Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

“I’m not playing. Well let’s see what we’ve got here!” She pointed at a cluster of figures. “Just as I thought, here’s you in a temple, or probably the Vineyard, with some other children. Now a man’s kissing you. You’re not very happy about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s death!” she clearly was surprised by that. “Lots of death. What’s that! Screaming abortion!”

[Translator’s note: swear words are translated literally but you can probably figure out what English equivalents would be well enough.]

She turned pale and was clearly very shocked.

“Don’t use language like that in front of Eleprin!” said Mum, returning with a glass of fruit juice in each hand.

“Sorry,” said Iandris, folding up the bag. “I was telling her fortune but this kid’s going to get into some serious problems!”

“I don’t really believe in those things,” said Mum.

“Perhaps it’s the paradox avoidance stopping her from telling me how to change the future,” I said.

“What did you see?” asked Mum.

“Lots of people getting killed and monsters,” said Iandris. “It probably wasn’t literally true.”

I probably should have paid more attention to this.

Yes Iandris should have known better.

I looked over the various artifacts in the shop. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some looked like stones or bits of wood. Others were old machines from before the Cataclysm. Other things I really wasn’t sure of. I did see some magic fireworks, they were basically two, four sided pyramids stuck together, octahedrons.

“You know you’re not allowed to buy artifacts,” said River.

“How can we stop the boys from using magic fireworks to blow everything up when we’re playing a game?”

“I was wondering when one of you would think of that. I’m surprised it was you and not Breeze. Now what shall we do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I could just tell you a way to deal with the magic fireworks. I could give you a quick magic lesson and enough hints to figure something out. We could start giving you kids proper magic lessons.”

“Perhaps a quick lesson,” I said, choosing the option that would put me ahead of Breeze.

Well I didn’t know that then!

“I think it would be better to arrange proper lessons but we really should discuss that with other people.”

We went to worship again. Again the protester and the cop were standing on the road to the Vineyard.

“Eighty percent of pedophilia victims are female!” the protester shouted.

“That would imply that twenty percent of pedophiles are homosexual,” said Dad. “Surely there aren’t that many homosexuals!”

“According to you Winemakers, it’s been found that twenty percent of men are homosexual!” said the man. “This means that there’s only the expected chance correlation between the two.”

I understood the statistics by then. If the probability of something belonging to group A is x and the probability of it belonging to group B is y, then the probability of belonging to both by chance is xy. If there’s much deviation from this, then it suggests that there’s some law that connects group A and group B. Therefore, if there’s no law connecting pedophilia and homosexuality, the proportion of pedophiles who are homosexual should be the same as the proportion of homosexuals in the general population.

Yes I am good at remembering what books and websites say!

“What’s a pedophile?” I asked.

“Somebody who hurts children in very bad ways,” said Mum.

“Like a bully?”

“Not exactly, it’s usually worse than bullies. This isn’t a good time to talk about this.”

I sat down with the other children at the start of worship class. I put my hand up as soon as River had us all seated.

“Eleprin?” she asked.

“Is it true that twenty percent of men are homosexual?”

“No,” said River, “it’s actually about two percent.”

“The protester on the road outside said that Winemakers say that twenty percent of men are homosexual.”

“He’s taken a bit of a story out of context,” said River. “It isn’t even doctrine, but it’s a story many Winemakers know and tell other people. It’s thought to have been brought to Midbar by the same anavim who told us about Yoho’s avatar. Of course, Yoho’s avatar is doctrine. The story is that a man on Earth, long after the nuclear war and long after Yoho’s avatar came, was given a job by the government to research homosexuality. Unfortunately he was homosexual and a lying piece of feces. He misused his job to say that there were far more homosexuals than there really were, probably about ten times more. He did this to promote his pro-homosexual ideas, which were also an attack on Winemakerism.”

“Anything anti-orientationist doubles as religionist,” said Breeze, with her hand up, “because it promotes discrimination against religions, like Winemakerism and Nuhara, that claim that homosexual relationships are sinful.”

“Yes, exactly Breeze. You understand that as Winemakerism teaches that homosexual relationships are sinful, that’s when you love somebody of your own sex the way a husband and wife should love each other.”

A couple of kids made sounds as if they really didn’t like the thought of this.

“Anyway, Winemakerism says that’s wrong so anything that tries to say otherwise is an attack on Winemakerism.”

“Isn’t Nuhara also orientationist?” asked Breeze.

“Yes,” said River. “Anything saying that homosexuality is right is also an attack on Nuhara. However, people never attack Nuhara for this because Nuharas are very violent and get angry easily and most people are too cowardly to take them on.”

I was sitting behind the reception desc, crying.

"You know you really will put off the customers," said Vritan, who was sitting beside me.

"Like you're always so cheerful!"

"I'm a moody teenager. Men are supposed to want to cheer me up."

"I should try to think of a way round this."

I'd tried explaining that it would probably help me to find out the Haprihagfen's secret but Mum and Dad had just said that they were sure this wasn't the way I was supposed to do it.

"What's the matter pretty girl," said an unfamiliar man, who'd just walked in.

He was a faharni! I was really upset and crying and I didn't bother to really look at him!

"Well crying's working for you and you don't even have boobs," said Vritan.

"Mum and Dad won't let me take magic lessons," I said.

"Aren't you rather young for that?" asked the man. "Anyway, I studied magic in Adolescent School and it was really difficult."

"But all my friends are going to be learning magic!"

"If they all decided to jump off a cliff, would you do it?"

"If they had flying spells!"

"I don't think there is such a thing, you don't see lots of magi flying around."

"Do you want a room or what?" asked Vritan.

"No, I'm looking for my woman."

"Well I've reached puberty and I'm single," said Vritan, "but I'd like to get to know you better first."

"Her name's, Iandris," said the man. "Short, slim, yellow hair, lots of tattoos. She told me to pick her up here."

I was shocked to hear a man refer to Iandris has "his woman" and I thought this meant that she was married to him.

[Translator’s note: in Faharni, the same word can mean either “woman” or “wife” depending on the context.]

No, there aren't any clear laws about how old you have to be to get married in Pax but most people do it when they're really old, like at least twenty.

"She's in our apartment," I said. "Down that corridor, down the steps and it's the door marked PRIVATE."

Should I have put 'PRIVATE' in italics and capital letters as I only said it? I know the sign's in capital letters and if I was putting it in a description I should use italics and capital letters. [Translator's note: as she wrote this in Faharni, she actually asked about cursive and ligandated writing.]

"All the best ones are taken," said Vritan as the man walked away.

I sat there, moping and then started thinking how I could outdo Breeze. I was still learning about ornamental plants and the hotel business but Breeze didn't seem interested in those things. I heard the man having a conversation with somebody, I think Mum and Iandris, down the corridor. What if I learnt to use psychic powers? No, that required me to be a psychic and nobody liked psychics.