ULAM. -- The Escaped Version

Let's talk about Samoan's tattoo, or Ta Tau.

While the male tattoo, the pe'a, shows the bravery of Samoan men, the female tattoo, the malu, means to be protected and sheltered. This is very well documented in most of the Samoan culture literatures, unlike Little Samoan cultures.

Not many people know about Little Samoan, a minority group of Samoan who is intentionally marginalized by the rest, because of their strange conception of Samoan cultures, and their weird interpretation about Ta tau.

While Samoan perceive women with malu is protected and sheltered by Samoan spirits, Little Samoan believe that the one who protects their tribe is someone born with malu on her one thigh. Or say it in another way, Little Samoan believe that the spirit which will offer protection and shelter to their tribe is trapped in the body with naturally born malu.

They call the spirit, or the girl with naturally born malu, Goddess of light.

What makes Little Samoan being marginalized by the rest of the Samoan is, they practice Sacrificism. If a girl is born with a malu on her thigh, her destiny is to sacrifice, to release the Goddess of light in her body when time comes.

Every members of Little Samoan bear the tradition by generations, but it is totally unacceptable for the rest of the Samoan. Once a little girl was recognized as the chosen Goddess of light, a mirror image of the naturally born malu will be tattooed on another thigh of the little girl. The pattern of the naturally-born malu changes through time, and when the time has come, a cross-match image of the naturally-born malu and its initial pattern which was tattooed-on will tell the message of Goddess of light....

...... ......

"Hold! Prof.," Zip raised his hand and stopped Prof Z from continuing his story, ".. you said 'when the time has come', what do you mean by that?"

Good question. Sitting beside Zip, KingKong nodded showing he was about to ask the same question too, out of thousands of questions in his mind.

"Well," Prof Z started to behave as if he was conducting a Q&A session in a formal conference, ".. there's a famous quote among Little Samoans which sounds like this: 5 days before full moon high, the time has come and the blue wolves cry.. " Prof Z intentionally made a pause, and looked at his two audiences, "anybody in this room cares to have a guess on it?"

Silence. A light smile on Prof Z, giving hints, "look at the picture, what do you see?"
"A goat, tail-less one.."
"Then tell me what is the similarity between a tail-less goat and '5 days before full moon'?"

Both are incomplete. SO??? Zip and KingKong were definitely wondering the same thing.

Prof Z knew what came into the mind of these two geniuses in front of him. They just need another piece of information to complete the puzzle about the tail-less goat. He took a deep breath, "This picture," paused, to pull Zip and KingKong back from deep thought, "... was taken 3 years ago by a kid of Little Samoan tribe on Samoa Island, when the picture was shown to the tribe elders, they all agreed that, this was the message sent by Goddess of light, telling them that the time has come..."

"... meaning.. any sign showing incompletion indicates the time to sacrifice the little girl?" KingKong needed some time to reformulate this interpretation, it was illogic at all to kill a girl based merely on a picture, maybe the goat just conscious and unconsciously hided its tail.

"Then how the hell all these are related to Elle?" Zip's main concern was still the love of his life, but the moment he finished his words, a chilling feeling smeared all over his body...

Elle.... is the little girl..

"..but how come? It was Elle who asked me to steal the ULAM file!! .. and she even tried to kill me for it!! How can she... argh no I don't get it at all!" Zip was frozen at the moment, but KingKong wasn't. He knew something else than Zip about Elle.

"The problem here is, Elle is ready to sacrifice." Prof Z state the message WORD by WORD.

Now both Zip and KingKong were frozen.

"Elle knows everything about her destiny, and she has been waiting for the moment to come, the brilliant Little Samoan came out with a neat and structured plan to make sure that everything will be ready by the time the sign appeared. They brainwashed Elle, they set their base in Tokyo and attached to an secret elite organization in Tokyo to help them to scout for talents and trained them --- and you, KingKong, you're one of their trainee, you're part of their plan.. -- it's just that I still don't understand why they were trying to kill you...."

Silence. Both Zip and KingKong were still stunned.

".....w---hy..?" somebody voiced this out, but the voice sounded so dry that Prof Z couldn't identify whose voice was it.

"I understand all these stuff are... mess. You're not sure why this little community of Little Samoan doing all this? You're not sure why there was a need to get the Japanese elite organization involved? You're not sure why and how and what they were doing all these things just only for a message from their Goddess of light?.... Look I know you're not sure of so many things, but trust me, my only explanation for it is, 'The message from their Goddess of light' that they are going to retrieve from the cross-match malu," Prof Z stopped and took a deep breath, "..is something very valuable than just a superstitious message about Goddess and myth.."

"which is?" KingKong was gaining his composure.
"I don't know." Prof Z replied firmly.

Sigh. Zip and KingKong finally felt released when they heard Prof Z gave them 'I don't know' as the answer. They didn't think they could bear any shocks and surprises anymore. These whole shits, they thought it started from the ULAM folder, obviously had already started at least 7 years before, and each of them was actually arranged and set-up, everything now seemed to be so not-solid, everything and everyone could be any parts of any plans and any lies of any relationships.

"... wait." out of the chaos Zip realized something, "how do you know all these? why we need to trust you, Prof Z.?"

"I...." Prof Z suddenly breathed deeply, "Elle is my grand daughter..."

Again, Zip and KingKong were lost in translation. What does it mean?

"... so is that make you part of the f*cking Little Samoan tribe who wanted to f*cking kill Elle for the sake of retrieving that f*cking message from that f*cking spirit?!!?" Zip was getting emotional. He stood up angrily and grabbed Prof Z on his lab coat's collar. The atmosphere was tensed up at the moment.

"Elle is a Samoan!" shouted Prof Z back to Zip.
What??!!?!?
"Elle was brainwashed. We Samoan people tried to protect Elle since she was born but Elle was kidnapped and brainwashed...."

Zip pushed Prof Z down. His anger was fumed up by all these things. "Tell us!!!" he shouted at Prof Z, despite of his respect to the wisest old man he'd ever met.

Prof Z sat back to his chair in the lab, sigh sadly, deeply, "Elle still could recognize me as her grandpa, but......"

******************************

It was the dream that Elle described to him that day made Raoul confirmed his wild guess about Elle and the relationship between three of them and the 'higher authority' that gave commands and orders.

The chant that Elle showed to him, he was absolutely familiar with. It was the chant sung during a tattooing ceremony for Samoan, but it was also the chant casted during the sacrifice of a lady of Little Samoan, who was believed to be able to free Goddess of light from her body after her malu was stabbed and a hole was made.

Raoul witnessed the ceremony three times in his life. He ran away from his own tribe after witnessing the 3rd sacrifice ceremony which involved his elder sister. Raoul decided to ran away not only because he did not agree nor accept the ceremony, it was also because he saw something which made him started to question about the existence of his own tribe, Little Samoan.

He was only 10 when he ran away. He never had a chance to get himself tattooed, but something else had tattooed in his heart. From the day on, he swore that he wanted to find out where he really came from.

... because what he saw during the night his sister died, was so unreal, which made him felt that he was just 'TOO REAL' to be one of the Little Samoan tribe.

... and now he needed to prove something from Elle's malu. He had this strong feeling sensing that Elle might have her naturally-born sign-of-Goddess malu on her thigh, but she was real.

Elle was, again, TOO REAL for her to be one of the Little Samoan tribe.

..and as the sketching of Elle's malu was finishing, Raoul became more and more nervous. The cross-match sketch of Elle's left and right thighs' malu was showing something he used to familiar with, he used to had nightmare of, he used to terrified with ---

--- it was a rough sketch of the image of Goddess of light that he saw during the night his sister died. YES, unlike the 2 experiences that ended up nothing was shown after the ladies were sacrificed, he DID see Goddess of light 'flow out' his sister's body after the ceremony, but it did not match any image that had been described or imagined. It was something else, and this time, on the tracing paper, Raoul saw another image of 'Goddess of light', it did not look like the one he saw before, but Raoul just knew, it was Goddess of light, or maybe another Goddess of light.

God damn it I sacrificed my morning bus to stay in UTP and spend almost 12 hours working on this before my 1 week off. See how noble (stupid) i am?