The air in the departure hall of Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport was thick with a tension that had nothing to do with the usual pre-flight anxieties. It was a metallic taste on the tongue, a hum of suppressed panic beneath the blaring announcements. Michael, moving with the shuffling queue, felt it like a physical pressure. The number of armed guards had visibly doubled since his arrival, their faces grim, eyes perpetually scanning the crowd like hawks. This, he knew, was the surface show. The real watchers would be the plainclothes ones, blended into the throng, their casual glances dissecting every passenger, every gesture. The wound to national pride was fresh and festering, and the beast was lashing its tail.
When his turn came, the immigration officer, a man with a neatly-tied turban and a moustache that seemed to bristle with official disapproval, took his passport. He flipped it open, his eyes flicking from the photo to Michael's face and back.
"Chinese?" the officer asked, his tone attempting casual indifference and failing miserably. It was a performance, and a bad one.
Here we go,Michael thought, keeping his own face a placid mask. The entire apparatus of the state, stung and furious, was on a hair-trigger. He'd spent just over ten hours in the wasteland, but here, a mere hour had passed since the Gundam's brazen vanishing act. The humiliation was at its peak, the thirst for a scapegoat palpable in the charged air.
"Yes," Michael replied, his voice flat.
"Your visa says tourist. Such a short stay. In a hurry to leave?" The officer's eyes narrowed a fraction. The unspoken accusation hung between them: Running away?
Michael allowed a look of exaggerated concern to wash over his features. He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a confiding tone that was anything but confidential. "This place," he said, waving a hand vaguely to encompass the airport, the city, the entire subcontinent, "it's gotten too dangerous. I'm heading home. China is safer." He delivered the line with the blunt, unvarnished honesty of a man stating the sky was blue.
The officer's face, already a shade of walnut, darkened further, mottling with suppressed anger and shame. For a long, tense second, Michael wondered if he'd gone too far. He could almost see the petty fantasies of revenge flicker behind the man's eyes—a 'random' secondary inspection, a 'lost' passport, a few uncomfortable hours in a small, windowless room. But the moment passed. The officer's jaw tightened, and with a motion that seemed to cost him physical effort, he brought his stamp down on Michael's passport with a sound like a gunshot. THWACK.
"Next," he bit out, the word clipped and cold, refusing to meet Michael's eyes.
The order had come down from on high, whispered through the ranks: Don't make trouble. Not now. Not with them.The 'them,' in the current paranoid calculus of the security apparatus, was decidedly notthe Chinese. The sheer, galling audacity of the act, the technological leap it implied, had placed the perpetrator firmly in the camp of other, more traditionally advanced rivals. American, Russian, perhaps Japanese. Chinese citizens, therefore, were to be processed swiftly, their exit smoothed. They were to be inconveniences removed, not potential leads. Michael, passport in hand, melted into the stream of passengers heading towards the gates, the ease of it all leaving him faintly unsettled. He had braced for a storm and encountered only a sullen, resentful calm.
He didn't know that at other counters, passengers with American, Russian, or Japanese passports were facing a very different reality—endless questions, 'random' baggage searches that emptied every suitcase, suspicious delays based on the flimsiest of bureaucratic pretenses. A diplomatic storm was brewing in his wake, a tempest of accusations and counter-accusations that would fill news cycles for days. Michael, soaring above the clouds in a metal tube, was already leaving it behind.
Back in Guangzhou, the muggy, familiar air felt like a blanket. His phone, switched on after the long flight, immediately emitted a series of frantic, overlapping vibrations—a backlog of notifications culminating in an incoming call. The screen flashed with the name: David, the East Malaysian fixer. The final payment had been settled with the visa. What more could the man want?
Michael swiped to answer, but before he could utter a greeting, a hushed, almost tremulous voice spilled from the speaker. "Michael? I know it's a stupid question, a dangerous one… but I have to ask. That thing in India… that was you, wasn't it?"
A slow smile touched Michael's lips. He pictured David, probably in some sweltering Kuala Lumpur office, sweating through his shirt for reasons that had nothing to do with the heat. "You tell me," Michael said softly, and ended the call. The idea of David reporting him was laughable. The man lacked the spine, for one. And for another, who would believe him? A story about a client, a visa for some African women, and a walking war machine that humiliated a navy? Preposterous. He was just a simple, innocent young man returning from a brief, unsettling holiday.
The red-eye flight, sustained only by a dubious airline curry, had left him hollow. Hunger was a sharp, gnawing creature in his belly. The procurement list in his mind was long and complex—engineering equipment, specialized supplies—but it would all have to wait. First, sustenance.
He found himself drawn, as if by homing instinct, to 'Aunty Fatty's' hole-in-the-wall eatery. The air was a glorious assault of sizzling garlic, ginger, and soy. The proprietress, a woman of formidable bosom and sharper tongue, beamed at the sight of him.
"Ah! The wanderer returns! Sit, sit! You look like a ghost fed on bad news! I'll get the wok fired up!"
The meal that arrived was, as usual, delicious. But today, there was a distinct, uncharacteristic generosity. The slices of pork in the black bean sauce were not the meager, transparent slivers of yore, but thick, substantial pieces. The chicken with cashews boasted actual breasts, not just bony scraps. Have they seen the light?Michael wondered, shovelling fragrant rice into his mouth. Has the culinary penny finally dropped?
He was on his third bowl when the mystery was solved. Aunty Fatty lumbered over, her presence blotting out the fluorescent light. She planted herself next to his small table, the familiar, overwhelming scent of cheap perfume and frying oil enveloping him. Then she delivered a meaty slap to his shoulder that rattled his teeth.
"You devil!" she boomed, a grin splitting her broad face. "Where have you been hiding?"
Michael's eyes shot instinctively towards the kitchen, where her husband, a silent, wiry man, was wreathed in steam and flame, wielding his wok with the grim focus of a warrior. Seeing no immediate reaction, Michael let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and edged his stool a few crucial inches away.
"Aunty… please," he muttered, a flush creeping up his neck. "A little decorum."
"Aiyoh!What nonsense are you thinking?" she cackled, swatting the air where his shoulder had been. "My heart belongs only to my husband and my wok! I'm a respectable woman!" She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial stage whisper. "I mean the swill! The swill, you silly boy! It's been piling up for days! Another day and it'll start singing opera! Even your precious pigs will turn up their snouts at that! Get sick! Then what will you do, eh?"
Ah. Of course. The swill. The lifeblood of his operation in the wasteland. Guilt, sharp and sudden, pricked him. The unexpected trip, the Gundam escapade… it had completely slipped his mind. The last batch he'd taken over had already been pushing its luck in the oppressive heat; several hundred pounds had gone off, forcing a grim burial detail. The look on Onyile's face as they'd shoveled dirt over that putrefying bounty had been one of profound, personal loss.
"You're right, you're right," Michael said, rubbing his shoulder. The woman was a force of nature, but her heart, as she'd loudly declared, was in the right place. Or at least, her business sense was. A steady customer was a good customer. A thought occurred to him, a way to solve the spoilage problem.
"Tell you what, Aunty. How about this… from now on, you pack it for me. Vacuum-sealed. Those thick plastic bags. It'll last for ages then. I'll pay extra—two yuan for every ten-jin bag you seal. What do you say? You know everyone around here—borrowing a vacuum sealer for the afternoon can't be hard. I'll come by tonight, say eight, and take the lot."
He saw the calculations flicker behind her eyes. The machine was cheap. The bags, bought in bulk, were pennies. Two yuan a bag was pure, almost effortless profit. A steady side-hustle. But her practical nature wrestled with sheer bewilderment.
"You devil," she said again, but the term was now tinged with awe. "For pigs? You're treating pig slop like it's… like it's mooncakes for export! Vacuum-sealed! What's next, a massage for the sausages?"
Michael adopted an expression of scholarly patience. "Aunty, that's where you're behind the times. Modern farming is all about scientific precision. Hygienic conditions. Quality control. These aren't just any pigs. These are… premium, export-grade swine. The future of Chinese pork is in my hands. We must be meticulous."
Aunty Fatty stared at him. She stared at the earnest young man sitting amidst the greasy tables of her cheap eatery, a man who bought her kitchen waste to feed animals, talking about 'export-grade swine' and 'scientific precision' with a straight face. A snort escaped her, then a giggle, which erupted into a full-throated roar of laughter that shook her entire frame. "Export-grade! Hah! Okay, okay, Mr. Scientist-Pig-Farmer! Eight o'clock! I'll have your 'premium feed' all sealed up and pretty for you!"
As Michael left, the sound of her laughter following him out into the street, he allowed himself a small, private smile. The cover story was absurd, paper-thin. But sometimes, he reflected, the most effective lies were the ones people wanted to believe because they made a mundane world seem slightly more interesting. And in the meantime, he'd just implemented a more efficient supply chain for his post-apocalyptic settlement. Science, indeed.