Penghilangan Paksa Futuristik — Cerpen 'BRAM' dari Mikael Johani

*Cerpen ini tayang sebagai bagian dari 'Pekan Fiksi VICE: Indonesia 2038'. Redaksi meminta penulis-penulis muda potensial negara ini menjelajahi kemungkinan situasi Indonesia pada 2038. Naskah yang kami terima rata-rata bercorak fiksi ilmiah, menyajikan gaya tutur segar, serta sudut pandang menarik saat mengulas topik seperti teknologi, lingkungan, agama, hingga bahasa di masa mendatang. Para pengarang dibolehkan menulis dalam bahasa apapun selain Bahasa Indonesia.

Selamat membaca!

FUCK. The sun is fucking blinding. Why did I forget to close the fucking cover? The rats in Kampung Bali are fucking THICC! Why am I speaking in retroslang? ZZZZZ. I can’t go back to sleep now. Have to get out of this dumpster. Was good though this one, the vegies were fresh, didn’t smell too bad. The hydrolettuces were fat and juicy, I could hear ‘em melt from the heat of my own body last night. I’ve got to do it today, yeh, gotta set my priority straight meng. Gotta join LA Résistongs. Buswit was zapped last week. Yusi two days ago. Maes just yesterday. They’re coming for me. BRAM**. BRAM is coming for me. Fuck him. Fuck this dumpster life. Ah yeah, at least that was a good dump. That public toilet has always been good to me. I like that bitch who mans it. (((The bitch who mans it))) HAHA! She’s so beautiful I could fuck her right now. But not now. She’s too stupid. I’m not gonna get anything out of her. Probably just how many people pay her the 5 million*** Giramondos to use the fucking toilet so far today, how many yesterday, the day before that, blablabla. She also cooks for that Indomie warung around the corner, maybe she also has memories of who orders what flavour which order comes with chopped rawit on the side. I’M FUCKING HUNGRY! She’s a fucking beauty though. Skin of copper that gleams under the neon of the toilet’s waiting lounge. Her perfect white teeth (kok bisa ya!****). She’s short-ish and walks like Chaplin but yeah, her imperfections only make her even more beautiful. Even her splayed out toes and her Human Made thongs. Gotta focus though. I need to find someone from LA Resistongs to fuck and tell ‘em I’m in. No more revolution on for later (ROFL! HA!). Gotta do this now. I don’t want to lose Anya. Where is she now? I hope she finds a good dumpster last night with Jae. Our next meet-up is not until the next full moon, I fucking miss them. Fuck this BRAM meng. But it’s not safe to go looking for them. Remember when we did that seven full moons ago. Just so I can see them from across the road in that Wendy’s. I missed the zap gun by inches. I don’t even know how they knew where I was or what I was doing. The Silops***** are with BRAM, I know that. But there was no Silop that day. Whatever. Fuck if I know. They were glowing with HAL. That’s what’s important for me. Anya was having her fave hydrobroccoli avec cheese and Jae was drinking KLIM. They had enough money and they looked full. That’s what’s important for me. I don’t even know why BRAM started zapping peeps in NKRIQ✙. I didn’t think this place had any AI nay-sayers. This place had no AI enthusiasts to say nay to. We were always just indifferent. Maybe I was wrong. Some people are serious I guess. Like that du who wrote that stupid historicorealist apologia of BRAM. Zapped! HAHAHA. Fuck that was so satisfying. He didn’t see it coming. BRAM is clever meng. He knew hagiographies would just turn more people off him and on to LA Résistongs, so—basic principles of utilitarianism—that du had to go. Even though the LIT MACHINA✙✙ declared the text “BERES DALAM SEGI PENCERITAAN”. I have to fuck Engga today. The last time I fucked someone who was in LA Résistongs, his body told me I have to fuck Engga to tell the other Revos that I’m in with them. Engga is at Aisereht, the ruins of it anyway. Not too far. What the fuck did that bitch say. She screamed something at me. Fuck. These 4N-D0nks✙✙✙ are fucking savage meng. Why couldn’t they stay in their line. But I can’t afford them. Better to save the Giramondos for Anya and Jae.

The streets are empty. A bit alarming. It’s never as busy as people said in old books since the Sarinah building was demolished. A girl got her head decapitated by debris from the detonation. Remember that. The parents sued the Ur-Batavus✙✙✙✙ council and they got zapped. That was when peeps worked out BRAM was here. BRAM WAS HERE. That was real fear, wasn’t it. We’d heard about BRAM for so long but we thought, nah, not here. Where’s she. Engga. I’ve seen her before, a long time ago. She had beautiful, slender, dark fingers. I saw them resting on the back of a church pew. I knew she was in LA Résistongs, which wasn’t so hard to work out, since everyone said it was full of beautiful chicks. Now I just have to remember her face. The guy I fucked last time told me Engga was in the nunnery. There was a room left standing underneath all the rubbles. She’d be waiting for me there. It’s funny. When BRAM turned off the internet in 2028 and peeps slowly realised the only way to get information was by fucking other people, that was nutz.

For 13 months, people were fucking everyone, everywhere. On the streets, in the dumpsters, in abandoned 4N-D0nks, everywhere, all of the time. Even me. Life’s orgiastic, it’s fantastic. Loved that time. But then you worked out, you don’t want too much information. And you start to get selective about what kind of information gets transferred to you when you fuck. I remember I fucked this girl from school I used to have a crush on, because she wanted to fuck me to get quotes from Aristophanes’ Sphekes (she was a lawyer), and dang, all the time we were fucking, I got all these useless info about KUHP and KUHAP and judicial review procedures and all that shit, fuck meng, I just didn’t need all that KNOWLEDGE. Especially since this fucking knowledge gets stored in your memory for at least a year before you can delete it. Fuck if I know if we now have limited memory storage, but my head always feels incredibly full after a fuck. Hang on, someone is in that room in the nunnery. And it was me. Fuck, that was totally fucked up. I had to do it. Otherwise, I won’t be able to see Anya and Jae again. Huhu. Someone asked me what did I just do, I said, what did I just do, yeah meng, that’s what I’ve been asking myself, fuck. He told me, yeah, BRAM does that sometimes. If he can’t find someone, he clones him/her, and then zaps the clone. It’s as good as zapping the real you. Don’t ask me how. So I told him, Engga wasn’t there, it was just me. I didn’t know it was not me. I was there and he who was I told me I had to fuck him to tell the other Revos in LA Résistance that I was with them. I thought this was some kind of security procedure, meng. What do I know. FUCK. I had to fuck him, me. Otherwise, I won’t be able to see Anya and Jae again. And yeah, you were right, he was zapped just after we were done fucking (which wasn’t very long, I assure you). He just disappeared like that as he was washing his face in a basin. There was a droplet of water left suspended in the air when his body disappeared. I don’t understand though, I’m still here, and nothing seems to have changed. You said I’m as good as dead? But I’m in LA Résistongs now, and we’re making progress. We’re building these fortresses underground made of used Bajajs. Apparently the metal the Indians used to make them are purer, so BRAM’s zap guns can’t penetrate it. What? Have I seen Anya and Jae? No. It’s still two weeks until the next full moon. No. NO! FUCK YOU ASSHOLE! NO! NO! FUCK! NOOOOO!!!

(*) This story is inspired by Roko’s Basilisk
(**) Bisexual Robotic AI Manimal, the universe’s AI overlord in 2238.
(***) Ur-Batavus currency in 2038.
(****) Everyone codeswitches in 2038.
(*****) The police
(✙) Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia Queer
(✙✙) NKRIQ’s equivalent of Académie Française
(✙✙✙) Luxury minibus, equivalent of present day’s Alphards
(✙✙✙✙) Present day Jakarta.

Mikael Johani adalah penyair, kritikus sastra, kritikus film. Tulisan-tulisannya pernah dimuat di berbagai media online maupun offline, termasuk Sinema Indonesia, Bung!, boemipoetra, Pop Teori, Vita Traductiva, a+, Matabaca, soap, Koran Tempo, dll. Buku puisinya yang baru terbit adalah We Are Nowhere and It's Wow.