You, who read me, are you sure you understand me?

COLD CIRCUIT

A cyberpunk novel

I sit up and open my eyes, the neo-fluorescent light irritating my left eye.

“You’re still here,” I say, taking in her soft features. Misleading, for someone of her calibre.

A black woman, military cropped hair, a pistol in her lap. Her citron eyes are focused on the control panel.

“You paid me well,” she answers flatly.

Fuck, exactly how much did I pay this merc for her to be so entangled in my shit?

Another thought arises, unbidden, in the back of my mind:

If she’s here to kill me, then why didn’t she do it already?

“Anything new?”

I raise my left arm to the cord jacked into my brainstem, a sense of despair washing over me once again as I pull the plug, severing my connection.

Despair? What connection do I have to—

“Another cold circuit,” I tell the mercenary.

My left arm whirs to life, and I wiggle the prosthetic fingers, a standard procedure to ensure that my neurons are still intact.

A cold circuit, an implanted memory.

I seem to come across a lot of those as of late.

“Have I paid you yet?”

“Yeah,” the merc answers, “two billion, upfront.”

“Where did I—”

“Neurocryptographer, Sybil. We’ve been through this already.”

“You’re not going to tell me any more?”

“You didn’t let me. You’d fry my nervous system otherwise.”

A sigh escapes my lips.

Whatever my past self was running from, she didn’t make it easy to trace.

which admittedly sounded pretentious as fuck but I'm just so angry that so few people know about the academic advancements during the golden age of Islam.

Islamic doctors were washing their hands and equipment when Europeans were still shoving dirty ass hands into bullet wounds. ancient Indians were describing tiny organisms worsening illness that could travel from person to person before Greece and Rome even started theorizing that some illnesses could be transmitted

also, not related to germ theory, but during the golden age of Islam, they developed an early version of surgery on the cornea. as in the fucking eye. and they were successful

and what have white people contributed exactly?

please go research the golden age of Islamic academia. so many of us wouldn't be alive today if not for their discoveries

people ask sometimes how I can be proud to be Muslim. this is just one of many reasons

some sources to get you started:

but keep in mind, it wasn't just science and medicine! we contributed to literature and philosophy and mathematics and political theory and more!

🧪The man known as the father of chemistry (or alchemy, our teacher said both are used for him), Jabir ibn Hayyan. He wrote a book named Kitab al-Kimya, "kimya" means chemistry, and the word chemistry originated from that as well. He invented aqua regia, he had the first chemistry lab, discovered the methods of refining and crystallizing nitric acid, hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid, and discovered diethyl ether, citric acid, acetic acid and tartaric acid. He developed the "retort" and literally introduced the concept of "base" to chemistry.

📐The father/ founder of algebra, Al-Khwarizmi. He wrote a book called Al-Jabr and the word "algebra" comes from "jabr". He presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. One of his achievements in algebra was his demonstration of how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square, for which he provided geometric justifications. He introduced the methods of "reduction" and "balancing". The word "algorithm" literally comes from his name. He also produced the first table of tangents.

📐Biruni, who proposed that the radius be accepted as a unit in trigonometric functions and added secant, cosecant and cotangent functions to it. He made many contributions to astronomy that are too detailed for me to write here because this is long enough already, but for medicine, he managed to make a woman give birth by C section. He wrote Kitabu's Saydane which describes the benefits of around 3000 plants and how they are used.

🩺The father of early polymeric medicine, Ibn Sina. His books, The Law of Medicine and The Book of Healing were taught as the basic works in medical science in various European universities until the mid-17th century. He discovered that the eye was made up of six sections and that the retina was important for vision, performed cataract surgery. He performed kidney surgery, diagnosed diabetes by analyzing urine, identified tumors, and worked on diseases such as facial paralysis, ulcers, and jaundice. He used "anesthesia" in surgeries, invented instruments such as forceps and scalpels to remove catheters and tumors. He was the first physician in history to mention the existence of microbes, at a time when there was no microscope. He made contributions to so many fields: astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology (he suggested treating patients with music).

🩺Al-Zahrawi wrote Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices. The surgery chapter of this work became the standard textbook in Europe for the next five hundred years. He pioneered the use of catgut for internal stitches, and his surgical instruments are still used today to treat people. He did so much work in surgery that I can't write them all here. The first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus was given by him, he clearly described the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children. He was also the first physician to identify the hereditary nature of haemophilia and describe an abdominal pregnancy, a subtype of ectopic pregnancy that in those days was a fatal affliction, and was first to discover the root cause of paralysis.

✈️Abbas ibn Firnas devised a means of manufacturing colorless glass, invented various planispheres, made corrective lenses, devised an apparatus consisting of a chain of objects that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, designed a water clock, and a prototype for a kind of metronome. He also attempted to FLY, and he did fly a respectable distance but forgot to add a tail to his wings and didn't stick the landing.

Women also became scholars in the Islamic society. An example would be Maryam al-Ijliyya, who was an astronomer and an astrolabe maker, who measured the altitude of celestial bodies with the astrolabes she made. Another example would be Fatima al-Fihri, who founded the oldest university in the world, the University of Qarawiyyin.

Baghdad was the dream place anyone in academia now would want to go, it was a peaceful place of inclusivity and research. So many scholars advanced so many fields of study. Ibn al-Haytham invented camera obscura (and pinhole camera), Ibn al-Nafis was the first to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood, father of robotics Ismail al-Jazari invented the elephant clock and his list of contributions to engineering are so long that I can't write them here...

I wanted to find a source from someone who was a bit politically engaged with the topic, here’s a sort of starter (although they do assume you have heard of Onesimus.)

A man came up to the girl and said, "You'll never save all of them. What you're doing is pointless. It doesn't matter."

The girl threw another starfish into the water. "It mattered to that one."

The man snorted and walked away.

The girl kept throwing starfish, one after another.

To throw one starfish back into the ocean takes a trivial amount of effort, but to throw ten, or fifty, is much less so. The girl had not learned much of biomechanics, but she began to feel the strain in her back. Her skin had softened from the seawater, and the starfish themselves were abrasive. Her fingers had pruned. Her shoulder hurt. She was cut, twice, on her fingers, as the same storm that had stranded the starfish had also brought up broken shells and crab carapaces. The skin of a starfish was like sandpaper.

She tried switching hands, and could throw the starfish less well, and it wasn't long before she had mirrored all her injuries. She was bleeding, though the blood wept rather than flowing, briefly staining the starfish pink before they were tossed into the ocean.

It seemed as though there were just as many dying starfish as when she'd started.

After three hours, the girl was sunburnt. A passing man had told her that she should stop what she was doing, and had offered her some water, which she took, but he hadn't helped to throw the starfish back.

The girl's hands were cracked, scraped, and raw. Saltwater found the wounds, but she'd gone numb, and her motions became more mechanical.

"It mattered to that one," she thought to herself, "It mattered to that one," over and over, like a mantra. Her muscles ached, but the ache became familiar. When she'd started, her throws had been beautiful things, guided by purpose, but now they were sloppy and threatened to pull her off balance.

She did fall, more than once, landing on sand that was filled with jagged debris, and sometimes she was slow to get up. But she did get up, because there were more starfish to save, tens of thousands of them.

Night fell, and it was harder to see the starfish, but they were still in need of help. She was tired, and the cuts on her fingers had multiplied. The skin had been wet for too long, and in one place, on her palm, where she had gripped a thousand starfish to throw them, a piece of white skin had come off.

Still, she kept throwing starfish.

Her mother didn't find her until after midnight.

"Hi mom," said the girl. Her voice croaked. She had been saying, "It mattered to that one" under her breath for long enough that her vocal cords had strained. She threw another starfish into the ocean.

"You need to come home," her mother said.

"These starfish will die without me," said the girl.

"I know," said her mother. "But you need to come home, because if you keep doing this, you'll collapse on the beach, and like a starfish, you'll need to be rescued too."

The girl stooped down, back aching, and picked up another starfish. Many of them had died by this point, but there were still uncountably many that lived. The rough skin of the starfish grated at her tender skin, but she rose and threw it, arm protesting, and watched it fall down into the water.

Her mother grabbed her gently by the shoulders. "I'm bringing you home," she said. "It would be better if I didn't have to carry you, but I will if I have to."

"I don't want to be the sort of person who leaves starfish to die," said the girl, shrugging off her mother. But a part of her did want to be carried, because she'd walked for miles along this beach, one stooping step at a time.

"I know," said her mother. "But to survive, you have to be. Save as many as you can, but take breaks, get good sleep, eat well. Then go back and save more."

The girl swayed where she was. She was close to passing out, though maybe it was because her rhythm had been interrupted.

Her mother held out a hand, so they could walk together, like they'd done when she was smaller.

And it was then that she noticed the scars on her mother's hands, the calluses and rough spots, the places where cuts had healed. She had seen her mother's hands many times before, but had never asked why they were that way.

If you’re still desperately thirsty after having some water, you probably need electrolytes. There are many options - eat a pickle, have a gatorade (or whatever brand you prefer), add an electrolyte packet to your water, sprinkle salt on some watermelon, make a fun drink with coconut water.