1Apocalypse stories are not new. Mankind’s curiosity about what the end will be like been written about since writing began. Whether it is the Christian Bible’s Flood narrative or the one found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, there have always been stories of catastrophe that occupy significant spaces in the narrative cultures of nearly every society. In recent times, these stories have found a massive audience; apocalyptic fiction is now seen as a sub-genre of science fiction. Often, these stories are either set just before the occurrence of a catastrophe, exploring the drama that emerges from people struggling to survive and/or keep their loved ones alive, or they are set long after the occurrence of the said catastrophe, opening the possibilities for creating settings that radically diverge from the pre-disaster world, such as the one found in the Mad Max series of films. There is a fascination with the idea of how everything could end. But why is there such a fascination?
- 1 Kermode, Frank, The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 96.
- 2 Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 8.
2In The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode contends that “it is by our imagery of past and present and future, rather than from our confidence in the uniqueness of our crisis, that the character of our apocalypse must be known.”1 To Kermode, apocalyptic fiction is an attempt to establish a “concord” with the past and the present, thus performing a predictive function. To him, imagining the end is a quintessentially human attitude, as humans are trapped in what he calls “the middest,” the middle of their existence, or in his words, “Apocalypse depends on a concord of imaginatively recorded past and imaginatively predicted future, achieved on behalf of us, who remain ‘in the middest.’”2 The problem with tying the past with an unknown future via a present that is, according to him, constantly in crisis, is that as the circumstances of the present change, so will the predictions on the future, thus necessitating multiple “apocalypses.” Apocalypses, thus, are an attempt to “humanize” time; imagining the end mirrors the finite existence of man. Since human life is finite individually, it also makes sense to also conceive of an end to mankind’s collective existence.
- 3 Kermode, The Sense of an Ending, 94.
3Considering this, then perhaps the impulse to project the end is not fatalistic but is, rather, an expression of the contemporary. To Kermode, crisis is an ongoing state of contemporary humankind: “Nevertheless crisis, however facile the conception, is inescapably a central element in our endeavors towards making sense of our world.”3 It connects very neatly with his idea of the end as a “concord” with the present and the past. Humans constantly see the current crisis as the most significant/relevant one ongoing, whether it is a personal or social crisis. It would be logical, therefore, to assume that any possible formulation of an end will come from whatever current crises are being seen in the world today.
- 4 Otomo, Katsuhiro, dir. Akira, 1988 (Tokyo: Toho studios, 2001), DVD, 124 min.
- 5 Cameron, James, dir. The Terminator, 1984 (Los Angeles: Orion Pictures, 1997), DVD, 107 min.
- 6 Although the true cause of disaster in the case of Akira was the psychic outburst of the titular ch (...)
- 7 Carpenter, John, dir. Escape from New York, 1981 (Los Angeles: AVCO Embassy Pictures, 2000), DVD, 9 (...)
- 8 Miller, George, dir. Mad Max, 1979 (Melbourne: Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, 1997), DVD, 93 (...)
- 9 Emmerich, Roland, dir. Independence Day, 1996 (Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox, 2000), DVD, 145 min.
- 10 Leder, Mimi, dir. Deep Impact, 1998 (Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures, Dreamworks Pictures, 1998), D (...)
- 11 Bay, Michael, dir. Armageddon, 1998 (Burbank: Buena Vista Pictures, 1999), DVD, 151 min.
4Looking very briefly at movies produced during certain periods, we see how the apocalypse gets reconfigured to reflect the crisis of the time. In the 1980s, for example, the major worry was a nuclear holocaust and the seeming rise of conservative economics and politics. Looking at a small sample of films from the period, we could mention Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira,4 and James Cameron’s The Terminator,5 both of which refer to the image of nuclear war as a reason for disaster.6 Concerns about the degradation of human civilization inform the imagery of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York,7 and the first three Mad Max films.8 In the 1990s, fears changed. The end was something external, such as the one caused by alien invasion, as can be seen from Independence Day,9 or by an impact with a celestial body, as in Deep Impact10 and Armageddon.11 This paper will argue that Philippine author Maria Felisa H. Batacan’s short story, “Keeping Time,” reflects another attempt at achieving a concord with mankind’s history, responding to the concerns and crises of contemporary times.
- 12 Crutzen, Paul, Jacques Grinevald, John McNeill, Will Steffen, “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and His (...)
- 13 Thunberg, Greta, “Transcript: Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit,” National (...)
521st century crises are marked, more clearly, by a sense of human responsibility. Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen used a term already being used by biologist Eugene Stroemer: the Anthropocene, to refer to the current age.12 Crutzen sharpened the meaning of the term, making it clear that he wanted to introduce the idea of a geologic age that acknowledged the amount of influence human action now has on the environment. Mankind’s culpability in the crises it faces are much more pronounced in contemporary discourse; Greta Thunberg’s passionate speech at the United Nations Climate Summit in September 201913 was an outcry which emphasized that the current state of the planet is clearly the result of humankind’s actions. While the Anthropocene has centered on what humanity has done to the planet and the environment, the idea, that of humanity being capable of destroying itself, falls into the same pattern. While the Anthropocene currently remains focused on the human impact on the environment, human responsibility should include not just what mankind does to its surroundings, but also to itself. Thus, the Anthropocene informs the story at hand, in that it is a presentation of a possible end of humanity which results directly from human action.
6“Keeping Time” is a science fiction story by F. H. Batacan, who is better known for her crime novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles, which won the Carlos Palanca Literary Award for the novel in 1999 and the National Book Award in 2002. “Keeping Time” first appeared in the Philippine Free Press magazine in 2007. After publication, the story gained recognition, winning the Philippine Free Press award for best short fiction in 2008. It was later anthologized in Volume 3 of The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction. The story has since been adapted into a podcast by Pakinggan Pilipinas (Listen, Philippines) and is available on Spotify.
- 14 James, P. D., The Children of Men (New York: Vintage Books, 2006).
- 15 Campbell, John W., “Twilight,” The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One 1929-1964, ed. Robert S (...)
7While other stories, such as P. D. James’ novel The Children of Men14 and John W. Campbell’s short story “Twilight”15 tackle the idea of mankind’s collapse, F. H. Batacan’s story of collapse takes a pensive look at the apocalypse through the ways mankind simply wastes away because of its lifestyle choices. Her story follows the World Health Organization field investigator Michael Tejada and his struggles with a new and unfamiliar body image, one born out of massive weight loss. Tejada was massively obese, which is now, ironically, the reason why he is still strong and capable of doing his job. He is no longer an obese person; instead, a substance that is slowly killing all humans has turned him trim, and, thus, in his mind, attractive. It is something he finds unfamiliar, and thus, while he is physically fit, emotionally, he still deals with the same insecurities he had when he was overweight.
- 16 Fluoridation practices were adopted by the World Health Organization after the institution of it by (...)
8The story swings between the sweeping nature of the catastrophe and Tejada’s own struggle to deal with the consequences of being in this collapsing world. The grand pathogen in the story is not an alien virus or a biological weapon gone awry but rather an enzyme originally created to solve obesity. The implied assumption is that the spread of obesity reached critical levels and the introduction of the enzyme was supposed to rapidly reduce cholesterol and fat in the body. To ensure that the distribution was widespread, the enzyme was introduced into water systems in the same way fluoride was introduced into the real world, in many water systems globally, to protect people from tooth decay.16 The enzyme worked too well, reducing not only excess fat but all fat in the human body, causing people to waste away to their death. The irony of the story is that the people who survived the longest were the fattest among the population. Because the enzyme burned through a body’s fat reserves, people had to consume even more food, again ironically, to stave off the wasting effect of the enzyme.
- 17 Batacan, F. H., “Keeping Time,” The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2005-2010, eds. Dean Fra (...)
9The saddest moments of the story are when it tackles the emptiness of decimated populations. The description of Manila, for example, reveals a silent cityscape, a far cry from the chaotic congestion that the city is in real life. Batacan offers a historical analogue to how the city looks: Biafra in the 1970s, a city under siege, its inhabitants starving, a city full of “shuffling skeletons.”17 The image Batacan uses is brutal; Biafra was a warzone, a city which was being starved out. If we expand the idea of a city under siege, then Manila is under siege, except that there are no walls to keep people in or out, instead, the population of Manila is besieged by something that cannot be contained. The people trapped in this siege have no hope of breaking it.
10The story covers roughly two days in Tejada’s stay in Manila, where he is to give a speech to the World Health Organization on the state of the crisis. He meets his friend and supervisor, Peter Darrow, who is already in an advanced state and is barely staying ahead of the enzyme’s effects. It is a brief encounter, but it emphasizes two things: first, the urgency of the crisis, which at this point is catastrophic. Mike will need to stay on the field (and, it is implied, not take a promotion) because he is one of the few people left who can. Second, it connects to the other main thread of the story, the loneliness of facing a crisis of this magnitude. Darrow gives Mike the dubious title of “timekeeper of the world,” which implies that Mike may be one of the few able to see the crisis to the end, and that there is so little time left. Darrow’s last words, “Don’t be alone when the end comes. That’s key. Everything else is just noise,” refers not only to Tejada’s inevitable end, but to everyone’s; at the end, it is better to face the end with a companion rather than alone.
- 18 Batacan, “Keeping Time,” 183.
11The other main plot of the story is his encounter with Marisol, a reporter assigned to cover his appearance at the WHO. His first sighting of her is covert; he sees her the evening before his speech, smoking a cigarette on the balcony of the hotel, topless. The encounter is awkward, he gets noticed staring at her, and he is too unsure of himself to talk, leading to her fleeing back to her room. They encounter each other several more times, always awkwardly. However, it is also made clear that they are interested in each other. Both seem to be perfectly healthy; they are both trim and attractive, which, in Mike’s world means that they were both formerly very obese. The latter half of the story deals with Mike finally mustering up the courage to go to Marisol’s room, where they eventually have sex. There, they share their experiences about being obese and undesirable, Mike’s wife left him when he gained weight. Marisol shares her experience of being subjected to what she calls a “mercy fuck,” after which her partner subjects her to the embarrassment of him computing her body mass index. The irony for both is that the enzyme that is killing the world made their body image dreams come true, which is something both characters are clearly aware of, as both face the consequences of a world wasting away. The story ends with Mike reflecting about how little time is left, to which Marisol replies that “There’s time enough to teach you how to make smoke rings.”18
12While it has clearly romantic elements, the story is not a love story. The urgency of the circumstances surrounding the two characters dictates that love cannot be a priority. It is not clear that Mike even loves Marisol, or vice versa. Instead, we are presented with two people who found each other at a time when love was not a practicable option. Instead, the two characters settle for companionship, fulfilling Darrow’s request to Mike. There is also the matter of their self-image: both Mike and Marisol carry scars from their trauma as obese individuals. The question of whether their affair comes from loneliness or a newfound pride in their appearance is not clear. It could be that their affair is a result of both. What is clear, however is that Mike and Marisol’s discovery of each other is set against a looming, catastrophic end.
13The catastrophe itself is intensely quiet. Despite mentions of riots in Istanbul, the story portrays a world waiting for its end, rather than fighting against it. There are no wars fought, no epic conversations about what could be done. Instead, Batacan presents the end of this world as something that has already been accepted. The story’s title, thus, does not just refer to Michael’s task but also to the circumstance the world is in; it is keeping time, waiting for its eventual end.
- 19 Dispositif is used by Mayes as a way of covering the varied ways by which lifestyle is deployed, co (...)
- 20 Fitzpatrick, Mike, “From ‘Nanny State’ to ‘Therapeutic State,’” British Journal of General Practice (...)
- 21 The research on cholesterol has become more complicated; there is a question of what kind of choles (...)
- 22 Mateo, Janvic, “DepEd Bans Softdrinks, Junk Food in Schools,” Philstar, 30 March 2017, accessed 24 (...)
14The story shows a clear connection between our current crises and a possible future. The obsession of society these days with health, and how it dovetails with human vanity, echoes with the enzyme in use for this story. Not only has lifestyle become a major determinant of how individuals make choices, but it is also a means by which countries can influence how citizens behave. Christopher Mayes, in his book, The Biopolitics of Lifestyle, argues that lifestyle is a kind of dispositif, taking the idea from Foucault.19 He contends that lifestyle is deployed by governments to modify the health-related behaviors of individuals. Mike Fitzpatrick notes in his article “From Nanny State to Therapeutic State” in the British Journal of General Practice that “[t]here is virtually no resistance to the advance of government intrusion in lifestyle if it is deemed to be justified in terms of public health.”20 Lifestyle becomes the means by which government can manage public health behavior. The image of the “desirable” citizen is often placed beside the idea of good nutrition, balanced meals, and daily exercise that most health departments around the world espouse. One of the most obvious breaches is obesity. Obesity is a violation of these lifestyle standards. Today, we see little resistance to measures that governments take on individual behavior if it is seen as beneficial. When high blood cholesterol was seen as a possible health hazard,21 governments mandated that individuals be allowed to see the amount of cholesterol in their food. Recently, in the Philippines, for example, schools have been prohibited from selling carbonated soft drinks in cafeterias as a means of fighting obesity and its related diseases.22 The lifestyle issue of obesity is already prevalent, the expression of it in the story is an extrapolation of present day health crises. Currently, most measures used to manage people’s lifestyles center on media campaigns promoting better health. The Philippine example is a direct imposition by a government body on the public to manage children’s habits and practices. The idea of a government acting unilaterally in the name of public health, if it reaches a certain tipping point, is not that far-fetched. The introduction of the enzyme into the water supply, implied in the story to be in the name of public health, is plausible. Lifestyle, in this case, becomes the justification for the introduction; with obesity recognized as a public health crisis, the government must act to maintain the lifestyle ideals set out for the public. The uncontrolled spread of the enzyme does not occur because of any insidious scheme, but is, rather, an ill-informed impulse to conform and enforce conformity. In an age of constant fears of water contamination by various pathogens and of rapid environmental decline, the idea of humanity damning itself is one that we face constantly.
15Like science fiction works of earlier periods, “Keeping Time” uses the fears and anxieties of current society and shows how, if unchecked, mankind can exterminate itself. It remains a story about the present, even as it discusses a possible future.
16The “diet” enzyme serves as the technology that places this story in the realm of science fiction, as Darko Suvin would have called it, the enzyme is the novum of the story. The “diet” enzyme is technology which remains beyond what current medicine can accomplish; the reason for using it is, however, thoroughly contemporary. At a time when governments use the idea of “lifestyle” to manage populations, evinced by the many health campaigns seen around the world aimed at presenting a more optimized body, the obesity crisis then is not merely a biological one, but it is also one that is clearly political as well. Currently, the idea of curating a country’s lifestyle is already in place. Obesity is already a health crisis in some countries of the world, even Mayes himself calls obesity a “pandemic,” and the desire for a “magic bullet” cure is not far-fetched at all given how many fad diets and weight loss products are being offered to the public currently. The story is not a fanciful apocalypse; it is a plausible one along the lines of Kermode’s idea of a “concord with the present.”
17The story’s treatment of romance in a time of catastrophe is a counterpoint to the distance created by the catastrophe in that it humanizes the crisis. Body-image issues are widespread in the current social landscape. Social media platforms are full of people either showing off their “transformations,” which often means their dramatic weight loss. Other accounts are dedicated to sharing either exercise videos or pictures of athletically built individuals supposed to motivate viewers to work out. Fad diets, supplements, exercise equipment and/or techniques are also very popular, all leading up to one of the current crises occupying our collective psyche, helped to some degree by the idea of an idealized self, promoted by some governments as a model to emulate. The possibility of sudden desirability, a “miracle” of sudden weight loss, is both fantasy and a source of fear. That dichotomy makes the awkwardness of Mike and Marisol reasonable, given how obese people are currently being judged by their size. Their stories of being derided because of their size highlights the lasting effects that this kind of discrimination can cause, all because of judgements made due to one’s appearance, often because they are seen as people who “violate” the ideal lifestyle choices being presented to the public.
- 23 Suvin says that science fiction is a “specifically roundabout way of commenting on the author’s col (...)
18Suvin also argues that science fiction is a place where a story can sharply comment on the author’s context even as it seems to be escaping it.23 In this case, Batacan’s work mixes both new and old. On the one hand, like many science fiction works, it explores the harm that new technology can inflict if used irresponsibly. On the other hand, it also uses the current concerns of society, particularly the social stigmatization of obesity, as a way of refreshing a classic science fiction concern. The story feels timely because the concern continues and affirms the anthropocentric trend of the times: it is an apocalypse of mankind’s doing. The additional pathos of having two people discover not only a partner, but their own desirability as the end of humanity approaches softens what could have been a harsh commentary on the consequences of lifestyle decisions being used not only to judge appearances, but also by governments to literally shape their citizens. As a way of tracing a moment in human history, by telling a possible future, Batacan’s story reveals much about the concerns and worries of contemporary humanity—or, if we recall Kermode once more, “Keeping Time” provides yet another reconfiguration of an apocalypse constantly on the horizon, thus enabling “concord” with our times.
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