story - Death of a Heretic

Looking through my old files because I'm reading HP Lovecraft's The Silver Key...it's true, the legends of dread and glory we each carry in our hearts are precious beyond words. Anyway I found what I wanted to find, a chronicle of my old dreams that maybe no one else will ever read. But I found this story I wrote back in secondary school, which is rather less intimate, but still a reflection of some very personal feelings - in particular, extreme frustration with the boringness of science education in Malaysia.

Those idiots who write the textbooks can take the wonders of the universe and turn them into cold oatmeal. No surprise that a young person might subconsciously file it all under "bullshit".

Death of a Heretic

The teacher had had the microscopes moved outside for better lighting, and now there were girls darting back and forth from the shade of the lab doors to the row of stools like pigeons flying down to feed. “Hei, come and look lah,” called one of her group members. She stepped into the sun reluctantly, twitching her skirt away from sweat-damp legs. Imbeciles, she thought, a blood smear is supposed to be thin, not thick as paint. My blood some more!

“Can see not?”

“Can...I think...I only see small dots...doesn’t look like sel darah merah though.”

Grimacing, she pushed her way through the clamour and squatted in front of the stool. There certainly were small dots in the field, but they weren’t red blood cells, more likely dust on the inside of the objective.

It’s all futile, she thought. We have a Mandarin teacher for Bio, telling us quite confidently that coconuts contain cholesterol and arthritis is caused by cold. The blind leading the blind indeed. What’s the point of learning all of this anyway? Eritrosit, leukosit, eosinofil, basofil, it’ll all be forgotten in a matter of months as soon as the SPM is over. We might as well be reciting mantras or telling the rosary; it’s nonsense to them.

Maybe it really is all nonsense. Maybe air pollution is good for Earth – it makes fantastic sunsets, at least. Maybe butterflies aren’t the adult form of caterpillars but a winged parasite that devours the chrysalis from within. Maybe menstruation is caused by a dog and a cat fighting in my belly. How should we know? Everything they teach us in school is a pack of lies anyway.

When the school bell rang she still brooded. All this nonsense about cells and hormones and genes is too complicated. When you think about how easily computers crash – the more complicated a system is, the more parts to fail. The simplest living thing would be perpetually on a knife’s edge from death, never mind the trillions of cells supposedly in the human body. I think I’ll be like the ancient Greeks, she decided. Four humours – simple, commonsensical, tangible. Anyone’s seen blood and phlegm; no one’s seen a gene yet. Even traditional Chinese medicine would be better. We know what heaty and windy feel like (well, with my dad, we know what “windy” sounds like too).

Cells are optical illusions. DNA is a deus ex machina for desperate geneticists created by the international conspiracy of Watson and Crick. Maggots can be generated from rotten meat. Malaria is caused by foul vapours. I shall be a heretic! she laughed, and the other kids at the bus stop edged away nervously.

The heat was relentless. In her room, she dropped her pinafore and peeled off the white shirt, sprawling on the bed. The thrum, thrum, thrum of the ceiling fan – the higher frequency rotation modulated by the lower frequency wobble – drew her into a hypnotic state as the sweat dried. She began to feel individual hairs on her arm stand up as the skin cooled. And in the singing of the fan, to hear voices:

“...we...”

“...catch and pull...catch and pull...”

“Drink the salt down, pump it through...”

“...come...us...”

“Halt, stranger, ...not pass.”

“...enough, send no more.”

There was no one in the room. It must have been the neighbours’ voices.

“You are...us.”

“...you hear? ...yourself...”

“...body...speaking to you.”

“How dare...like that...denied us?”

“...sheer ingratitude of the...”

“...why?”

“Nothing but...we are you.”

Then her consciousness exploded with the awareness of everything that had been hidden from the shell she called a mind. Blood flowed with chemical messages like the jungle air to a wild animal. Electrical pulses blazed down neurons, each one with more connections than any computer server could handle. The nanomachines called enzymes churned in her organs, taking in food and expelling toxins. Monocytes crawled through the interstices of her flesh, sniffing, seeking prey.

Even as she realized what the voices were, the whole system that she had turned against rose in retribution. Inflammatory molecules ran through her veins, causing a burning fever and head pain. Muscles twitched, trembled, and convulsed, and she could feel every one of the myosin heads pulling against actin strands in them. She tried to get up but the little stones in her ears had come unglued, leaving her giddy.

Stop, she moaned silently. It’s too fast. It’s too much.

“How...we stop?” they whispered back “...but none...is real, you said...”

I was wrong, she cried. There are so many things... She felt her racing heart slow, beads of sweat on her skin.

“...stop?

Stop. Please.

All stop.

Creative Commons licenses:

Death of a Heretic by Shi-Hsia Hwa is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Death of a Heretic by Hwa Shi-Hsia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Malaysia License.

Critical reading

I don't think I've EVER seen or heard a better piece of advice on reading religious literature:

It is Truth which we must look for in Holy Writ, not cunning of words. All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written. We must rather seek for what is profitable in Scripture, than for what ministereth to subtlety in discourse. Therefore we ought to read books which are devotional and simple, as well as those which are deep and difficult. And let not the weight of the writer be a stumbling-block to thee, whether he be of little or much learning, but let the love of the pure Truth draw thee to read. Ask not, who hath said this or that, but look to what he says.

- Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, First Book, Chapter V

In case that didn't all sink in, let me break it up into bullet points and add italics:

• It is Truth which we must look for in Holy Writ, not cunning of words.
• All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written.
• We must rather seek for what is profitable in Scripture, than for what ministereth to subtlety in discourse. Therefore we ought to read books which are devotional and simple, as well as those which are deep and difficult.
• And let not the weight of the writer be a stumbling-block to thee, whether he be of little or much learning, but let the love of the pure Truth draw thee to read. Ask not, who hath said this or that, but look to what he says.

"Every damn morning"

This is why I started keeping a notebook next to my bed to write down dreams.

Peter Dickinson said that the first chapter of The Weathermonger came to him in a dream. Who knows, I could write a novel.

In case you're wondering, the mouseover text on this xkcd strip is a quote from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Lucy sneaks into the magician's rooms to find a spell to restore the Monopods, and reads a spell "for the refreshment of the spirit" that turns into a beautiful reverie, but fades from memory as it ends. This essayist believes that the objects Lucy remembers - a cup, a sword, a tree, and a green hill - are a reference to the agony, death, and resurrection of Christ, the story that all other good stories remind us of in one way or another.

I couldn't quite remember whether it was from Lewis or Tolkien.

---

Speaking of the Chronicles of Narnia, FlowerMoonFish and I were discussing the Prince Caspian movie on the phone and she says that the reason Peter and Caspian were written as a pair of testosterone-drenched idiots was that (quoting someone else) "the art of our time can't recognize nobility".

---

Speaking of nobility, I hope that Raja Petra's right and our King doesn't let AAB and gang call a snap election to screw around with Pakatan Rakyat's chances of taking over the government. Sure they're mostly figureheads in a parliamentary democracy...and history has proved over and over again that heredity confers nothing in morality or intelligence...yet I still find myself hoping that when needed the Agong will act, with nobility.

2008 New Year's Resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions (e.g. "I will not bite my nails" has been a historical failure since age eight or so) but I've come up with what I think is a viable one this year:

• To match any amount I spend aside from regular groceries, household, and toiletry supplies with donations to NGOs doing food aid, health, education, social justice, or women's issues - both secular and Christian.
• To match ALL spending on my cat with donations to animal welfare (not animal rights) and wildlife conservation organizations.

This way I'll probably spend less money this year on silly stuff and waste less time Internet shopping.

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to some people but I've found since leaving home and starting to earn my own money at age 18, that the less stuff I buy, the less stuff I want. Materialism is a self-perpetuating lust, and most of the hobbies I really enjoy require very little material.

Other things I'd like to do:

• Write at least 2 short fiction stories and submit at least 1 to Writers of the Future or a science fiction magazine.
• Draw more, and spontaneously.
• Reinstall Creatures 3/Docking Station on my computer and start tinkering with the CAOS (Creatures Agent Object Scripting) language.
• Call parents and sisters and "small" boy more often (sometimes I forget my brother has a phone because he never calls me...)
• Clean my bike more often.
• Cook for my boyfriend and make him take his vitamins regularly.
• Watch more movies.

It's gonna be a personally interesting year...my project is going to get into animal studies...I'll have to write a thesis and hopefully graduate...my parents just got transferred to Penang...two of my London cousins are getting married in the summer so I'll finally have a chance to go to England...a couple of Phases kakis are getting married in Malaysia...another couple is having a baby, which makes them the first friends my age to reproduce...my boyfriend is taking 2/3 of a year off school for an internship...his mum wants to show our respective cats in the summer (TICA lets you show household pets)...

Et cetera. 'Tis life. =)

Whoopsies!

Silverfish Books kinda put its foot in its mouth with this story.

Someone tried to order a book on Malaya from Amazon.com and when an error message came up saying that the book couldn't be shipped to Malaysia, he/she concluded that Amazon was collaborating with the Malaysian government to ban the import of certain books.

Then a reader (scroll to the end of the Silverfish story, read the first comment) pointed out that you simply can't have Amazon Marketplace used books shipped to certain countries. I think there's an option to provide international shipping when you put a used book up for sale on Amazon Marketplace, but you might still need an American credit card to purchase it (i.e. if you were buying from Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk or some other regional site).

Jumping to Conclusions, are we? =D