Time is scarce right now. With Kendo, Capoeira both happening twice a week, 4 times in total, and the ever-mounting pile of readings and revisions loaded upon all Singaporean undergraduates in an attempt by the nation to “mould a better future”, the hours in each day seemed to have contracted and shrunk. Every single day is a film on fast-forward: Wake up for school. Eat my breakfast. Do bodyweight training. Go to school. Force-fed knowledge. Read books. Print notes. Chase buses. Board. Stone. Sleep. And wake up again to another blur of my life.
It is on rare occasions that I have time to read again; George Orwell’s 1985 lay forgotten amongst the torrents of readings from long-dead philosophers and psychology’s revolutionaries and visionaries. Yet, the impossible happened: someone slowed down the paradoxical recording/re-play of the present, and granted me precious hours to read.
This is where I chanced upon 3 truly amazing reads in a short span of 3 days: Andy Weirrs’ The Egg, Issac Asimov’s The Last Question and Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger.
Funny how they all start with “The” – this particular word seem to give the title a more commanding, mysterious air about the predicate that comes after “The”. It’s like shining the 1,000 MW spotlight onto the predicate when you use “The”: The King has arrived! The slave is over there! The irony! The thing that’s standing right behind you, right now!
Anyway, these 3 stories vary widely in length – The Egg is more of an article than a short story per say, The Last Question a short story and The Mysterious Stranger perhaps qualifying as a novella.
— Please read the stories before you proceed any further! You will be spoilt to a certain extend if you continue on! —
The Egg
The Egg’s story examines the afterlife, the true purpose of this cycle of life and death that all human beings are condemned to live through. The plot is simple: you died, and God’s there explaining to you why you died, and what happens next. This simplicity is the article’s strongest point. The straightforwardness of The Egg is akin to taking a slap right in the face; no attempts to fool your reflexes, no trickery to get you to look the other way, just a straight-on slap in the face.
This is most evident in its opening phrase: “You were on your way home when you died”.
In 9 words, your entire life happened and cease to happen. The sledgehammer-efficiency of this phrase resonates throughout the article; the story has been strained, sunned, filtered, condensed to yield the purest essence of the story’s plot.
The story gives a refreshing new take on the purpose of human life. I see similarities between this story and Carl Jung’s outlandish theory about the collective human consciousness. Well, perhaps it really does exist – but verification of this is an epistemological hurdle too great for us to overcome.
The Last Question
After recovering from the slap in the face administered by The Egg, I (sadistically?) yearned for more of these mind-boggling stories. A quick search on the internet reviewed Issac Asimov’s The Last Question. This short story occupied most of my attention during my monotonous bus rides to school – and it was time well spent.
Perhaps it was its simplicity in its plot as well (then again, how much plot can a short story have without going off-tangent?). The Last Question simply revolves around this query: Can entropy be reversed?
I have a lot more to say, but my thoughts are jarred and convulsed today. I think the mind-blowing read from The Mysterious Stranger did something to my mind. I’ll be back with a complete opinion on the 2 stories.
Balloon Text Bubbles. Heh. 