12 KiB
Heroes Save the World, ch. 16: Zahra Ghorbani
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Author: u/callmebrotherg now posting as /u/callmesalticidae*
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URL: https://heroessavetheworld.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/not-too-small-ch-3-zahra-ghorbani/
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Score: 11
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Created: 2016-11-01T03:46:09
Post:
Comments:
u/nicholaslaux [+6] (56 minutes later)
Was she raised homeless? I'm somewhat confused because my understanding of Tehran was that it was roughly equivalent (economically, at least) to an American metropolitan city, where I'd be thoroughly shocked to find someone (with applied knowledge of chemistry) willing to repeatedly commit suicide and subject themselves and those who they claim to be helping to participating in cannibalism.
Assuming other things (not just the body, but clothing as well?) are duplicated along with the person, any number of other uses could be found. What happens when something copied with the body is dropped?
If only the body is copied, there are still other possibilities. What happens when the copy picks up/eats/etc something and then dematerializes? Could be used as a form of 100% safe nuclear waste disposal, perhaps?
Hell, even without all of that, being able to reliably produce identical medical experiment subjects/cadavers should be worth more than enough money to be able to simply buy the food that she is wanting to provide, while having none of the risks associated with violating such a massive taboo as cannibalism.
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (22 hours later)
I'm somewhat confused because my understanding of Tehran was that it was roughly equivalent (economically, at least) to an American metropolitan city.
I was expecting that Zahra would have to live elsewhere in Iran, but as I was doing my research for her, it turned out that Tehran has a really awful wealth gap--one report that I found estimated that between 44.5% and 55% of the city's population are below the poverty line. On the other hand, "nearly all of Iran's national government officials are multimillionaires".
On top of that, unemployment has been rising for at least the past few years and wages have been dropping--in many cases past the point necessary to households to be fully fed.
where I'd be thoroughly shocked to find someone (with applied knowledge of chemistry) willing to repeatedly commit suicide and subject themselves and those who they claim to be helping to participating in cannibalism.
This is where I might be guilty of steelmanning a little too much. I'm not sure if it has more to do with my own personality when I was a theist or with my irritation with lukewarm and inconsistent theists, but my religious characters tend to take their faith very seriously. Zahra doesn't just believe that she believes, but genuinely believes, that she has an immortal soul and a duty to sacrifice herself if that is what is necessary.
[A note: According to a blog post that I happened to come across quite recently, it may be that Zahra is even more of an oddity among Iranian Christians than she would be among American Christians. I hope to dig up more on that before we come back to Zahra.]
Assuming other things (not just the body, but clothing as well?) are duplicated along with the person, any number of other uses could be found. What happens when something copied with the body is dropped?
Whoops! I thought that it might detract from the flow of the story, but in retrospect I probably could have dropped a quick mention to clarify this. I should go back and edit a line about this into the part where she's talking about how useless her power seemed to be, but here you go:
Clothing is duplicated. Things that are not clothing (e.g. bars of gold) are not duplicated. Yes, her power distinguishes between "clothing" and "not clothing," and it does so in a way that probably agrees with the intuitions of most people. Zahra doesn't think that this is weird, since God gave her this talent so of course God can fine-tune it however God likes.
Clothing vanishes if the duplicate would vanish, but stays if the duplicate would stay (i.e. if Zahra-2 has died, then her clothing will stay).
If only the body is copied, there are still other possibilities. What happens when the copy picks up/eats/etc something and then dematerializes? Could be used as a form of 100% safe nuclear waste disposal, perhaps?
She could probably be used as a form of nuclear waste disposal, because the sangak that the duplicate eats is always gone when the duplicate vanishes.
Hell, even without all of that, being able to reliably produce identical medical experiment subjects/cadavers should be worth more than enough money to be able to simply buy the food that she is wanting to provide, while having none of the risks associated with violating such a massive taboo as cannibalism.
Google informs me that Iran has less problems with research cadavers than I (for some reason) assumed, but I am still under the impression that cadavers are donated, not sold. If I'm wrong, then hopefully it doesn't break suspension of disbelief that Zahra has the same (wrong) understanding and didn't even bother with that approach.
Thank you for reading and for taking the time to comment!
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a month later)
in many cases past the point necessary to households to be fully fed.
Are people actually dying of hunger in Tehran though?
Also, does jewelry count as clothing? Even if it doesn't, there are some pretty expensive pieces of clothing in the world. In theory she should be able to work herself up to them by buying something and then selling a few dozen copies of it.
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a month later)
Are people actually dying of hunger in Tehran though?
Yes.
Also, does jewelry count as clothing?
No.
Even if it doesn't, there are some pretty expensive pieces of clothing in the world. In theory she should be able to work herself up to them by buying something and then selling a few dozen copies of it.
This would work, though. Zahra might have thought of it, in which case you can safely assume that she's saving up her doubles' clothes to resell them later so that she can get enough money to buy better clothes (she'll probably sell them in bulk, because that's probably less likely to make people suspicious than selling the same set of clothing again and again over a period of time). In the meantime, though, she's still got to kill herself, because the clothing only stays if Zahra-2 is dead.
Thank you for reading! I'm glad that you're enjoying the story!
u/Ozimandius [+2] (22 hours later)
Yeah, I mean, surely just duplicating yourself and continuing to hold hands you should be able to get more done to alleviate poverty and misery than all this. If you are willing to literally kill yourself and feed yourself to people then you could think of any number of things like: hard physical labor that might injure yourself (carrying hundreds of pounds of water to people who need it), taking care of sick and diseased that most people would avoid, or just working really really hard and whenever your other you gets tired or hungry make a new one - labor that doesn't need to drink, eat, sleep, and never gets tired seems pretty valuable.
If you absolutely must die, might as well die in a way that preserves your organs and flood the donor market. Or even donate blood/marrow/kidneys and take the money to buy food for the starving - though it might be difficult to do that with the hand holding thing. Could simply claim it was for moral support or some such, though that wouldn't fly for kidney donation for obvious reasons.
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (24 seconds later)
Synopsis
Across the world, one hundred adolescents unexpectedly find themselves in possession of superpowers, running the gamut from conventional to world-breaking to annoyingly limited. But despite the diversity of powers, certain patterns emerge, and as the Children begin to find each other, they realize that the world itself may be in great peril.
Heroes save the world, but will they succeed in being heroes?
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (6 minutes later)
Like /u/tk17studios and r!animorphs (which you must read, if you've somehow found this fic but not that one), I can't say how that I know how this story is going to end. Events that are a few chapters way get put under the lens to a degree that they don't suffer when they're further out and more nebulous, and very tiny details have a way of overturning all of my earlier projections about how a given course of events was going to turn out.
Plans never survive contact with the enemy and, it appears, they don't fare much better against characters (especially when there are as many as I'm keeping track of--instead of one plan getting sent off the rails, it might be the plans of half a dozen or more characters).
u/Draconomial [+1] Sunshine Regiment (54 minutes later)
I'm confused. Why is she copying herself and then committing suicide?
u/nicholaslaux [+2] (an hour later)
The implication I got was cannibalism. Hints about dietary restrictions and need.
u/CCC_037 [+3] (6 hours later)
If she poisons her second self, then won't that poison anyone who eats the resultant dead body?
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (21 hours later)
Cyanide can be destroyed by heat, as described in this paper. So long as her second self is cooked, the cyanide won't be a problem.
In addition, if the above were not true, then either the cyanide would be concentrated in certain parts of her body or be distributed equally. If the former, then you could simply avoid those organs, and if the latter then it would only be a problem if one person ate the whole body in a short period of time. This was my original plan as I started thinking about how to capitalize on Zahra's power in her current circumstances, but it turns out that cyanide is pretty convenient, right down to apricots being really common in Iran.
Thank you for reading and for taking the time to comment! >:]
u/CCC_037 [+2] (a day later)
Ah, that makes sense, thanks.
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (21 hours later)
Hm. From your comment it isn't clear if it was difficult to figure out what her plan was by the time that the chapter ended. Do you think that I need to clarify or expand on some passages, and if so do you have any specific suggestions?
u/nicholaslaux [+3] (22 hours later)
I don't think it was especially unclear, other than a mental block that some readers might have against even considering cannibalism. I don't think I have any advice on making it clearer - my comments on the actual actions are elsewhere in the thread, and anything more blatant seems like it would be less fitting with the rest of the writing style, other than maybe something at the very end.