Et Sequitur Magazine

Et Sequitur Magazine, Issue 12

Issue 12 (Winter 2025)

Pepperoni

By Stacy Buevich Kay

Singapore’s Dhoby Ghaut underground station is M.C. Escher’s LSD-induced nightmare. Escalators crawl every which way without any sense or reason. Like the staircases in Hogwarts, they turn and switch directions when no one is looking. The same goes for the signs—their conspirators—designed to hoodwink and bamboozle unsuspecting commuters. Despite the countless times I’ve travelled the synapses of the mass rapid transit system, I’m still completely out of my depth.

I follow the directions to Plaza Singapura, feeling foolish as I wander in aimless circles. A pleasing aroma of vanilla and warm milk teases of cream puffs, promising that I’m close to my final destination. I skip up a short flight of steps and head through the automatic doors, emerging into the maddening hustle and bustle of a food court—a smorgasbord of scents, from the warmth of freshly baked bread to sizzling Japanese octopus balls. While each aroma is pleasant on its own, together they blend into something peculiar, like how colours on a painter’s palette eventually merge into a dirty brown. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these ingredients have all been synthesised in a lab.

Jostling through the lunchtime crowd of locals licking their lips and rubbing their bellies, I hop onto another escalator. It takes me to the first floor, where people gather in hordes to gawk at the perpetual rain. I rise onto my tiptoes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the outside. Luckily, I’m tall enough to spot the pebble-sized globules dropping from a purple sky, painted by acid clouds. It’s been raining for eleven years now, and Singapore—once a lush, green oasis—has dissolved into a brownish mush of rock and rubble. Thank God for the malls and tunnel systems we populate like mole people, shielding ourselves from the noxious rain. When the poison hit, we already had half the infrastructure we needed to survive. For now, at least. Still, it’s nice to look at something real, something other than the omnipresent computer screens that permeate our existence.

The first floor of Plaza Singapura Mall is one of the last places in the city where you can still steal a glance at what the real world is like—the world of acid rain, death, and decay. Some time ago, the government deemed the landscape too depressing and installed screens over the windows wherever glass used to reign. Developed by the Koreans years back, these screens paint a different picture. You can change the weather the way you change your clothes, depending on your mood. I woke up to a snowy Alpine Switzerland this morning, but tomorrow I might feel like gazing at the sunny New South Wales countryside. Of course, there are premium settings that cost a pretty penny, but that’s always the case with these things.

An enormous analogue clock looms over Plaza Singapura’s central atrium like a giant all-seeing eye. It’s frozen at ten minutes to midnight—a constant reminder that our time is running out. In contrast to the clock’s stillness, the surrounding walls feature towering computer screens that project endless videos advertising the latest gadgets and restaurant chains; we’re stuck in perpetual motion.

“Gabby!” Su-Jin leaps onto my back like a monkey, straddling me from behind.

I know it’s her for two reasons. One, she’s the only person in the world who would ambush me like that, and two, we arranged to meet at the bakery in ten minutes’ time.

“You scared me,” I lie.

She releases me from her monkey grip, looking pleased. Her tongue peeks out from the side of her mouth, like those photos of puppies leaning out of car windows. Unlike me, she’s tiny, and when we’re together, I strongly suspect we look like C-3PO and R2-D2.

“Hungry?” She cocks her head, inviting me to join her in the queue for the descending escalator.

“Always.”

“What do you fancy?”

“Korean.”

She throws her head back and lets out a moan. “I can have Korean at home.”

“Fine then. Sushi?”

“Ah, no. Lab fish tastes like rubber.” Su-Jin scrunches her nose.

“I like it. Do you even remember what real fish tastes like?”

She steps onto the moving stair. I follow right behind her.

“I’m not sure,” she says, squinting as if that might jog her memory.

“That means you don’t.”

“I don’t want fish.”

“Pizza?”

She twists around, her face lit up, tongue sticking out. I can’t help but smile.

“That’s way upstairs.” I point upward, against our current direction.

“Ah, damn it,” she says. “It’s OK—we’ll hop on the lift.”

We follow the crowd streaming off the escalator, huddling behind the throng heading toward the lift. The queue snakes around kiosks and cafés, like something you’d see in old movies where people line up for rides and roller coasters. We take micro-steps forward, moving in sync with the people around us, like parts of one giant organism.

“How was your date, by the way?” I ask.

Su-Jin huffs.

“That bad?”

“Meetster is lame. Everyone who swipes on me is after one thing and one thing only. And that is definitely not what I’m after.”

“Didn’t he seem nice?”

“They all seem nice.” She emphasises the word seem by stretching out the vowel.

We shuffle forward. People cram themselves into the lift like sardines in a can; some wear medical masks.

“Next time, call me. You don’t need a man to wine and dine you. We can do that ourselves,” I say.

“I got dressed up and everything. Went to the salon, did my nails.” She wriggles her fingers. They’re already chipped at the edges.

“Nice colour.”

“Isn’t it?” She holds her fingers up for closer inspection.

We’re next in line for the elevator, and that’s when my impatience spikes, my foot tapping against the ground. Now that the lift is so close, the wait feels like an eternity.

“It’s like the microwave,” I mutter, folding my hands behind my head, arching my back for a stretch.

“The microwave?” A wrinkle forms between Su-Jin’s eyebrows.

“The longest minute.”

“Huh?”

“You know, a minute is a minute, but not all minutes are the same.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Think about a minute playing video games versus a minute waiting for the microwave to heat up your food.”

Su-Jin’s eyes widen in understanding just as the doors open. Stepping inside, I press the button for the third floor. It lights up blue.

“For me, it’s when your date goes to the bathroom.”

“What?” I laugh.

“It’s the longest minute because you don’t know if he’s coming back or if he’s just ditching you to finish off the oysters you didn’t want in the first place.”

“Has that ever happened?”

“No. But it’s always a possibility.”

Bodies shove past us to exit on the second floor, and a new group piles in. If one more person tries to squeeze inside, I won’t be able to breathe. Poor Su-Jin has it worse—she’s only four foot ten. She notices my pitying look and scoffs, straightening her back to gain a precious inch.

“I don’t want pizza anymore.” She scrunches her nose.

“Su-Jin!”

The lift doors open, bringing a welcome rush of air. With some awkward manoeuvring, we step out into relative freedom.

“They have pasta there, too,” I say.

“Meh.” Su-Jin curls her lip. “How about Thai?”

“I am not going back down there.”

“Fine. I’ll have pasta.”

With an exasperated growl, Su-Jin stomps toward the Italiana Mamma café. It’s open-plan, situated on the third-floor balcony overlooking the main atrium. The place is decorated more like a Parisian tea house than a trattoria, with pastel doilies, dainty pink chairs, and round tables on single legs that spider into delicate twirls at the bottom. The china bears images of strawberries and daisies, and soft drinks come in cut-glass goblets in all the colours of the rainbow. The lunchtime rush has eased, so the queue is mercifully short. My stomach rumbles, and I pat it in reassurance.

Su-Jin thumbs something into her phone.

“Meetster?” I ask.

Her eyes flick up at me. “I can’t help it. I’m addicted. But look at this one…” She shoves her phone in my face. I lean back to see a muscular man holding a large fish in front of a picturesque lake.

“That’s…”

“Not possible, I know. There’s a filter that makes it look like you’ve gone fishing. I don’t know why, but men really love those fishing pics. I’m making a collage in my bedroom of all the Meetster guys with their giant fish.”

“The bigger the better?” I let a smile tug at my lips.

“I know! Overcompensating much? Just once, I’d like to see a guy proudly holding a tiny sardine. I could fall for a guy like that.”

I laugh, covering my mouth.

“Table for two?” asks an automaton, scooping her chin toward us. She blinks at odd, precise intervals, designed to resemble someone’s idea of an Italian ‘mamma’—stout and smiley. An automatic diffuser inside her mouth emits a heady gust of tomatoes, bread, and cheese. I cough, fanning the pungent air away.

“Yes, please,” Su-Jin says, still tapping on her phone.

“Table number thirty-eight. Buon appetito!”

We settle into our chairs, and immediately the tabletop erupts into a colourful ad for an air purifier. A smiling Chinese lady with alabaster skin stretches her arms wide, spinning atop a snowy mountain, like in that old musical film where they sing all the time. Except now there’s no such thing as snow, and the mountains are long gone. Last I heard, the Alps were eroded by acid rain in a massive landslide that wiped out much of central Europe. That’s still better than starving, like people do in most warmer countries. We’re lucky here in Singapore. Oh, so lucky.

“You know what’s strange?”

“What’s strange?” Su-Jin asks, her eyes still glued to her phone.

“What’s the point of ads? All these corporations pushing junk on us… but we’re all gonna die in, what, three years tops? What’s the estimate now?”

“Two and a half. Ten minutes to midnight.” Su-Jin points behind her at the Doomsday clock without even looking. I’m impressed by her accuracy.

“What do they need money for? We’re all stuck in the same tunnels.”

“I heard Elon’s in a private bunker with a pool, a jungle room, a snow room, an ice-skating rink —even an indoor mountain for skiing.” She locks her phone and folds her hands on the table.

“But he’s all alone. I’d rather be here.”

“True.” Su-Jin slides her lips to one side.

“And his Mars mission might be great, but it’s twenty years out, and we’re two and a half years away from oblivion. He’s dying with us whether he likes it or not.”

“Breadsticks?” A waiter bot rolls up, bearing a basket of stale bread nestled in a red gingham cloth. The middle and bottom compartments hold pasta dishes and salad for other tables.

Su-Jin takes the basket. The bot’s screen blinks twice in a wink, then scurries off. I grab a breadstick and bite down, worried for a second that I might have chipped a tooth.

“I don’t know. I like shopping, going out, and dating. Maybe in these next two years, I’ll meet someone wonderful and get married,” Su-Jin says.

“Is that what you want?”

“Yeah. Don’t you? Love—that’s all that matters. Whether I live thirty years or three hundred, it’s what I care about.”

I gape at her, letting her words settle. They feel heavy, pressing me into silence. What is love? What did I ever learn about it in my short life?

“I love my dog and my parents. Maybe I once loved a boy when I was ten, but he wasn’t very nice.”

Su-Jin laughs behind her hand.

“I love you,” I continue. “You’re my best friend in the whole world. That has to be love.”

Su-Jin smiles and reaches for my hand.“I love you too, Gabby.”

We gaze at each other, as if our eyes might unlock the meaning of life, right here in a crowded mall. I’m not sure how long we stay like this. A booming gong jolts us from our trance. The thunder of the giant clock reverberates through the atrium, echoing in every pore, every crevice of our bodies. It isn’t just us who freeze—everyone does. All breathing halts. Su-Jin looks over her shoulder at the clock. The small hand shifts with a sharp, resounding click, and every human sound is sucked away into silence. Only the clueless robots keep moving, and the screens keep blaring nonsense. For the longest, most painful of minutes, all humans remain still.

“Nine minutes to midnight,” Su-Jin whispers. Her voice is deafening.

Gradually, the murmurs reemerge from hibernation; glasses clink, silverware scrapes porcelain, and laughter starts to ripple through the air again.

I fill my lungs with what little oxygen is left.

“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “Maybe we’re not so different from our grandparents and their grandparents. We just have less time.” I shrug, scanning the QR code for the menu. “What are we having?”

“I’m coming around to pizza.”

“Oh yeah? What kind?”

“Pepperoni.”

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