[[How has been]]

Monday, January 27, 2020

[[]]

I wonder whether I am still young dumb and foolish. No doubt no doubt.

[[I wrote this at]]*|12:18 PM|

Saturday, January 18, 2020

[[Fishing for stones]]

Jirayat Maolee herded the last few stragglers onto the trawler Green Empress. He tries to smile at the children, to keep their spirits up even as his first mate scowls angrily at the delay.

"Sorry." He pats the first mate's arm as he walked to his station. "Kids you know?"

"You are too soft with them." The first mate's face softens just the slightest shade.

"I know." Jirayat calls out without turning around.

"I try..." He adds, under his breath.

Within minutes, they leave the bustle of the port behind with the Green Empress cutting cleanly through the gentle greenish blue waves of the South China Sea. The weather is good and the Green Empress can easily make up for the delay in such ideal conditions. Perhaps they could even come back early today.

Jirayat was about to finish some work with the ropes when he hears the blast of an alarm signalling all hands on deck. He shrugs off some of the heavier work equipment and enjoys the breeze as he waits for the rest of the crew to join him on deck. This stopping in the middle of the ocean is unusual, he muses to himself. They are still some distance away from their usual hunting grounds even though they were currently in international, disputed waters.

Finally, the children come streaming out from below deck where they were doing the bulk of the unskilled grunt work, shielding their eyes with their hands from the intense sunlight and chattering sporadically about things children chatter about. Jirayat always thought that it would be better for the children to attend school - so they could know how to read and write about whatever it is they talked about. As it was, they would only become like him when they grew up. Floating around, sailing around, doing backbreaking manual labour. At least it was honest work?

The captain, a gruff man strides onto the deck. The murmurings among the crew melts away and all eyes are on him. His face us grim. Behind him, his deputies carry a stoned form. It was one of the younger boys that came with the last group, from who-knows-what village. Jirayat recalled this boy had not adapted well, he had been miserable and missed his family - well, they all did, but he let it affect him more than the others. Last he heard, the boy had decided to stop eating and refused to move even when they beat him. That was 3 days ago.

Jirayat and the children watch in stunned silence as the men carry the stoned form to the captain. This was their first experience with someone turning to stone even though they heard people talking about the newfound possibility. No one had dared to try something that foreign, no one knew what the effects would be. Jirayat had thought that no self respecting person would do such a thing and choose to turn his back on everyone else. Apparently someone had thought differently - perhaps he thought that he had no one to turn his back on anymore.

The captain barks a word. The two men run towards the side of the craft and, with a coordinated swing, tosses the stone form over the guardrail. They hear a loud splash a fraction of a second later. The sharp intake of breath is clearly audible to the captain over the waves gently lapping against the side of his craft.

"Let this be a lesson" The captains says. He turns his back, and strides away.

[[I wrote this at]]*|5:37 PM|

Sunday, January 5, 2020

[[Stoning the young]]

23/1/2030

Lee Hui Min leans on the parapet at the landing between the second and third floor of Blk 288 Bedok North Avenue 2, Singapore. It is 8pm and she is still in her school uniform and she has neither eaten dinner nor started on her homework (Math and Chinese today) nor started revision for a minor POA test the next day. She can hear people, a family talking a they wait for the lift on the ground floor. She can also hear intermittent shouting and loud banging noises 1 floor up as a couple vent their frustrations alternating between dialect, mandarin and English.

The people shouting are her parents, and their actions are the reason she is loitering outside her home. She knows her dinner will be getting cold on the dining table. She hears her person - and her act of not coming home - occasionally being referenced by her mother occasionally. In fact, most of the noises are coming from her mother now. She knows this part well, at 8pm, her father will have finished his dinner and become weary of "defending himself" against his wife's constant nagging. He will plop himself down on the cushion and switch on the news and tune his wife out. "Hear only the good stuff". Hui Min knows the script, the rough gist if not the exact lines by heart nowadays. It is like they have been having the same unresolved argument for the past 7 months. Something something about not being home for the kids. Something about his children's grades getting worse. Something about his female colleagues. Something about him only knowing how to drink alcohol...

Hui Min sighs. 20 more minutes or so and the coast will be clear for her to slink back home and grab her dinner, she was getting hungrier by the minute. Maybe she should have rushed home faster after her CCA ended, before the inevitable quarrel rekindled and burst back into flames. But she had to stay back to talk to her friend about her (guy) problems... The savage safari that was secondary school social life was dangerous and required much effort and skill to navigate. Hui Min knew she hadn't been putting in the effort required to keep her above average position on the social ladder and that she was bound to slip down the rankings soon.

There were 10 more minutes. There were 2 main routes the situation at home could play out.

The one Hui Min preferred involved her mother giving up. For there would be some reprieve, if only temporarily. There was a chance her mother would storm back into her room and start crying while her father would mutter "Siao Zhar Bor" (Crazy woman) loudly enough for it to be heard at the landing. Or her mother could walk out of the house to "buy something" and walk around aimlessly or visit her own mother/sister to cry/complain. Or her mother could just run out of things to say and wring her hands and go back to doing whatever chores needed to be done while maintaining a "black" face.

The worse alternative involved a direct confrontation. This happened when her mother pushed it too far and crossed some unseen trigger point that made her father erupt. This option usually ended in some physical violence and much emotional violence - a whole lot of screaming threats and/or hurling deliberately crafted insults to maximise hurt and at the same time pretending that you weren't affected by the return fire. Apart from that, the final outcomes were pretty much the same as her mother giving up without a confrontation.

6 more minutes. Hui Min hopes that the recent stretch of silence is her mother giving up.

5 more minutes. The silence shatters. Apparently her mother had pulled the plug out of the TV and the silence that followed was only however long it took for her Dad to get out of shock at his wife's audacity. Vulgarities rend the air followed by what sounds like things being thrown around in the house. Porcelain breaking - probably her dinner. There would be injuries for sure. Hui Min looks down at her phone and debates whether to call the police again.

The police arrives 20 minutes later. On their way up the staircase, they pass a stoned Hui Min.

At least it is temporary peace and this too shall pass?

[[I wrote this at]]*|9:18 PM|

Friday, January 3, 2020

[[Stoning the war]]

22 Jan 2030 - 1 week after the announcement on 15 Jan

What were once ferocious battles between men now resemble a Victorian sculptor's backyard. An eerie peace permeates the air.

Captain Lakash of the 233rd Indian Infantry Regiment is flummoxed. He has withdrawn 5 kilometres from the frontline where much of his regiment still stands, unmoving, steadfastly staring off an equally stoic opponent. The personnel report of his company reads 26 present, 8 killed, 12 wounded and 59 stoning. About 20 metres in front of him, propped against the tree is the stone form of a Pakistani sergeant. He finishes his cigarette and casually fires a round that pings off the head of said stone figure (his helmet is already in smithereens) leaving not the slightest scratch. The bullet ricochets and busts a jerry can beside Captain Lakash's foot. Startled, he lets loose a string of vulgarities in his native tongue that even if his men heard, they would not understand.

He curses the Pakistani sergeant for refusing to die, himself for almost blowing off his own leg and himself again for busting one of his two good jerry cans and wasting precious water.

As he gathers his composure, he mutters under his breath "at least it isn't the bloomin *insert colorful expletives* Pakistanis that are shooting at me"

Later that day, he is summoned to a meeting with the other officers in his brigade. They have with them three stone forms - Pakistani commandos. A fourth, dead and fleshly body is chucked beside the three. These four commandos have apparently been sabotaging and ambushing many a soft target, usually supply trains, killing some and indirectly turning many others into stone (as they prefer stoning to dying). They were finally dealt with by an Indian platoon on patrol as they were trying to pilfer food from a village. Still they put up quite a fight and killed 2 Indian soldiers, 2 villagers and turned 6 villagers and 4 other soldiers into stone before turning into stone after they themselves wounded. Stoning was already rapidly becoming common practice for evacuating critically injured soldiers.

They were here to discuss the fate of these 3 Pakistani stone figures. The eventual decision was to tie the three "injured" stone figures to a tree in the centre the village they were stealing for and leaving the villagers to decide upon their fate if they unstoned and didn't die too quickly of their prevailing injuries. Lakash was surprised that his CO's suggestion of dropping them to the bottom of a nearby polluted lake didn't prevail. Perhaps it was because in 20 years that lake might cease to be.

Just before they disbanded, the brigade commander relayed notice from higher HQ: Soldiers that stoned without critical injury were to be court martial-ed for cowardice. Lakash noticed that the brigade commander didn't seem to think much of the notice for he did not give further clearer instructions on the specifics.

[[I wrote this at]]*|5:07 PM|

[[Humans Stoning (Where it all began)]]

Back in 2020, the world knew that technology was going to change the world. People looked to technology to solve all sorts of issues - from pollution to inequality, food security to last mile transportation, disease eradication to fight against extremism... Technology, however, failed to be the panacea just like religion, education and communism/capitalism before it. Nonetheless, one particular invention stood out above the rest, and fundamentally changed society and the world without solving any of its problems.

In early 2029, from a cabal based in Southeast Asia, XII, came the announcement that humans could now turn to stone and back. While this secretive cabal had a reputation for authenticity, this initial claim made hardly a splash was mostly ignored as being outlandish with many technical experts expressing skepticism. For those that took it seriously, the question was "to what end?" It made it to meme of the month (something about being turned rock hard) for march 2029 but the world quickly moved on and forgot about it.

In late May 2029, the world's attention was drawn into a conflict over a resource rich patch of the Indian ocean roughly equidistant from Madagascar, Somalia and India being claimed by all 3 countries with China and Russia (and Iran) backing the African claimants while the USA and the west supported India (Britain and France were claimants too, due to them having apparent sovereignty over some minuscule Islands nearby as a relic from the age of colonisation). Certain missteps (?) at sea lead to a disastrous naval engagement in that area which led to lives lost and a gradual spiral towards armed conflict of all involved. The conflict slowly shifted from the naval and cyber spheres to hotspots around the world. This meant a significant increase in misery for the two thirds of the world involved in either side of the conflict (except for the richest 1% that didn't have to do any of the fighting and certain powerful interests and people that stood to profit from war). By October 2029, significant fighting had broken out in Eastern Europe, South Asia and North and East Africa and the Middle East with South America and Oceania being dragged slowly and unwillingly into the conflict.

It is against this backdrop that XII made the second announcement that changed the world in January 2030.
The main points were such.
1. Anyone could turn him/herself into stone, almost instantaneously just by thinking a certain sequence of thoughts together with having the intent of turning him/herself into stone
2. When "stone", the human being was essentially invulnerable. (It wasn't stone stone like granite or limestone, but some sort of indestructible material that resembled stone)
3. The human would become stone for a random period of time between 1 hour and a 100 years (most likely, according to the cabal). After the time was up, they would revert to being flesh and blood humans.
4. After reverting to flesh human form, one had to wait between a month and some indeterminate amount of time (most likely 10 years according to XII) to be able to turn back into stone again.
5. There were certain additional steps that one could take to choose the period of time that one would spend in "stone form". The first of which was to wire the cabal a ludicrous amount of money.
6. There were certain steps that one could take to discern how long in stone form would a "stone" person remain in. The first of which was to wire the cabal a huge sum of money.
7. There were certain additional steps upon the additional steps that one could take to "cloak" how long in stone form were you going to be in from observers. One had to, again, part with a significant fortune to do that.
8. Turning into stone and back is entirely harmless.
9. While stone, you are having a dreamless sleep.

Along with these points, XII included videos of subjects turning into stone (a process they dubbed "stoning", turning out of stone ("un-stoning"), and of 2 people that were once stone, turning back into stone ("re-stoning"). Subjects that were once stone appeared to be in the physical and mental state that they were just prior to turning into stone without any apparent signs of ageing. Most importantly, they also released publicly the steps that anyone could take to turn into stone. XII ended it's announcement with a disclaimer urging people to be responsible with this invention of theirs although "ultimately, it is your body".

This announcement spread throughout the globe like some supercharged plague and within the week, a good 95% of the world's population had heard of it and 3% of the world's population were "stoning" with the number rising rapidly.

I'll share some stories of what happened next, here (like at this page) I guess. Hahaha. Was fun to write though only the setting.

[[I wrote this at]]*|4:22 PM|