Anchalee Viva received the 1990 Southeast Asian Writer Award (S.E.A. Write Award) for her short stories collection, Jewel of Life.

Among her other published works are New York, New York, a memoir; In Inscription, a poetry collection; and A Perch Over the World, a novel. She now lives in San Diego, California and writes short stories for Elite Plus Magazine, an English language magazine in Bangkok, Thailand

“If we couldn’t call ourselves ‘human’ I don’t know what we should be called for now.”

“Human in the making,” Twenty-Six murmurs with a half-smile.

“Human in the making! That hits the bullseye. That’s exactly what
we are now!” the old man is nodding excitedly. “Still such a long journey... As long as we are incapable of transcending a boundary that’s binding us and all animals together in living on fundamental instincts, we could never tell the difference between them and us. All dooms happen because we have only reached half-way of what we believe we are.”

“How long will this journey to humanhood take us? Do we still have time left...?”

In the twenty-fifth century following the most catastrophic World
War, when oxygen is controlled and humanity is on the brink of extinction, their sovereign has the most diabolic plan on oxygen supplies. Twenty-six must fight for his survival. But what he finds out is that the worst enemy awaiting him turns to be himself as ‘a human in the making’.