Category: Smoke (page 1 of 6)

The final scene of the holo depicts Moon’s troubled return to earth, a slow-moving, almost haunting montage of his metamorphosis from an astronaut into a late twenty-something Korean man catching the subway to Incheon. Nobody recognises him. His journey decelerates as he switches from subway to bus, and then to foot. Somehow, of course, we know he knows which way he’s going, though of course even the holo is lost in this montage maze of street scenes, metal wires and neon hangul. Zero finally emerges onto the almost-deserted seaside wharf at Muuido, that place he never did get to as a child, not even as a runaway. He sits at a small food stall and eats, watching the twinkles of airbus lights coming in to land on the eastern side of the island. Perhaps the ajumma actually recognises him but she is off-screen, the holo harbouring in on Zero’s almost imperceptible disappearance. As the credits roll we see him drinking soju and smoking. After a glance at his wristwath he makes a connection on his PCB. The display lights up, and a human face becomes visible there. It’s animated but I know it’s me. I can tell by the smile on your moon-bathed face, and the television look in your eyes.

In the feature holo a young engineer becomes the first Korean to land on the moon. The Aramis Drive is packed with pods, lasers carve advertising daemons in the crackling air and for once I’m grateful for the busyness, seeing the holo drive pumping like it should, a packed house to compensate for the emptiness back home. I hear the reclining chairs creak with anticipation. The actor playing the engineer looks a lot like you. Or maybe it is you. Over the course of ninety five real time minutes Zero Moon rises from his child prodigy beginnings to undergo a period of life on the road as a runaway teenager, before undergoing a kind of spiritual returning, in which he solves several longstanding astronomical problems, and thence onwards to fame: at the age of twenty one as Korea’s first spacewalker, and then triumphantly, assuming command of the International Space Station on behalf of the people of Korea, an ornamental PCB glowing on his immaculate silver space suit. In this context, the rest of the holo, concerning Moon’s arrival on the moon itself, seems almost an anti-climax: there are, of course, a large number of other moon bases already in existence, and Zero finds himself in a strange anti-world, kind of like the United Nations, on the moon.

I’m the writer in residence in an empty house you’ll never see. I’m sleeping in a small box, floating on a bed of sea noise. We will never visit the holo drive, though I have been there several times, posing as a motor sports enthusiast. The plastic caverns of the refreshments hall. I’m considering applying for some casual work shlocking giant plastic cups, sequestering fast food detritus, buffying benches while keeping an ear out for the muzac changes. Mindless but infinitely variable clone moments. The viewers glued inside their Aramis pods, tracking the crinkle of holo space, the city’s pollution vectors. I find the deserted pod lots peaceful, especially in the early morning, when it’s raining. We sometimes turn the lasers on, construct satellites and death stars in the vacant holo hall. It’s wireless moments like these you begin to feel closer. Live moments of a digital age recur and loop. Working somewhere just to be somewhere else. Working nights then emerging exhausted but with credit on another city moonscape morning, another neon feed.

Just as the last police barrier was being trundled off by truck you waltzed into the hotel via a kitchen door, one tall Korean sea monster with two giggling seaweed-clad hoju in tow. The reaction of the conference delegates was like two hundred dominoes going off in great spirals and cascades of laughter. Instead of astonished outrage, as I had expected, the plenary speaker and the magnate both burst into tears which later turned out to be laughter as well. You were clearly well-known to these people. High fives eventuated and you circled the room, dispensing little bits of OT wisdom. The cohort’s attention had not yet turned to your Australasian companions. Whose seaweed did begin to wilt. But who bravely endured a combined total of one thousand handshakes, hugs and back-slaps in return for unlimited champagne and a table out on the seaside balcony, where ice buckets had been provided for scotch drinkers and the sun began its long and languorous descent into a monstrous sea of its own. The dream interrupted when the dreamer was woken by the sound of a small alarm going off in the dark.

That’s when I realised you were some kind of environmental activist. It wasn’t until we were inside the lobby of the hotel however that I finally realised the ‘costume party’ we were crashing was in fact an international conference on ocean pollution. The conference, hosted by the local electronics magnate, had attracted over two hundred delegates. All of whom were now sipping silver champagne and bravely navigating the canapes, mingling in the refreshments area in the hotel lobby, and out on the wide balcony too. A heated intellectual air prevailed, caused by the day’s final plenary speaker, an expert on oil slicks from one of the Submerged Islands. Her presentation on undersea exploration and drilling had polarised opinion both within the cohort of the conference but also in the local media. The seemingly friendly Jeju-do police – sniffing a demonstration amidst the white noise of street vendor talk, the cross traffic of helium wireless and the swift removal of hand-pasted printouts from OT poles and overpasses – quickly moved in, cancelling basketball practice for a dozen off-duty dozers and preparing a riot shield wall outside the conference venue. No demonstrators arrived.