Pill Expanda

By Kun Bi and Frances Lu

“It’s two dollars fifty-six now.” Grandma Wong flickered her eyes over the meter, muttering to herself. “I miss you so much, Alan, my son.”

Located in this remote mountain area, the village was like a lonely island in the middle of the sea. However, even in such inaccessible region, agriculture was no longer the major means of living during the invasion of industrialization. Alan Wong, the only son of the family, like most of the younger generation in the village, moved to the city to earn a better life. However, the big city was too expensive for Grandma Wong to live in. Staying at home alone, she felt her thoughts of her son to be the only crowded part in her peaceful life. She could not remember how long she had been isolated for. Time flies when the family is reunited, while days became longer and longer when she was alone. “It has been 235 days since Alan’s was last here” she told the calendar.

Grandma Wong’s home is a small wooden hut and nobody knew the exact time of construction. The last renovation was done by X factory two years ago — they concealed leaks in the window and installed a set of strange device on the top of the roof. Grandma Wong merely knew the machine was used for internal gas collection, but the curiosity was no longer important since it was the only income for this poor family. Looking around the tiny indoor space, a bed, a cooking stove, a small square table and an old wooden cupboard, all the furniture was set up to meet basic daily requirements. Although nothing had altered for decades, Grandma Wong felt the space had started expanding since last renovation. “Maybe it’s only because of my increasing loneliness.” She felt the ten-square meter room was filled by emptiness and the space seemed to grow as time went by. The cupboard became bigger and bigger — it took her a while these days to figure out where things located. The door rose to an unreachable scale and became farther and farther from the bed. It could be even worse on rainy days; the gloomy weather catalyzed the emptiness and blew up such perceptions to be thousands of times stronger. Fortunately, the considerable growth of the gas meter was able to draw a few crumbs of comfort to the old woman.

“Two dollars fifty-seven.” The airbag was inflated again.

All the gases would be collected by X factory through an underground pipe network. According to the locals the factory was huge, the cloud-like smoke curling up from chimneys covered half of the sky. People said that all the collected gases from undeveloped regions were processed into pills and sold to city dwellers. That was true. X factory did exist. Remarkable urbanization in the country had broken the balance between urban and rural areas. Overpopulation had squeezed the city and made the struggle for survival even fiercer. People working in tiny cubical offices with machinery stream-lining operations usually suffered “urban overwhelming syndrome (UOS)”, which is a mixture of depression, anxiety and claustrophobia. Pill Expanda from X factory, was specifically made to combat it. The concept was to create balance. Isolation had enlarged the sensitivity to time and space of old people in countryside so they could perceive slower time and farther distance. Such consciousness had released the element of “Exgyon” in their breath. The lonelier people felt, the higher percentage the substance would be. After processing the collected gases, “Exgyon” could be purified and extracted for medical pills. Once people with UOS had the pill, their symptom would be relieved significantly: the space expanded to an adequate condition and time was no longer so short. X factory had made huge profit from “Expanda” by invading remote villages with gas collection machines and paying old people little money. The rumor also said that the factory had secretly juggled during every device installation to obtain high purity Exgyon.

Grandma Wong’s son, Alan, like most of his colleagues working in the internet company, was an UOS patient and an Expanda addict. Under harsh competition and working pressure, his front-line daily life had squeezed his activity scope to its ultimate limitations. Generally in big cities living areas were always proportional to working areas. For migrant workers like Alan Wong, life was not easy. In the cubical office he was buried by screens and thousands of documents, while in the capsule apartment a single bed was the only thing that he could afford to make himself comfortable. Sometimes he felt breathless in such congestion. He dreamed of himself becoming a tiny ant, meandering along the crowded streets with skyscrapers falling down from above. It was then he knew he was caught by UOS and Expanda was the only solution. Although the price was reasonable, the pill still resulted in a strong financial demand as a daily treatment. Every month, his meager salary was split in to several parts. “$200 food, $250 rent, $100 transportation, $40 pill, $80 send to mom, $120 save in bank….” He wrote. The pill did work on him effectively. Sometimes he felt more energetic and positive than ever before, so he spent the whole night in the office to earn more overtime bonus. The date for going back home had been rescheduled again and again, and finally became a part of the indefinite future.

One night after taking a pill, he had a strange dream. He dreamt about the small village where he had lived, which was now filled with breath of his mom. Everything was so peaceful and like an image cast from his childhood: farmers were busy in green fields; fisherman worked by the water, the calm river glistened in the sunlight with the background of foggy mountains. Suddenly, the sunshine disappeared. Numerous mechanical airbags dropped from the sky, covering the entire village. He saw his mother’s eyes. He smelt her breath, with cold and sharp despair, burying deep into his heart like a wicked knife. Then he was pulled by another force and started flying, his body torn into thousands parts during the high speed voyage. He felt oblivious to pain but breathless…

“Ring Ring Ring Ring Ring…” It was the alarm.

He silenced the alarm and looked up the grey sky of the city. “It is time to go to work.”

#fairytales2016 #architecture #illustration #fiction