PROLOGUE

“When the tiniest of infractions, like an unintentional death of a butterfly, could then snowball into drastic changes in history.” – Ray Bradbury, on the Butterfly Effect

The Philippines have become a different place.

Its history had jumped off a cliff and landed belly-flop onto a pool of peculiar circumstances. From this arose something out of the ordinary and remarkable. It is a weird thing, like a primordial creature with newly evolved limbs, surfacing out from some prehistoric swamp bringing forth strange life. It is something that grasps our imagination and unsettles our core beliefs.

An unknown being of a trickster nature and whose motivations are as mystifying as itself resolved to change a particular incident in the country’s established history. At first glance, the incident in question looked unimportant to the ordinary onlooker but proved consequential in the great scheme of things. It was a seemingly ordinary and distinct event, which turned out to be significant in establishing the country’s identity. This was the piece of clay that this trickster decided to shape anew.

As a result, a new world has emerged. It’s a world like our own in many ways yet in some, different.

We’ve seen this kind of world before and some of us hated it. Unfortunately, some of us loved and will continue loving it, no matter what we may have seen or heard. This is a world already revealed to our senses and will likely endure.

Be that as it may…

Welcome.

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It was 1941; this was a crucial year in World War II. The Allied Forces in the southwest Pacific theatre led by General Douglas MacArthur—then commander of the United States Army in the Far East—committed a series of fatal blunders that resulted in the invasion of the Philippines by the Japanese forces.

It was a fateful morning in December. The sky, like the general mood of the Philippine populace, was as dull as corroded metal. General MacArthur was pacing back and forth in his makeshift office (which was just a large and stuffy tent) at the base of operations in Corregidor Island, just 26 miles from Manila Bay.

He had received an urgent message from US President Franklin Roosevelt to withdraw his remaining forces to the Bataan peninsula. He was to bequeath his leadership to General Jonathan Wainwright, his second-in-command. He would then high-tail to Australia where he would set up a new base of operations.

His instinct was to refuse and continue the good fight but contemplated reconsidering since he was offered his theatre of operations at another territory in the Pacific.

He was in dire straits. He needed to untangle himself from the intricate web he was caught in. He also had to make a decision fast since the fate of whole US Army operations in the Far East was riding on his shoulders.

He was usually vain about his appearance, but on that morning, he couldn’t care less. He had many things in his mind. His army uniform, once crisp and lustrous, now was a little soiled and faded light-brown. He was sweating bullets because of the tropical humidity and also suffered an unfortunate bout of diarrhea (or the brown grenade, as the infantrymen unfunnily called it). He was muttering by himself, inhaling quick and angry puffs of tobacco smoke from his corncob pipe. His stomach made an all-too-familiar sound and he rushed to the communal latrine to relieve his bowels for the nth time that morning.

After ten stomach-churning minutes, he staggered back and immediately sat down. He wiped his wet brow, leaned back on his chair, relit his pipe, and tried to relax. It didn’t work. He felt drained, both emotionally and physically. His thoughts went back to the present predicament and for the remaining strength in him, couldn’t think of a better alternative. Bataan… So be it, he thought and his whole body shrunk a little in his chair.

Suddenly he heard a loud commotion outside; angry shouts and what seemed like kicks and blows. A lone man quickly entered wearing army fatigues. He looked battle-weary and sickly pale in hue. He was shouting incoherently and had a crazy look in his eyes. He was frantically rushing towards where the general sat. Two MPs appeared at the entrance and were hastily following behind. MacArthur stood up and raised both his arms, attempting to shield himself from this incoming onslaught, but to no avail. The man threw a left hook toward the general’s lower jaw and knocked him out cold.

The man with the killer hook was a lowly grunt who went a little crazy because of the harsh conditions he experienced under the general’s command. He was looking to get some payback and as bad luck would have it, found it with the general. He was quickly arrested and taken to confinement. From the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he was charged with Assaulting or Willfully Disobeying a Superior Commissioned Officer and convicted to serve ten years in a military prison. However, his sentence was cut short due to the dire situation in the Pacific Islands and was dishonorably discharged.

This man didn’t amount to anything that was deemed worthy for the history books. Like most people that survived the war, he went back home, worked, married, had children, grew old, and died. His life was just an insignificant blip in the bigger picture, a grain of sand in a giant hourglass. His punch, however, did something that boggled the general’s mind and changed his very constitution.

Gen. MacArthur was unconscious for ten minutes. In the dreaming mind, the time has stretched to longer periods: ten minutes would become ten days. In this expanded timeframe, something changed within the general and affected the course of war and history as we all knew it.

In Dreams, Time Passes Slowly

This is a place between places, between sleep and wakefulness, between life and death. This is a world where the impossible becomes possible, where the unreal becomes real.

A man is walking alone on a dirt road. He is a young man, tall and gaunt, with a hook nose and eyes as blue as the ocean. He is muttering by himself, inhaling quick and angry puffs of smoke from a pipe. The tall man looks disheveled and worn out. He sees a coconut tree beside the road and stops. He is thirsty and attempts to climb the jagged trunk to get a coco-fruit. He succeeds, cracks it open, and drinks its sweet-tasting water. He feels a sense of relief that he hadn’t felt for the longest time.

He glances at the horizon and sees a valley filled with desolation and death. Bullet-riddled bodies, some torn to pieces, some half-decomposed, some have become dry carcasses. The skulls seem to be facing him, staring at him.

He shudders.

He walks away from the dark valley. He reaches a grassy knoll and looks for the shadiest part.

He lies down and rests his weary soul.

He closes his eyes…