Let’s try to imagine that I am going to be born in 17 years . . . Let’s in our heads go forward to the year 2016. The year in which I will be conceived by the country’s most famous hidden couple. The year the worlds largest Dam, The Three Gorges Dam will have just been built in our province. The year one million people will be relocated to prefab towns, for the creation of the large water reservoir. And the year.. The notorious TV programme, Kilowatt Dynasty will be on.
This Tele-Shopping programme will be broadcast from a flashy underwater centre... At the bottom of the newly formed lake. The country’s biggest multinational, selling electrical appliances... Will expect a big shopping craze and finance the programme as a marketing tool. People will still be able to watch their old valley... While being seduced into buying a washing machine. And no one other than my mother... Will get the privileged job of presenting it.
A divorced mother-of-one-ex-quiz-show-host... Then in her late thirties... Will give it her best in a tangy coloured two-piece. Leaning casually on shiny washing machines... In front of various underwater scenes.
But in the third month the slick backdrops will change due to heavy silation What happens next depends on who you’ll speak to. The man who is going to make a difference in her life... Is then still slumped in front of the television in his new living room.
My future father is neither here nor there... During the construction of the dam... He will have handcuffed himself to the fence around the visitors’ centre. While activists chained elsewhere will be locked up... He will have luckily put himself in a place... Where a lot of national and international camera crews will film him... So he wont be arrested.
Now he will be disrespected in the activists’ hidden scene. And having nothing on his CV... Other than handcuffing himself to a fence... Will have made him a lonely man. While irregularities rush through his mind... He thinks of a way of reinstating his activist’s grace.
In the night of October the 18th he goes up to the centre... Walks past the sleeping guard... Comes live on air and makes an announcement... That he has taken mum hostage. He makes no clear demands but is armed. This will be bad news...bad news for him... Because mum won’t actually be in the centre when this happens.
She would have been seen by several witnesses going around the new town above. So just as the word will spread about her apparent escape... Her head will appear on the programme’s last ever broadcast... ...in which she just repeats his exact words.
The fact that she will have re-entered the centre voluntarily... Without telling anyone of her decision... And leaving her teenage son above water... Will have everyone looking frantically for an explanation. Each member of our small family will have their own theories... Involving her quest for love, fame or just adventure.
But I think that she will have started suffering from... “The Inverted dream syndrome” Which is dangerously common to astronauts. When the spaces and events in their dreams will look more real... Than the everyday dark nothingness of outer space. Until they are convinced that they are awake.... While dreaming of their wives in bungalows back on earth... And that their empty floaty reality is actually a dream.
Mum will start believing... She dreams of being in a transparent building underwater, Surrounded by an oddly familiar landscape... While wearing an orange uniform... And flesh-coloured tights. And these people she doesn’t know, but know her... Keep ringing her about washing machines. And when she thinks she is awake... She sleepwalks out of the centre into the life... Which takes her up to the new town above.
Here she’ll wander around aimlessly... Looking absent... Not speaking to anyone... Just like on the afternoon father thinks he takes her hostage... She will be hovering around town. While dreaming of getting tired... She will unknowingly return to the centre... ...to go to sleep.
