By Ramprasath Rengasamy
“Listen up!” Irant shouted. A collective silence fell as the villagers and their chief looked up at Irant. The massive banyan tree at the centre of the island cast its vast shadow over the entire crowd.
“The government has come to know about you all. ‘Education for everyone’ is the government’s policy. The government has instructed us to inspire you to learn mathematics. I am a mathematics teacher at a high school in the mainland. I am here with my best math student, Dojo,” Irant said in a loud voice.
Dojo waved his hand, making it abundantly clear exactly who Irant was talking about.
Most of the village men stood with towels draped over their bare torsos and lungis wrapped around their waists. Nearby, the village women had gathered in a tight group, their voices a low flurry of whispers.
The children began to whisper among themselves. One boy slumped his shoulders and sighed, “Mathematics? I heard it’s completely boring.”
“Dojo is here to pique your interest.” Irant glanced at Dojo and gave a slight nod, signaling that it was his turn to speak.
“Think of it this way: on my walk to school, I pass a row of mango trees. Every single day, I note down whether a mango falls on my path. After ten days, I have a clear record of what happened in the past — and that record is Statistics. When I use those past ten days to guess if I’ll get a mango on day eleven, I’m using Probability.”
The gathered crowd nodded in understanding.
“Try a coin flip,” Irant advised. “It’s a bit easier to explain.”
“A coin has two sides, Heads and Tails, so the sum of both chances must equal one,” Dojo said, keeping his smile warm and encouraging. “That means the probability for Heads is just half.”
Around him, the village children squinted and tilted their heads, completely lost.
“But what if it doesn’t land on either side?” one boy spoke up, challenging the idea.
“That almost never happens,” Dojo said.
Instantly, a boy in the crowd stood up to prove him wrong. He pulled a coin from his pocket and tossed it onto the ground. The coin bounced once and rolled to a stop, balancing precisely on its rim.
Dojo stared at the coin, completely dumbfounded.
The first boy scooped up the coin and threw it again. Edge. Another boy lunged forward, grabbed the same coin, and flipped it. It spun wildly before dropping like a stone, balancing perfectly on its side. Soon, the boys were lining up, repeating the trick one after the other. Yet no matter who threw it, the coin landed upright every single time.
Amazement and shock washed over Dojo and Irant as they stared at the upright coin.
“Now, what are the chances of that happening?” the boys asked triumphantly.
“In textbooks, we’d call that a biased coin,” Dojo answered, his voice tracking his confusion. “But a coin never behaves like this back on the mainland.”
The island boys kept scooping up the coin and flipping it, over and over, and every single time the metal stubbornly settled on its rim.
“Have you noticed how gravity feels a bit off on this island?” Irant murmured, narrowing his eyes at the dirt. “Either they’ve figured out a completely different way to toss that coin, or the physics here is making the coin spin unnaturally.”
“Fine,” Dojo groaned, rubbing his temples. “Even if we change the formula to account for the edge, that means the probability of landing on its side is $P(side) = 1 - P(Heads) - P(Tails). Oh, ... just trying to re-calculate this is making my head spin.”
“Forget the math for a second, Dojo,” Irant said. “If the government takes this island seriously, our textbooks are ruined. Every formula you’ve ever drilled into your head will have to be changed and learned all over again.”
Dojo clamped his mouth shut, utterly defeated.
“What a nightmare,” Dojo whined. “We should have just stayed away from this place.”
Irant frowned, trying to catch his meaning. “What do you mean by that, Dojo?”
“Forgive me, sir,” Dojo replied, looking thoroughly overwhelmed. “A shift in probability would fundamentally reshape geometry, calculus, and algebra. The sheer volume of revisions it would force onto our examination papers is staggering.”
He stared blankly at the ground in despair. Then, in the blink of an eye, his expression transformed, and his eyes widened as an idea clicked into place.
One of the island boys walked up to him, looking up with earnest eyes.
“Every outsider who comes here gets asked the same thing,” the boy said in a pleading tone. “Please, don’t tell the government about us. Will you keep our secret?”
“But why, my boy?” Irant pressed. “Don’t you want to study? Don’t you want to be a part of the wider world on the mainland?”
“Our life here is uncomplicated,” the student explained calmly. “Probability holds no meaning for us. When the nets bring in fish, we have food. When they come up empty, we starve. We welcome both outcomes equally, because we don’t want to exhaust ourselves trying to plan ahead.”
The student looked directly at Irant. “We should learn about our environment, yes. But this island is the only environment we care about. We have no wish to make our lives any more complex than they already are.”
Finally understanding the islanders’ perspective, Irant said his goodbyes and headed toward the coast, Dojo following in silence.
“Honestly, I envy him,” Dojo admitted as they walked along the sand. “I wish I could look at life that way.”
Irant offered a soft, disagreeing shake of his head.
“Their small island may be their entire world, Dojo,” Irant mused. “But for us, even the vast earth feels like a tiny island. Our minds demand more space. It’s no wonder we endlessly crave more mathematics, more equations, more theories, and more formulas to map it all out.”
About the Author
Apart from being a computer engineer working in IT, Ramprasath is also a bilingual science fiction writer. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, since 2014.
He is also an SFWA Member.
His work has appeared (or is scheduled to appear) in AntipodeanSF, Protocolized, Aphelion SF&F, Sci-Fi Shorts, L.Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future, Allegory SF&F, and Metastellar.
Reach him at <
Merri Andrew writes poetry and short fiction, some of which has appeared in Cordite, Be:longing, Baby Teeth and Islet, among other places.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
My time at Nambucca Valley Community Radio began back in 2016 after moving into the area from Sydney.
Emma Louise Gill (she/her) is a British-Australian spec fic writer and consumer of vast amounts of coffee. Brought up on a diet of English lit, she rebelled and now spends her time writing explosive space opera and other fantastical things in
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Ed lives with his wife plus a magical assortment of native animals in tropical North Queensland.
James Walton was a librarian, a farm labourer, and mostly a public sector union official.
Tom Wrosch is a retired policy analyst with the State of Oregon, and resides with his wife in Salem.
Geraldine Borella writes fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her work has been published by Deadset Press, IFWG Publishing, Wombat Books/Rhiza Edge, AHWA/Midnight Echo, Antipodean SF, Shacklebound Books, Black Ink Fiction, Paramour Ink Fiction, House of Loki and Raven & Drake
Sarah Jane Justice is an Adelaide-based fiction writer, poet, musician and spoken word artist.
Brian Biswas lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing.