"Good things happen to good people, I'm sure she'll be fine."
"Sigh, you get some rest too Xu'er."
"Ya, I'll go to sleep after washing the dishes."
Huang Ji had already returned home. His grandfather became extremely anxious upon hearing about Dr. Liang's kidnapping. He couldn't fathom why she'd been kidnapped and at the same time was very concerned for her well being. But no matter how much he cared there was nothing he could do, the cops would take care of everything. The old man could only pray for Dr. Liang's safe return.
Huang Ji helped wash his grandfather's feet and helped him to bed. He then went to the kitchen to take care of the dishes. After finishing everything he walked into the yard, lifting his head and staring at the sky. In his ears he could already hear his grandfather's snoring. In the time that it took to wash the plates, the old man had already fallen asleep.
"Why...Why make me able to feel so much…"
Huang Ji stared at the moon, a complicated expression appearing over his face. It was one of helplessness and despair, but amongst the despair there was also a hint of relief. This sort of complex expression was something a person like him with a mild intellectual disability could never have expressed in the past.
He was cured. Ever since falling unconscious three days ago, his intelligence had returned to the levels of an average person. Or maybe, his problem never had anything to do with an intellectual disability.
Since childhood the world that he saw was different from everyone else. The world in his eyes was like a giant database! Everywhere he looked all he saw was this complex data, some of it remained constant while others were ever-changing. He had no clue what it was. Every flower and tree, every bird and insect, a gust of wind, or even a cup of water, they were all revealing themselves to him. It seemed like they were exposing to him every bit of information they contained. Unfortunately, he couldn't understand any of it.
The data wouldn't allow him to automatically grasp knowledge and concepts that he himself didn't already understand. For example, the age of a tree. When he didn't comprehend the concept of 'age', the information regarding age was just a jumble of nothing. Only when Huang Ji understood the concept of age, knew what 'years, months, and days' were, knew that 'a tree should have an age', and knew about 'how long had it been since this tree was a seed''... Only then, when he looked at that tree would a small portion of the data be perceived as 'age': 7 years, 3 months, 29 days, 9 hours, 44 minutes and 1 second...This data was still changing with every passing moment.
Based on this, he was able to perceive the type of the tree, the size and the mass of the tree, how many atoms the tree currently had… How much water had it absorbed? How many fruits had it ever produced? From the very moment it was planted, to the precise time when it first sprouted, and every single time it bore fruit; he was able to perceive everything related to the tree like reading through a historical record. There was no end to the amount of information like this. He was even capable of knowing strange and elaborate information like who had planted the tree, how many times it had been touched and how many insects it had been bitten by.
It was because he was born with this extraordinary gift that he became intellectually disabled...
That's right, even though he had this extraordinary gift that was akin to omniscience, he spent sixteen years as an intellectually disabled child. All because how much of the information he was able to perceive relied entirely upon his own scope of knowledge.
As a newborn baby who didn't know a single thing, the entire world was an unknown mystery to him. He was surrounded by an endless stream of incomprehensible data. This perception ability was too powerful, and for an infant, that power transformed into endless suffering. A never ending flow of bizarre, alien information bombarding his mind and senses.
It was under these circumstances that he became sluggish and slow-witted, with horrible memory and terrible eyesight. Accurately speaking, the reason he had supposedly terrible eyesight was because his vision was obstructed by the torrent of information, information that was complex, incoherent, and indescribable...
Some intelligence tests and reactions tests were even more of a mystery to him. He didn't even know what the doctors wanted him to do… In the eyes of the doctors, this was the display of a mental deficiency. In reality, Hua Ji was very smart. So smart that at the age of four he already understood the concept of 'parents' and understood that he should learn to speak…he understood that he saw things differently from other people...
Indeed, it was a miracle that a four year old child could understand this all. With a bit of repetition and patience, it was simple to teach a child what a father was, what a mother was, what drinking milk was, the colour white, the colour yellow… All because humans were just that smart. But for a special case like him, it was tough.
Father? Mother? One clump of incoherent data pointing towards another clump of incoherent data saying this was mother, and then pointing towards another clump of incoherent data saying this was grandpa… It was truly a miracle that he was able to understand. When a person saw the world differently from other people, it became an incredible struggle to come to know this world. It was like teaching a blind person about the colour purple...the colour red...
In the beginning, Huang Ji was no different from a blind person. Luckily, as his body and brain developed, he started gaining more control over his ability. The year he turned four, he started understanding how to collect and expand the information, silently blocking out all of the stuff he couldn't understand. Of course, he could only block out a small amount, but at least he was no longer completely blind to "the world in the eyes of everyone else'.
As time passed and his body developed further, he was able to block out more information. With the growth of Huang Ji's knowledge, he was also able to block out the information that he'd already grasped along with the unknown information. This was also the reason why he was able to reach an IQ of 50 when he saw the doctor at age four.
In other words, if the old man hadn't listened to the fortune teller's words and had taken him to go see a doctor at the age of one, the test results wouldn't have just been an IQ of 50 and a mild intellectual disability… He would have been a complete idiot…and his eyesight wouldn't have been 0.2, he would have been blind...or maybe mostly blind with a bit of light sensitivity.
From a different perspective, a much different picture about Huang Ji's intelligence was painted. It seemed like he was in fact a genius. To still be able to reach an IQ of 50 and be capable of communicating with other people at the age of five, all this while his mind was dulled and suppressed by the torrential influx of information… Not to mention his eyesight was also perfectly fine.
The start was always the toughest. As he continued to grasp more concepts and increased his understanding of the world, his body continued to mature and his control over his ability grew stronger. With more and more information being collected together, Huang Ji's intelligence slowly recovered, the burden on his mind easing.
In junior secondary school, his IQ had actually already recovered to 60 and was rapidly improving. The reason his grades were so bad was because he was forcing himself to study under the constant barrage of information. This resulted in him overusing his brain and constant migraines, followed by an inability to continue studying and even fainting.
The truth was that he loved to learn, because knowledge could alleviate his symptoms. The more he knew, the more information he could choose to block out and free up more of his mind that was occupied by useless data.
After giving up on the National High School Entrance Examination and returning home, he became free to study whatever he wanted without the heavy academic burden. He observed this world, trying to understand this world. He sat in the fields with his own thoughts, stood by the road listening to gossip, and watched tv for all of the ideas spread through it. This gave him more time to solidify and organize his common sense.
That's right, common sense! Things most people probably already understand when they were only a few years old. Only after learning all of the basic logic could he go on to acquire knowledge. Like this, the half-a-year he spent at home was precisely the most important time for him to return to normal.
Ever since waking up from the last time he fell unconscious, he was finally able to block out the majority of the information that normal people were unable to see and feel. The development of his body corresponded to how much incomprehensible information he was able to collect together and ignore. On the other hand, his cognitive knowledge and understanding corresponded to how much comprehensible information he was able to collect together.
Free from the pressure of the constant assault of data, Huang Ji's intelligence had finally returned to the level of an average person, or perhaps even higher? He was now able to block out the information of everything in the world, but he was also able to let it free. Anything he wanted to know, as long he could understand it, he could just use his mind to seek and access the information. When he didn't want to, the earth and the village, the people and the scenery, everything he saw was basically the same to him as every other person.
"Other than the stars..." Huang Ji sighed.
Besides the data his eyes could see, he could also use his hearing, touch, and smell to perceive data. All of these combined together formed a unique perception. He called it data perception.
Right now Huang Ji was only able to block out all of the information within human society. The moment he raised his head looking up at the stars, he would sense a tsunami of data crushing his mind. This was also the reason why he would always get a severe headache and would even faint whenever he looked up at the stars.
Every star in the sky contained an enormous amount of information, but he had the ability to block out the normal information abouts the stars. Take the Sun for example, the Sun was a very simple celestial body. Huang Ji was already able to block out its information from the age of six. The real problem was that even now at the age of sixteen, he still wasn't able to block out celestial bodies that harboured civilizations.
That's right, civilizations!
Among the stars lived a vast number of thriving civilizations. The light from these stars with civilizations travelled to Earth where they were received by Huang Ji. The amount of information they carried was countless times more complex than the Sun! More importantly, even after blocking out all sorts of data that were conceptually similar to the data from the Sun, there still remained a large majority of uninterpretable information from the stars.
On the bright side, he was only receiving the weakened light from these stellar civilizations and not looking straight at the civilizations up close. As a result, when Huang Ji came to understand the idea of stars, civilizations, and aliens, he was then able to close off the majority of the information from the stars. But ultimately as a sixteen year old, he was still unable to block it all out, the stars were still relaying to him too much incomprehensible information.
Maybe he still needed to continue growing. His body needed to be stronger and his brain had to be more developed. In other words, his mind was still being "dulled", any amount of thinking was done under the pressure of that vast amount of information. Even during the day his twin pupils were still capable of perceiving the information from the stars, albeit to a much smaller extent compared to the night.
Huang Ji's intelligence was being suppressed by all of the stars in the sky! Even now he was still a long ways off from reaching his most relaxed state.
Thanks for the chapter!
ReplyDeleteBeing able to perceive and know so much information at a young age can be a wonderful gift to others, but, in Huang Ji's situation, I felt more sadness rather than appreciation over his intelligence. Sometimes, excessive intelligence makes our emotion apathetic and eccentric to others.
Wow, very refreshing read.
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