Pakis Rayen finally sat down to enjoy a bite of her favorite home cooked Adobo made by her husband when NALA, their virtual assistant, pinged. Her 10-year old daughter, Zeyar, immediately shouted to NALA, “Open message!” and a rotating postcard hologram the size of Zeyar’s body appeared just half-a-meter from NALA’s screen. In the middle of the postcard, there was a big text popping out towards them with fireworks in motion on its side that said: 

“Congratulations Pakis Rayen, you are selected as one of the contributors to WEJANG 2071!“

It only took a moment before everyone in the room was on their feet jumping and cheering for her. Since it was dinner, Pakis’ entire commune was there to witness this joyous moment. One by one, her housemates hugged, kissed, and congratulated her, starting from Zeyar, her husband Nial, then Uma, Jake, Maung, Denpo, Gewa, and finally Aye. Every year, only 11 people from the 11 Southeast Asian countries were selected as annual contributors to WEJANG, a digital collection of Southeast Asian wisdom. The annual contributors shared their valuable stories and life experiences. WEJANG was integrated in NALA’s algorithm and was created to help the broader public make wiser decisions when faced with similar dilemmas. With its extensive database of mistakes and lessons learned, WEJANG has helped millions of people in the world accelerate their personal growth in becoming wiser. Being a contributor to WEJANG also meant that you would appear in people’s homes and offices in a full body size hologram talking about your experience. 

“How unexpected!”, said Pakis. 

“Yeah, but so cool!” exclaimed Zeyar.

The only thing for Pakis to do now, was to tell her story. 

The next morning, looking out at her commune and sitting in her chair as it gently floated above her garden, she began her recording.

My name is Pakis Rayen, and this story takes place in 2056. I was then the director of the TIRTHA facility in the city of Manuk in northern Myanmar, where I now reside. I will talk about what a TIRTHA facility is shortly. In the 2020s, scientists found that many places on earth had turned so dry that they became uninhabitable for people, animals, and plants to live. They soon discovered that upwind deforestation within one precipitationshed was the main culprit for the decreases in precipitation and the drying up of downwind land. Since this finding, we started calling trees the “moisture leak” because their transpiration had caused moisture to leak from land to atmosphere at a speedy rate. A global target was soon imposed to minimize this leakage. However, this goal was wrongly interpreted as a permission for countries to cut down their trees to keep their water underground for national use, which subsequently led to their downwind landscapes becoming even drier. Atmospheric water content would change drastically in the absence of trees. Trees also happen to be important for the climate, biodiversity, and human wellbeing.

Thus, in 2037, the United Nations introduced TIRTHA, a monitoring system that was aimed at maintaining the atmospheric water balance while keeping trees. TIRTHA’s objective was to keep atmospheric moisture stable throughout 258 transboundary precipitationsheds that were hotspots for the drying-up of landscapes. Soon after that, every tree in these hotspots was equipped with a chip that measured the balance between precipitation, soil and plant evaporation, and water storage per tree footprint. Manuk, my hometown, and its neighboring town were part of one of the hotspots and a TIRTHA facility was placed here in 2039. As the Director, I was responsible for monitoring the precipitation that came from our upwind trees in Manipur and Nagaland, India, and the evaporation from our forests that traveled downwind to Yunan, China. I was very proud of this job and I felt that my return from Canada after 5 years was worthwhile because I found the one thing I was good at that served the interest of my beloved country, Myanmar. I was already a passionate and outspoken moisture ambassador for my country at the age of 33. 

Every day, I would fly from my TIRTHA station to different patches of trees throughout our area, to check if all chips were functioning well.

One day, however, when I came back from my daily tree tour, and arrived in TIRTHA’s main control room, I noticed a shallow dip in precipitation across my area. I asked NALA to pull up more water balance records and I was surprised to see that there had apparently been a very gradual decrease in precipitation in the past weeks, well below the normal range of variation. “This is serious - how have I overlooked this!”, I cried. My mind jumped over time to imagine how many problems this change in atmospheric water balance would bring to my people in Manuk if it remained. At that time, it was already difficult for the citizens of Manuk to make ends meet. Many people were already suffering from crop failures related to climate change, pollution, and development pressure. 

I immediately launched an investigation. I had no doubt that no trees had been cut in our area and all our trees were healthy. Evaporation from our trees had not decreased either. “There must be something wrong upwind”, I suspected, though I was baffled as to why India would break the agreement to keep the atmospheric water in balance. When TIRTHA was implemented, an agreement was drafted and signed by all countries involved to avoid the cutting of any trees while keeping the trade-off between moisture leakage and the benefits of trees in check. However, it would be easy for upwind areas to still cut their trees without caring for their downwind areas, especially if they themselves are not downwind of another upwind area. When they cut trees, they would need to compensate for the biggest loss of biological particles that were released by trees that allow for condensation, cloud formation, and precipitation to occur. The US had been known for covertly doing this by injecting what people called the “binder” from upward facing nozzles towards the sky across the deforested areas. The binder was a mysterious, synthetic, liquid product that effectively bonded water vapor and basically sucked moisture out of the atmosphere to fall on land. I had heard that cutting trees and using the binder would result in the highest water capture overall that your country would ever see, hence the big temptation. High water availability would then boost a country’s economy such as through agricultural output, hydropower, and even industrial production. 

I then reflected that given the improved diplomacy between the US and India over the past five years, it would not be surprising if the US had secretly supplied the binder to India. My suspicion proved correct when a senior official in Manuk municipality informally responded to my inquiry on what could cause the decrease in precipitation. 

“I heard a rumor that Nagaland has been busy with a secret little project, their vegetable sales have also sky-rocketed”, he said in a shaky and whispery voice. 

I suddenly felt punched in my stomach. My country was betrayed and I could not hold in my tears. I could not accept the fact that these giant countries could just do whatever they wanted. Nor that they had fooled a small and powerless country like mine. I was angry.

The next day, I rushed to the municipality and demanded that we take legal action against them. They shrugged off my demand and told me that we were just a small player in this game and that we would not win the case. 

“Soon enough, our evaporation would drop too and Yunan would do something about this!” I shouted to one of the officials in a desperate attempt to convince them as they generally fear China. But he looked indifferent and perhaps had no ability to imagine this long-term cascading consequence. I came home very disappointed. Years before, I had given up a life of comparative comfort as a student and then a consultant in Canada, to dedicate myself to my country. But, being a government functionary was apparently not enough - I also needed to fight for the country. I knew at that time that if legal action was impossible, there was no other way than rebellion. I started making calls to old friends who would know exactly what to do. 

I won’t dwell on the details — mostly to protect my friends — but I soon found myself smuggled in an underground goods capsule that traveled to Nagaland. I was with two other rebels who were part of the environmental movement in Manuk. We aimed to reach what we believed was the binder storage facility and we attempted to drain or destroy all of it. For a second, I thought that we could also steal a small amount of the binder and replicate it home. But I stopped myself and mumbled, “we are better people”. 

I will not describe the many obstacles we encountered in entering the facility, but suffice it to say nobody was hurt badly. Eventually, we found our way into a long corridor of a very dark cellar. We walked through it until we reached a door with a name plaque in Hindi that said “Cracker Crumbs”. Cracker crumbs were one of the famous binding agents for food in the US, and so we knew we were in the right place. One of the rebels managed to breach the security of the door and once we were in, I was running so fast to get to one of the stacked barrels of binder. There were not many of them and we thought we would manage to drain them in no time. Before lifting the container, I glanced through at the label on the barrel, printed in neon yellow text. Out of curiosity I started reading them as we started moving the container towards the drain - I guess because of that shameful thought of wanting to steal the recipe. 

“Binding agent” was obviously on the first line. “Effective at binding…”, I rushed to the next line as I was impatient. “Use with high-pres…”, again I skipped this line. Finally, “Ingredients: water, yeast, stevia, gum from Amherstia nobilis”, and I immediately stopped reading. The name Amherstia nobilis sounded so familiar to me. I stopped walking and the rebel who was lifting the container with me also stopped. “You okay?” she asked. I looked up to the ceiling trying to pull at my photographic memory on where I had seen this word. “Just thinking”, I answered and we continued to lift the container to drain its contents. 

Lost in thought, my hand slipped and as I caught the corner of the container with my knee, I read another part of the label:“Pride of Burma. Made in Pyay, Myanmar”, this time I stepped backwards and dropped the container. 

“Of course! Amherstia nobilis is the Pride of Burma tree with those beautiful red flowers, my biology book!”, I said. 

The other rebel gritted out “Pakis! What happened?”. 

I stood there and froze, I was unable to utter a single word. I just pointed to the barrel and the label. A thousand emotions went through my brain. I almost fainted. Once the two other rebels read the label, they pulled me, or dragged me to be precise, out of the room. We ran as fast as we could and my memory was fuzzy after this. 

The trip back home passed in a blur. My head swam with shame and guilt. And anger. “How could we do this?” I thought, blaming my people. I was mainly ashamed because I had been so proud of being Burmese, without realizing that all this time, we were proudly servicing those selfish giants instead of our own people. 

Once home, and after clearing my mind, I was determined to make this public. I continued my investigation in private together with the two rebels who had traveled with me and some other rebels who were outraged by what we found. After an arduous six months of investigation, we found that after the worsened fluctuation of seasonal flows of the Irrawaddy river, the governors in Pyay were pressed to find alternative livelihoods. Around 3,500 people had been deceived to work at what was seemingly a cooking oil factory but in fact, was a binder factory. The nation was shocked when the story was published in The Myanmar Times in December 2056. 

Since that time I have been very cautious to not become too idealistic. I used to think of my country as the victimized, innocent, and perhaps the honest one, until I learnt that there things are always more complex — more nuanced. I have become less nationalistic over the past 15 years. My hunger to contribute to my country had fueled me in my youthful days and recognition was something that I had never actively sought. But now I realize that it had always been a sense of purpose that I was chasing after. These past years as I have grown older, I have learnt that I should not put my nationalism and idealism on a pedestal. I have replaced these ideas, gradually, with a more purposeful acceptance of a life that embraces complexity but also simple happiness. Back when these events happened in 2056, I had refused to have children, to avoid burdening the earth even further - an idealism of mine. Fifteen years later, I am a mother figure in a family of three, where I am kept content on a daily basis by my amazing husband and daughter. We live in a commune with six more wonderful people and together with our chickens, a small pig, two hedgehogs, and a vertical vegetable farm, we have found our purpose. In our community.