2023-09-13: .the human impacT
- Cutscene: .the human impacT
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim
- Where: Makassar, Indonesia
- Date: 2023-09-13
- Summary: Yuliana's mourning the anniversary of Second Impact, too. (CW: Frank discussion of mass death)
This is a stealth operation, and unfortunately, those are best executed underwater. Da Xukong 0 skitters along the bottom of the coast, protected against the deep-pressure crush just as it creeps up the leg of space. Yuliana still remembers the patrol habits of the REA; it's trivial for her to tap in and listen for their characteristic radio chatter. She knows the euphemisms which corrupt officers use to indicate they've turned their backs, too.
Some smugglers slip through, and so does she. None the wiser. She's one of the REA's most wanted women, but if they don't see her, they can't shoot her. She promised Elisa she'd be careful. She's not looking for a fight, today.
She surfaces in an abandoned, half-drowned bay on South Sulawesi. It's going to be a hike from here to Makassar -- but she blends in with her sarong, blouse, and kerudung hijab, the last hanging down to cover her torso entirely. She walks all the way down those moonlit roads. To move down the city, to...
... Southwest Cemetery.
Much of this city still holds the habit of not cremating their dead -- though it's been a long time since it was framed as a religious issue, the habits of culture are difficult to break. The maintenance of their cemeteries, then, is deeply important; though the dead are rarely visited, they still must have a place to rest. It wouldn't do to keep them from their peace too long.
It means Yuliana has to walk through quite a few rows before she finds what she's looking for, all tucked away with a tree growing for shade. There's no need for shade at midnight, of course, but it's the principle of the thing. Unlike Yuliana, some people aren't sneaking around when they visit their homelands.
"Hey," she says, to empty space.
"Been a while."
She presses her fingers to a plaque -- an unfortunate entire wall of them. "Maimunah... I remember. The ocean took you. We never," her fingers tighten, clawing dust from the metal, "we never found your body. No one was in a hurry to look..."
"No one was too worried about it, huh? Zakaria." She clicks her tongue to her teeth, as she turns to what is, at least, a proper grave. "When kids started dropping from dysentery with all the water fouled... I still don't know why they could tolerate that in a civilised country. It didn't need to happen. Just, you thought you were a man already, and then..."
She sits herself down, leaning on the side of a gravestone, leaning back until her headscarf impacts the stone. "Mawar... it shouldn't have happened to you. I never could just say what my problem was, huh...? I sure was a terror, coming to your school like that... I still remembered Sydney, that's all. Thought... I was done with floods, after that." She closes her eyes, and grits her teeth. "Stupid of me." In the dark, she has as much acid for herself as anyone else.
"It's not like you never tried to help me to fit in, even if I was harsh. Indah, too... I heard what happened." Yuliana reaches out a hand, as if she could grasp a grave she still hasn't found. "It's not fair. You got through it, but... guess it was too heavy, right? That's why you went back to give the sea another shot. Guess I can't blame you. Every coastal city on Earth was a shithole for years after that..."
Her hand grasps, all a sudden, to a fist. "Second fucking Impact. Yeah. I remember." She breathes out, sharply, through her nose. "It's all so clinical in the textbooks, and one day that's all the kids are gonna think of it. The sea level rising... like it's no big deal. Like we weren't dying out here. Phrase it dry enough, you just think of the tide coming in... hahahaha, it doesn't sound violent at all." Her hand and her head sag, and all that's seen of her face for a moment is the glint of a too-sharp tooth as her mouth pulls back. Her grin is a painful grimace. "Hahahahaha..." It's funny, it's so funny, she'll choke on it.
"It's funny," Yuliana says, out loud, though she knows no ghost can hear her. She was trained for years not to verbalise her thoughts. Indulging in talking to herself is something of a novelty. Her hand comes to rest on her belly, where something has coiled there, under her hijab. "I'm sure NERV wouldn't welcome me, as I am now. They destroy monsters like me, after all. Even so... I can't hate them. I didn't sleep for months, even after we escaped to Zaftra... mama had to make sure we had a shower just so I'd be able to wash. There's no way I could suffer a bath, not after the second time. I couldn't stand raucousness, I just heard screaming... is that why I dropped out? I don't know. But..." She sighs, looking up, again. "That kind of human misery -- it crushes you. I've always been grateful it's not my problem. Maybe I am a coward, just as Zoltan says... I doubt I could stop those Angels. Because NERV keeps them in check, we don't have to deal with a Third Impact..."
Her legs tuck a little closer to her, and she curls her arms around them. "You know I'm living on another island now? And a smaller one, too. I know I said I'd never live so close to the sea again, but... you know, I met someone who could even destroy a flood to keep me safe. It's just that every time I get scared about it... I have to remind myself Elya would never let it happen. I feel like I have even more faith in her protection, always thinking of it like that..." And she says it so fondly.
"I wish you could see it," Yuliana says, her tone growing morose again. "Tirta... Adi... were you really going to get married when you grew up? I heard you snuck off together, and no one knew where you were when the floods hit..." By the time they found them, Tirta was a bloated corpse, Adi not far behind. Hundreds more fit that story. They did what they could for the survivors, with what field medicine they could muster. Yuliana understood little of the decisions they were making, young as she was. Even so: "I remember... seeing you in the tents." Her eyes shut, tightly, but she can't blot out the images. "All that water in your lungs... you could barely croak out help." Tolong, tolong, tolong he groaned, another body in a row a dozen strong, another body soon to die.
"I did finally get married," she says, her voice a shade choked. "Finally. Took me long enough to become a proper adult..."
She scrubs at her eyes, sniffling. "You know... sometimes I'm still angry at my ayah," her father, "the way it happened. I -- I understand now, of course. Now I'm grown. But it felt so -- so unfair, back then... everyone was dying around us, and, and ayah was a Major, couldn't he call the military to help us? Couldn't he save you, Bulan? I know there were military medics. They took care of me, too. But ayah said there was no saving you, he had to ration things, the military had other important things to do... wretched, isn't it? Of course, what they were doing was -- hahaha, what I was doing, once I joined up. Obviously. The military's dirty, always has been. All too occupied with sabotage, even while our people are dying like dogs."
Her smile is strained. "And then mama and I, we just left, as soon as ayah found us a transport to Zaftra... we left everyone to die out here. It took so long to find a transport with room for us, too... everyone needed to escape. It felt like there were no places to escape to... every day I heard mama talking about how countries were closing their borders, not accepting asylum. I heard some people even had to... go to space... God," she hiccoughs, and finds that she hasn't conquered her tears in the slightest. "How is that fair?"
Yuliana sometimes gets dangerously close to a realisation, but she's an absolute authority at not putting two and two together. It's probably one of her best qualities.
"Back then... I thought I knew what it was like to be overwhelmed, the way those tidal waves came from Australia to every neighbouring shore. But it was just a prelude. When Second Impact struck us... the whole world stopped. The whole world," Yuliana repeats, numb, pained. "I still can't believe... you're all dead. So many people... in the street, and not even buried..."
For a time, she curls into herself, and cries without any commentary at all. When she is done, she unfurls from herself. She lays a flower on too many graves. She leaves.
She will not be detected on her way out.