Station 9: Russia

Race Across Russia

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This was moments before the great flood. I thought that it was stupid to watch a human centipede barrel into the underground station. Even I knew the sea would pour down in a matter of time. We are irredeemable.

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I don't know how long it was when I came back to the station. It was very deep beneath the surface. There were marks of irreparable damage laid against the walls. Exploring Mother Nature's tantrum, I notice a dark room still filled with stagnant water. The barricades guard the broken mess while the blind lead the blind. Even darkness has its shadows.

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A nurse jumps me from behind and invites me to the pharmacy for a check-up. A nursery rhyme whispers at the entrance of the sheet door. Upon asking, I comply and take off my belt and the rest of my hard objects. She assists me and I only have to keep still. 

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Wait. Is this a dream? It has to be. Time is traveling. Look at how the days only operate part-time. The plots are playing hopscotch with each other. If I wait this out long enough, I can play forever. Anything to escape reality is worth chasing, even if dreams are all but a reflection of reality. I close my eyes and chant my wishes to never wake up. 

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There’s a person out there who is the intermediary holding the conscious and the subconscious together. There are two roads connecting them and he is driving a car along that road. It’s a thirty minute drive away, and one world apart. But the subconscious isn’t just a point. It is a town full of places that are not just possible, but probable. This person doesn’t realize however how many houses it actually has to visit during the nighttime, it’s a lot though. To do this, it gets a partner, myself, and we agree on where and what we want to see. But along this trip I was having too much fun, and I didn’t want to go back. In desperation, I tried to squeeze its hand but it didn’t squeeze my hand back. It threw me into the backseat, and I was forced back onto earth. 

When I woke up, I was somehow drenched in sweat as though I had come out of Laguna Lake. My room was the same as it was when I slept the night before(I think).  The faint light of dawn filters through the curtains as I lumber out of my bed. My dad sat on an egg-shaped chair and I could still see the numberless dust particles suspended around him. He sees me first and tells me welcome back. 

“What day is it?” 

“26th September 2198.” 

I was shocked. There was a surprising degree of normality in my father’s tone. He tells me not to worry, but I cry to him how am I supposed to press continue? They say he and Mom researched all the places and documentation to prepare me for my second coming. He was even glad I woke up at this time. 

I thought I was dumb when trying to learn Japanese with Tagalog. Trying to learn Russian in Japanese made me realize I am delusional. In three months, I relearned and redownloaded my engineering knowledge and polished my languages. For someone who hasn’t touched a gear in so long, I recalled almost everything. When I went to sleep, I brought the calendar with me to bed. I held on to it for dear life, fighting the laws of logic that told it to get moving. In exchange, the calendar protected my innocence. I’m still a twenty year old operating inside a twenty three year old carcass and a one year old brain. When the time finally came, the plane came knocking and I was off.  The fortunate thing was that there was a viral epidemic for the majority of the time I was asleep. The world is waking up just at the same time as me. I already met my distant uncle who supposedly promised me a trade job. Now is the rest week before the new year starts. 

As of now, I sit in the waiting room reading the silent letter from my father on my vision goggles. And yet, here in Vladivostok, the city of sounds, I can hear his flat but caring voice, begging me to show myself once more. One week is short but it’s enough. This is the first city I wanted to see. Besides being the closest major port to Manila and Tokyo, it is the only city founded on acoustic architecture. The buildings test the ideas of the next generation by crunching infinite simulations that dampen and amplify what a sound is and is to be. 

On top of me lies the platform and its tracks while I am directly below. A music cafe diffuses a vibrant and fresher noise across the waiting room where I’m seated. We are bisected by a passageway for commuters to pass below the station. The curved corners of the ceiling at the entrance points allow for more light to flow into the room.  I already ate and drank at the warehouse cafe just before, some pizza and an old Cuban. Guitar replicas hung on the wall next to plastered posters of once iconic rock bands. There’s a band performance in the evening so maybe I’ll come back later. Rock ‘n’ Roll might not solve my problems, but it lets me dance all over them. Why have a breakdown when you can breakdance? 

AL said he was stuck in traffic. I told him that I flew here. “Perhaps you should do that next time.” He wants me to believe he is stuck on the highway. It could be true, given the pitter-pattering from the sky. This is my forced friendship given to me by my father to make my acclimatization smoother. He heard of me before I arrived at the airport and his introduction was as seamless as though I had never gone on a three year holiday to dreamland. He made me believe I was like a brother and not the other.

As the shadow of a pillar crossed my foot, the glass doors slid apart, revealing a man stepping out of a noir film. He wore a long dark overcoat that pulled along as he entered my private space. I can’t see his face for it is hidden by the hat’s brim. The door closes back, locking the room in an acute silence until his low and smooth voice echoes a hello. He has my full attention. 

“Hi, what do you want?” I sound like a waiter. I might as well have brought out a notepad and tell him the soup of the day. 

“Would you like to play a casual game?” 

To pass the time, I thought okay sure. Drawing out my controllers, I thought he meant a virtual one but he grabs my arm lightly and slides the controller back into my pocket. Quietly, I watch him uncover a clear case of white tiles covered with flags.  I can recognize some of them as country and state flags. He lays out two of them on the seat in between us and begins telling me what to do. 

“These are country erasers. With each turn, you flick your erasers once. You win when your eraser lands completely on top of your opponent and it is eliminated.” Using a Pakistan and Indian eraser, he slips the edge of his fingernail below the Indian eraser, and lifts his finger, causing the eraser to flip onto the Pakistan eraser. The Indian eraser emanates a light blue illumination while the latter flashes red. 

“If you win, I’ll give ya fifty bitcoin.”

“And if you win?”

“Nothing. You can keep playing until you want.” 

“Four hundred Ethereum. How about that?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers. Do you want to play the game or not?”

I tried playing with myself first. It had a rubbery texture and was about the size of half my thumb. It’s a much more delicate game that involves being precise with the jump and movement. When I was ready, he offered me a tray to select any three erasers. Consumed by patriotism for my region, I selected Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. He picks Finland, Sweden, and Norway. 

There are times in life when the smallest of things frustrate you the most. Only after a few rounds did I realize luck is the mask that hides skill and strategy. Turn after turn, I lost my counterattacks. It’s impossible to hate the Scandanavians but it sure felt like I was about to go beyond my breaking point. He would always position multiple two-on-one attacks that systematically picked each eraser off. At the same time, each loss only made me want to replay more. If only Korea was a bit lighter, or if Japan was wider I could’ve infected the Viking’s blood. The problem was I was too scared of what would happen. My graceful motions would devolve into erratic frustrations that send Japan across the opposite ends of the cardboard arena, erupting a series of curses as he eliminated my countries one by one. 

Finally, after the perfect variation of force and angle, I managed to win a one versus one in the last round. I felt like a kid again as I hounded him to transfer over the cash. With his holographic phone, I felt a vibrating sensation in my right pants pocket. Money never falls from the sky, until it does. Maybe this is what it’s like to see cloud nine from below. 

As I was celebrating my win, I shared my number so that he could transfer the money over. A notification pops into my consciousness telling me the transaction was processed. Additionally, he sends a message through the same number with an infographic of a Race Across Russia. “There‘s more where this has come from.” “I have a seven-day race this Sunday from here to the other end of Russia. Transportation and everything will be funded. Three teams compete in a series of challenges to earn points to get train tickets. The winning team gets twelve million worth of any cryptocurrency. It can be dogs-that-boink coins for all I care. I just need two more people and I’m inviting you now.” 

This is the sound of a man who knows what he’s doing. And he already kept his end of the deal once which is a good sign. There's a way of magic in the way he says it. I can probably never return to the Philippines ever again. I am finished there. My father didn’t say it explicitly but it was implied. Yet at the same time, I'm afraid. What does someone do when they're thirsty but all they can drink is sea water? He could dance in the rain. The air is flavorful as well. The wind makes it even saltier. 

“If the race is several days, won’t that mean I’ll be gone for a whole week?” 

He gave me a weird look and said: "Did you know that eight hundred people die annually by falling off their bed?"

“Erm no.”

“Well now we both know something new!”

He has a point. I’ve ditched my past, and with it my loves, my hates, and my everything. I was born with a Filipino face and now I have a Japanese one. No one recognises me post-surgery bar my parents and AL. And now, I'm trying to find everything with nothing. This is my second life. Everybody gets a first day for everything. Now I am handed with two. 

Playing with him made me feel like a child again, running back to that long forgotten house uphill and the weathered toy box haphazardly arranged with all the toys of my childhood. Animals had yet to learn how to cook themselves and when model houses could have a globe attached as a roof. These are the moments that will retreat to the recesses of the mind but eagerly wait for their return to the heart.

As I finished reading the details, AL burst through the door and was apologizing for being late. He is carrying nothing but a bag and his car keys still. Meanwhile his jersey and track pants are still absorbing the sweat and rain that trickles down from his face. The timing couldn’t be any more perfect. Without missing a beat, I wrapped my arm around this carpenter and declared the final contestant for this Race Across Russia.

The following morning, with enough reluctance to not say no, we were back at the same station the day before, this time on the actual platform itself. The floor was designed such that each step lights up our tracks in different colors and rings a little note.  I tried repeating a series of eight steps and discovered an instrumental oozing below me. Looking across the platform, I see other people looking just as lost as me. It was a mix of mostly middle-aged men and women. It was magically easy to drag AL on a leash. Forgiveness is easier than seeking permission first, that is how we got here. 

Five minutes before the stated time, we saw the same man in the same outfit rising from the opposite entrance. He sees us first and points his eyes to the left. AL has been talking to me about another show and the minute details which I am not that interested in. He’s not wrong, but why dig your face into the dirt for the answers? Roping in the rest of the contestants, he offers us another woman in a beige shirt and white jeans. She looks like the kind to flood her social media with glorified photos of herself. Admittedly, I was mentally preparing to make this a two-man show with AL. 

Using the bench as a podium to step up, he welcomes us and introduces three decks of cards containing a series of challenges to earn coins. “You will draw a random card each time and do what it says lest you wanna veto. If you do veto, your team cannot do anything and will be stuck in the city for thirty minutes. These coins dictate how far you can travel using trains and only trains. You’ll start with a baseline to travel across Vladivostok to complete your first challenge. There are several key locations too that will guide you to St Petersburg.” Looking through one of the decks, he draws out a set of purple cards. “Additionally, you can use power-ups to curse and blockade your opposing teams which will slow them down with additional challenges and hurdles. All these points will be accounted for via the app I asked you all to download on your phones and minds. As promised, if you can reach the last point, twelve million dollars of cryptocurrency is yours.” 

He tells us to save his contact number as the circle and encourages a ten minute introduction first before the race starts as well as any queries, I look at AL and then I look at the woman and she looks back at us. She’s holding the deck of cards passed to us. I tell her hello and she exchanges back her name. Chloé. That’s Chloé with an é. The way she emphasized it made it seem she had to vomit it out of her mouth. I was about to ask where she was from when she turned around and asked the circle what the challenges were like. He promises that they are trivial, athletic, and passive in nature. No danger is involved. A distinctively Southeast Asian man(possibly from my homeland too) asked how this race was sponsored. He said it was his investment funds, which will be saved as a story for the endgame. This man had a map that laid out every possible response in advance. If something wasn’t on that map, he’d draw a new island where he could swim to and save himself. 

Mining more information about her, We find out she’s indeed in her mid-twenties and works at a diner around here. It makes sense, the only people free enough to embark on this challenge are the ones with no other option. There is a student on holiday but otherwise, the rest of us are different shades of the same human. 

Bags of clothing and travel items on our backs, as soon as the clock struck 8 am, he shouted begin and we flipped the uppermost card in the challenge deck. 

Go bowl a strike: 

(1)Find a bowling alley and play a ten frame game of bowling. 

(2) Each person who scores a strike receives 1000 coins.

(3) Budget: $50. 

A quick tap of my wrist and darting of my eyes into the search bar led me to find that the nearest center is only one stop away by medium-speed rail which we can afford. Letting the circle know of our first route, we declared our first challenge and he sent us the tickets straight away. Crossing to a different platform, we left the other two teams behind. 

I remember seeing a neighbor carrying his bowling bag and telling me about Cosmic Fusion Bowling Alley. In the back of my mind, I already knew this was the go-to place. We reached there in less than twenty minutes. Entering the center, we collected our shoes at the counter and passed beneath the massive iridescent portal entrance. In front of us awaits a forty foot lane bathed in celestial glows.  It felt like a giant leap into an adventure with the stars. It felt like a giant leap into an adventure through the stars. Me first, then Chloé, then AL as the anchor. I was the only one that knew how to curve the ball, both of them could only go straight. As soon as the one hour timer started ticking, I catapulted the ball on a curved trajectory, leaving behind colored trails of LED lights on the lane. As the lane transitioned from oil to dry, my ball pulled back towards the center, striking down eight pins at the first shot. As it was only strikes that count, I threw a dummy ball on the second throw and gave way to Chloé. Sometimes the pins had animations on them. They were scared and quivering in panic at the unstoppable force approaching them. By the halfway mark, I managed to get a strike while the others didn’t. I gave up my turn and let them bowl the rest, mentoring them where to focus the ball each time. On the seventh throw, Chloé sends the ball gliding down towards its destiny as the final pin drops. The screen above thunders as we celebrate ecstatically. My secret pride for her leaking through a high-five. Sport is its own language. We left AL to bowl the rest of the game. 

The way he bowls reminds me of a swan. When he releases the ball, he does so with a graceful finesse that would leave people with the impression he knows what he is doing, just save the eyes from the end result. There was a mix of threes, sixes, and eights, as well as a spare which proved he could get there but not quite yet. In the last frame, I asked him to change a lighter ball and roll it straight down the middle, and it worked.  I swiftly snapped a photo as proof and sent it to the circle via my iris. We swapped shoes, returned the ball, and were out of there instantly. That’s three thousand coins and enough to transfer to the next station at Khabarovsk, plus some spare coins to save for the next journey. The train is arriving in ten minutes so we need to rush for it. 

The app currently shows my blank profile picture, AL’s cat, and Chloé’s Christmas pose inching across the map. The rest are not even returning to Vladivostok station yet. Only when we were nearing the end of the ride to Khabarovsk did a notification appear in the right corner of my vision that they completed their challenge. One of them earned coins by basking on the beach of broken glass. The other managed to catch three cicadas in a cicada farm. Right now is our advantage. 

While I was researching Russia’s geography and where to relocate before surrendering to the nearest place from home,  I learned that this was the Little Africa of Russia. Immigrants from the continent with the largest working population came for their land of opportunity. There was nothing left down there. A quick way of winning this race is to hop onto the local rocketships. I could take a flight to the moon and back and still win. A rocket museum snores in the not-so-far distance of the train window. 

As the train doors opened, it did not feel like I was breathing in air, but a different life. I don’t feel local here, but neither does anyone else when they first come here. Just like how people mistakingly marginalize all Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, and Filipino cultures under an Asian label, people don’t fully realize the meaning of concepts like ubuntu: I am because we are. Unfortunately, I don’t have that when I’m here. Russia is and will always be a European country, not Eurasian. But I can find comfort here first with the Africans.

We shuffled the deck once more and drew the next card.  

Translate your phones: 

(1) Each person has to translate their phone into either Moroccan, French, or Arabic. 

(2) For the next 24 hours, you can only use your phone in that selected language. 

(3) You may immediately earn 4000 coins. 

This is really bad. Even with the downloadable language pack, it is merely a translation tool rather than practice revision. Parents and grandparents have been complaining about the ease of life and homogenization of culture since the International Linguistics Act was passed in 2060. 

Back in Japanese middle school, I vaguely take back one memory from my Japanese lessons. My teacher Miyazono sensei once told a story of a boy naively lured into a train by a female spirit. When it passed through the mountain, one went in but none went out. To be frank, my body was melting away from the lack of rest the night before. Seeing my lack of willpower to listen(or care), he asked me to write three reasons why I hated the Japanese language. This only made me despise it even more. I swore not to pick up a language again. The basic words remain inside of me, but they are a drop in a giant sea of words. Forming a sentence is traveling across a great passage. By giving up, I cut off my engine and let the currents take me wherever in the vast expanse. Sometimes I dip my hand and grab some words to see what I can make out of it.

Upon command, I ordered my phone to switch to Morrocan, while AL and Ralf selected French and Arabic respectively. Given our lead, I suggest that we draw another card to save up for the long trip to Irkutsk which is at least four thousand kilometers away. 

Eat spicy food: 

(1) Go to a local Indian restaurant and ask them for the hottest food they can serve you. 

(2) For each serving finished, you earn 1000 coins. 

(3) For each cup of water drunk, deduct 50 coins. 

(4) Budget: $150. 

I re-read it just to make sure it specified Indian and not African. There is a mall directly below the station which we can try. I’m hoping there is no need for a sense of direction, I had to leave it at the train station without a choice. Without looking at anyone,  I felt my eyes icing up as I looked at passers-by then the floor, and then at people’s shoes, hoping I wouldn’t have to approach them for help. Upon entering, the previous malls smelled of wood, wealth, and grandeur. Although my body self paralyzed itself upon the first touch with the colder air, the sweeter scent in this one is like inhaling comfort. Some malls have a signature scent. 

The directory showed several places with possible spicy food from their names like SizzleSphere, ChillByte, and Flame Fusion Diner but no sign they were authentically Indian. “We need to create a translation method among ourselves first,” Chloé asked. Although our keyboards were different, we agreed that a comma would mean yes, and a full stop meant a no. The number pad and punctuation symbols are also the same. For now, this would overcome the lexical nightmare until we get our English back. I’ll go to the first floor while the others will cover upstairs for any Indian traces among the said restaurants. 

About twenty minutes later, I was the first to message, then Chloé, then Al. Three strikes. As I make my way back to the station entrance, I don’t even know how to type ‘India’ amidst all the fancy scribbles on my keyboard. Nothing I say can make it understand what I want and how badly I need it. Once they arrived, they confirmed their lack of luck. 

“Should we go around asking for help?” AL injected. He looks at me and knows I hate what he is asking of me. He’s seen me struggle and psycho-analyze every minute detail. The silent frequency AL is emitting also indicates he is not interested in tuning into the idea but there’s little choice. 

“We’ll go as a group together. Each person can take turns.”

Giving into his idea, I started looking around for the friendliest goofball possible. It’s best not to risk a bad report from unwanted interactions. There was a dark-skinned bald man whom AL tried to approach, only for the guy to pretend not to see him and veer off to another part of the mall away from us. Another was walking his robotic dog and I tried asking. He didn’t know of any Indian restaurants either. We smiled and waved him goodbye. 

Now walking outside, there are a lot of malls from our point of view that we should call ourselves lucky. If the circle had set the question, he knew there must be something here. The thought of vetoing is a headache and it’s too late. Seeing a waiter standing by the entrance of a black and red restaurant, Chloé asks me to ask them.

 “They’re being paid to be nice to us. Just tell them Good afternoon, do you know of any Indian restaurants nearby?”

Without an excuse that the people look too intimidating, a woman is offering free samples of an unknown greenish drink. My hopes of waiting for the others completely vanished when AL tapped my shoulder, sparking a chain reaction in my legs to swim horizontally. 

When I finished asking her though, she started to yell why I have to eat spicy Indian food and not her African ones. I try to defend myself and say it’s for a challenge, only for her to say it’s people like me who are racist and can’t stand to appreciate local culture, instead taking comfort in mainstream food. I raise my voice but she screams even louder as people’s heads start gravitating towards the epicentre of us. 

Helplessly, she kept roasting me with burning scars with each word she fired, she was burning what felt like my leftover dignity. I wanted to go but I was sinking in a lava pit which is impossible to get out of. My bones began to shrink and hug against my body, asking for the pain to go away which it doesn’t.

When she finally said all that she had to say, the three of us gave in and ate a small lunch meal to appease her. I informed the circle that we would veto the card. The thirty minute time pill is tough to swallow but so are the spices. 

AL and Chloé were just as shaken as me. Using their eye power, they let me know in the restaurant still that everything was okay. It’s just a game. She was a lunatic driven to her breaking point as well. She probably has terrible business, you could tell from the food as well. But still, I’m thinking to myself what else could I have done? My sanity is a temple parading into a pandemonium as to what has just happened. For emotional consolation, we tried asking one more old woman for the location of a restaurant but she couldn’t speak English, and that was that. 

We managed to do a flurry of mini challenges including finding ten non-Russian flags and earned enough to reach Yakutsk. We booked a hotel and rested there for the night. Over the next morning and afternoon, we got a hole-in-one on a golf course and completed an adventure water park in Yakutsk. By the time the language curse wore off, we could make it to our original destination Irkutsk. In my backpack, there is a pair of headphones that I wore on the train. Melancholic music on trips like this made me believe the train would go on for infinity. 

Irkutsk was integrated with more forests and rivers that flowed into the buildings, making the landscape more naturalistic than Khabarovsk. There’s an artificial river dug connecting here to the Pacific Ocean as part of a terraforming plan to bring water in and reduce rising sea levels. Memories of that were quickly relegated to the corner of my mind however when we then had to find as many glow worms as possible. It wasn’t until I had to build a raft and cross between a lake that I really took a good look at the water. It looks different than ocean and pond waters. At the end of the day, we spent another two hours inside several natural disaster museums. 

The battle to reach St Petersburg is intensifying as well as the curses and artificial barriers began to send across the sky. They either prolonged our stay by waiting for the next station or detour us along slower regional lines than the express ones. Still, by the end of the third day, we were within arms reach of the leading trio. At the biggest station in Ural, we booked a cab along the glow-in-the-dark roads to the mountainous regions. We will reside in a wooden cabin resort near the top of a hill for the night. 

It’s a blessing that I have AL and Chloé to bash through the challenges. He taught us how to fish in the wild and she answered a lot of trivial questions. The navigation between different points was settled thanks to her as well.

Beneath the blankets, I could tell that the pandemic did indeed happen, and from its hands, it dropped a loneliness epidemic that was all but left behind even after the cure was found. I was first infected when talking to the woman back in the restaurant, and since then, my costume that was once covered in cloth was blown away, leaving behind a scarecrow of a man with no other expression than his one and only. My stick legs could only jump so far before the wind caught up to me. No one likes talking anymore. AL was born to be an anomaly but Chloé only talked when social constructs told her to do so. We can download anything into our brain, but we cannot import character from a virtual database. That’s the mistake I made when asking for help.

Excusing myself from the cabin, I go on a walk of solitude and let the war bunkers scattered across the mountain face absorb me beneath the middle of the night. Interesting how architecture is a pawn of war. Its devastation epitomizes the relationship between war, the natural environment, victims of war, and irreparable loss. All in the name of power. Taking a cig from my pocket, I tried to light it but was defeated by the breeze. It’s okay. I can just blow out the cool air and play pretend.

In front of me, there’s a bench in the shape of a stone pancake with flowers in its center. I sit down and ponder about these buildings and the people that inhabit them. I’m like one of these people too. Most environmental refugees retreated up north here when the tides evicted them. This was what was told in the natural disaster museum in Irkutsk along with the other global tragedies of 58’ and 77’. My family went to Japan first and now I’m here. 

When all is said and finished, at the end of this road, I know someone is waiting for me. If I am going to get there, I need to embrace not who I am but who I want to become. Holding onto the stars above, we can spin across the globe fast enough if we grip tightly enough. It is days like these when I look up at the 2 am night and it is the brightest thing in the world. It’s time to be patient and forgive myself. Maybe this is what I want. I want to speak with my mind but I only have my voice.