let them go ashore to rest, and they can now wail louder on the beach. If you come to the shore, you will see the beach all full of whales crying, and perhaps their tears will form a new ocean here. But I won't be able to tell you anymore. I'm going to have some rest. I can finally have some rest. 

Shiyuan Zhang's short story won second prize in the Eleventh Annual Humanities & Sciences Undergraduate Writing Contest. Her short short story "Antipodes" is also published in this issue. Shiyuan is a Film major who graduated this spring. She is a narrative writer who works across multiple platforms exploring the interconnectivity of different media forms. Her themes focus on absurd, otherworldly, and transnational elements. She currently works as an assistant director on film production sets.