Fiction: Group 3
them in? What are they doing? Millions of questions popped up in my brain, but there wasn’t any time for
me to think and hesitate anymore. With all my strength, I pulled myself up. A sudden pain struck the back
of my neck.
“Hey, bud. Our little friend has woken,” chortled the slender man.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“To make the Pearl River Delta a better place. To speed up the economic development, to transform!
Transform it into the world’s largest consumer markets,” said the thinner man.
“No. No one has the rights to do that. All cities in the Pearl River Delta develop gradually. It will
eventually grow to…”
“We need the cities to grow now!” shouted the stronger man. “We need this stupid machine to run
faster!”
“That’s utterly selfish, greedy and stupid,” I rebutted. “Everything needs a balance. If you turn the
gears to make the machine run faster, there would be disastrous consequences! If the machine runs too
fast…”
The stronger man slapped me hard on the face, and I fell onto the ground. “Stop choking and
throwing up your useless words! No one now cares about that anymore. Bring him out, bud! He’s now
apparently futile…we’ve still got work to do.”
“You’ll regret…” I tried to explain while I struggled to regain my composure, but I fainted, only
hearing the harsh and unforgettable last words said by the stronger man, ‘In a selfish world, the selfish
succeeds’…
I kept telling myself that all was a dream when I woke up. I’ve found myself lying on an unfamiliar
ground. I didn’t know what the time was or even the year. All I felt was that I must have grown old.
I pulled myself up, and looked around.
No, no…this could not be
, I whispered to myself, as I felt the
short hairs along the nape of my neck raising.
Houses and villages were all gone. The Pearl River I saw didn’t reflect little huts anymore. There
were tall building blocks instead, so tall that you couldn’t see the top in the reflection. I could never imagine
what those building blocks are and the uses of the blocks. And I could also never imagine that a thing could
be so tall and high, as if it had already reached the clouds in the sky. I was lost for words and absolutely
dumbstruck, until I found myself gawking and being stared at.
“Mum…who is that weird man over there?” an innocent looking little girl grasped her mother’s dress
and kept tugging. Her mother stared at me with crossed eyebrows, and quickly grabbed her daughter’s hand,
pulling her away, as if I were a hazard. I wanted to speak out for myself, but I only found myself gesturing.
People continued to look at me vacantly as they walked pass. I didn’t know why…maybe I was the one
who got lost in time, with the old fashioned clothes, and being the only one stopping in a fast, developing
city.
Pearl River was not as beautiful as it was before. There was often heavy smog smothering along the
river. Instead of a greenish blue peacock color, I found it murky and darkish green, with white patches of
things lying on top and clumps of mud swamping the lake. The saddest thing of all was that white dolphins
were gone. I couldn’t see them anymore. I thought dolphins and humans were friends, but now the
dolphins are forced to leave.
I walked in between the building blocks and factories. I saw weird-shaped transportation and heavy
industrial manufacturing factories. There were complex network of roads, and there were constructions of
large-built bridges, connecting between the cities, Hong Kong and Macau Traditions and culture seemed to
disappear in thin air, and joy was covered up in the grey clouds and smoke. Deep in my mind, I could
imagine the gears in the clockwork machine running in an unbearable speed. I could imagine the gears
rusting and would break down one day.
Everything is different and is going on too fast. I sometimes ask myself am I the one lost in time, or is
it the people in the cities? Am I still dreaming, or maybe everything in the past was just a dream? But there
is a thing that I am clearly certain of: human intelligence is polluted by its nature, and this pollution is
rapidly spreading.
And now, I sit here, in a place that was once familiar…Pearl River Delta.
