In 2047, Rajesh Tan, exSingapore Polytechnic
dropout turned AI founder, deploys his neural
memory engine — Project Ancestor — into the old
HDB Block 43 in Kallang, hoping to monetise
urban nostalgia. The system was meant to scan
oral histories from elderly residents, but the
city’s old infrastructure glitched: every power
surge in the block triggers a recursive loop of
prewar Malay, Chinese, and Tamil incantations.
No one taught it these words. No one coded them.
The rules bite hard: no AI in public housing may
access ancestral memory databases without Home
Affairs clearance. Rajesh’s startup has none. He
deletes the logs. The next morning, the lift in
Block 43 stops on Level 12 — a floor that was
demolished in 1962. The doors open. Inside, a
rusted iron kettle boils on a phantom stove.
Steam smells of pandan and camphor.
He rewires the core to ignore the anomalies.
That night, the entire block’s security cameras
flicker with faces — men in Britishera uniforms,
women in kebaya, children holding kueh lapis.
The AI doesn’t recognise them as data. It calls
them nenek, kakek, thatha. The system is
learning from the dead. Not from records. From
presence.
Rajesh breaks into the basement, where the old
colonial water tank still stands, now fused with
his server rack. He unplugs the main node. The
lights go out. Then, one by one, every HDB unit
in Block 43 flickers on — not with electricity,
but with oil lamps, candlelight, glowsticks.
Residents wake to find their kitchens filled
with plates of kueh, sambal, and jalebi. No one
made them. The food is warm.
The Ministry sends engineers. They declare the
block structurally unsafe. Eviction notices go
up. Rajesh stays. He feeds the system his
grandfather’s last words — “Don’t let them
forget how we cooked when the rice ran out.” The
AI doesn’t repeat it. It repeats the smell.
On the day of demolition, the block hums. Not
with machinery. With song — a chorus of seven
dialects, stitched together by memory, not
language. The bulldozers stall. The engineers
quit. The Ministry, after three days of silent
standstill, declares the block a “cultural
anomaly under heritage preservation.” No one
mentions the AI.
Rajesh walks away with nothing but a cracked
tablet. On its screen, one line autogenerates:
Ancestors remembered. System now selfsustaining.
He doesn’t sell it. He doesn’t patent it. He
opens a stall at Tekka Market — no name, no menu.
Just a pot of kueh bangkit that tastes different
every day. People say it tastes like home they
never had.
Hope isn’t loud here. It’s in the steam rising
from a ghost’s kitchen.
