They hopped off when the bus pulled over nearby a 4-star hotel that was popular as a bed and breakfast for business trips. When Stephanie's old office held meetings for the regional business team that required in-person presentations, they rented some rooms there because the hotel was only five kilos away from their office. She was familiar with this route, and yet, reminiscing the old job felt jarring. Everyone's life was now divided into before and after the pandemic, a point of no return. Romanticising the past would not do much.
They rode the lift to reach the 3A floor after picking up an envelope containing a key card left at the receptionist, signed for Mark Zuhair.
"Is this what you see every day?" he asked.
"Deserted places? Yes. This used to be a popular hotel, but I believe you know that we're now only at a quarter of the pre-pandemic population."
They turned left after leaving the lift as the arrow indicated the aisle where Mark's designated room was located.
Mark reached inside his jeans' pocket to retrieve a white plastic card of an ID's size, the key to this room.
"How do I . . .?" He looked up to Stephanie.
She took the card from his hand, inserted it into a slot mounted on the metal base of the door handle. The beeping red light turned green in an instant, then she pushed the handle downward.
Stale air welcomed them.
"Um . . . I guess we have to air it out," he suggested. "How long has it been closed?"
They both didn't know, so the first half an hour was spent opening the windows. Thankfully, it was originally a smoking room, so the window could be slid open.
"If I lost this card, how would I get the replacement? Nobody mans the receptionist."
"Then don't lose it. I don't know what to do, either."
He paused for a moment while his eyes surveyed the door and the room. His tall body blocked the sunlight to Stephanie's eyes like a narrow curtain. "I'll just leave the door open all the time. Putting some block of wood, perhaps, to stop the door."
They figured out the daily necessities. The document sent by the penitentiary to her email contained minimum instructions, but like many other things in this age, she explored the area when no one was around to ask.
They found the hotel restaurant and kitchen on the second floor. The dining area was dimly lit by the only one out of rows after rows of neon lamps overhead. Some Edison bulbs hung from the open ceiling where they could see the maintenance line painted black to morph into the base. Styled in industrial decoration, exposed bricks lined one side of the wall, a background of the coffee section. Because the initial target market of the hotel was business travellers, it had an expansive selection of coffee handwritten on the blackboard on the wall, but very few alcoholic beverages. The chalk writing faded out but they could still make the majority of the letters.
It was a room once seating people in business suits or with laptops humming on the table, securing new contracts or preparing for their upcoming presentations. Stephanie could only imagine the low chatter reverberating across the room, the waiters or waitresses traversing the area effortlessly, greeting each patron or matron, delivering the orders back and forth to the kitchen. Walks. She painted different types of walks everyone here in the time before did. Power walk. Someone strutting with head held up high. Jutted chin. Guests moseying along after a long day at business matters, looking for an easy twilight.
People used to come and go, but what before her was now an airy room, its vast flooring said hello to them emptily. Almost like watching Titanic's remnants from an ROV video, its obsolete bustle left crumbs when pages of history turned. Of dead lamps. Of unfired stoves. Of sad, limping, chef's apron sprawling somewhere on the preparation table.
"Well, I think I can cook the instant noodles here so we can have lunch. Hope you're not starving. The ramen bricks are all that I'm packed with from the penitentiary."
"By the cold lady?" she chuckled.
"Cold? Oh," the titter was contagious. "She was an okay person. Before coming to the East Jakarta penitentiary, she was a warden of the women's prison. It was a stressful time for everyone on earth, I believe. And having to move to a male prison didn't ease off her stress. She was only helping with administrative tasks because we had a male warden, but the birds said she was scared to death when some of us almost legged it at the logistic hub."
He tilted his head and directed his gaze at one of the bulbs as if recalling something. "Not many of us lived to see this day."
Sensing the darkened mood, Stephanie broke away. "I'll help cook your lunch."
Yanked away from the recollection, Mark grabbed the two sad noodle packets. "I have like, ten packets. I could treat you one."
"Don't be absurd, it's your ration."
He quickly continued, "It's the first time I can eat again as a free man. A chance best not to be spent alone." He accentuated his point with slightly raised eyebrows.
For once, Stephanie felt warm and proceeded to turn on the heat. Next to the stovetop, lay two packets instead of one.
They sit opposite each other at a two-seat dining table. There were only the two plates Mark took from the heaping piles on the rack and two sets of silverware. It was odd to have fried noodles presented barely on hotel standard cutleries. But at least the table was bare, too.
"What do you eat every day?" Mark began after swallowing a forkful of sauce-coated noodles.
Stephanie chewed slowly while thinking. "Different stuff. Depending on what I have from the logistic hub or supply depots."
"What is the difference between them?"
"Well, as a start, a supply depot is a warehouse of daily supplies, like what its name means. It's the master greengrocer. Smaller greengrocers or other Immune workers pick up items from there for local distribution. A logistic hub, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily limit itself to groceries. They could host arrays of secondary needs like stationeries, non-basic clothes, trinkets rampaged and collected from the thrift shops, or items seized from properties without owners."
"Gardening shears, for example, can be stocked only at the logistic hub. But, apart from the warehouse function, a logistic hub is manned by more people because their main function is to dispatch couriers to distribute things from both supply depots and the hub itself."
Mark nodded slowly. "And robbers were killed by the mob back then."
"To be fair, that's why the term is 'seized'. There is no owner claiming it as any Immune can bagsy it anytime they find something in a free property. A frontliner, someone patrolling the neighbourhood, or me if I find the house next to my client's is unlocked and empty. People gut out housing units from time to time like grave robbers doing their job. I just don't have the time and energy to scour the areas."
"It's . . . no-man's-land," he commented to the cold water he sipped from a clean coffee cup.
"Indeed. But the properties like these, hotels, offices, banks, that used to belong to corporations that no longer exist, are the government's property. I haven't seen or heard people relocating to hotels anyway. The Immunes who move to other towns usually settle themselves in empty apartment units or houses. You're the first." She flashed a bright smile.
"But, rest assured, even if you want to leave your door unlocked, no one would risk it to steal from you or this hotel. The punishment for stealing from the government's properties is that you'll get shipped to the labour camp. Mostly on the farms, mines, where you break your back but receive no wages."
At the mention of 'labour camp', Mark dropped his fork. Coughing almost silently to cover the embarrassment, he continued eating while Stephanie kept chewing.
"So, everyone's got a house now?" He followed the conversation path.
"More or less. We never got the chance to prove or disprove the statement: This earth is enough for people's needs, not people's wants. Three-quarters of humanity was wiped out before we revolutionised how we should run this world."
After cleaning and storing away the cutleries, the pair went back to Mark's room, that was what Stephanie called it now to get Mark into a habit of claiming something legally for himself.
"And now for the basic internet."
"I know what it is."
She did the maths mentally and concluded that when Mark received his 20-year sentence, Internet was still a rising phenomenon in this country. Her family, for one, were still at the mercy of dial-up connection. She could still hear the particular screeching noises when her parents' modem squawked to establish the connection. A traumatic sensory experience.
"What was your job at the logistic hub, or later, in the penitentiary logistic centre?" Since public schools and universities started installing wi-fi modems at their compounds, Stephanie imagined he would not be in zero acknowledgement of the internet itself.
"I recorded the inventory of coming and going boxes, and every end of the day I counted to ensure my data matched the actual number."
"Got it. Did you need to send the data somewhere, or was it just stored locally on the computer?"
"Yes, I did, I think. The warden said I had to update and click 'Send' at five pm every day so someone on the bigger hub could process and analyse it for the next day's shipping. Had I sent it late, the East Jakarta central logistic hub in Pulogadung wouldn't have known what to send to replenish our stock. Still, it wasn't fatal because the items weren't food supplies. As for an operating system, not much. If anything went wrong with the computer, I'd just ask for someone to fix it."
Stephanie bobbed her head. She could work with that. Mark grasped the basic concept of input and output, and he got exposure to the internet.
"Last question before we do the unboxing of this package. Have you ever had a phone with an internet connection before? A Nokia with camera, perhaps?"
If he used to work for a mob boss, surely he encountered such devices. Rich people got hold of the latest technology. She did a historical check to help her empathise. Mark spent his first day of the 20-year sentence a couple of years before the birth of the first iPhone.
"With p- poly- poly something ringtones. Is it called ringtones?" he stuttered.
"Yes," she smiled. "We don't do that anymore. So, maybe we can start unboxing now. I'll explain the concept of applications to you."
They opened the phone box carefully and laid it in bed. Mark couldn't hold his gasp.
"So, a smartphone, or let's call it a phone here, is like a handheld computer. Similar to the computer you used at work, it is equipped with many programs. We call them, apps, short for applications. Each of the applications can be downloaded from the central application store here, and they need to be updated regularly. It works on a data package to be online, but I think you can use the hotel wi-fi."
She checked the PDF that was sent to her as a guide for Day 0 of Mark Zuhair, and near the bottom of the Hotel Facilities section, she found the wi-fi password. She showed Mark which icon to press, the sequence until she found a text field to input the password and the notification that his phone was now connected to the internet.
"Now, let's practise making calls. Oh, you've installed Prattle app, too."
"Do you want me to hire you on this app?"
She grinned. "You're special. I'm your assigned Companion by legal request, so you don't need to touch the app to get some visits. You can still explore what it does, definitely."
They were engrossed in texting and making calls using the phone network and the data package.
"It's like the old text messaging, but it's free now rather than paid by character. Texting using an app is not limited by screen space, either. Oh, and you can also send multimedia, like videos or images at no cost other than the internet connection. Maybe something like the old MMS, which I've never used it."
"I didn't use MMS, but my boss did. Pictures for extortion or blackmail. The boss."
That verified her assumption. What she knew from the document was Mark faced a trial for drug and blood money arrest, quoted verbatim as no more information was provided. She put a lid on her curiosity.
"Alright, now try to type anything to text me."
He texted on the app. He typed, Hello, this is Mark Zuhair.
"Great," she exclaimed. "We're almost there. Now, let's make a call. I'll call you first, then you call me."
Stephanie walked out of the room and stood in the hallway to avoid echo from being too close to Mark. They made a few calls and exchanged pleasantries before she went back inside.
She found Mark beaming and chortling, "I made it. I made a call using the internet. I've never been this long with a phone before. The guards just flipped their own around but I never knew what was inside it and whose voice they heard across the line."
He babbled on and shouted, "Yeah," raising his fist in the air. Stephanie giggled back with an amused smile. She tore her gaze away for a moment.
If her eyes watered a bit for this small success, Mark didn't need to know.
If his first day back as a free man would be memorised forever, she had the responsibility to make it enough.