Sexual, racial, gender violence and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture- Charlotte Bunch
I am happy to introduce to you again Dr. Syed Faizal, he has written many interesting stories on his Facebook recently . This story was written on the eve of Malaysia’s 64th birthday. The story reminds us that we Malaysians should stick together regardless religion, race and skin colour.
SALAM MERDEKA FROM THE EDGES OF MARS.
“Ten, Nine, Eight….. Ignition…….And Blast off” The count-down still reverberated in my mind. That was 5 months ago when we launched our maiden human mission to Mars.
We had self-sufficient launching facility built in Yan, Kedah.
At least we didn’t have to rely on Houston, Texas anymore. The year was 2121…… There was nothing to be jubilant about. In fact, as a nation, we were among the last in the space race.
Some of the more advanced countries like the United States and Japan had already established their own self-sustaining colonies on Mars. Some of the colonies could sustain a few thousand people.
This was achievable because they managed to terraform parts of the planet by melting some of the underground hidden water via a few nuclear blasts. We were forced to be in the race because Earth was getting overly populated and less habitable. In fact, most of our islands like Langkawi and Penang were already inundated due to the global warming.
We Are Far Behind
Our mission was to establish our own Malaysian colony there. Our team was basically only functioning as an analytical team to establish the suitability of a spot given to us. Obviously we were only in the inception phase of our colonization whereas other countries had literally built mini cities within their own bubble. The international Martian Organization ( IMO ) had unfairly allocated us a crater near the foot of Olympus Mons.
This location was far away from the Gale crater where most of the colonies and water supply were centered. I blamed this to our forefathers about a 100 years ago.
They were so embroiled in their own racial, religious and political spin that they had failed to envision the future. They overlooked in preparing their young future generations to face this very day. All they cared about was their political survival compromising our education system totally to be in shambles.
How could we put our heads together when they programmed our country in rule and divide approach disallowing people of various races to mingle. This had totally handicapped us the ability to master the art of spacefaring skills. Nevertheless, we were not too late. About a few decades ago we had run out of our patience. We grew utterly tired of the shenanigans of the politicians so much that it catapulted us into a revolution.
We have to rebuild our Country
It was only through the people power that we managed to overthrow the dead woods and recalibrated our country. We managed to repurpose our democracy system that our leader was elected not based on popularity but by intellectuality. Those who despite winning the election still had to undergo a series of IQ tests verified by the international standards.
If they failed we looked for another one. A law was also passed stipulating that any politicians who betrayed the party they pledged during the election was punishable by death. Only through all these drastic changes that we managed to put our path back on track. We managed to assemble many talented people to strive for our survival. Unfortunately, with all the lost time, we only managed to reach to this level. At least at this level we could already send our own people to space from our own soil using our own rocket.
I had asked my other crew members to take a rest. It was my turn to man the cockpit of our shuttle within this darkness of the space. Our team consisted of 12 people. I just couldn’t tell what they were. They were neither Malays, Chinese, Indians nor Kadazans. We came from a potpourri of mixed marriages that nobody could proclaim with certainty they were a Bumiputera or Non-Bumiputera.
We Are Malaysians
I heard this concept was such an important labeling many decades ago that had definitely become outmoded nowadays. In fact, please keep this as a secret. I heard my lady captain, she was totally “race-less” because she was a product from a test tube out of a sperm bank. Yet, as long as our space jackets were emblazoned with a Malaysian flag, we were a team.
We had lost so much time differentiating each other so perpetually that we had hampered our own progress. Prior to this our space exploration programme was stagnating because they employed non-deserving people due to a certain racial inclination. From now on, we would surely disallow any future racial biases be in our way. Especially now, as our very existence on earth was already at stake.
Hadn’t we learned from our ancient history centuries ago that any ideologies pivoting on racial differences would fail in their quests? The German Nazis, South African Apartheid and Roman Empire to name a few. I glanced at our monitor with excitement. It indicated we had another 30 days, 2 hours and 54 seconds before reaching Mars. Soon we would have our own Malaysian colony on the planet. I wondered would there still be a concept of racial differentiation on this newfound land?
If so how would they categorize the status? Would it be the first batch or the first 10 batches of the spacecraft be granted the Bumiputera status? Or should we regard every single person that lived and contributed to The Malaysian colony as just a Malaysian? Suddenly, one of the alarms in the cockpit was making a loud beeping sound. It was trying to remind the crew today was 31st August on Earth.
I had to wake everyone up….That was my job to do so. I forced all the crew members to send their own individual Merdeka messages to their beloved country. The Malaysian back on earth were latching their hopes to sagacious, talented, knowledgeable and clever people like us.
As for me I wrote , “ I love you so much Malaysia…….. Salam Merdeka from the edges of Mars”
