Lintang Arifin

Early history

Lintang was born on the 15th of December, 1982, in the district of Ospomere, Hathaway. His parents, Zainul Arifin and Widya Indriani, were migrants from Indonesia. His family had just relocated to the district during the time of his birth, as his father found work at the power plant that was built there. He also had a sister, Faiza, aged five.

His intelligence was apparent during infancy and early childhood. He achieved his milestones spontaneously, without assistance — he started walking at 16 months; learned the alphabet at 19 months; understood basic maths at the age of 3; and taught himself to read at the age of 4. Talking was one area where he fell behind, but even though he learned to talk at the age of 2 and a half, he quickly learned how to say fully-formed sentences. He also showed a keen interest in puzzles and problem-solving. His talents also extended to the arts — he started attending violin lessons when he was 3 and showed considerable promise.

When he was nearly three years old, his younger brother Fadhly was born. He was attending preschool at the time. He did not mingle with his peers, preferring to keep to himself or interact with adults, both because he had already surpassed them in skill and because he found them immature. His classmates also found him stuck-up and odd, and they either picked on him or left him alone. Although his parents were focused on taking care of his baby brother, they noticed that he was unchallenged and misunderstood at school. They took him to get tested when he was 5 and discovered that he was exceptionally gifted. He was allowed to skip a year of kindergarten and enter primary school as a result.

In his first year of primary school, he was seated with a particularly rambunctious boy named Chase Baldwin. They found each other annoying at first but unexpectedly became fast friends. The boys’ friendship was mutually beneficial; Lintang helped Chase with his schoolwork, and Chase helped Lintang come out of his shell. Lintang’s parents also enrolled him in activities where he could mingle with children his age, such as Scouting, cricket, and swimming. Nevertheless, his idiosyncrasies and sensory sensitivities remained, and he was brought for an evaluation once again when he was 10. This earned him a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome and savant syndrome.

Scout Troop #9

In the summer of 1992, Lintang and Chase noticed something was off with one of the new members of their Cub Scout troop. They quickly discovered that said member, Vivienne St. Clair was switching places with her twin brother Vivian, who attended drama classes in her place. The two boys quickly formed a trio with Vivienne and defended her from the rest of the troop, who gave her a hard time for her gender. They also became friends with Agatha Donohoe, who was a junior assistant scoutmaster in their troop and a family friend of Chase’s.

Their friendship soon expanded outside of Scouting. Though Vivienne was two grades below the two boys, they still played together during breaks and outside of school. They hung out in either Lintang or Vivienne’s house often, to the point where the parents helped set up a treehouse in Vivienne’s yard for the three children to play in. It helped that Valerie, Vivienne’s mother, was already close with Lintang’s family — she was Faiza’s Latin teacher and Zainul’s best friend. Lintang’s friendship with both Chase and Vivienne came as a relief to his parents, who worried about his social development.

Adolescence and tertiary education

Lintang left primary school in 1994. He passed the PLCs with flying colours and was accepted into Littlewood Grammar School, the same secondary school Faiza attended. Unfortunately, this meant that he had to be separated from Chase, who attended Ospomere Comprehensive School. They still hung out after school, however, and he often invited Chase over to his house to study.

He was very involved as a student. Science was his favourite subject; he was drawn to his science teacher James Elroy’s teaching methods (even if he argued often with him during class). In addition, he joined his school’s science club, which was also led by Elroy. He showed off his intellectual prowess by participating in maths and science olympiads, at times having been selected by the school to serve as a representative. His academic achievements and performance at school allowed him to skip another grade, and he jumped from Secondary 1 to Secondary 3. The following year, Fadhly attended Littlewood as well, and Faiza left school to attend university in Germany.

In Secondary 3, he started going out with Rita O’Leary, a girl a grade above him. They had a completely chaste relationship. They got on perfectly with each other, although she tended to talk down on his friends and the rest of his cohort. She was also rather jealous and often pushed him away over perceived slights, but he was willing to overlook her behaviour, both because it was his first relationship and because he was head-over-heels for her. They broke it off after she left school and he entered Secondary 6, as she wanted to take the veil. This left him heartbroken for a while.

Despite the setback, he left secondary school in 1999 and studied astrophysics at the University of Crynaria. He faced a few challenges related to his status as a minor, and his parents had to manage some of the paperwork. Still, he managed his studies well and had little trouble living independently. He also obtained his driver’s licence after he turned 17, though he still relied on public transport while living in Crynaria.

Trouble waited for him at home after his first year of university. When he returned to Ospomere for the summer holidays, he could not spend it with Chase, as he was enlisted in military service that year. Instead, he had to help Vivienne by driving her to a clinic to have her pregnancy terminated. Vivienne’s boyfriend Pip was also brought to the clinic with them, and Lintang gave him a stern talking-to. At the same time, Fadhly was staying at a mental health facility for an eating disorder, which prompted Lintang to do as much research as he could about them. Upon returning to campus, he frequented the counsellor’s office and isolated himself in his dorm room for the entirety of the term.

He paused his studies in the middle of his second year to enlist in mandatory military service. He served in the army for a full year, from the beginning of 2001 to the beginning of 2002. Because of his health, he was assigned to clerk duty. He returned to university afterwards and continued his studies without much incident. As always, he spends his term breaks with his family — he travelled to Indonesia to attend his maternal grandmother’s funeral during the winter of 2002, and in the summer of 2003, he travelled to Armani to celebrate Fadhly leaving school. He met his second girlfriend, Alessandra Navarro, in Armani, and exchanged emails with her after he returned to Dristol. They broke up 5 years later, in 2008.

He obtained his bachelor’s degree in 2004 and stayed in Crynaria to obtain his master’s degree and doctorate at the same university. His postgraduate education went relatively smoothly (save for a few major incidents), and he was able to obtain his PhD in 2010. He then returned home and started working as a lecturer at St. Lucy’s University, a Catholic university located there.

The origins of the Paraffin Investigative Co.

In 2005, Agatha married Henry Zhang, and Lintang attended their wedding near the end of his summer break along with his friends. Henry befriended Chase, Vivienne, and Elroy quite easily; however, it took a while for Lintang and Henry to warm up to each other, both due to their vast differences in intellect and because Lintang did not meet him as often as the others did. Nevertheless, the six of them formed a close-knit group. They initially hung out in the Zhangs’ house, then Agatha’s café after it opened.

Henry’s death at the beginning of 2010 came as a shock to the group. Lintang was fixated on the circumstances of his death; he wondered how Henry could die after a quick jog to the Warwick Forest, why his body was found wrinkled and covered in black tar, and why the authorities listed his death as ‘pneumonia’. Roughly a year after Henry was gone, Lintang encountered someone suffering from a similar fate while driving through the forest, which led him to form the Paraffin Investigative Co. with the remaining members of the group.