Ocean

One of my earliest memories was a dark, lonely night when my family was asleep upstairs. I had stayed up looking at the city lights below through our apartment window on the bottom floor. I had some deep thoughts about the future, and that was the first time I realized that my mother and father would not be here forever and that they were going to die someday, leaving me all alone. Even as a child, perhaps no older than four, I understood that all living things were going to die eventually, and that included my mother and father. I, too, would have to go when the time came. To stay happy, I must find friends in a sea of strangers to replace my family.

The next afternoon, I suffered through so much of that isolating sadness that I felt hollow inside and whatever I tried, I could not get rid of the feeling. My mother was vacuuming the carpet in the living room while I stayed on the couch. I was paralyzed and immersed in thought. I once told her, “Mommy, I don’t feel like myself.” I said this seriously, as if it was the most important thing in the world, but she just furrowed her brow, smiled a bit, continued vacuuming and shrugged it off, unaware of the great predicament I was in.

I don’t have too many memories after that. I had a great dream that changed my life, causing me to lose many of them. At the age of forty-four, many things get hazy in memory, and great childhood predicaments are not remembered, even though the feelings you felt during them stay with you forever.

#

Geopolis has trillions and trillions of people, and I am just one citizen. No one knows the exact number, but everyone feels the bodies of trillions when we shop in a grocery store as large as an entire Old Earth city, spend three hours to find a username that has not been used, see walls with overlapping graffiti of artist tags, find restaurant reservation schedules with the earliest slot in the next decade, or discover that every patch of grass in a park is dry from too many people walking on the same paths.

It covers all of Earth, even the oceans. 

With so many people you may think it is easy to make friends. I have wanted love ever since I discovered it in high school, but any woman I create a connection with moves on quickly because they have too many choices, and I have moved on from many women because there are too many quality options I see too. In the end, there is an inability of both sides to ever fully connect with one person.

The day my loneliness was the highest it had ever been, when I had given up on love, my coworker and best friend suggested an idea. He said to become a tutor to simulate what it would be like to have a child. From this, I created a long-term goal to adopt a child in the future. But to see how life with one would feel like, I decided to follow his suggestion and try that idea.

I applied to become a math tutor at a tutoring company. They asked me some questions and once they believed I had the knowledge to teach young children math, I made an account and entered my name: Maxwell Ken.

Two weeks later, I met Claudia Holly.

#

“Claudia is in Grade 2,” said Mrs. Holly. “She does not have any problems with learning math, but I want her to get ahead so she can excel in university and have more time for her friends and hobbies.”

Claudia was behind her and silent. I knew immediately she was a shy girl who feared strangers.

“Her father is an engineer,” continued Mrs. Holly. “He wants to get Claudia interested in math as early as possible. If she misses a single lesson in her class, she will fall behind and fail to learn the next. This is very important to me and my husband.”

“I see.”

“Her father works at Arcalane. His job needs him to travel. Sometimes it’s a transpacific maglev rail to the Korea district, sometimes it’s a transatlantic maglev rail to the South Africa district, and so on. Right now, he is working in the China district. It’s just me and Claudia at home, and her two sisters.”

“I understand. I work at Arcalane too. But my job doesn’t require me to travel.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. Who doesn’t work there these days?”

After we chuckled, she gently brought Claudia into the spotlight with her hand, in between us.

“Hey sweetie, why don’t you introduce yourself to the man?”

“Hi,” she said with a meek voice, her hands behind her back. “My name is Claudia.”

#

I spent the next year tutoring Claudia. I managed to get her through all her tasks without any problems, and we often had free time at the end of our sessions. She was as shy as I expected and did not talk unless she needed to. It was like she was a foreigner who didn’t know English.

One time, after finishing early once again, she sat in silence at the table as I gathered up the worksheets she completed. Tears began rolling down her face.

“Hey, kiddo,” I said, “what’s wrong?”

“I miss my daddy.”

It dawned on me that she was in one of those childhood predicaments. The type that held utmost importance to them under the surface. Recognizing this felt good.

“It’s OK. Sometimes he needs to go far away for work. He is busy making money so you can go to a good school when you grow up. I’m sure wherever he is, he loves you very much and thinks about you at every moment. He is working hard for you.”

“It’s not sometimes. He is always away.”

I did not know what to say to that.

“I don’t care to go to a good school. I just want my daddy. He told me he was going to teach me to play chess, but he hasn’t yet. Mister, sometimes I think he will never come back.” She continued to cry.

Her mother told me that she liked food, so I had an idea.

“Hey, kiddo. Do you like ice cream?”

She paused, then nodded her head slowly.

In the next hour, I took her to an ice cream store I go to after work sometimes, near my street. I often see parents bring their children there. I bought her an ice cream cone of her favourite flavour: cookies n’ cream. When I offered it to her, she looked at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful. But when she held it and took the first lick, she’d start to smile slowly.

We did that every time she felt sad at our tutoring sessions. She did not have many childhood predicaments after that.

#

At her mother’s request, I helped prepare Claudia’s raincoat and umbrella for her at the end of our sessions, so she was ready to go when her mother arrived.

It rained eternally in my district. I don’t know why, but I’ve theorized it’s because we lived close to where the ocean used to be. All the water is still under there, but the surface is covered in the megacity. The skyscrapers have foundations that reach the bottom of the sea floor. I always picture the fish swimming around the pillars from their heavens.

Claudia’s umbrella had a pattern of orange goldfish on it. She liked to spin it and say they were swimming. She always forgot it when she put on her raincoat and prepared to leave, so I always reminded her. Whenever the door of the tutoring place opens and reveals the endless downpour hammering the street, her mother’s car and its headlights waiting at the front, she puts on her boots, opens her umbrella, waves and says, “Bye, Mr. Ken!” and gets drenched in the rain as she bounds out the door.

This umbrella was left in my apartment on the last day I ever saw her. She had forgotten it when her father’s work caused her family to move. I considered returning it to her, but the adult in me put it in my closet and waited to call her tomorrow if they wanted it back. When I called the next day, her mother said she would buy her a new one. 

If I had run after her that night, she would still have it today, and it wouldn’t have gotten so old.

#

What I can remember from that year is that we grew attached. She wanted to go to an amusement park, but her mother was too busy to take her, so she begged if I could bring her instead, and her mother agreed. We had a fun day riding the tallest rides and adding more maple syrup to our funnel cakes than any parent would ever approve.

Another time, a boy at school was mean to her and broke her puzzle in class, so I bought her pizza and told her mother about it. Her mother made sure the boy never hurt her again, and she was thankful for that.

“I need help,” she said one day. “I want to wear different coloured socks to school. But Mommy won’t let me.”

“This is a big problem.”

“I know! What should we do, Mr. Ken?”

“I don’t think we should talk to her. You need to follow what she says before going to school, then switch one of your socks when you get to school.”

She gasped loudly. “Mr. Ken, that is so smart! This is why you are a math teacher!”

A day later, her mother figured out what we were up to. She sighed. But she liked that we were having fun.

Another day, she came to the session feeling down. We did two math problems before I knew she would not be in the mood to complete a third.

“Hey, kiddo. What’s wrong?”

She paused. “I don’t have many friends at school.”

Once more, I did not know what to say.

“What would you like to do with friends?” I began.

“There is a show about ponies I watch. We trade these toys from the show at school. But I have no one to talk about or trade toys with. I don’t think you can trade with me, Mr. Ken. I don’t think you would like watching this show or collecting these ponies.”

She was too sad to continue math, so we got ice cream instead and when she left, she was still in a wistful mood.

Something compelled me to spend the next two weeks watching pony cartoons and buying packs of ponies.

When I believed I was an official expert in ponies, I discussed them with her and showed her my impressive collection, up for trade. She was delighted.

#

The worst thing that ever happened was when I lost her in a mall.

I had to use the washroom and there was an open space outside the hallway entrance where I figured it would be fine to leave her temporarily. I told her to wait there, and that I would return soon. This was a mistake, and in retrospect, I know so much better now.

When I returned, the open space was quickly filled with people, and I spent a short while searching for her in the crowd. I did not panic because this was a scenario I never expected to be in, and because of that inexperience, I held no paranoia. I was sure she was somewhere in this crowd.

The crowd disappeared and I still couldn’t find her. Only then I realized that I had lost her in the flood of the world. When ten minutes passed, I started to panic. I asked a mall cop if she had seen her.

“Have you lost your child?” she asked.

“She’s not my child, but yes, I cannot find her. I told her to wait outside the washroom entrance over there.”

The cop asked me to describe her. Then she radioed this description to her colleagues.

“She could not have gone far. We will find her, don’t worry.”

In the moments between losing her and eventually finding her, I understood that this type of problem was the worst nightmare for a parent, and that when my coworker explained how this tutoring job could teach me how to love a child, this was included in the package. Our world was so big that every corner was filled with strangers, strangers with unrevealed motives that you must hope are beneficial to the safety of your non-strangers. I had lost her through a crowd, and it was this same crowd that was stopping me from finding her. This same crowd filled the streets outside, the trains on our tracks, the districts of Earth, and the farms of the Feeder Worlds that imported our food. Every face was a face I had never seen before, but one that I could speak to and form a connection with. But each connection held variable strengths and availabilities, and only a certain few could help me find Claudia.

People do not get lost anymore because they have their phones. But children did not have phones. So if she had gotten so severely lost that she accidentally took a rail to the Mexico district, which she could reach in about two hours, I would be the last one who knew her to have ever known her last location. It was strange and oddly terrifying, too, to think that if she got into a horrible accident, no one but a stranger would know where she was last. But they would not know her.

One time, I talked with an old man on a park bench--a stranger, of course--and he had an interesting idea. He was quite talkative, and he began to speculate to me that perhaps unknown to Geopolis citizens, there could be numerous planets out there that humanity has conquered that are just like Earth, all with trillions more people, each with their own Feeder Worlds, scattered across the galaxy or even the universe. If this were true, there would be so many people alive that individuality would cease to exist, identities would be compromised, there would be no more original thoughts or experiences, and each planet would have its own megastars--like our own, the Rivendell family, a single family which controls Geopolis’s pop culture. He said he already felt it when someone mistakenly sued him for plagiarism for an online article he wrote a few years ago when he had written it completely by himself. He had no idea this person even existed until this happened, and he did not know anything about who he was or where he lived, yet here he was in his life anyway.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I was getting attacked by everyone online,” he said, laughing. “All those unofficial copyright activists and young naïve people flaming me! It was quite the spectacle.”

“Did anyone know the truth?”

“With so many strangers who don’t know you, it’s impossible for you to tell them your story.”

He was referring to his earlier theory about numerous ecumenopolises.

“It’s a very interesting idea,” I said. “What would you do if it were true?”

“Well young man, I think you should be asking that question right now.”

#

We made progress when I called her mother.

The ringing of the call made me think of earlier, when I had decided that the world was full of people with possible connections of varying strengths and availability. Finding Claudia was dependent on this phone, which would only be an effective device if I knew her mother and she knew me, and it would only do its job if her mother picked it up, which was dependent on whether she was not working or taking a shower in this instant of time. In these few seconds, Claudia’s fate could be decided, by an invisible link across the streets of Geopolis connecting two devices for our two hearts.

This is what I thought in the seconds between each ring. Perhaps Geopolis had trillions of people, and we invented ways to circumvent that, but there was still no way to summon a person to answer a call when you needed them to.

“Hello?” she finally answered.

I explained the situation, and the cop beside me listened to our conversation. 

“Oh no. I think I may know where she went. I gave her some money to buy you a gift to say thanks for all the work you’ve done. I told her to get help from you to buy it. But I know her--she would have taken any opportunity to get it in secret so it would be a surprise. I warned her against it, but she didn’t listen. You need to check the toy store.”

The cop contacted her colleague near the toy store, and soon after, we found her. The colleague put her on the phone so she could talk to me.

“I was so scared, Mr. Ken.” She said this with shaky breaths, and I could tell she had been sobbing for an hour. “I’m so sorry! I was trying to buy you a gift, but then, but then, I couldn’t find the way back to the washroom. I was so scared.”

“I know. It’s okay, kiddo.”

This was when I learned that childhood predicaments did not always have to be negative.

“What gift were you going to buy me?” I asked when she calmed down.

“I was going to get you a pony. The limited edition one we talked about.”

Only later, I learned it was a going-away gift because I would never see her again.

#

When the abrupt news came that her family had to move, she was so distressed her mother said she cried for a day.

“She is not taking it well,” said Mrs. Holly.

“Why is she so upset?”

“She does not want to leave her life here and restart everything. She will miss you.”

“I see. She knows I’m the best math teacher she’ll ever find.”

When she laughed, I felt guilty making fun of a childhood predicament.

“She is very good at math now. Thanks for everything.”

“Will I see her again?”

“Unfortunately, we are leaving this weekend. This is her last session.”

“OK. I wish you and your family well. I hope she feels better.”

We said goodbye and she went outside, getting drenched in the rain.

#

The dream that changed my life came ten years later.

There was a woman with dark hair who lived next door to me in my apartment. I saw her often in the hallway because we ended work at the same time and got groceries before coming home, and we always smiled at each other with our grocery bags as we unlocked our doors. Despite seeing her constantly, she was a total stranger to me. I didn’t know her name. 

In time, admittedly to countless repetitions, I developed small feelings for her. As more time passed, these small feelings grew into larger feelings, and then they intoxicated me until I was drunk, until one day I could no longer deny I was in love with her. But still, we never spoke a word to each other. Yet, she appeared in my dream.

The special thing about my dream was that it lasted an entire lifetime.

I became Vance, a man who lived in the medieval era of Europe. It started from my birth as a peasant, to my adolescent training as a squire, to my adulthood as a knight protecting my king against our enemies, and finally to my death during a crusade. I encountered many people in my life: Olivia, my lover with the face of the woman next door; Darnell, my knight best friend with the face of my coworker at work; and Juniper, a little girl in our village who adored me that I brought exotic flowers to from my missions.

I knelt, clad in armour, and offered her a sea holly from a recent expedition. Her eyes were in awe. “It’s so exotic, Pa!”

Olivia and Darnell were beside me as I transferred it to her hands.

“Careful darling, that is a delicate flower,” said Olivia. “Oh, it’s already withering.”

“I don’t care if it’s withering, Ma. Pa brought it.”

So this is what it is like to have a child, I thought. Their world is different from ours.

“We need to go, Vance,” said Darnell. “The king calls us for this evening.”

I nodded. Then I stood up.

“Will you return, Pa?”

“I swear.”

I grabbed my wife’s hands, and she gave me a proud but sad look. I kissed her goodbye.

“If we clear the field in the south by noon tomorrow, we can set up to protect the village,” said Darnell.

#

I kept my promise. I spilled blood on grass, dirt, mud, and snow. But I always returned to Juniper. Missions were rare, and I spent most of my days with my family at home. Olivia cooked, and I taught Juniper how to play chess, a game a monk at a monastery taught me how to play. She learned fast, and soon she always beat me.

Our world was small. The village we lived in did not have that many people, and everyone knew each other in one way or another. I would send Juniper to get bread from the baker’s son, whose mother was part of a group of ladies Olivia chatted with about the wars with neighbouring kingdoms, wars which needed the skills of our local blacksmith, who was the man who produced my weapons. This interconnectedness was cohesive and felt irreplaceable, as if an alternate way of life was inconceivable. There was no other world but ours, and we had no business with the next kingdom over or the affairs of their villages, other than the trade we conducted, which was impersonal and could be done with strangers. Faces we have never seen before.

Even so, in this small world, if Juniper was kidnapped by bandits and thrown into a caravan, I could live a hundred years without ever finding out where she went. Our world was small, but the world was still big.

But none of this happened. Our days were filled with peace and bliss until the final crusade that would end my life.

I shared a love with Olivia so strongly that she pleaded I did not go. I had never felt something like that before. I did love her enough to stay, but my life purpose of serving my king and faith overpowered all else, and though our connection was strong, there was nothing stronger than a man’s conviction in a power greater than himself. This conviction was ultimate. I did not know the cure to the woes of life, but this conviction helped me suffer them less, and people were surely an ingredient.

We faced many casualties on the road eastward. Tides of the sea and war wavered our conviction, testing the beliefs of our purpose. It bent and shaped who we were to our loved ones and shattered or strengthened these connections, not in the same room but over miles of dirt and soil through sun and rain. We saw the faces of many strangers and tasted their blood. 

On one battlefield, I was fatally wounded and Darnell fought on without me. He shouted words of encouragement, but I knew I was destined for death. Despite spending the last moments of my life with faces I did not know, I died a content man. I had no phone to call Olivia or Juniper, but I understood the non-physical connections I had with them that did not wane over time or space. With this knowledge, I died on a foreign ground satisfied with the life I lived, the purpose I served, the wife I married, and the daughter we raised. It was exhilarating.

When I woke up, that hollow feeling I felt in childhood returned, replacing all traces of that exhilaration like a person blowing on a flame that had always been there, igniting an old inferno. I had no deep happiness in life as Maxwell Ken, and no strong family like that of the identity of Vance. My alarm would go off soon, and the appearance of its red digits shocked me into remembering my life as Maxwell Ken. I had not been him for so long. It took a slow, dreadful morning to remember I had to brush my teeth and go to work soon.

The dream was so powerful that the doctor told me I had permanent but mild amnesia for the rest of my life. He could not find the cause, as all tests implied that I was perfectly healthy. Well, this was the natural state of adulthood, I thought. There was no issue here. I believed it to be an unwillingness to remember. Everyone goes through this. This is why we do not have many memories of our childhoods.

In the following weeks, I made mistakes causing me to become alienated from everyone in my life. I no longer smiled at the lady next door in the hallway, which broke her heart, destroying the little connection we had. I no longer chatted with my coworker at work, destroying our friendship. I was berated by my boss and came close to getting fired. Most of all, I forgot who Claudia was.

I stayed in this state of amnesia for a long time. One day, a woman called me and claimed to be my mother, complaining that I didn’t call her on Christmas. Believing this to be a scam, I played along and said, “I’m sorry Mom, I’ve just been busy with work.” I was about to hang up until the woman told me the weather was going to get worse in the upcoming week, and that I should find a good umbrella to complement my raincoat. Parents, too, always have strange problems, like children.

I decided to find out if I owned an umbrella. In a district with eternal rain, I always preferred raincoats because they were less hassle. After a few minutes of searching, I found a goldfish-patterned umbrella in a corner of my closet. I discovered that if I spun it, the fish looked like they were swimming. But since it was rusty and too small, I could not use it. I was going to throw it in the trash, but something about my discovery stopped me and changed my mind.

I ended up bringing it with me whenever I moved homes.

#

I am now 108 years old. Today is the day I learned why I still have the umbrella.

On this rainy day in my home, an online stranger emailed me about a search which had led him to me. To explain everything, he sent me a post on the internet fifty years ago from a woman named Claudia Suzuki. I put on my glasses and squinted at the words on the computer:

Whoever is listening,

I know it’s a slim chance, but on that slim chance, I’m asking all of you, the followers of my blog, to help me with this task.

I once knew a man in my childhood. His name was Maxwell Ken, and I called him Mr. Ken. He was my math tutor. I was good at math, but I hated it so much as a kid. The reason was my father; he was an engineer. He worked endlessly and I never saw much of him in those days of growing up. Doing math only made me think of him. He was the one who taught me how to add and subtract in the first place, after all. But in the end, it was Mr. Ken who taught me to like math.

Because I was a child, I don’t remember many details of Mr. Ken. What I do remember was that he was the kindest and funniest man I had ever known. I had been feeling terrible in those days, but when he bought me food I always felt better. He was very thoughtful. He was the kind of man who did not show much emotion but still showed it in his way.

One time, as we walked through a grocery store to get some snacks, Mr. Ken discovered that my favourite food was this particular brand of instant ramen. The next tutoring session, he bought me a whole crate of it. It was so large, it almost didn’t fit through the door, and he struggled to carry it. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said. It was our secret, and thinking about it, and how silly he looked carrying it through the door, always made me laugh. We slowly finished it over the rest of our days together.

Mr. Ken was my math tutor. But he was also my best friend when I felt alone in those days. I looked forward to our sessions more than school. So, when I learned that my family had to move to the Japan district permanently because of my father’s work, my heart broke. I knew it was likely that I would never see Mr. Ken again.

I haven’t talked to that man in a long time.

But I didn’t believe I would never see him again. The world is big, yes, but we have the internet. At least, that is what my naïve young mind thought. I never completed my quest because the man moved from his old apartment. The number we used to call him no longer worked. Social media was hopeless as there were millions of Maxwell Ken profiles, more than enough for a lifetime of clicking, and because of how large, chaotic, and overwhelming Geopolis is with its trillions and trillions of inhabitants, finding an old childhood friend was impossible. It was like releasing your pet fish into the ocean, and then trying to find it years later.

I have been on a personal quest to find this man for decades. It is a quest I tell no one about, and it plays in the background of my life. I thought all was lost until I created this blog. Suddenly, countless people were on my side on various things and opinions, even if vaguely. Now I have a tool to really help my cause, and it requires the help of all of you. If there is anything you know about this story, this man, his name, the location of his apartment and the ice cream shop we went to, or someone who would know any of these things, please help me and let me know.

How has the world gotten so big that most of the faces we see every day are those of strangers, with these strangers also strangers to each other? I know most of you only through digital words, yet in a way, I feel connected. You will know more about me and my story if you read this, and we will still be strangers by knowledge, but no longer strangers by heart.

I want to end this by saying that I am hopeful I will eventually see him again one day, even amongst the bustling streets of Geopolis, where every woman and man in the crowded city squares is trying to make their own life. But, although it breaks my heart, I must also come to terms with the fact that I may never see him again, and that there is a sea of strangers’ faces I will see first before the face of one I know.

There is one last thing you should know if you decide to help me find this man. He may not know me as Claudia Suzuki, but as Juniper instead.

I reached the end of the post, stunned. I could not bear to remember for it was too painful.

So I stood up and went to cook dinner.

After dinner, I called my adopted son and told him about the post, asking him to help me find the address of the blogger.

“So we’re going there tomorrow? Are you sure you don’t want me to call her first?”

“This is a childhood predicament. Only I know how to solve it.”

He did not understand what I meant, but he said he would come to my apartment in the morning. I found the goldfish-patterned umbrella in my closet, preparing it for return. It was rusty beyond recognition, but daughters did not care if you brought them withered flowers.

When tomorrow came, we began the long maglev rail ride to the Japan district.

###