Saving the Orangutans
The Hawker Centres of Atlantis
By Jie Venus Cohen
I was ten years old when Sumatra disappeared.
The scientists put out a statement only five days ahead of the sinking. It started with the orangutans. Every orangutan in Sumatra climbed the tallest tree that they could find, shuffling their entire communities to the sky, and refused to look down. They ate what they could find in their new arboreal home, and then grew anxious and hungry as the fruits and vegetation became sparse. When conservationists attempted to coax them down, they reacted with anxious violence, climbing higher, and began to eat the frogs and insects that also ascended into the trees.
One day later, small rodents hollowed out holes in the highest branches, opportunistically licking up ants and sap. Ground-dwelling mammals headed for higher hills, and coastal fish fled to deeper waters. Fishermen noticed this before the scientists did, bringing their discoveries back to land with uneasy eyes.
The waves swelled and the wind blew through the forest on the day of the sinking. My mother clutched my hand and dragged me through the crowded Kualanamu International Airport. As we drove through the rural villages to get there, I saw large, fuzzy orange forms huddled in the treetops like pineapples or coconuts, singing or screaming, and swaying in the rough breeze.
The flight to auntie’s home in Singapore was packed and hot, the other passengers looking with horror at our island as it heaved with the impact of the initial splinter. We saw the sea break Sumatra in two from the sky. We saw the trees and the roads falling into the blue below, as we floated up into the blue above. I ate salted duck egg potato chips and refused to picture my big, orange friends as they scrambled for safety.
Two days later, both parts of Sumatra shuddered with great force and sank beneath the ocean.
—
The world did not frenzy until it ran out of Sumatran coffee beans.
Small, independent shops began to go through their reserves of the dark, smokey beans, and then the famous coffee chains used up the rest of their own. Sumatran coffee first inflated in price, then became a commodity of the ultra-rich only, then there was none left on earth. The largest purveyors of Sumatran coffee beans began to post alarming infographics on social media about the rapidly growing threats of climate change. How many more islands must we lose before real change is made, they asked.
The general public reacted with fervor, sharing the posts, curating protests and demonstrations, rallying the government for more immediate action. When Zanzibar’s mainland disappeared, this had not happened. There was a brief outcry, a small mutual aid fund forming to support the displaced citizens, and then radio silence for years.
Now, everyone is worried about coffee, and Zanzibar goes on unmentioned.
—
The scientists could not tell us which island would be next, but I knew it would be mine.
I felt it in my feet as I walked to the MRT in the morning, the subtle shifting of the ground. I became seasick on the hot tar. I felt the humidity creep in around me, more oppressive than January air ought to be. I rode the bus to the zoo and stared at the gibbons as they climbed to the tops of the trees. My fingers stretched and closed up again, longing to join them.
When I told my mother that Singapore was going to sink, she agreed with me, but did not seem worried. She told me to go to school. She told me to call my father in America, and make arrangements to move in with him. She told me to tend to auntie’s cats and my little nephew, and to be careful while walking around outside.
I returned to the zoo every day after school and watched the gibbons, orangutans and proboscis monkeys. They stared at me with solemn understanding while I stared at them with anxiety and guilt. They wouldn’t come down from the branches, other than to take fruit from their feeding platters. Then they climbed up again and stayed.
All of my other free time was spent online, following biological and environmental science journals, waiting for the announcement of our evacuation. It came the day after my graduation. They expected Singapore to sink within two weeks, but everyone was encouraged to get out now.
I clutched my mother’s hand as we walked through Changi International Airport.
—
Singapore disappeared but refused to be obliterated.
One tiny section was still afloat in the geographical center of the island, just large enough to conduct business on. A swarm of international tourists began to gather once per year on an ocean liner to visit the fallen city. They are taken on a scuba expedition through the ruins of Marina Bay Sands, the rusted MRT tracks, the bones of the zoo, and the ghoulish-looking hawker centres. There are strategically placed signs mimicking where the roads used to be, highlighted by thrumming LEDs.
Eventually, large bubble caverns were constructed around the shells of the hawker centres and pumped with oxygen and energy so that the scuba tourists could relax for a moment, remove their masks, and eat peanut pancakes safely under the sea.
Automatons collected their scraps and plastic plates.
—
I arrived in Borneo on a ship large enough for twenty scientists and the remaining one hundred apes that inhabited the island. The human population had been evacuated, and the fauna left behind. We struck land and anchored, there were no beaches remaining on the island.
I adjusted my glasses against the dreadful wind and rain, shouting questions and answers to my colleagues above the noise of the ship’s motor and the storm. Five years I had spent planning this expedition and I would see it through. The ocean shook its blue head at me as I ran full speed toward the abandoned Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre, breathing salty rain in through flared nostrils.
The apes watched me come. My crew stood by the ship and watched me go. I approached a tree, still intact, with a young orangutan hanging on a lower branch. Most of the trees had splintered apart in the storm, and there was a din of screams in the mud. I held up my hands, but the animals were far smarter than me. They didn’t need me at all.
The orangutan I had approached dropped from branch to soil and all at once the apes gathered, walking on hands and feet toward the ship. They sauntered by with purpose on either side of me, my hands still in the air. They didn’t tread on me or knock me about, but they did not pay any attention to me either. I was an insignificant spectre.
I stood until every orangutan, gibbon, macaque, and proboscis monkey had been accounted for. Then I turned on my heel and walked back to the ship as the ground became putty beneath me. I deployed the motor on my boots and wondered if I would be swallowed with the island. A colleague broke protocol and floated in the thick air over to me, hovering and shouting as he wrestled me from the rushing dirt and ocean.
Aboard, I sat in the galley with the safely sheltered animals and sang to them until I fell asleep on the sleek metal. They stared at me without curiosity.
—
Once per year, I betrayed my scruples and boarded the ocean liner to visit the neon ruins of Singapore for research. It was a long and not particularly pleasant journey from our lab and homestead in Kaa-Khem, through mountains on yaks. My stomach would protest the sudden influx of milk and cheese, our only food for much of the trek.
Every so often we stopped to camp. My vocal cords joined my stomach in its upset as I attempted, as always, to keep up with the far more experienced throat singers. We lilted Good Horses and strummed away the cold while our animals slept or congregated around us to watch.
The Tuva Biology Compound would be the final place on earth to sink. I was sure of it. My team built a dome around an abandoned housing complex and purchased towering climate regulators with the remainder of our grant money, creating a jungle inside its walls for the apes and for us.
I studied the submerged triumph of Singapore and copied it on land, plastered my own dome with solar panels, and tried not to think about where the scrap metals and coltan had come from.
I arrived in Singapore on the 25th of December and sank beneath the depths of the water the following morning. There was a small, floating hotel near the remaining land now. The land was expanding in chrome. I gazed up at the underside of the metal island from the ocean. A giant suckerfish was attached to the bottom. When we were brought deeper, into the sunken streets, the water lit up with thousands of colors.
The power hummed around us as we floated to the Tekka Centre for lunch.
—
My mother visited my compound home frequently but always had little to say. She lived in the U.S. now, not with my father in New York, which would sink soon, as I kept telling him, but in the center of the country. Her skin would sparkle with freshly-applied sunscreen and she wore a stylish wide-brimmed hat at all times, which I found practical and endearing.
She was very interested in the apes, and they were interested in her as well. I felt envious when she visited and they would delicately touch her palms when she raised them in greeting. The mother apes would bring their babies to show off, and my mother would gently incline her head toward them with a caring smile.
The babies would wrap their small hands around my mother’s outstretched fingers and sometimes they would make screeching noises that sounded like laughter.
Then she would give them fruits and slurry nutrient treats and leave them until next time. She never stayed long. That is why they cared for her, I knew. She made herself mysterious and did not pine over their fate; while I found every excuse I could to infiltrate their environment and check on them, to ensure their safety and happiness, but also to be in their magnificent presence.
My mother scolded me during one visit and told me the apes were just fine and to stop bothering them, that my vanity project to protect them was sufficient and they were thankful, but I could stop pining with pity. I thanked her for that.
When she would leave after one or two weeks, we would ride horses until we approached the nearest train station. I would bring her all the way to the airport, and we would clutch each other’s hands as we walked through the halls. She would turn to me just before boarding and tell me that I would never be able to save the world, but that she was proud of me for preserving just a tiny piece.
Then she would board the plane and go home to her ranch in Kansas.
I would go home to my lab and sit amongst my piles of paperwork and spilled coffee cups, hearing the apes singing outside of my window, and wonder how I could prove her wrong.
婕 Venus Cohen is a mixed, transgender writer. Their work explores the intersections of surrealism and identity, and has been published or is forthcoming in Serotonin Poetry, Fahmidan Journal, and Nat-Brut, amongst others. They are the editor-in-chief of LUPERCALIApress and assistant editor at Smoke and Mold Journal.
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