The school tonner came growling down the dirt slope, spewing black smoke from its ancient diesel engine. Only in the well-off regions would one see cars and buses that ran on hydrogen fuel cells or batteries. Old Singapore lost her right to public transport when half of its population rebelled against their new rulers and fled to the train tunnels and ammo dumps deep underground. Funded by Asian Americans and Asian Australians sympathetic to their plight, the underground fighters of Old Singapore were hailed by western media as the “Tunnel Rats of the Twenty-First Century”. To this day somehow, the Tunnel Rats continue to be a thorn in the butt-cheek of the throne, to which even after Malaysia and Indonesia sent their volunteers at the turn of the Twenty-Second Century, lost even with advanced laser and plasma firing weaponry.
They had not done so ever since the completion of the Krah Canal.
The Royal Government had admitted unofficial, silent defeat.
On the surface though, on propaganda radio, TV and newspaper, they enthusiastically claimed that the fight “against those who threaten stability in the region” is still ever-ongoing, but in reality, they stopped caring about the original Singapore when they built a new city in their backyard on the Krah Canal, touted as: ‘The Asian Suez’; eventually naming that city ‘Neo Singapore’—with the old one forgotten in due time.
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And forgot about her, everyone did.
Even the United States, in financial recession from over-extending their military by participating in the Second Arab-Israeli War, fighting the Russians who sided with Iran, and the Chinese, who now made the African Union their puppet recognised Neo Singapore as ‘the real Singapore’ in a desperate bid to withdraw from Southeast Asia to better concentrate on the Korean Peninsula.
The green school tonners were the last relics of Singapore’s pride of independence. Military supply trucks. German-made. Now they were but vehicles to transport mindless citizens to a school, not to learn, but to obey. The death of the mind. Sheep to the slaughter.
Everyone spoke about what they hoped to become. Some were simple and simply wanted to carry on with life in the village, continuing their family's trade. Some wanted to leave the village, and move one step up the ladder into a town. But some were like Jade, who simply kept quiet and slept on the long ride to East Old Singapore—reserving their dreams in dreams. Talk was cheap. Hope was hopeless. The X-Levels were their God now, and “God “would make you what he wanted you to become, not what you wanted to become.
At the age of sixteen, young minds were still easily malleable.