" Ionization is the process by which
an atom or a molecule acquires a negative or positive charge by gaining or
losing electrons..." Professor Athena was reading out loud what was
Ionization. Being an eight, Ionization was still too easy for me. I, like my
classmates, were more interested in the topics that the top grades were taught.
Our society's motto: Age is nothing, knowledge and learning is all.
Since all the people in our society
were intelligent, our society was made perfect. There were no crimes in these
50 years, no stealing, no murdering and no... My parents always told me to be
focus in lessons, why would I be not focus in lessons? Every time I received
the knowledge well in lessons, I had a sense of satisfaction.
I loved my timetable. Fourteen
hours learning and remaining hours for knowledge and feeling sharing and sleep.
Since I was two, I already had ten hours learning, learning about how people
minds could change easily. How people could betray you. It was all written in
the history, at least it was how it told us. I was grateful that I was chipped,
so that I could store more knowledge, and learn more about the weakness of
human's mind.
After all the lessons, essentially,
I said goodbye to my classmates and teachers, then headed back home.
When I was forty more meters away
from home, I heard someone groaning. Without hesitation, I went towards the source and found a boy at my
age moaning in the grass. From his clothing, he was not from our society,
because all clothes of us had the motto, but he didn't. However, my
intelligence told me to carry him back to home.
This was the first time I ever used
medication on others. I expected he would not ache soon and could sit up and
talked to me, and it matched my calculation. I stretched out a hand to show
friendliness to him, he looked at me with an odd face, but he shook it. If he
was from my society, this hand shaking would be impropriate, as he shook four
instead of three. I then politely some questions like," How are you now?
Are you feeling okay?" Then, we exchanged our name and some other
information. He was called James, and he was from another society. He looked
around and suddenly said in awe," wow, you get so many books. I keep many
books, though it was less than yours by half, I thought." He read a book
without my permission and exclaimed," wow, this book was so difficult.
There are lots of words that I don't know, and what is it talking about?"
I was stunned as I read this when I was three. I explained, " it is about
the elements of universe, this is the periodic table."
I was suddenly curious about his
society and him, so I asked, " can you please tell me about your society
and you and your family?" He looked at me and nodded. " My society is
wonderful. We have to go to school to learn stuffs for eight hours since five,
including lunch and breakfast and two recess." I was suddenly aware that I
didn't know the word 'recess'. A word
that this boy know but I don't know? " Recess?" I asked. "
You don't know what recess is." he said, obviously surprised. " We don't
have it. Even in dictionary." I said, searching for the word in the
brain," can you explain it?" He then explained," there is a time
period between two lessons and it is called recess. It is a time for people to
relax, play and have fun." Yes,
there is a time period between one lesson, but it was not... never mind, it was
for you to rethink of how you were doing in class, and what you unwisely did. I
really have problems in these words: have
fun and play.
I knew relax, it was to read books, another way to gain knowledge. I was
now very curious," what is 'have fun'
and 'play'?" He exclaimed again," what? You don't know how to
have fun and play?" I shook. " Ummm, we play hide-and-seek and other
things like sliding down a hill with a sled!" He said, smiling broadly, I
wondered if I had ever smiled like this one," but you don't know what is hide-and-seek,
right?" I shook again, but I said," from the three words, I can see
that there is a group hiding and a group seeking for them." He looked
surprised, but it quickly disappeared," hard to talk with the too-clever
guys. Yeah, it is something like it. You will be excited and happy if you seek
someone and caught him. You will be excited and happy if you are unnoticed by
the ones who are seeking you when they are really close to you. But how to show
it to you?"
Then, he said," go back to
where you find me, I have a phone there." He crawled out of my house and
was back soon with a very old type of phone (in our society). He touched the
screen and many videos and photos were shown. He selected one of them. "
Mom, you are filming us." a boy, obviously the younger version of him,
yelled at the camera. Then, he giggled as another boy was chasing him, trying
to catch him. Then he laughed," C'mon Ben, you are going to catch
me." Then, they tumbled with each other as they were laughing loudly. Then
stood up quickly, both with a big smile over their face. Some other videos were
shown too, and I realized something. They
look so...so innocent. " You were stupid. You don't know how people
minds are, they are always changeable." I didn't know if I was matching
the title, but then explained my lessons to him and he shook his head,"
yes, I was innocent. However, we were all innocent. We just want to play with
each other, and be happy. There is another thing that you may not know. My
teacher always stressed on a sentence: And
now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." The word
"love" made me shock again.
There were no examples of "love" in my society, not even a example
sentence. " Love?" I asked, with so much curiosity and bravery.
" Love, just like this." Then he picked up his phone again and
selected a passage, and gave the phone to me.
I quickly finished
it and it stunned me. It made me start to believe in something that I was
trying not to believe. It made me start to think of the knowledge I learnt, all
those scientific facts, all those inventions and all those skills. It started
to make some of the knowledge collapse in my brain. It made me think of the true
meaning of this word.
Just look at
the title, it shook me. Greatest Love: Mother died to save her son. "
The lady was holding her three-year-old son in her arms while rocks falling
down the hill in a landslide. The life-saving workers later heard crying and
found the lifeless mother and her crying son."
It is a sacrifice, and there is nothing like
this in our society. In the last flooding, a woman knew that if she tied her
daughter who was only 2-year-old on the lamp, she might survive. So she did,
tying the innocent girl on the lamp, and stood on her, so she could breathe and
yelled for the workers to save her. Of course, her daughter died, but she
didn't care really much. Then I thought of myself, would I do the same
thing? Probably yes, I would not take the risk, I would let myself survive
first. It was stupid to sacrifice myself for the girl, at least that was what
the professor told us. We all know how
people minds change easily, so there is no more trust, or no much trust. "
Trust would bring you to hell sometimes." As the book said. Even my dad
and mum do not completely trust in each other, I could tell it by their habit.
They never tried to share their money, they would not help each other. When I
asked them, they said they could manage their things.
I suddenly came with a horrible thought, what if we are not that intelligent. Our
knowledge seemed so small in front of " love". Love, seemed so
difficult to taste completely. Maybe no sacrifice, no love. No trust, no love.
No caring, no love. I always thought our society was the best of all,
knowing all sort of things. And the truth was revealed during my conversation
with this kid from another society.
" Hey,
smart boy, deep in thought again, huh?" He chuckled.
" Don't
call me smart boy, how do you call each other?" I said, after my deep
thought broke.
" Um, I
will say " hey, dude" when I see someone?" he said.
"Hey dude" wasn't a formal English, but it sounded so...so friendly. I would
love to be called like this.
Friendly...friendship.
"Can I be a friend of you?" I
asked.
He glared at
me, and said," okay, dude."
And for the
first time, I smiled broadly.
For the first
time, I would love to go away from my society, and go with my friend. I would
learn to play, no, I would play there.
Crossed the
river, then I would be away from this endless sleep forever...
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