GetLit! Part 3: 2035
#BuySingLit begins today, heralding three days of more than 40 activities in all four official languages to promote Singapore literature, aka SingLit. In print and online, The New Paper is profiling some of the talent involved. Today, we have a selection of work looking beyond tomorrow...
Melissa Powers
The year two thousand thirty-five, an army of new holograms greet the homeward-bound at Changi Airport.
Waiting for my dad to catch the luggage, hawk-eyed, impatient, I sidle up to the hollow visage of Sir Stamford Raffles.
He's handsome like how I thought British men should be before I went to England. Like the lead in a period drama - but his stubble transparent, ghost hair swaying in ghost wind, his dead mouth in a half smile that opens to emit
the voice of Jude Law. 2035. "Welcome to Singapore." They made the choice not to dress him as a soldier.
The whirr of luggage on linoleum as my dad calls me over, striding towards the exit. I glance at Stamford's boots before we leave.
Behind me, Jude Law welcomes the rest in perfect Mandarin. And I can't understand it.
That's the little death there. The tragedy. The ghost of a time pre-2035, an alternate timeline where the spirits of my nation could've welcomed the British through their own borders.
Or just an alternate universe where Jude Law decided to become a Chinese teacher.
