CHAPTER 1 — Between Two Cities
The first sound Umar Arif bin Uthman Ash-Sharif heard was the kettle, not the AI.
It rose from the kitchen in a thin, steady whistle, threading its way through the small apartment. The NADI network would wake a few seconds later, announcing schedules and reminders in its smooth, unbothered voice, but the kettle always came first. Tok Puan insisted on boiling water by hand, even though the tap could heat it instantly.
“Machines can rush,” she liked to say. “Water shouldn’t.”
Arif lay still on his thin mattress, listening. The room was dim, washed in the pale grey that came before sunrise. Wooden blinds filtered the early light into narrow slats across the wall. The air was cool.
He sat up slowly, careful not to let the metal bedframe creak too loudly, and reached for his towel. The blanket slid into a loose heap at his feet as he crossed the room to the bathroom. The flat was old enough that pipes still complained when they woke. The shower sputtered before settling, cold water biting briefly before easing. It chased the last of sleep from his limbs without shock.
Afterward, he stood at the sink and performed wudhu in silence, letting the cool water steady him. Hands, face, arms, head, feet and each movement familiar, practiced, unhurried. It grounded him in a way no system prompt ever could.
Back in his room, he unfolded the sejadah beside his mattress. The floor was firm beneath his palms. The azan for Subuh drifted faintly from Masjid Jamek, softened by layers of concrete, corridors, and balconies. Down here in the underlayer, the call always arrived gentler, as if it had learned to move carefully through the city.
He liked it that way.
He prayed in the half-light, the city still holding its breath. When he finished, he remained seated, letting the final doa settle in his chest. Outside, a few windows flickered to life. Someone’s kettle clicked off. Somewhere above, the upper city was already preparing to move faster.
Arif reached for the al-Qur’an on his desk, its cover worn smooth at the edges. He returned to the prayer mat and recited a few short surah, his voice low, almost folded into the morning itself.
Only then did he pause.
The room was small: a low cupboard, a narrow shelf with his school books and an old framed photo of his parents, their smiles slightly faded, and the wall where he’d once drawn stars in pencil and then scrubbed them off badly. The faint marks were still there if you knew where to look.
“Umar Arif?” Tok Puan’s voice floated down the short hall. “You awake or pretending?”
“Awake,” he called back.
“Good. Come take your share before NADI schedules you to death.”
He smiled despite himself. Only then did he stand and make his way to the kitchen, where the smell of fried tempeh and ginger porridge waited for him.
He padded barefoot into the kitchen. The tiles were cool, and one of them near the doorway had a crack that always surprised his heel. The apartment didn’t have much, but it had that crack, the scuffed table, the old gas stove, the faded curtains with a floral print that had seen three different styles of Neo-KL come and go. It had Tok Puan. It had history.
Tok Puan stood by the stove with a scarf wrapped neatly around her hair. The edges were frayed, the color softened from years of washing. Her hands moved slowly but without hesitation as she scooped rice porridge into two bowls. On the counter, slices of fried tempeh rested on brown paper, glistening slightly with oil.
“You’re early,” she said, glancing at him. “Worried about school?”
“Not really,” he said, then shrugged. “Maybe a bit.”
“Mm.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Sit.”
He did. The chair creaked under him. She set a bowl in front of him and slid a small dish of sambal to the middle of the table. The porridge smelled of ginger and pandan. He wrapped his hands around the warm ceramic and felt his shoulders loosen.
The kettle clicked off. A second later, the apartment lights brightened by a fraction, a gentle shift rather than a harsh flare. NADI’s voice flowed from the ceiling speaker, calm and genderless.
“Good morning, residents of Tower C, Old Kuala Lumpur Underlayer Eight,” it said. “Today’s forecast for your zone is scattered showers between 1400 and 1600 hours. School Sector Twelve reports Cultural Appreciation Week activities continuing. Public transit is operating with minor delays in Sky Corridor Three. Have a productive day.”
The voice slipped away as smoothly as it had arrived.
Arif stirred his porridge. “Cultural Appreciation Week,” he repeated. “They make it sound like homework.”
“Maybe to them it is,” Tok Puan said. She sat opposite him with her own bowl, hands a little slower as she lifted the spoon. “To me, culture is the reason you bother to make nice food on a rainy day, not just swallow nutrition paste from a packet.”
He imagined his classmates listening to the same announcement while getting dressed in flatscreen-lit bedrooms, letting their wardrobes auto-select something sleek and smart-fabric. He thought of the posters at school: Culture in the Cloud! with smiling children wearing shifting projection-outfits that changed pattern when they laughed.
To them, it probably did feel like homework.
He spooned porridge into his mouth, the warmth spreading down his throat, and watched his grandmother. Her fingers were thin, the skin along her knuckles lightly stained with colors that never quite went away, deep blue along the side of her thumb, a faint trace of reddish-brown near the nail of her index finger. When he was younger, he used to think she’d dipped them in rainbows. Later, he learned that dye could cling to skin for years if you gave it enough of yourself.
She caught him staring and raised an eyebrow. “What? My face got extra eye this morning?”
“Your hands,” he said. “The stains. They’re still there.”
She looked down at them as if seeing them for the first time that day. “Good. Means they remember who they are.”
“Hands can remember?”
“Of course. Same way your feet remember the way to the kitchen half-asleep.”
He smiled, but the words lodged somewhere deeper.
His gaze drifted to the photo on the shelf beyond the doorway. His parents stood side by side, his mother’s shawl caught mid-swing by the camera, his father’s arm resting light on her shoulder. People had told Arif more than once that he had his father’s eyes and his mother’s mouth. He sometimes searched his reflection for proof. Some days he found it. Some days all he saw was a boy who didn’t quite fit anywhere.
Tok Puan followed his gaze.
“Eat,” she said softly. “Your parents wouldn’t want you going to school empty.”
He looked back at her. “If… if they were still here, do you think we’d still live in Old KL?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. Your father liked heights. Always looking at buildings, the top floors, the plans. Your mother liked people more than places. She would’ve gone where the conversations were. But they left you with me. That’s where you are now.”
He swallowed. “I remember his voice when we rode the old train,” he said. “Before the pods. He said the city was going to grow upwards. ‘Soon we’ll be under the future,’ he said, like it was a joke.”
“He was right.” She stirred her porridge, lines deepening around her mouth. “He helped build that future too.”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It just sat between them, familiar. They had learned to live with the shape of his parents’ absence years ago. It no longer stabbed, but it still pressed.
Tok Puan set her spoon down. “Finish up,” she said. “Pods won’t wait for sentimental boys.”
“You’re the one who brought them up,” he said, but took another bite.
“Old people are allowed. We have a license for nostalgia.”
He laughed quietly.
When he was done, he rinsed his bowl and set it on the drying rack. The morning light had shifted by then, stretching further across the floor. Outside, he heard the faint whoosh of a sky pod passing overhead, its magnetic track humming.
He slipped on his school trousers and standard uniform shirt, still slightly stiff from the last wash. Over that, he pulled a simple jacket—the fabric thin and smooth, regulation grey with a small strip of reactive material near the wrist that would flash if he neared a restricted area.
He hesitated. The batik shirt, folded on the small shelf near his bed, seemed to tug at his thoughts even from here. The one Tok Puan had made and given him on his last birthday, saying only, “For when you want to remember.”
He wanted to wear it. But Cultural Day proper was still later in the week. Today there would be screens and rehearsals, a talk about “integrating heritage into modern design.” He imagined the looks if he turned up already in full batik, among classmates glowing in digital fabric.
Later, he told himself. There will be a better day.
“Tok,” he called, stepping back into the kitchen. “You need anything from the market later?”
“Just come home in one piece,” she said lightly. “The rest we can buy.”
He slung his bag over his shoulder.
On the way out, he paused at the door. “Tok?”
“Yes?”
“Do you ever… wish we lived up there instead?” He nodded toward the ceiling, where the hum of the upper city vibrated faintly.
She didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes shifted toward the small window, where a sliver of blue sky showed between two towering support beams.
“I lived long enough to know that up and down don’t mean better or worse,” she said. “They mean different. The air up there is cooler. The air down here is older. That’s all.”
He tried to imagine what “older air” felt like, but his chest already knew. It was this: turmeric, steam, dust motes, the distant hiss of a kettle.
“Go,” she added. “NADI will scold you if you miss the pod.”
He stepped into the corridor. As the door closed behind him with a soft click, he heard her humming to herself, some old tune whose words he didn’t know.
The corridor opened to a narrow balcony that overlooked a slice of Old KL. Clotheslines hung between units, T-shirts and sarongs swaying gently in the breeze. Potted plants crowded corners and window ledges—chili shrubs, pandan in cut-off bottles, a stubborn bougainvillea that bent toward the sun. Someone had hung a string of paper lanterns and forgotten to take them down after last Chinese New Year; their once-bright colors had faded to soft pastels.
Below, the ground level was a mesh of stalls, alleyways, and parked bikes. A cart selling kuih was already in place, bright plastic containers lined up in a row. The vendor waved at him when she saw him looking.
“Sekolah, Arif?” she called.
“Ya, Makcik,” he replied. “Later I buy kuih when balik.”
“Promise,” she said. “If not, I sell yours to someone else.”
The banter settled his nerves. This layer of the city still spoke in familiar rhythms: half in Malay, half in laughter.
He made his way to the lift, which was older than most of the people who used it. It shuddered a little as it climbed. The doors opened onto the pod platform. A small concrete slab with a transparent barrier, overlooking the lower city.
From here, he could see the second city above the first one.
The skybridges stretched in clean lines, glass and metal catching the morning light. Pods glided along their invisible tracks, whispering past one another without ever colliding. Between towers, floating gardens hung suspended like green islands, their plants arranged in precise rows, watered by timed mists. Holographic billboards flickered along the sides of sleek buildings, advertising learning modules, synthetic fabrics, nutrient drinks.
A faint chime sounded.
“Transit Pod 4A arriving,” NADI said. “Destination: Sector Twelve School District, Upper Neo–Kuala Lumpur. Please queue within the marked lines.”
Arif stepped into the designated square. A pod slid into place with a soft hiss, its doors unfolding with smooth precision. Cool, filtered air brushed his face as he stepped inside.
“Good morning, passenger,” NADI said from the overhead console. “Please confirm identity.”
“Umar Arif bin Uthman Ash-Sharif,” he replied.
There was a pause, then a soft tone. “Identity confirmed. Seat preference: window.”
The seat nearest the window brightened. He sat, his bag on his lap, feeling the faint vibration as the pod detached and joined the main flow. Old KL began to fall away beneath them, shrinking into puzzle pieces of rooftops and shadow.
Through the glass, the underlayer looked like an older photograph slowly being overexposed. The colors were softer, more uneven. Smoke from a food stall curled up in a lazy ribbon. The top of a yellow prayer dome peeked between concrete beams.
Then the pod rose into the bright zones.
Neo–KL’s upper level greeted them with a sharp, clean light. The sky here seemed a little too even, as if filtered. The towers loomed close now, all mirror and angle. Skywalks linked building to building with polished floors that lit up footsteps. The air shimmered faintly with projected interfaces and public announcements.
“Reminder,” NADI intoned gently. “Sector Twelve students: Cultural Appreciation Week assembly at 0900 hours in Hall B. Projection uniforms will be functional during the event. Physical heritage items must be registered with school administration.”
Arif shifted in his seat. The words “physical heritage items” seemed to curl around his grandmother’s hands, her scarf, the old curtains, the cracked tile in the kitchen. None of those were registered anywhere.
The pod doors opened at the station. A wave of sound rolled in at once—laughter, chatter, snippets of conversation in Malay, English, Mandarin, Tamil. Students streamed along the skywalks, their uniforms bright with projected overlays. Some had activated digital kebaya patterns over their school shirts; others wore neon hanbok designs, lehenga swirls, baju melayu silhouettes. When they moved, their projections left faint trails of light.
He stared for a second. If you squinted, it almost looked like a festival. But the closer he looked, the more he saw the repetition—identical folds, the same ten patterns cycling in different colors.
“Hey, kampung boy.”
He turned.
Liyana stood just outside the pod, one hand on the door frame, a grin already in place. Her hair was short, slightly messy, and a bright projected ribbon flickered above one ear, looping itself without ever falling. Her uniform had a holographic songket overlay, the gold threads flashing in and out like coded light.
“You going to stand there blocking the whole pod, or you planning to migrate back down?” she asked.
He stepped aside quickly. “Sorry.”
She fell into step beside him as they joined the flow of students.
“You didn’t activate anything?” she asked, flicking her fingers to adjust the parameters of her projection. The pattern shifted from deep green to royal blue.
“I don’t have projection skins,” he said.
“Everyone has basic skins.”
“I never set them up.”
She stared at him like he’d announced he didn’t know how to breathe. “You never— Arif. They’re literally free with the school account.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. The real uniform is enough.”
“Traditional minimalist,” she said, as if naming a design choice. “Okay, okay. Respect. But you’re going to look like a background extra.”
“That’s… not a bad thing,” he muttered.
They reached a junction where the skywalk split—a bright arrow pointing left toward “Hall B – Cultural Appreciation Assembly,” and another right toward “Classroom Blocks.” The flow of students veered mostly left.
“Assembly first,” Liyana said. “Then they’ll release us to the workshops. I signed up for ‘Heritage Remix: Designing with Classic Motifs in AR.’ You?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “Just the general session,” he said finally. “I put ‘observer.’”
She shook her head. “You and your observer mode. One day you should try participant mode. The water’s not that cold.”
They stepped into the main atrium. The hall’s ceiling arched high above them, a lattice of translucent panels through which the sky—real or simulated, he couldn’t tell—glowed soft and pale. Digital banners hovered in the air:
CULTURAL APPRECIATION WEEK
HERITAGE IN THE AGE OF NADI
CONNECTING PAST AND FUTURE
Below the words, rotating icons showed wayang kulit puppets, kompang, lion dance heads, calligraphy brushes, all rendered with a clean shiny finish.
The smell up here was different too. No turmeric, no fried tempeh, no damp laundry. Just the faint scent of antiseptic and something citrus—probably a building-wide air freshener. Even the sound was cleaner, amplified by hidden speakers rather than rising naturally from the ground.
He took it all in and felt that familiar dislocation: his body here, his sense of comfort somewhere two hundred meters below.
Liyana nudged him gently with her elbow. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You look like you’re watching a documentary instead of your own school.”
“Maybe I am,” he said.
“You know what your problem is?” she asked, but her tone was fond.
“Many things?”
She laughed. “You still think in underlayer speed. Up here, everything moves faster. You just have to stop comparing.”
He wanted to say that he wasn’t sure he wanted to move faster. That he liked the way Old KL made space for small things: for a neighbor’s greeting, for the pause before the kettle boiled, for the way dusk stretched lazily across concrete and rusted metal.
Instead he said, “I just… feel like two different places are fighting in my head.”
“Wow,” she said. “Deep for before assembly.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s good. Very literature. You should write it down. ‘Boy Between Two Cities.’ Sell to some old-fashioned publisher.”
He gave her a look. “You’re not helping.”
“I’m teasing you because you look like you’re going to float away. Stay on the floor, Umar Arif.”
He looked down at the polished surface beneath his shoes. The floor lights traced the path toward the hall. For a moment, he imagined the ground peeling back, revealing the underlayer below with cracked tiles, hanging laundry, the glint of a metal kettle on a stove.
He hoped Tok Puan had eaten properly. Some mornings she only picked at her food and told him she wasn’t hungry yet. He wished he could bring her up here just once, let her see how the skybridges cut through the air, how the gardens hung, how everything looked so sure of itself. Then again, he didn’t know if she’d be impressed or bored.
“Oi. You went far,” Liyana said, snapping her fingers lightly near his face.
“Sorry,” he said again.
“Stop apologizing. Come on. Let’s survive assembly, then maybe I can hack us into a more interesting workshop.”
“You’re going to get caught one day.”
She grinned. “Not today.”
They joined the queue going into Hall B. A teacher with a tablet checked names as they passed.
“Phones on silent. Projection settings stable. No unauthorized items,” the teacher recited. “Cultural content will be streamed via NADI. Remember, heritage is a shared resource.”
Heritage is a shared resource, Arif repeated silently. It sounded like something written on a brochure, not something you could hold, or smell, or stain your hands with.
He looked at the rows of students ahead of him, their outfits shimmering in pre-set sequences. The patterns were beautiful, in a way. Clean, symmetrical, perfectly lit. But he knew if he reached out, his fingers would pass through nothing but light.
For a fleeting second, he thought of the batik shirt folded in his cupboard at home. Of the way the colors seemed to deepen when he touched them. Of the weight of it, heavier than his uniform.
He wondered what it would feel like to wear it here, among all this glass and glow.
Then he pushed the thought away. It felt like imagining something dangerous in the middle of a prayer.
“Next,” the teacher at the door said, and it was their turn to enter.
Arif stepped into the hall, into the cool, measured air of Neo–KL’s carefully curated version of culture, and the feeling followed him quietly:
He was part of this world, but it didn’t feel like home. Not the way the small kitchen with the cracked tile and the old kettle did. Not the way his grandmother’s stained hands did.
Two cities. One boy. No clear place to stand.
For now, all he could do was keep walking.
