Fiction my foot, we live fact

Photo by Jonathan Cooper 

Of all the offbeat start ups that became entrepreneurial behemoths in the last ten years, the South East Asian concern making science fiction fact is the most popular and the most jaw-dropping.

Science Works Inc. was the culmination of what children of a school insignificant in South East Asia, and that part of the verdant Dekana state in particular started, not as a school project but a project of their own. Children enthused by science fiction asked government officials to implement their projects.

But the authorities poured cold water on their dreams.  The children however wrote more science fiction, and in their creative works — through effective used of parody — poked fun at the authorities, lampooning them for their lack of imagination.

This kid-storytelling and citizen journalism of the juniors eventually galvanized the community, which redoubled the scorn poured on the political and bureaucratic leadership.

Science Works Inc  (SWI) was at the right time in the right place. Abahasim Rennatiya the CEO of SWI was not humiliated or embarrassed by the kids, he was instead enthused.

So began the story of SWI and the Company that dedicates itself to making science fiction, fact.

Here are the fun facts and the hard truths about SWI’s love affair with science fiction made science fact:

–       Some of the best innovations weren’t big ideas but they were bright ideas and in the realm of science fiction. Among this was the idea to get trains to run on the dot absolutely to the last second on time in South East Asia. Just kidding, even SWI didn’t attempt this!

–       The science fiction made into fact was not all the work of established writers. Seven kid writers had their science fiction work at least worked on by SWI as potential projects to be turned into science fact.

–       Nations without borders was a science fiction idea because it used satellite pictures to din into people’s minds that they are in fact living in ‘nations without borders’. SWI began the project and even though no nation has so far sacrificed its borders because citizens now know arbitrary lines are not real borders, this project resulted in so much media attention that it was what first to put SWI on the map.

–       Channeling science and technology for longevity: The project seeking to compel State agencies to pay families if two of their members at least don’t live upto hundred was roughed up by opinion makers, who called it an exercise in communism totally divorced from science fiction or fact. But  CEO Abahasim and his team said it’s science that will ensure longevity with a quality of life. Today such a scheme that that compensates families for short lives lived, when a life expectancy of hundred is feasible, is in the realm of, well, science fiction. That’s because the science needs to be advanced enough to make the scheme feasible for any State. The project lives and SWI is confident, it will be a matter of time before this ‘fiction’ becomes fact.