Hello the hereafter,

My name is Phan, and I am sixteen and four days old.

Today marks my first day of documentation. While I only managed to gather bits of information towards the end of our lives in this city, I decided to log these memories properly before we, collectively as citizens, flew at supersonic speed into the wind and onto our journey ahead of us. Our Elder Chief broke the news about our migration just in the morning.

My mind is crowded with so many feelings, ups and downs. But I couldn't help being excited and entertained by the possibilities. Perhaps on our way, we could see the edge of our forest, crash through a blinding haboob, or witness a desert tornado.

Ooh, I hope to see the ocean the most, though. I want to see what a deep blue sea looks like. That would be an excellent first day of our future when we leave the old city and build a new utopia, much like this one.

I fear, perchance, we’d vanish into thin air or melt into torrential tropical rains all at once. I have no clue what's out there. In that awful case, these would be our last days on Planet Earth before our souls migrate to another universe— hopefully, it’d be one with love. Who knows what will happen.

—

I live with my mother, Arem, on the inner rim of the Elder, a giant redwood tree that has housed our entire city for generations. We call ourselves the Elderkens, the only tiny inhabitants within the beautiful tree of a city.

The Elder was a lone survivor of its kind too. Many years ago, the Elder Tree used to have more brothers and sisters in this area. But for some reason, ill fates had avoided the Elder while it wasn’t too kind to the sibling trees. The Elder withstood a big forest fire, a godly asteroid, and oddly enough, an aeroplane that crash-landed just a mere twenty meters away, counting from the tip of its broken right wing to the furthest south branches of the Elder. The dead metal bird is still there by the Elder’s side and will probably be there until the end of time as a small museum of a somber fortune.

My mother, Arem, is the cantin manager in the 8th Settlement- the most populated one. She upheld the quality of food supply for the entire population of the 8th- from its House of Children, the Gate Guards, to stocking up the Elder’s primary food storage. Arem took over this job from her mother— Grandma Chru— after her fatal stroke during a steamy summer day. The old woman had worked til the last minute. Arem was twenty-nine when it happened sixteen years ago.

That made her the youngest cantin manager to run the food supply for essential units like the hundred-people Gate Guards. We knew others to take on this critical position only towards the end of their career. But when Arem was over eight, she began religiously shadowing my grandmother at the cantin. So when Grandma Chru collapsed, we were much in shock, and there was no time for the usual lengthy job transfer protocol. Arem, at the time, became the most qualified for the job. After all, Arem was Grandma Chru’s right-hand woman— the only one to take care of her mother’s paperwork and oversee the kitchen during her sick days.

—

By the way, the cake my mother and her team baked arrived a day late. No one seemed to remember my birthday, or they were too industrious to do anything other than their recent endless tasks. I woke up the following day with the first rays of sunlight hitting my pillow and a surprising ivory day-late cake outside my bedroom.

To be fair, the whole city was dealing with a big unusual event, something I heard about through the grapevines— actual vine walls that fenced out my workplace, the House of Children, from the vertical grid roads of our city. I heard about this news when two pediatricians discussed it during today’s 9 AM recess. One woman sighed,

“I stopped counting on Tày to be home by 10 pm on Saturdays. I thought it was the greatest thing ever, him becoming a Gate Guard eleven years ago. It started dreamily, and the money was decent. But for the past four years, after Grandpa T’o passed away, they have sent extra Guards on week-long, month-long expeditions. Tày never knew how to say no, even when grieving for his dad. He was gone so much; sometimes I forgot I had a husband at all” - The older pediatrician was biting her nails and yapping for the hundredth time about the same problem. She was always a broken record, to be honest.

The other was a younger nurse. She smoked her herbal cigarette, mumbling, “Well, the event didn’t help your whole ordeal, huh? Why would they plan for a massive Offering in the middle of August anyway? I thought those things only happened in the spring. Is it for the move?”

“Yeah, this Offering is off-season, and Tày said it’s definitely for the big move. They were all hush-hush about it. But anyway, he's so busy all the time. An honor became a question, became a burden! I’d be surprised even to see Tày at home anymore this season. Maybe after the Offering, I’ll have to sit him down. I’d love a holiday with a husband after all these years.”

I thought about the conversation as I ate two pieces of my birthday cake anyway. ‘The Offering’ is something familiar to us in uncertain times. We’d prepare a massive table of our finest harvest and food, famously executed by my mother’s 8th Settlement cantin, with sweet fizzy wines tower poured like an endless shower to ask the Moon for Her blessing— we’d burn the old lousy luck, send it to the forgotten cloud, and hope for new good ones in the spring.

—

I wandered past the rugged neighborhood, listening to my walkman for a history assignment at my University’s Autumn class. The project was time-consuming but straightforward: draw a chart from the recording of ‘The Elder: A Heaven Piercer.’ It was a run-through of the Tree's compartments and inner workings. My instructor for this course was the kind that explained the assignment like it was something she wanted to do for the next hundred years. She might expect us to draw AND color our chart like an elaborated painting, more than an information chart. Though, I wasn't sure what schools would be like when we carried out the indefinite break for our mammoth-sized reorientation. Like everything else, I heard the adults are in an overwrought mode for months leading up to the Offering day.

We shall see, shan't we?



The moon was bright, and the wind was kind that day.

Annam finally dropped her pen and stood up too fast after long hours the solitude in her tent. Her head spun, and her thoughts tangled like the map she had studied for six hours. She could not sleep for days and relied on vitamin pills and concentrated caffeine shots to fuel her through those extra hours. The adrenalin of being on this exploration meant food for her. Annam yawned and sat back at her desk, flipping the pages, and stopped the last paragraphs she had just jotted down frantically before marching on this trip,

The Elder, their shelter city, died many years ago. But their fathers had kept its giant frame and natural roots intact, for this was the only (used-to) living creature that spanned from deep underground where they'd go when they died, to such great height, they called that heaven. The inhabitants were much like hermit gypsies. They found this a home base for their tribe and took shelter. They all started from somewhere, living a life of waiting. Then, when fate deemed it necessary, they left the city feasibly frozen in time like the marble statues in the museum, or the stone lions in front of massive buildings downtown, capturing a peak of emotions and leaving us visualizing a thirst for immortality.

Our job is to decipher the cause of this phenomenon, from collecting specimens from the tree, what was left behind, or possibly any forms of writing and art. It has been a long wait since we studied them from afar. Too long, in fact. The mutual interest of the national leaders worked out well in our favor. Hence governmental funding and military aid birthed this excavation at last.

The looking glass into The Elder’s past will be a significant touchdown for us, the people. Its mother roots within the crunchy intertwine of curious relics and pieces of gathered technological imprints mean possible solutions for the nation, but that belongs to another topic. Historically, our country owed it to the Elderkens. Because of your legacy, we have matured and married religion and science as a civilization. You were vigorous proof that these two human experiences didn’t have to be ultimatums. They could coexist in civility. Granted, we read about the Elderkens’ story all at school and in further studies as a part of fundamental history lessons, but all that was just the tip of a monumental iceberg. Witnessing The Elder point-blank would have been something else… something new.

Staring into the truth was like peeking from underneath the freezing water. Annam got so good at visualizing the feeling of unraveling the surface and seeing The Elder in person that she was wired to sink into these imaginative pages like an avid diver after many years. Annam’d drink up the whole ocean if she could. She continued jotting down her discombobulated thoughts about what being inside The Elder Tree would signify.

I IMAGINE: IF YOUR KINGDOM NESTS IN A DESERT

Perhaps by the time we find you, the water that hid your story undersea will all be drained. The truth will be unearthed and stand high on an empty ocean floor like a majestic pop-up storybook-- waterless-ly exposed, drying under the harshest sun, and casting the crispiest shadows. Your city will be cited as the new Pompeii.

I IMAGINE: IF YOUR KINGDOM LIES IN AN OCEAN

The moment when we go from dry air down to the magical underwater below the surface ice bed, we’d stand on an icy mountain top staring down into the abyss. We'd be speculating just how high we'd float up here compared to the deafening land near that pitch-black bottom of an ocean floor. We'd be among the only light source. We'd be the sun gate, the heaven, the colors to their darkness.

Icebergs are made of fallen snow over thousands of years. We can look at their layers to know the temperatures and conditions of their surrounding land. Studying the Elder would be my way of exploring the past, my kaleidoscope staring through time, hoping for an accidental encounter where I can see how you died and how the machine had failed its beloved Elderkens. The deeper we dive into your story, the more tendered we are marinating ourselves in a dream of going back in time— perhaps changing narratives, unpausing the machine, and brimming the idea of reconciling with our ill fate.

When we ask for God, it is unsure that we get God. But the hope is forever there, even in the darkest time. Marching ahead is the only way to reverse time.

The team has been on an expedition for a year and some odd weeks, searching for the famous phenomenon, The Elder Mystery. But the journey started long before her generation.


Even before elementary education, Annam's father, Dr. Sùng Lãm, had taught her about the hermit people who lived in a big tall tree in the middle of a fantastic rainforest through children’s books and drawings. As a little girl, Annam knew it was a history of an obsolete minority group who originally came from the sky way back then, who was told to have the most fragile hearts- they wouldn’t be able to stand the standard Earth atmosphere. This was the critical reason they had developed unique living conditions right here on Earth- where they are in a close, filtered environment, breathing their air and withstanding their own gravity, much like living in their own bubble shaped like a tree.


Only when Annam was twelve, the age that Sùng Lãm promised before, that she would finally be old enough to have coffee-favored candies once in a while and that she got to read whatever she wanted from her Dad’s study.


Dr. Sùng Lãm held an impressive library of historical writings, his published essays, history books, collected data, archeologist documents, and virtually any known maps of The Elder Mystery. Through this library's generous pool of knowledge on The Elder, it took her not so long to discover the concealed state-of-the-art technology where its people found a way to generate power from sunlight. The only dilemma with his calling was that the Elderkens had a way to protect their location. Every past helicopter trip and archaeologist excursion had yet to lead to any fruitful result, partially due to weather phenomena in the area or unusual radio disruptions in navigation. Pin-pointing The Elder would take the technology of our time a bit longer to catch up and unveil.

—

Annam woke up first among her teammates. The sun was kind enough to lighten the wet ground around her feet. She went to sit at the dead campfire, hoping for any warmth left from the big pile of damp, sad ashes. The only thing left to do right now is wait.

There are few things I could think of that is better than a thrust into the future, where we'd wake up to the soothing breezy wind in the background of a different bird chirping from the top of coconut trees. The sunlight maybe be less harsh at 2 pm, and we might gain two hours of daylight in a probable hot climate. There are many hopes, and I'd write them down as our momentous day gently approached.

I can't deny that I dream of seeing the ocean the most. Unfortunately, I only knew of fresh seawater and how it was supposed to glide on our skin like a cool touch through the last year's Autumn class. We were shown deep blue images of a vast body called “the ocean," which was supposed to be salty magically.

But the reality was much different than my brilliant blue diary entry. I had a deflated mother downstairs.

By resurrecting an impossible task, I felt the earnest necessity to put my foot forward and ask my mother about her torment. For an entire week now, Arem had tucked herself in a thick checkers blanket on the large, faded leather sofa with billowy cushions every night, but without dozing off. After a sleepless late-night roaming in her own mind, she’d morph into a quiet cat. Then, the tired cat returned to its comfy warm bed in the early morning. My mother was waiting forever for her sleep to take over, a simple task she had failed miserably for the past week.

Phan finished a journal entry before approaching Arem in the early morning. Her eyes were barely closed and barely opened. She looked up to the first sound of my quiet step.

“Hey, you’re awake? When did you manage to sleep last night?

“I wasn’t sure I slept at all—what a strange week. I got so tired from work, but sleeping wasn’t something I craved. As if we were running out of time, I felt sleeping would waste even more time.”

Phan thought about it, concluding he didn’t know what she meant. “You know, a famous woman named Arem once told me, You can only rescue faith with a full stomach!— C’mon, let’s grab breakfast before you head out again.”

Phan fried the synthetic eggs he brought from the cantin yesterday. Inside the empty rusted metal frame of the inert crashed aeroplane outside the Elder, they converted the empty shell into an old trusty greenhouse and synthetic farm for many years. It had been the sole supplier of fruits and protein for the Elderkens. Arem’s cantin brought in a gratuitously yielding amount of synthetic eggs and edible vegetables for the upcoming migration.

These eggs tasted better than usual today, to Phan’s surprise. Arem sighed and mumbled,

“The sentience of leaving this home behind has ripped my heart apart. The cantin— I can’t even mention deserting the cantin without my throat choking on tears. I walked around daily, remembering to see ‘Ma Chru in the cantin yelling, sweating, and cooking up a storm. How do I leave that, my baby, abandon the only life I love?”

Phan got the scrambled eggs in front of an emotional Arem. He poured her a glassful of citrus juice.

“There there— please try to absorb any nutrition before you collapse on your team and me. The cantin will fall without you. Heck, I’d drop dead like a weird fish in limbo without you! We need you!”

A weird fish in limbo was the only thing that made Arem laugh recently. Phan sat beside his mother, inhaling the breakfast like he was showcasing how to eat food to an indifferent toddler that was his mother. He hoped this toddler might mimic him and save its own life from malnutrition and apparent exhaustion.

“Please play dead like a weird fish for me again. I need to record that in my memory!”

Phan froze with his eggy fork in front of his wide-opened mouth comically. He even stopped breathing to sell the look.

“OK darling, your version of play dead is more like someone hitting that pause button on the television.” - Arem then rated her son’s acting a mere four out of ten, at best.

—

IV. ANNAM

Annam's research team huddled before the humming excavator and their leader, covered in brown dust and strange smoky debris. Captain Lang An was appointed for this once-in-a-lifetime mission, and Annam was among the first picks. There weren't many differences between man and machine in those days. Everyone assumed they’d have to work like diligent ants in a colony, grinding through inhumane hours in either pitch dark or under a blazing red hot sun. Unfortunately, the weather had gone awry compared to its forecast before they reached their destination, making this mission more taxing than ever.

It wasn't much to the mornings in the camp. They set up tents serving quick breakfast rations and coffee, then the soldiers hurried out. The goal was precise: drill to destroy the hinges of the tree's giant heavy metal gate, and dig a hole for it to fall into, all within four months.

“Give it four months. You'll be amazed” - the Drill Commander’s voice was devoid of enthusiasm, contrasting with his crunched plan. Captain Lang An was amazed indeed. He managed to destroy the hinges so that the door was just a loose metal plate ready to be knocked over. Then, with the help of chained explosives and an empty dug hole for the gate to fall into, they were prepared for the big bang.

On track for timing, they finally earned the first proper break since they set up camp. All in time for Annam's memory to pop up.

After New Year, spring that year was arid. My father said the drought was severe, and it'd only get more challenging when summer crept up around the corner.

“ When I finish building some shelves for the greenhouse this weekend, could you give me a hand organizing the pots?”

“ Why yes, it's no problem." - I told him that, knowing it meant my only Sunday off that month would be under the hot sun rather than a sleep-in kinda morning. SO hot that this past week's drill job had me thinking of the greenhouse spring back then.

“ We have to get our own herbs soon. The market won't carry that many kinds anymore, and prices will just go up. The drought, the sun, I get sad when your mother's soup lacks the final touch she's so proud about.”

“ I think you're a bigger fan of the herbs sprinkles, Dad, more than anyone, including Mum!”

“ On point! I’m the one out here building this greenhouse, not your mother, no?”

We laughed at the thought of convincing my Mum to join the herb garden. Oh, don't get me wrong, she absolutely would, but then we'd end up with a fragrant garden of lilies and maybe some herbs in the corner instead. Sùng Lãm wouldn't have a clue where his culantro went.

My Dad was not the best craftsman ever. But he learned enough carpentry so that, for example, his beige greenhouse shelves actually turned out pretty cute. We were digging the pots to introduce air into the soil and plant some seeds when he mentioned one of his Did-You-Knows.

“Hey baby, did you know that the Elders were self-sufficient? They knew something we don’t.”

“Like they don't need herbs in their soup like you do?” - I teased him.

“Haha, I don't know if they like herbs in their soup, to be honest. They did have their own garden, though, growing the herbs they could consume because they couldn't eat any plants native to Earth, let alone their local forest. But the cool thing was that they knew how to harvest and recycle the sun's power- Used that energy to spin their own world, living in their specific gravity and atmosphere right here on land.”

“Really! That's pretty neat. But does that mean don't we know how to use the sun's power?”

“Yes and no. We only know how to harvest a small fraction of solar energy. Recycling is another ball game. And if the Elderkens knew how to recycle energy, they also knew how to store it well. There is no way in the near future that we can recycle the sun's energy to its full, vigorous potential, yet. But, if we find a way into the Elder Tree and learn their secret, or find out where they migrated to after the Tree and talk to them one day, it might save our lives without the need to leave Earth.”

I didn't say anything else for a minute. It sank in with me that the news had talked about so many forest fires, droughts, and flooding due to global warming. It seemed like the end was nearer.

“Hey, but don't worry, baby girl. It’s my life's mission to locate the Elder Tree. Hopefully, my scrappy papers will one day lead us to the Elders, ultimately. Or at least, I hope that what we need would still be there.”

—

The anticipation leading up to Detonation Day for this towering gate was tremendous. The big-boy trusty reinforced prow dug a deep hole to make space for the rusty gate to fall forward after the blow, hoping to open up two centuries of mystery behind this lock. But the time was nigh, and everyone was unanimously anxious about the explosion. So the Captain hit that ominous button. Here we go.

After Annam’s four rapid heartbeats, there was a loud blaze in the sky, followed by the ground shaking violently underneath the Captain’s team. Then, before they knew what happened, the mighty gate fell into their dug hole, causing endless clouds of smoke and whipping debris made of tree branches and leaves to fly by them in the aftermath dust wind. Masks up. It took them a while to gather and walk on the fallen gate to approach indoors.

They entered the musky darkness that opened up to a forgotten city, which only existed in the land's studies and spoken myths. Lang An's team of twenty, including Annam, turned on their head flashlights simultaneously. The first people started passing by the fallen gate. As steps getting more echoed, it dawned on them how thick The Elder's tree bark indeed was. The large arc entrance opened up to a tunnel that was an easy shy of a kilometer walk until they could reach the ample inner space of The Elderken's land. So deep that it was just darkness by the time they got there. The weak moonlight has no way to reach that deep into the tunnel.

Captain led the way, and the rest of her team followed suit. She signaled them to stop when they reached the inner space, and the group attempted to fathom the unbelievable sight.

Through the dust was a marvelously drastic and frozen civilization on the vertical- the massive city built meticulously on the inner rim of the Elder tree. Somehow they found a way to defy the Earth’s gravity. Annam stepped forward into her magical pop-up storybook that conveniently gathered all the puzzle pieces she had read and heard about since she was little. Except all this was touchable and undeniable. Except it was true.

—

V. PHAN

Phan walked on the vertical dirt grid road, thinking about going to the top Settlement for some sunlight. As usual, he could only go the whole way by snooping around his favorite shops or catching up with his favorite people. Of course, he wouldn't miss barging into the warehouse corner’s vehicle shop with an orange neon sign that read ‘Sliders.’

“What was the best thing that happened to you in the past month, Uncle Hre?”

“Hey, kiddo, what’s good? And what’s with the cryptic question?” - Hre pulled down his dusty goggles with a knitting brow.

“Nothing much with me other than listening to this tape about the Elder tree for school. It explains how the machine spins an inner sprocket vertically anchored in the tree's center so we can defy gravity and live on the inner rim's centrifugal surface. You know, the standard. What about you? How are you doing with whipping up this giant order of Sliders for everyone?”

“I’m so glad I’m just a small supplier among other auto shops to prep all these Sliders for Elderkens. It’d take me about two days to make a dozen pairs in completion now— I picked up the pace so I could pack too. It seems crazy to clean up this whole shop, right?”

Hre gave a Slider-in-progress for Phan to marvel at. This notable Slider was a brand-new model they had just perfected at the beginning of Spring specifically for this historic migration. The updated version made a new standard for personal aircraft shoes with wearable blades, known as ice-skating shoes but with motors that thrust their wearers ahead with supersonic speed. It glided on air and gripped the wind to push the Elderkens forward— the only documented autonomous vehicle designed for each Elderken to fashion. Phan tinkered with it for a while.

“I figured it must be nuts for you to sort this antique mechanic shop.”

“Oh, I kept delaying it. It is strange to unroot old souls like Arem and me off our usual soils.”

“My mother is going insane, too, it seems. She isn’t sleeping well. You can talk to her— perhaps, she might decide to listen to her brother!”

“But what do you want to get across to her, though? Isn’t she so caught up packing the livestock warehouse with her precious herbs and seeds assortments?”

“She hasn’t slept at night for a week straight now. She mentioned running out of time and being a spacy downer at home. She even forgot my birthday.”

“Arem forgot your birthday? That’s never happened before, hasn’t it?” - Hre was genuinely perplexed.

“Well, technically, she didn’t forget it. She was just a day late to make me a cake.”

“That’s even more shocking than her forgetting it altogether!” - Hre considered messaging Arem tonight.

“I just don’t see why she gets so sad. This adventure should be the most exciting thing in our lives, no?”

“Or, Phan, she’s just terrified to lose you and herself if anything— Her whole life has been around that cantin and kitchen. Oh My Elders, knock on wood!” - Hre knocked religiously on the oily wood handle of his hammer.

Phan stared at the 10-meter high wall of archival Sliders models over the years. Hre’s cousin designed some, and others were trademarked by Hre himself. He seemed goofy, but Hre was one of the leading engineers to reinforce the mechanics behind the only vehicles in this evacuation plan. So it was bittersweet to realize that it might be one of the last times Phan ever saw Hre’s shop in full glory.

Phan waved at Uncle Hre and headed out. He still wondered what Hre’s answer might be for the best thing that had happened to him in the past month.

—

VI. ANNAM

Lang An was chosen unanimously as the next Captain of Annam’s expedition crew one and a year earlier. With a doomsday prediction in the offing, she won the position in a landslide election that took the nation’s breath away. Countless men and women in service stepped up for the part, from brave youngins to enormous names in the military and decorated veterans, and could die for this mission. But Lang An was different. Not only was she Dr. Sùng Lãm's protege in The Elders Study, fluent in Elderken language (much like Annam), but she worked her body and mind to be incredibly well equipped and ready for such tasks like this excursion to ever require her service.

Dr. Sùng Lãm, predicted the election and was so proud of the outcome. With his children competent with curiosity and thirst, he became their incredibly dependable navigation from home base. He emerged out of his deep hibernation from the world, his dedication to his herbs garden, and returned to where he was just before he retired, alighted with the old hope and aspiration.

When the election was over, Annam witnessed how quickly Lang An secured her core crew members and embarked on the road. Lang An and Annam shared the same study and obsession with the Elderkens for the longest time. So when Lang An pulled Annam into her team as the most naturally anticipated move, they knew the answer to her nation’s crisis might be closer.

Lang An moved with meticulous aims, calculated to an eye blink. She entered the room like there was a concrete lotus underneath each of her steps, grabbing the attention like it was her lunch serving on a silver platter, with silver chopsticks and a crystal glass of rice wine. Lang An led this team with grace and hilarity in her voice. She delivered the harshest news or toughest deliberations with the same voice Annam’d hear from intimate crew dinners. She moved vehicles and excavations ahead for the past months with one determination: bringing back a piece of the Elderkens’ forgotten technology that may rescue us from our own doomsday.

Annam jotted in her journals,

We know it was a strange land, and endless rain pouring on us with winds that slapped our egos like this campaign was an unfathomable mistake. We entered this route as if we were ready to die a hero or just disappear into that good night like the Elderkens, waiting on the future to discover us buried in the mud and landslides of this Buddha-aided power of doomed nature. We had to find our way out of the weaves and onto clear lands. But we knew our way to you after all this time.

Sùng Lãm put us through a painstaking accuracy of manual navigations from home. Without this man's life work, it would be as if we jumped in the middle of the ocean with no life vest. Lang An asked me a week before our trip if I had any clue what would be there for us.

“If heaven did speak, I might have got a clue. But I haven’t heard any. So. I’m still clueless, sis.”

Lang An sat sipping her camomile tea. “ The Doc said the same. Wild to see him back in the game and dragging his reference books out. Oh, the last time we talked, he was deep in his homework. Bless your Dad. But anyway, our team’s appetite for answers got pretty primitive at this point. I just want a small solution, whatever it might cost.”

“I feel you. We are not close, but closer than ever before. My impatience is taking a toll on me. I feel so deep underwater, and, I’m dying to go to the surface. To breathe, to see.”

“Trust me, you will. But, be ready with a smart head, cuz I know your heart will run amok on you.”

We went on our way just like that— with a parched throat of a wish to see where your people went, if you died, or what was left of the Elderkens. We wanted desperately to see your last vestiges, any possible hints of technology relics we could pick up to help our perishing world. The temperature on Earth has continued rising in the past years, with thinner air, deadly storms, and scarce food. I knew, and Lang An knew, that we couldn't let our people die in vain.

We need you.

—

VII. PHAN

The sunlight is everywhere, and the warmth is nearly there.

Things have been tough around here, to say the least. So while keeping myself together, I'm trying to jot down our journey while jumping between helping Arem pack her kitchen and Hre distribute the Sliders to each home in the 8th Settlement.

We gathered in small groups for the last night at the 8th Settlement’s Park today. Tomorrow’s dawn will be the last morning of us occupying the Elder land.

Arem and her team were still busy giving out canned rations and drinkable vitamins for people’s equipment. Hre’s shop now only existed in boxes and cargo. He locked his tall bins, covered them in thick canvas, and tied them in ropes. The busy bees hadn't stopped packing since the big citizen meetings at Moon Gates when our Elder Chief broke the news two years ago.

A somber day changed our lives- the day of my first journal entry.

—

“My dear folks, my dear people,

We gather here to open this box containing a series of numbers I can finally tell you about. In my presence are the wise old men who were Chiefs before me. We are here today to tell you a dire secret- something we had to vow not to say to another soul when we took the position in office to be Your Civil Servant. Until the predetermined time comes.

Dear Elderkens, our Elder Tree is dying.

Not only is it dying recently, it was dying from a very long time ago. I knew this, and old Chiefs and those before us all knew. We were told of a precise date that, eventually, we must pack and leave our beloved Elder. The tree will soon be too tired to house us anymore. As we all know, the centrifugal force that kept our unique gravity is powered by solar energy and aided by the workings of the Elder Tree. The center rod that connects the whole city only works if the roots of The Elder are healthy. Unfortunately, our tree is not. She has been sick for such a long time. But she has been so gracious to work way past her due time. She is tired and sore. The machine needed to stop.

In preparation for this event, in recent years, we have conducted many secret expeditions carried by a small Special Unit belonging to the Gate Guards- to see what's out there and to work out probable navigation and a credible itinerary for us. We have relied solely on data and information they gathered to point us Southbound- a safe direction in hopes of finding us a new home.”

Commotions broke out violently within the cities. People were shocked and betrayed that they had been kept in the dark. Some were in denial, some were in pain. None were pleased and relieved.

“Delivering you this news has been and always will be the most challenging task for generations of Chiefs. Such a declaration was not taken lightly. Leaking this news before due time would hold devastating consequences- misinformation, miscalculations, and harmful speculations were just a few of our worst worries. It would go against my belief and job to serve and protect you. From now on, all our knowledge will be made public. We will answer all your questions and guide you through our daunting odyssey. As you witnessed, we made an Offering ceremony and will hold others leading up to the Day. Temples will be in session as much as we need, and the new Navigation Lab will hire the best scientists to develop vehicles and survival specs for the Elderkens during the move. We will continue to open our funds to help with anything you need.

To conclude, the time has come. I will open this case now and let you see the series of numbers. They are the precise date of when our move needs to happen. We will honor this generational prophecy and move forward.

Thank you.”

—

When things got somber and quiet, we joined in a big circle at one point during the last night. In other Settlements, there are countless communal circles all around the city tonight. We held our hearts intact by holding each other’s hands in perpetuity, with the Elders in our thoughts. For my family, we thought of Grandma Chru. Tày- the neighbor Gate Guard- and his family prayed to their Grandpa T’o. In harmony, we connected with our ancestors, the original caretakers of the Elder land. It was our light, our Sun Gate, our heaven. They will lead the way when we are unsure of our fate.

Hre led our group of prayers. The sounds of humming echoed like a thousand bees vibrating. A city breathing and beseeching. A people making peace with our destiny- or at least we tried.

The following day came so fast that I thought it was after two blinks. We had nowhere near enough time to say goodbye to our homes but managed to gather the boiled-down baggage and waited for the signals coming from our ground’s humming vibration.

One long thump, we’d collectively move out of our pods.

One more thump to reach our assigned spot.

After two fast thumps, we’d put our pressure-neutralizing goggles on.
Two more, we'd turn on our Sliders.

I put my footgear on first, and now we’re waiting in small flight groups for the next thumps. I hugged my mother for the first time in so long. I will salute the humming machine behind us for so long that it’d have to vanish on the horizon before I could take my eyes off it.

For the first time, fear sets in for me. I have relied on this journal to calm my nerves and literalize my faith in the people. I’d have to hold my courage on my sleeves from now on. I’ll go on a pipe dream without it from now on.

After the next thumps, I will not be able to write anymore. This is goodbye.
With great hope, this is a see you later.

Even if we perish, along with our love for each other, we’d still carry a soulful narrative of a nation that lived.

With Love,
An Elderken named Phan

—

VIII. .::..:..

“Hey kids, what is it?” - Sùng Lãm's voice cracked on the radio. It was a miracle that the connection was still intact.

There was no answer from this side of the radio— there was no need for another sound.

After traversing the long mammoth entrance passage, they arrived in the time capsule heart of The Elder Tree. The night was deafening, closing in on the dusted leftovers of an abandoned civilization. For too long, the city was without its ardent custodians. So naturally, without them, the city fell apart expectedly. It must have been how divers felt swimming toward a shipwreck on the dark ocean floor. The mummified world was taken over by millions of microbiological creatures of adamant nature combined with the ruthless force of time. No wonder they formed their own ecosystem in this tree as if this was the height of its habitat.

The crew started looking at the empty homes with wide open doors. Upon closer investigation, Annam turned on her bodycam’s night vision for her Dad to see live and walked into the third random pod. Due to overwhelming clues that this city had a centrifugal gravity that no longer worked, Annam had to walk on walls instead of their floor when entering the home. The indoor furniture sat nicely in the middle of a spacious living room and open kitchen. They did not appear to have gone through a destructive tornado like she would have predicted. Everything looked tidy despite being under layers of green moss and overgrown branches. It was as if we stepped into a family's holiday home who had left it in a state of order for them to return next season- furnished and complete, but they left opened doors and emptied unlocked cabinets. The people just never went back. Things were clearly filtered and selected, but their home was ultimately respected. No evidence of violence or force, just a special place that was simply forgotten.

Lang An made her way into the compact helicopter. With Annam, she flew upwards and towards the nearest light source – the opened “Moon Gate” carved above the tree’s massive opening.

And there was something on their grassy moss ground, endless and chaotic. Those mysterious things cast long shadows through the opened gate from the moonlight.  Annam’s face turned white, and Lang An’s heart stopped at the harrowing sight.

Is that what it is? Annam gasped. “Are those, are those people?”

—

The Captain flew to the deck outside the larger-than-life Gate to land her helicopter. They zip-lined so fast down to the open ground with flashlights to get a good look at the people in the dark.

At least a dozen dark human shapes in each small group stood high like they were scrambling on their way somewhere on the considerable open ground. All of them faced out to their Moon Gate. All of them were in poses of motion.

Lang An quickly discovered that these human shapes were life-like statues, easy to be in the four hundred. They were covered in thick layers of dust, resembling terracotta. She brushed the dust off a statue’s face to find a glass-like translucent hardened skin underneath. The figures were anticipating something significant, for sure. There were adult men with babies piggyback-riding on their shoulders, women with rucksacks across them, and shorter youngins with smaller bottles of water and snack tin cans tied to their belts. There were older looking figures in big warm scarfs, some others sitting by their books and manuscripts canvas packages. Boxes of luggage as backpacks, more giant crates, and chunky cargo chests stacked on longer blades shaped like skis on snowmobiles. It was easy to speculate that they were ready for long-term traveling. Some wore masks with breathing tubes, and some held the covers in their hands, ready to wear.

Another thing that struck Lang An was that the greens miraculously didn’t grow on them. Instead, the healthy vines hugged around the figures’ feet like a bed of wet grassy green. Their eyes were all closed, but Lang An could see their facial expressions frozen with surprise and instant fear.

She brushed off the vines at their feet to find out how these statues connected to their base. But she saw something rusty. They appeared to wear shoes attached with blades underneath. The blades were covered by moss and dirt, some heavily rusted and disintegrating into the ground. Lang An and Annam were met with way more head-scratching questions than clearance for their quest.

Annam quietly reported to her dad. Terracotta dusty skin, shoes with blades, terrified, perplexed “people.”

“How many?” - he asked.

“Captain estimated groups of dozens adding up to perhaps four hundred so far!"

“No way, that number is way too low for the Elderkens count in my books. There must be others unless these are the last ones.”

Waves of radio reports started to pour in from other small helicopter units. They had found many statues in other groups at different Moon Gates along the tree's height, not far from each other, and bearing the same characters and expressions. Some heavier cargo was stacked with soldier-type statues with the word Gate Guard in a faded shield crest on their red armbands. Some were found just sitting neatly in their pods of homes, not wearing any shoe-blades, holding each other's hands at the dining tables. They all closed their eyes, depicting quiet demeanors, like praying and almost smiling. Then, with the heavy magnitude of the bigger picture, Annam pressed the talk button.

“Dad.”

“Yes, I'm listening.”

“They're all dead. The Elderkens died right here next to their homes. Dad. They never went anywhere else.”

Annam wanted to let out a scream, but no sound escaped. Seeing and taking in the reality of a lost world had been overwhelming. But what knocked Annam over her keeping a clear head was more straightforward.

“I didn’t know what to expect, Dad. I knew we’d get to the tree and see traces of their city. We knew where it was located but not what was inside. But one possibility I could never apprehend, even for a second my whole life, that we’d find the Elderkens to still be here. They’re all here. Not a body left.”

She let go of her zip lines, sobbing at last, dangling next to the populated statues that stood 90 degrees from her. Dr. Sùng Lãm had nothing left to say when his daughter felt it all, her anguish visceral and despair unbridled. Annam kept going from one statue to the next, taking in the Elderkens families holding hands. She cried, holding their faces, brushing off debris to no prevail. Their hair was crusty, faces sleeping. Were they dreaming in their last moments?

Is this what is gonna happen to us, too, as people?

Annam looked over and saw Lang An slowed down for the first time. She, too, was grieving the terracotta people who used to be the brilliant, hopeful Elderkens at some point in history. She was writing on her pad, and the flashlight caught Lang An’s tears like glossy pearls dropping on the paper. She heard everything Annam said earlier and ditto her fear for their own fate.

As Annam approached closer to the local Moon Gate, she came across a young boy with a firm stand and one foot ahead of the other. His shoe-blades were neatly tied to his feet, and a closed fist holding his pants. But, much to Annam’s surprise, he was the only one with his eyes open. Dusted off his young face, Annam found the set of blue marble eyes underneath. She took a long time staring into those eyes and couldn’t help but feel like she had known this soul for a thousand years.


His crossbody bag lay relaxed off to his left side. Annam found a thick notebook with cobalt covers inside the bag, next to a walkman, and four other journals. She opened the blue one and immediately recognized the only language that could hold her curiosity for years, the Elderken. Her heart started to beat so fast, as if someone just pulled a string on the power generator of Annam’s heart. The longing sincerity off of its first pages made her eyes watery. Endless handwritten, dated journal entries with loose pages of quick doodles and a detailed chart of the Elder Tree.


Before she could read more, Lang An called for an order. The Captain asked everyone to collect any possible writings, tapes, and books in their belongings. Any evidence of a library would be immensely critical.

—

Hi Phan,

I’ve filled my days between sinking my head into the pages of your journals and collecting traces from the Tree. We’ve been on this expedition for almost a year now. We just managed to get through the summer storm. It’s still raining hard for days on end, though.

Oh, look at me writing to you like a proper pen pal!

We split teams gathering documents and traces from your cargo and library, with another sector organizing the information in our tents. I don’t know if you knew, at the time, how vital your journal is to us these days. Your piece of writing was the last straw that made my eighty-one-year-old father go against his doctors’ advice and onto a plane as quick as a hummingbird. He rode along the food rations and medical aid flight, and they finally reached sight two days ago. Old man could finally marvel at The Elder Tree and your beautiful city in person.

I discovered that the woman beside you was Arem, your mother. She was beautiful, I bet. I can tell. You pointed us to the right place, the Sliders Shop, and this week we are focusing on learning about your shoe-blades. Hre would have been the best uncle to learn from!

Oh, by the way, there was absolutely nothing more urgent and necessary for my father and Lang An than finally erecting an altar at the Gate to the Elder Tree. I brought the scarce fruit-flavored rations from our fresh supply and incense that I asked Sùng Lãm to get from our home and offer your people.



Anyway, I have to go now. Dinner time. I’ll write to you again next week when we finally enter the crashed aeroplane.

Your friend,
Annam