The rice was cold.
Niran sat at the table with his daughter across from him, picking at her food while glancing at her tablet. The screen's glow cast pale light over her face. Her hair was tied back tight in a Ministry clip, her uniform creased at the elbows, stiff from repeated use and never enough washing.
“I don’t know how you eat this stuff,” she said, pushing a sliver of fish to the side.
Niran shrugged. “It’s better than some of the things I ate in the '40s. At least this one doesn’t have bones.”
She smirked but didn’t laugh. Neither of them did much laughing these days.
Outside, the lights of Zone P-3 flickered across the high-rises like a dying constellation. Pattaya wasn’t what it used to be. Once it had been neon and noise, foreign voices spilling out of bars and tuk-tuks choking the roads with diesel and dance music. Now it was silent. Repurposed. Reclaimed.
Whole towers had been converted into accommodation units. Old beachfront hotels served as housing blocks for the newly reassigned. No one came to Pattaya to rest anymore. No one came from anywhere.
“How was the office?” she asked.
He scraped a few grains of rice onto his spoon and chewed slowly before answering. “Quiet. Same forms. Same people. I think someone in my division had a birthday. They didn’t say anything. Just put a sticky note on the desk.”
“Nice.”
“Very.”
He looked around the apartment—government-issue, narrow and clean. The table they were sitting at was once a desk in a hotel room, probably used by a tourist from the UK or Japan or Germany. The drawers still had little stubs of pencils in them, the kind they used to leave for comment cards. He'd found a note in one once—“Fantastic pool, great staff, would come back again.”
That pool was now a fish farm. No one swam in Zone P-3.
“You used to do trade, right?” she asked, suddenly, as if the question had been waiting a long time.
He nodded. “I ran shipments of rice, mostly. Sent them across Asia. Indonesia, Philippines, even Egypt once. We used to ship from Laem Chabang. Port’s sealed off now. Haven’t been there in ten years.”
She tilted her head. “What was it like? Being on a plane?”
He blinked, surprised by the question. It had been years since anyone asked.
“It was…” He paused. “Hard to explain. Comfortable, sometimes. But…beautiful.I remember looking out the window as we flew over the bay. The sky was just open. You could see the curve of the world.”
She frowned, trying to imagine it.
“There were people everywhere. Airports packed with languages, smells, arguments, laughter. And everyone trying to go somewhere else. It was noisy. Messy. Wonderful.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous?”
“People said it was the safest way to travel. And they were right.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then, “I wish I could’ve seen that.”
He nodded. “I wish I could’ve shown you.”
Silence returned, the kind that stretches between generations. The kind that isn’t awkward, just tired.
He cleared the plates into the reclamation bin. They weren’t allowed to wash dishes anymore—everything went back into the cycle. Efficiency protocols.
From the living room, the wall screen came to life again, unprompted.
“Ministry Bulletin: Regional Trade Operations to remain suspended for fiscal year 2084. National Supply Chain remains stable. Imports unnecessary. Local resources prioritized.”
Niran stared at the screen, then turned it off with a flick.
“I used to have customers in seven countries,” he said quietly, mostly to himself. “Now I deliver forms to a supervisor who doesn’t even read them.”
His daughter didn’t answer. She looked at him with something close to pity. Not the sharp kind—just a soft, sad understanding.
Later that night, when she’d gone to bed and the apartment was dark, Niran sat by the window with a small bottle of rice liquor he’d traded for under the table. He looked down at the street—rows of people walking to assigned sleep blocks, lights blinking overhead, drones passing every few minutes.
In the alleyway below, the faded remnants of a mural were still visible on an old wall. It was a cartoon tourist with a beer in one hand and the words: WELCOME TO PATTAYA – FUN UNDER THE SUN!
Niran raised his glass.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Fun under the sun.”
And drank.