The black hole was like a great hole that pierced the space in front of them. Nothing could get away from it and within their space station that was monitoring it since ages could only prepare themselves for another uneventful workday. This was a monitoring station built for scientific purpose and one of the first things that humans tried to discover and understand was this enigmatic phenomenon in the center of the galaxies. The station was round like giant ball that had hid its artificial gravity by rolling itself fixed in the space. One point though was always fixed towards the hole like it was always gazing at it without blinking.
- Anything to report?
- No, Jason.
It was the same routine everyday on the station. As they was trying to catch any kind of anomaly within or around the black hole but often nothing would be discovered. Jason had been the chief commander on the station since ten years ago and he wanted nothing more to get away from there. It was the claustrophobic setting of it all but the all the same routine every day.
Once there was an occurrence that bewildered him that happened within the hole. Just for a moment the station think they had monitored some kind of reflected light within it. But as a sane and rational individual they all knew this could not have happened. Besides that nothing could happen out here.
-Please tell me if you can find anything interesting.
-Shall do, Linda replied.
The crew was all time small. Beside him and Linda there were only five others on the station. But there was often only two at their stations at any hour of the day. This time it was their turn. The others were in their resting rooms probably sleeping. Often it was the only joyment to get this far out in the space unless they didn’t want to play another round of card games. Needless to say but the time anyone had on the station was often very short.
Suddenly it came a beep from one of the screens in front of Linda. This was something very unusual.
-What was that? Jason asked.
-I think I am picking up something here. Let me zoom in.
And within seconds they could see something coming out from the center of the hole. Two white tentacles came rushing towards them. As the distance between them and the hole was huge they were shocked to recognize the speed and the force the travelled towards them. But also the length of them as it looked they could go on for an eternity without snapping.
As they drew closer Jason and Linda pushed the fire alarm button as an incident like this was never ever thought of. In fact an alien contact has never before been done unless you counted in simple life forms like one cell organisms since space exploration started for real over five centuries ago. Mankind started to assume we were all alone in space. But this thing seems to have a will or a purpose as these tentacles was not set in motion aimlessly. It didn’t take long before the others woke up and came in to the main bridge room. One of them said:
-What is that?
-I have never seen anything like this before and I t seems to come right at us, Linda said.
One of the shakes his head in disbelief and asked:
-Do you have any idea what it is Jason? You have been here the longest of us.
-Honestly I have no idea what this is. I have only got a glimpse of it before but not like this. Prepare for impact. Whatever it is I got a bad feeling about it. As everything else in nature, either you are the hunter or the prey. And right now we seem to be sitting ducks in a cage.
And with those words the crew went silent as they knew there was some truth within those words just uttered. The tentacles had gone a good way towards them by now and somehow they must have accelerated. Again when they watched out again towards the hole they could now see what was after them. A huge eel-like creature had come out from the black hole. This creature with no eyes or visible mouth was just sitting there halfway out from the hole. It certainly had more than two tentacles but none of the others was putting their attention towards the station.
-I can’t believe what I am seeing right now, Linda said.
And then they heard the sound they didn’t want to hear. KA-KLANK! They had been hit by something heavy and hard. But not even some occasional meteorites would shake the station as this was doing. The tentacles had taken a fixed hold of the station and pulling it towards the creature. The crew was all thrown down the floor by the immense force. Quickly they were able to get on their feet again but only for a short time. As the station had stopped rotating weightlessness in the station had incurred.
-What does it want? Is this the end for us? Jason wondered.
One of the more heavily built engineers asked Jason:
-Do we have any kind of defense on the station? Just anything? This is ridiculous not being able to do anything in a situation like this.
-We have never seen anything like this before. This station have monitored this hole for over a century and explored space longer than that. This is first signs of any kind of alien life forms at all. What should we have prepared for exactly?
-No emergency exists or plans at all?
-Nothing! Jason replied.
He tried to calm down and little later said to them:
-There will no help for us. Let’s all hope this will go quick. Being this near the hole was nothing the station was built for. Let us try to calm down because we are about to witness something no one else have seen before.
Halfway towards the black hole the gravity from it was showing it strengths as the hull started to creak. It was evident that this station was never built to be this close to the hole at it was only a matter of time which would the final straw in which the station would collapse. As they still could see through the window towards the hole and creature they know really understood the scale this two entities were about. Then one of the automatic alarms started.
-WARNING! HULL BREACH!
And within the station section by section was beginning to shut itself down. Soon there would be a lot of breaches as the whole station started to crumble by the pressure. Even the air in the bridge started to become even more troublesome to breath. As the station came close the eel-like creature head it was bumped towards its center. Something in front of them opened and the saw a great opening of bright light which blinded the crew which saw it through the window. Slowly the station was drawn towards the bright light and little by little the station vanished. And as soon as the creature had shown his ugly head he quickly went back into the hole again. The whereabouts of the station was never heard about again but it was rumored it managed to get to the other side of the hole.
onsdag 11 augusti 2010
torsdag 29 juli 2010
Assignment 3 - Poetry
Clerihew
Brave Sir Winston Churchill
could with his iron will
fortifying the beaches of Dover
so no airplane above could hover
Free form
A lamp hanging from the ceiling
hanging heavy above the ground.
All the shrouds it is unveiling
but it never be able to burst a sound.
With a single stroke igniting the wire
and we shall see that without smoke
the lamp can give away an eternal fire
that will end only with an inverse stroke.
Limerick
He's lucky that Meg isn't telling,
despite all her dad's angry yelling.
That mark on her neck
was more than a peck,
and could cause abdominal swelling!
Brave Sir Winston Churchill
could with his iron will
fortifying the beaches of Dover
so no airplane above could hover
Free form
A lamp hanging from the ceiling
hanging heavy above the ground.
All the shrouds it is unveiling
but it never be able to burst a sound.
With a single stroke igniting the wire
and we shall see that without smoke
the lamp can give away an eternal fire
that will end only with an inverse stroke.
Limerick
He's lucky that Meg isn't telling,
despite all her dad's angry yelling.
That mark on her neck
was more than a peck,
and could cause abdominal swelling!
torsdag 15 juli 2010
Assignment 2 - Elevator problem
1) Select one of the following scenarios, copy it to your page and then write a matching dialogue to go with it. Whatever your choice, try to bring the scenario to some sort of close in the actual dialogue. Target length: 250-500 words.
c) Two office workers who know but dislike each other are trapped in a lift/an elevator with a sales representative who they've never met before but who they're both immediately attracted to. Help is on its way.
O1: Well this is just great!
O2: This should be temporarily. Help should b on their way. The faster the better if you tell me.
O1: I hope it does. Being here with you against my will isn’t something anyone would look forward to.
S: Please stop it you two. If the situation wasn’t awkward enough as it is certainly not better listening to you pickering about. Try to keep the noise down, will you?
O1: Don’t worry. As long this idiot here doesn’t open his mouth it wouldn’t be any problem. It is as far as we know as we both know the reason the company performance is underachieving.
O2: Oh, look who is talking. The big boss little lackey telling everyone else it is their fault that the company underperforms. You know what, if it wasn’t for the cretins at the top that have no idea how it is to work at lower didn’t always look for a quick profit we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. I mean, you can’t fire a quarter of the workforce and hope to achieve the same productivity as before.
S: Heh, the plebs never knew what hit them!
O1: Good one! This quarter was something that had to be removed to make the company more efficient. Why do you bother about the plebs anyway? Do you in any way feel connected with in any way?
O2: Well some of us aren’t born with a silver spoon from birth. Most of us really most work harder than others to actually achieve anything. But I doubt anyone of you know anything about that. At least the elevator seems to work again.
S: Not a moment too late.
2) Create and briefly describe a scenario of your own (involving 2-4 characters) and then write a matching dialogue to go with it. As with the task above, try to bring your scenario to some sort of close in the actual dialogue. Target length (including scenario description): 350-750 words.
The two elevator office persons from the elevator are going to a meeting and on th way the meet a third office worker. They walk along towards the meeting. Here it is the Office person 1 and 2 and another office person from another part of the company, Office person 3.
O3: Hi there! It was a long time to see you both? Are finished with you project as planned?
O1: No really! But I got it in my briefcase with me here. I am sure we can all go through it at the meeting room and look what more needs to be done.
O2: Well, we know who we could blame for that. With a quarter of the company lay off.
O3: Yes! I heard about that. My department wasn’t as affected as yours directly but we can still see how it hurt the whole company as such. There have been many delays since. Often we can wait four hours if not for days they get new working orders.
O2: I see.
O1: And then again we do have some lazy bums that never do what they are supposed to do. Instead we have to watch over them that they are not surfing the net or time wasting stuff like that. It really drains on the resources.
O2: And you suppose we should what exactly. We can’t do more work than there is. I hope you see the logic fallacy about doing work on nothing. Or then again, it is you we are talking about.
O3: Let me see? Despite all the layoffs there are still too little work to be done? How is that even possible?
O2: It is possible because other departments in the company were also affected. This in turn resulted in what you can see now. Nothing seems to be done at all.
O1: Well, it is always going to get some time to adjust. It is the nature of it all. Just wait and see. In couple of weeks everything should be back to normal.
O2: It sure has taken it’s time alright. It already went two months and still nothing seems to be gone for the better.
O1: Let me open the door for you.
O3: Ok. Let’s take a seat here and wait till the meeting begins.
3) Create a scenario of your own (involving 2-4 characters) without describing it and then convert it into a self-contained dialogue of no more than 500 words. Our job as your readers will be to work out as much as we can about the scenario and the characters involved from the dialogue alone.
O1: So if few look at this graph here we can see that the stock index has raised yet again the last couple of months. And with this speed of recovery we would b able to expand by next two-three years. And the future prospects may also include tha…
O2: May I ask something?
O1: Could it wait until after the briefing?
CEO: Let’s hear him.
O2: You said that we have increased or stock value but the overall productivity have decreased since the last layoff. How is this possible?
CEO: By cutting off extensive costs everything is possible in short term aspects. And that is all that counts here. But the long term effects should come soon as well. It is all about streamlining the processes.
O2: That explains a lot.
O1: So where was I?
CEO: About future prospects.
O1: Yes. In the future we can expect to see even more grandeur projects. And this dam project of the Nile we would be able to produce enough electricity for the whole African continent. The profit for such a dam once finished would be tremendous.
O2: Wouldn’t the farmers object?
CEO: What farmers?
O2: Those who work the Nile delta? Or it doesn’t matter either?
O1: Honestly, I am getting tired of you. Why o you work here at all? If you want to do moral preaching there are other places to go. Not here.
O2: Hey, maybe I should. I never liked working here anyway. Do you even know how ridiculous this meeting is when half the company has no tasks to do anymore? Half the time is spent on waiting on new assignments. Well, you are right. I am leaving.
CEO: I think the dam looks like a good idea. And Mike stop by my office before you go. I can’t tolerate these outbursts on meetings.
O1: So we are going to take a short break then? Ten minutes?
c) Two office workers who know but dislike each other are trapped in a lift/an elevator with a sales representative who they've never met before but who they're both immediately attracted to. Help is on its way.
O1: Well this is just great!
O2: This should be temporarily. Help should b on their way. The faster the better if you tell me.
O1: I hope it does. Being here with you against my will isn’t something anyone would look forward to.
S: Please stop it you two. If the situation wasn’t awkward enough as it is certainly not better listening to you pickering about. Try to keep the noise down, will you?
O1: Don’t worry. As long this idiot here doesn’t open his mouth it wouldn’t be any problem. It is as far as we know as we both know the reason the company performance is underachieving.
O2: Oh, look who is talking. The big boss little lackey telling everyone else it is their fault that the company underperforms. You know what, if it wasn’t for the cretins at the top that have no idea how it is to work at lower didn’t always look for a quick profit we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. I mean, you can’t fire a quarter of the workforce and hope to achieve the same productivity as before.
S: Heh, the plebs never knew what hit them!
O1: Good one! This quarter was something that had to be removed to make the company more efficient. Why do you bother about the plebs anyway? Do you in any way feel connected with in any way?
O2: Well some of us aren’t born with a silver spoon from birth. Most of us really most work harder than others to actually achieve anything. But I doubt anyone of you know anything about that. At least the elevator seems to work again.
S: Not a moment too late.
2) Create and briefly describe a scenario of your own (involving 2-4 characters) and then write a matching dialogue to go with it. As with the task above, try to bring your scenario to some sort of close in the actual dialogue. Target length (including scenario description): 350-750 words.
The two elevator office persons from the elevator are going to a meeting and on th way the meet a third office worker. They walk along towards the meeting. Here it is the Office person 1 and 2 and another office person from another part of the company, Office person 3.
O3: Hi there! It was a long time to see you both? Are finished with you project as planned?
O1: No really! But I got it in my briefcase with me here. I am sure we can all go through it at the meeting room and look what more needs to be done.
O2: Well, we know who we could blame for that. With a quarter of the company lay off.
O3: Yes! I heard about that. My department wasn’t as affected as yours directly but we can still see how it hurt the whole company as such. There have been many delays since. Often we can wait four hours if not for days they get new working orders.
O2: I see.
O1: And then again we do have some lazy bums that never do what they are supposed to do. Instead we have to watch over them that they are not surfing the net or time wasting stuff like that. It really drains on the resources.
O2: And you suppose we should what exactly. We can’t do more work than there is. I hope you see the logic fallacy about doing work on nothing. Or then again, it is you we are talking about.
O3: Let me see? Despite all the layoffs there are still too little work to be done? How is that even possible?
O2: It is possible because other departments in the company were also affected. This in turn resulted in what you can see now. Nothing seems to be done at all.
O1: Well, it is always going to get some time to adjust. It is the nature of it all. Just wait and see. In couple of weeks everything should be back to normal.
O2: It sure has taken it’s time alright. It already went two months and still nothing seems to be gone for the better.
O1: Let me open the door for you.
O3: Ok. Let’s take a seat here and wait till the meeting begins.
3) Create a scenario of your own (involving 2-4 characters) without describing it and then convert it into a self-contained dialogue of no more than 500 words. Our job as your readers will be to work out as much as we can about the scenario and the characters involved from the dialogue alone.
O1: So if few look at this graph here we can see that the stock index has raised yet again the last couple of months. And with this speed of recovery we would b able to expand by next two-three years. And the future prospects may also include tha…
O2: May I ask something?
O1: Could it wait until after the briefing?
CEO: Let’s hear him.
O2: You said that we have increased or stock value but the overall productivity have decreased since the last layoff. How is this possible?
CEO: By cutting off extensive costs everything is possible in short term aspects. And that is all that counts here. But the long term effects should come soon as well. It is all about streamlining the processes.
O2: That explains a lot.
O1: So where was I?
CEO: About future prospects.
O1: Yes. In the future we can expect to see even more grandeur projects. And this dam project of the Nile we would be able to produce enough electricity for the whole African continent. The profit for such a dam once finished would be tremendous.
O2: Wouldn’t the farmers object?
CEO: What farmers?
O2: Those who work the Nile delta? Or it doesn’t matter either?
O1: Honestly, I am getting tired of you. Why o you work here at all? If you want to do moral preaching there are other places to go. Not here.
O2: Hey, maybe I should. I never liked working here anyway. Do you even know how ridiculous this meeting is when half the company has no tasks to do anymore? Half the time is spent on waiting on new assignments. Well, you are right. I am leaving.
CEO: I think the dam looks like a good idea. And Mike stop by my office before you go. I can’t tolerate these outbursts on meetings.
O1: So we are going to take a short break then? Ten minutes?
torsdag 1 juli 2010
Assignment 1 - Some stones are better left unturned - existence - And then she jumped
Some stones are better left unturned. Everything the last couple of months had been put upside down and Linda felt there was no turning back for her. And still she had no idea how all this could have happened in the very first place. The longer she went through the recent events the more she knew that she was betrayed by those that were supposed to be closest to her. As she strolled down the road she faintly tried to remember how it all began.
It all began a couple of years ago when an old childhood friend contacted her again. But he had changed. Gone was the old James with his golden hair and the new James was more scarred man- both in the within and on the outside. He had been in jail and life hardship had taken their toll. But still she couldn’t help herself taking care of him. This later would prove to be a dire mistake since his past had not forgotten him. But then again after she realized what had go through she didn’t have to heart to shut the door for him like everyone else did before.
As the time went on it surfaced that James was in some economical defiance. He had been borrowing heavily from loan sharks and they were quick to catch up for lost payments. At first she didn’t know anything but as time went on James disappeared for longer periods and one evening she eventually found him with a bloodied shirt in the bathroom. Unable to explain what had happened to her he even made her believe it was his own through an accident. Ignorance sure is bliss and it was only a precursor what would come.
She continued down the road and was nearing the town’s main bridge. The importance of the bridge existence as it was it was the only way to cross the town river and therefore and had very important role in the town’s history. But it also had very grim history as the river stream here was very strong and it anything dropped in the water here would be lost. As Linda went forth she tried to remember the very recent events.
After the incident in the bathroom it only became worse for James. He was dragged in even more shady business to keep up with the payments in a never ending downward spiraling process. Soon he was unable to make payments at all. No money, and soon James would just disappear without a word. No good bye, he just vanished and no one knew where he had gone.
One day they came after her. It all happened only a few months ago when she walked the very same road she went down at this very moment. A car had stopped beside her and out stepped four large grown men and asked her about James whereabouts. Men she previously had been presented to through James as very close friends and now they were after him. Realizing that he had disappeared and now they wanted some usual payment. And naturally she was the first one they come after searching for him. And this was the kind of people how to make people start to talk.
And their brutal methods would become all too clear for Linda as she was forced into a car and drove to an abandoned building outside the town. And here untold measures were taken to make sure right information about James. It went on for several days and unfortunately she didn’t know anything and the scars left behind were unimaginable. As if it wasn’t enough they even took all her properties and wrecked her economy all together. A tragic turn of events by meeting a man had now shattered her life all together.
And here she was now walking at the old road through town. At the other end on the bridge he saw a group of men dumping something into the river. It was something plastic but it moved like some kind of larvae. At first she didn’t recognize them at all. But as she came closer she knew who they were. The she realized what they were dumping. It only took very few minutes until she realized what she wanted to do. And then she jumped.
It all began a couple of years ago when an old childhood friend contacted her again. But he had changed. Gone was the old James with his golden hair and the new James was more scarred man- both in the within and on the outside. He had been in jail and life hardship had taken their toll. But still she couldn’t help herself taking care of him. This later would prove to be a dire mistake since his past had not forgotten him. But then again after she realized what had go through she didn’t have to heart to shut the door for him like everyone else did before.
As the time went on it surfaced that James was in some economical defiance. He had been borrowing heavily from loan sharks and they were quick to catch up for lost payments. At first she didn’t know anything but as time went on James disappeared for longer periods and one evening she eventually found him with a bloodied shirt in the bathroom. Unable to explain what had happened to her he even made her believe it was his own through an accident. Ignorance sure is bliss and it was only a precursor what would come.
She continued down the road and was nearing the town’s main bridge. The importance of the bridge existence as it was it was the only way to cross the town river and therefore and had very important role in the town’s history. But it also had very grim history as the river stream here was very strong and it anything dropped in the water here would be lost. As Linda went forth she tried to remember the very recent events.
After the incident in the bathroom it only became worse for James. He was dragged in even more shady business to keep up with the payments in a never ending downward spiraling process. Soon he was unable to make payments at all. No money, and soon James would just disappear without a word. No good bye, he just vanished and no one knew where he had gone.
One day they came after her. It all happened only a few months ago when she walked the very same road she went down at this very moment. A car had stopped beside her and out stepped four large grown men and asked her about James whereabouts. Men she previously had been presented to through James as very close friends and now they were after him. Realizing that he had disappeared and now they wanted some usual payment. And naturally she was the first one they come after searching for him. And this was the kind of people how to make people start to talk.
And their brutal methods would become all too clear for Linda as she was forced into a car and drove to an abandoned building outside the town. And here untold measures were taken to make sure right information about James. It went on for several days and unfortunately she didn’t know anything and the scars left behind were unimaginable. As if it wasn’t enough they even took all her properties and wrecked her economy all together. A tragic turn of events by meeting a man had now shattered her life all together.
And here she was now walking at the old road through town. At the other end on the bridge he saw a group of men dumping something into the river. It was something plastic but it moved like some kind of larvae. At first she didn’t recognize them at all. But as she came closer she knew who they were. The she realized what they were dumping. It only took very few minutes until she realized what she wanted to do. And then she jumped.
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