Chương 5: The Chill of the Gel

The Levant dissolved into grey static, then darkness. Ethan pulled the manual emergency levers. The heavy polymer seals of his reconditioned 2035 capsule popped with a wet, flat hiss, releasing the sharp tang of cheap industrial disinfectant. He pushed the scratched visor up, his eyes blinking against the harsh white light of Room 12-04. The air in the Chinatown flat felt thin, cold, and tasted faintly of burnt copper wires. Ethan climbed out of the tube. His feet hit the bare concrete floor.

He shivered, his fingers instantly going numb as the automated air-con unit on the wall rattled, blowing a weak, low-efficiency stream of filtered oxygen. He took three paces across the small room. The yellow LED display on the medical preservation pod flickered in the dim light: Internal Nutrient Level: 14%. Current Draw: 450W. Status: Throttled. Inside the glass pod, Grandma Tan's hands were tucked against her chest. Her skin looked like translucent parchment pulled over thin, blue veins.

She lay perfectly still, but her chest rose and fell in short, irregular hitches. The cooling system was drawing too much power; the smart-meter had cut the thermal loop, causing the support gel-pad beneath her shoulders to turn a dull, icy grey. Ethan reached out and touched the exterior casing. Cold.

"Ethan?" Her voice came through the small speaker mesh near the top of the casing. It was a faint, scraping sound.

"I'm here, Grandma," Ethan said, keeping his voice perfectly level. He knelt down, checking the digital power ledger on the pod's lower console. The balance read: S$1. 19. The digital numbers were already counting down. S$1. 18. S$1. 17. Every sixty seconds, the Chinatown smart-grid swallowed three cents just to keep the pod's filtration pump spinning.

"The air... it's short today," she murmured, her eyelids fluttering but not opening.

"The machine keeps clicking."

"The grid lowered our efficiency because of the peak hour corporate traffic downtown," Ethan lied smoothly, his eyes fixed on the dropping numbers.

"Don't talk. Waste oxygen only." He reached behind the induction stove, pulled out a half-empty plastic container of tap water, and poured a precise fifty millilitres into a small cup. He didn't use the automated sink tap; the residential grid charged an extra five cents per litre if the sensor detected a hand.

"I made one dollar and nineteen cents in two hours," Ethan said, sitting on the cold concrete beside her pod.

"From the computer game?" Grandma Tan wheezed, her voice raspy.

"Government never give money for free one. Later the computer swallow everything, then you know."

"From the barley fields," Ethan said.

"The system has rules. If you know the old rules, the corporate players can't touch you. I didn't spend a single copper bit on tools." Grandma Tan let out a sound that was half-cough, half-laugh. Her fingers twitched inside the freezing gel.

"Aiyah, let those rich family boys go and buy iron. Iron becomes rusty, but the earth stays the same. Last time in the kampung also like that." Ethan watched the ledger. S$1. 12. Twelve minutes of air was already down to seven. The barley flour hack was too small. If he stayed in the fields, he would spend his entire life converting grains into pennies while the smart-meter systematically bled them dry. He stood up, walked back to the capsule, and wiped a smear of old grease from the side panel.

"I'm going back in," Ethan said.

"Don't go buy air, boy," she whispered, her voice fading as the pod's compressor cycled into its low-power conservation mode.

"Everything inside also fake one."

"I'm buying the hours, Grandma," Ethan said. He climbed back into the tube. The plastic molding caught his shoulders, stiff and unyielding. He pulled the visor down, locking the seals until the cold air of Chinatown vanished behind the digital hum of the Levant.