Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 1 Page 15

  He feels for the psychosomatic throbbing soreness on his head. He wishes he had woken early, like 06:00:00, but had not heard the mistoku’s ringing. That thing is broken again, although the technokeeper has promised it would last till the 33rd Quarter. He knows better than to trust a merchandise pirate—but given his memory status, Dr. Lamco knows he can do no better: how does one exactly teach old dogs new tricks? And not even an old dog, he quickly smiles.

  Already, the day feels heavy. He opens the window shades, then shields his eyes from the sunlight, which streams into the room like a threat. He flips the switch right below the console to make the bed, which mechanically wriggles, the puratex sheets and compillows straightening.

  “Good morning, Pepe,” a mechanical voice intones.

  “Morning, Monroy,” Dr. Lamco responds to the nickname, resigned to it finally. He sighs. “Monroy, make sure the technokeeper knows about the mistoku. I can’t be late again for any important meeting. And you know what today is, of course.”

  “Very good, Pepe. Headquarters tells me that the Parliament of Elders expects you within the hour.”

  “I know, I know,” he sighs again.

  He gets to the task of switching and pressing for housekeeping. In truth, he has never gotten over that ritual of making way for the day. It is the only complete thing in his life. There are no questions involved in its actions, only a certainty of foregone movements. How he wishes that is true for most of life! Finally there is nothing else to do, except go down to General Quarters.

  Dr. Lamco hesitates. There’s still time, he thinks.

  He presses fingers into belly andfeels the comfortable sensation of churning void. He wills it.He makes a mental note to take something—a pear octoblet—from the Refriger. He feels a slight disorientation—a whirring in his ears that soon disappears as his thoughts come clear, and quick. There is a little static in his head, but that is natural in 2064.

  Soon enough he can see the world clearly again outside his bay window: the sky is blue, the clouds fluffy white—just the way the Day was meant to be. It had been so ordered: the Nø355287H Meeting of the Elders had seen to that.

  The Minister of Pharmagriculture had insisted on rain during the Meet. It was broadcast three days ago through the ABS-CNN MonitorNet on the HoloVision, a stream of color and movement that materialized in the air, bringing him news, or illicit masturbatory porn.

  The news had shown Pharmagriculture Minister Jorge Rosales debating for precipitation to jumpstart the pharma-production of the new crop of emergency octoblets. But First Minister Oliver de Abad, quickly taking the Podium, wanted sun for his International Pageant of BioScience. Quite visibly, in the cramped chambers of Parliament, heads shook in disagreement.

  The HoloVision camera quickly drew into the debate, taking in the sight of the Minister Rosales standing to protest, punching his Ver-push in the middle of the First Minister’s speech. The Ver-screen behind Minister de Abad sprang to life, and Rosales crowed, “Grand Sir, there is famine in Cebuhol!”

  On screen, the two-island province—separated by a faint trace of sandbars only a mile long and gray as lead—looked hazy from above. Buildings and highways—dots which teemed like cancer cells—were spilling into Tañon Strait. There were gray dustclouds obscuring the high-resolution Heli-Cam, residues from the cataclysm of the Canlaon Eruption seven years ago. Only Talinis Island and Canlaon Island remained of what used to be Negros.

  As the camera swooped down to earth, a montage proved Minister Rosales’s pleading: they saw carbonans furtive in hunger, their faces grimy, with small bodies clad in Bagets 2050 ukay-ukay. Dilapidated buildings from the early 2000s bore down on them like threats. The final shot showed a long line of people. A sign read: “NOTICE FROM THE SOCIAL SERVICE MINITRY: Three rice octoblets for each family only. Jam, vanilla, and pork flavors available in limited supplies. First come, first served. People without cedula will not be entertained.” There was a sluggishness to the people—but perhaps it was the Heli-Cam’s digital cast.

  Then the Ver-screen flickered dead. The First Minister only smiled, well-poised in his coifed hair and Inno Sotto IV Season Four Suit. “We just signed the Contingency Action Resolution for the Immediate Appeasement of Cebuhol Destitute Carbonans a few hours ago,” he said. “Elder Tomita Osmeña seconded the Action. There will be food for Cebuhol to last the 31st Quarter.”

  Rosales quietly sat down to a scattering of applause.

  The First Minister punched his own Ver-push, and on the screen flickered the government’s double-helix logo. “But let’s talk about other important things,” the First Minister began.

  Hearing that on the HoloVision, Dr. Lamco had grumbled, “Who is it this time? Apolinario Mabini without polio?” He thought that at this time in history, they would have had enough of waking heroes. Even Afghanipakistan had ceased with their Bin Laden Project.

  The First Minister, on the HoloVision, only said two words, “Jose Rizal.” A snatch of the word “tomorrow” started Dr. Lamco’s heart sinking. He had quickly turned the HoloVision off.

  This was three days ago.

  Later, shortly before coming home from the Clonaid Laboratory where he was Project Coordinator for Specimen Testing (a grandiose name for genetic quack), he finally stumbled on the truth, his culture having gone through the accelerated process of tissue formation.

  He saw the Creature.

  He remembers how he had wished so hard to disappear.

  IT HAS LONG been acknowledged even early in the 21st century that true humanoid cloning would require taking a somatic cell, as opposed to a reproductive cell such as an egg or sperm cell, from a donor humanoid, and removing its nucleus. The DNA of the somatic cell is then transferred to an enucleated egg cell. This proved impossible for a long time—until only eight years ago—because somatic cells were specialized cells, and early cloning advocates, equipped only with rehashing the disastrous “Dolly Method,” always ran up constant dead ends, realizing that many of the genes involved in the procedure had subsequently been “turned off”—and nobody quite knew how to turn them back “on.” It took time and an abundance of exquisite technology, but Dr. Lamco found the button.

  And how he worked, sweated, fine-tuned. Bringing up, then slaying little monsters—grotesque creatures with mouths for eyes, or limbless torsos that moaned in pain. The process took time. The mandate was perfection.

  The rebirth of Rizal had to be perfect to answer the riddle well.

  The other night, in the slush of liquid simulating amniotic distillation, the seemingly perfect being had finally revealed itself, and not even the acceleration of biologic growth thwarted what he had longed to see for seven years. The black hair, dripping with slime, fell and stuck to familiar cheekbones. Stature: short. The blood registers: close enough to historical records. All to negate any chance of a past being unresurrected. This is Rizal, incarnated beyond God, bowing only to the slow perfections and manipulations of science.

  Dr. Lamco remembers sighing in relief, all tests finally revealing the perfection he has wrought. The creature had come out of the sac in the Clonaid chamber like a butterfly from a cocoon, dripping with amniotic fluid. It slid, and he caught it, cradled it, its baby-breathing coming close to his face as it turned to him.

  That was when he knew.

  Even with that secret, he remembers mostly only the Rizal creature’s eyes, brown and searching. There was a look of pleading to them. It had not done anything, only settled to a ready bed. Trembling, Dr. Lamco had laid it down and closed the chambers, only telling the staff it was time to break for the day.

  “What about the results, Doctor?” the young research assistant newly graduated from the Center asked.

  “There is always tomorrow,” Dr. Lamco waved him away.

  With the last of the technicians gone, he carefully finished the task himself, stored the necessary information into plastidiscs ready for presentation, closed the laboratory doors, went to his private mini-quarters to clean
se himself in the quirinth showers. The soothing steam invading skin and clothes was a sudden, wanted comfort.

  The eyes....

  “There was a reason for the overcoat, after all,” he murmured.

  When he got home to his main quarters, he made sure he scribbled the right memorandum to the Gender Ministry, and slept.

  Descending to his troubled dreams, he hazily thought of the first summons to the grand meeting with the Elders for initiating what was called “Project Waking.” How the news that day from the HoloVision was crowing with the latest bio-mathematical breakthrough involving what had been dubbed a “cultural anthropo-reincarnation.” In Eurussia, they had already done considerably well with a midget Mozart—but that had been a well-publicized disappointment: the cloned Mozart had no taste for music, not even for a few bars of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  They, too, missed with Ninoy Aquino, but the attempt was nevertheless considered a “successful failure.” The clones were all badly disfigured—one had three eyes and died within three hours, another had a heart outside his chest. But the Elders saw beyond that, knowing only, in the words of a colleague, “how to be more ambitious.”

  They wanted Jose Rizal.

  Gender Minister Justin Emeniano was quick to admit, leaning forward to Dr. Lamco, “This is what we want, to re-body the ultimate paragon of our malehood. It will be our crowning glory…”

  There was a stir. “But with all due respect, Grand Sir,” Dr. Lamco rushed to say, “we haven’t yet perfected the procedure. No one in the world has. You’ve received the latest reports from our team with regards the difficulties of creating the perfect clone. Our Aquino project has not been successful. We’ve produced only monsters….”

  “Because you are not trying hard enough,” Minister Emeniano said.

  Dr. Lamco fell silent.

  Around the darkened room, most of the Elders murmured in agreement, a sound as dark as the faux wood paneling that overwhelmed the penile-shaped room, which sank quickly into Dr. Lamco’s growing sense of dread.

  Then Minister de Abad said, “You will be given ample time. We have patience. We are Men after all—“

  “But I don’t have a specimen to work on. No biological artifacts to extract even dead cells. We know his bones in Luneta have long disappeared during the Great Explosion.”

  “We have tufts of his hair. He apparently cut off a few strands earlier, in jail, and hid them with that valedictory poem bundled in the lamp he smuggled to his…biological sibling.”

  “And what if we do get Rizal? Is his life not a danger to our Male Tradition?”

  “You talk, of course, of mythological creatures. Things you call sisters, wives, mothers. That is not your worry. What we must bear in mind now is the resurrection of a Male Paragon.”

  “But the technology—”

  “That would be your challenge,” Minister de Abad quickly cut in. “Of course, you have our full support, this you need not worry over.” He stood up. “And now, if you will kindly excuse me, I have other pressing matters. You can stay here with Minister Emeniano. I believe he has more to say?”

  Minister Emeniano nodded. And as that last import resounded, the First Minister exited, followed by the rest of the Council, gray men floating out the door. Dr. Lamco remained seated as silence—notwithstanding the familiar mechanical whir that pervaded their world—engulfed him. He looked up, and said, “I guess I have no real choice. This is an assignation.”

  “It is the project of a lifetime.”

  “But why all these? When we had stumbled upon the initial discovery of post-Dolly procedures, it was meant to hasten the manufacture of stem cells, something we need more.”

  “Ah, the perfect short-sightedness of scientists,” the Minister chuckled. “You have no idea, do you, of the possibilities of your discoveries? It goes beyond medicine to the realm of mythological—of course you cannot imagine that.”

  Dr. Lamco remained still.

  “Nevertheless, you will soon know why, I would hope so, when you are done,” the Minister shrugged, and turning to a bureau beneath the penile conference table, took out an electronic ledger marked with confidential Green.

  “What’s this?” Dr. Lamco asked.

  “This, Dr. Lamco, is what we need you to uncover about Jose Rizal…”

  “What of him?”

  “To find out, however you can, if he was a homosexual.”

  Dr. Lamco shivered. It was a word long suppressed by the Maintaining Infrastructures—an identity so vile and dripping with secrets and taboo. It felt like a shock hearing it so openly acknowledged, and by the Gender Minister himself!

  “By the look on your face, I see that I’ve shocked you,” the Minister said, laughing a bit.

  Dr. Lamco only nodded.

  “You should be. Such aberration remains a total abomination in Manly Society. That is why we need you to clone Rizal, and determine from his full genetic make-up if he has the trigger of a homosexual nature. We cannot accept such an icon. It weakens the symbolic Maleness we must foster for society to stay true in its path.”

  Dr. Lamco found his voice. “But we can determine that with simple gene culture! It won’t be a complete result as you might get from a full humanoid body, of course—but it is revealing enough.”

  The Minister shook his head. “We need the full procedure to determine the truth. No chance should be left to genetic metonymy.”

  “All right…but why the sudden interest?”

  The Minister pushed the power button of the ledger and it quickly sprang to life, the hologram dissolving into a compendium of data floating about, glowing orange and green in the air. With his right hand, the Minister brushes on a menu to his right, and a folder opens to reveal a monochrome picture of a man with a mustache. A short man, with the eternal overcoat. It was a familiar sight, yet also foreign, the pixels in the picture revealing the age of the relic.

  The Minister coughed. “This is the Rizal. Photographic evidence gleaned from old records. I suppose you are familiar with this picture? It is the picture we can best approve to suit our needs. But this folder is even more important.” The Minister pointed to another menu, which opened to a holographic text.

  “This is Rizal’s diary. The historian Guerrero points out an interesting erasure in the section called My Life Away from My Parents¾My Troubles, the second chapter.”

  The Minister indicated the faint trace of handwriting, something so ancient it bore the primitive device of ink. The details of the script, appropriate to the age, was faint, and the erasure made it much more so. Only a palimpsest remained. The Minister coughed again. “To date, historians believe the erased word might be in reference to a nickname by which the boy Rizal was teased …”

  “Who would tease a hero?”

  “Not quite yet. As was the case in the Old Period of Chaos, childhood was cruel. Rizal’s boy classmates in Biñan town called him names….”

  “I recall a bit of this from Historical Records.”

  “Yes, yes…we had to edit out a lot of material for the bio-course, enough to be accepted by the Maintaining Infrastructures.”

  “Is this why we cannot, until today, read…Noli Me Tangere and that other book?”

  “You would have been shocked by the blasphemous mentions of strange creatures and practices. The Elders thought it best to… But enough of questions for a bit, if you may. I wish to finish.”

  Dr. Lamco nodded.

  The Minister continued, “In 1949, the historians Alberto and Tomas Barretto, who published the Spanish edition of Memorias, decided—we think erroneously—to put ‘Calambeño’ as the original word, which, as you can see, had been crossed out so thoroughly in the manuscript. So thoroughly it denotes a kind of shame in Rizal’s part. And yet…” The Minister brushed another folder, and another text ran. “This is what the 21st century gender theorist J. Neil C. Garcia had written. I must warn you this is sensitive, confidential material… It cannot be shared with anybody, no
t even the closest associate in your research team.”

  Dr. Lamco again nodded. The Minister continued, “Garcia said the word ‘Calambeño’ did not seem to be, as an epithet, ‘sufficiently opprobrious to have called for an excision.’ If you look closely, the pattern of the three tall strokes are not consistent with what you can see as definitely two tall strokes of the original word. The question we had in mind, when we first thought of this project, rose because of this historical mystery. What could be so derogatory that it needed to be savagely erased by Rizal?”

  The Minister paused.

  “Could this word be the Tagalog ‘binabayi,’ which was a taunt meaning ‘sissy’?” he continued.

  Dr. Lamco found himself taking a deep breath.

  “If you notice,” the Minister looked at him, “when the very word is written down, you could very well see the two tall strokes spaced just right.” The Minister pushed the off-button, and the ledger’s parade of holo-graphics shrunk to their shell.

  “Binabayi, my dear Dr. Lamco…” he said. “You must tell us, was Rizal gay?”

  DR. DOMINGO LAMCO marches to the Hall of Man, opens the doors to where the Elders sit, all quiet and attentive. The First Minister sits at the head table, and Minister Emeniano towers over him at his rear, eager too for the report. Dr. Lamco takes his designated place near the mouth of the penile table, and gingerly inserts the plastidisks into the terminal.

  He begins, “Gentlemen, you’ll be glad to know that Rizal was not a homosexual.” The Council claps.

  Dr. Lamco nods, and continues, “All the genetic scans, holoid projections, and individual DNA mapping—made possible by examining a whole specimen seven years in the making—reveal this…” They clap some more.

  Dr. Lamco clicks the switch to the terminal, and he can vaguely imagine the whir of the plastidisks as they turn to reveal what is the final, unredeemed, catch.

  “This is your Rizal, gentlemen….” he breathes, voice suddenly falling.

  With the suddenness of thunder, the men fall silent, contemplating the small mounds that grow from what should have been Rizal’s fleshy plains of chest.