Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Season Two Episode Twenty Six


As I sat in my office, gazing out the window, I saw the city sprawled out below me, how the river seemed to have cut through it, long ago, as if a ruler had measured out precisely where the river would lie and which way it would run. I imagined how it must be, to sit in an office of a smaller building in the core of downtown, how your only view would be the next building over, and how if I had that office for too long, I would probably draw a picture on the building just outside my window, so that I could have a view, of some kind. Then every once in a while I'd scrub it off and draw a new one, just for the sake of variety. Either that or I would imagine how it is to be a guy with an office at the edge of downtown, where it didn't matter how high up your office was because you'd still have a view of the river and the rest of the city.

At that moment, I saw a curious thing. A mother had been walking with her child down the pathway along the river. The child had a red balloon in ...her, hand but it was not tied to her wrist as it should have been. How did I know that? It was because the red balloon slipped from her grasp and started to float towards the sky. I could remember when that first happened to me when I was her age, and a part of me was sad for that little girl, but then the adult part of me realized there was work needing to be done and I couldn't feel sorry for every little child that lost a balloon.

It was at that time when I noticed the particular path in which the balloon seemed to be on, which was leading right to my office window. Sure enough, before too long, the red balloon hit my window with a soft 'poom' and then slowly made it's way up along the rest of the building, as if it were guided by an invisible hand. Whether it made it's way over the roof without popping and continued to sail through the skies, or it got caught under the ledge of the roof and eventually popped or just got stuck there, I don't know. That's when it struck me! ..Er.. an idea, not the balloon. This was going straight to the top! ...My idea, as well as the balloon. I could see the promotion now!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Season Two Episode Twenty Five



Stephanie awoke. The alarm hadn't woken her, for there was still another two minutes before it would go off. Was it her body anticipating the alarm, or had there been a noise outside? It was still dark out, but then again at this time of year, it took longer for the sun to rise. Hmm. She felt tired, and therefore did not want to check the time, nor did she. She turned over onto her left side, found a comfortable place on the pillow, and tried to once again attain sleep.

Had she been dreaming? She didn't think so, but remembered the professor saying that one does not always remember one's dreams. If that was the case, then she just didn't remember what her dream was. Stephanie thought about the last time she had a dream, in the hopes that she would quickly fall asleep. The last dream she remembered having involved her friend Tim and Samantha... something about them fighting and Stephanie was trying to break it up but she couldn't speak because her mouth was sewn shut.

"... -a smile on his face, the day that you left this place! Welcome home!" Rang out from her radio, it was her alarm going off. Just when she thought she could get some sleep and perhaps let the day carry on without her. Stephanie opened her eyes, stretched, and made her brain tell her arms to throw off the covers so that she could get out of bed. The message must have gotten lost on its way to her arms because no action was produced. She thought maybe she'd get her legs to do the work, to swing out of bed and make their way to the door. This also did not happen. Had she suddenly become paralysed? She had stretched, and was able to put her arms back underneath the covers... what happened between then and now?

As the music played on, Stephanie realized that yes, she did have a life to get to, yes it would hurt her marks if she missed her classes today, and in order to accomplish all that, she had to get her body to cooperate with her brain. With what seemed to be great effort, she finally got her left arm to move towards the top of the blanket and put it up and off of her. She then got her right arm to finish what the left arm started. Now for her legs to do her job. Stephanie propped herself up on her elbows, and pushed herself up into a sitting position. While she put her body into submission, her mind worked on waking itself from a state of sleep, into a state of ...well at least semi-consciousness.

Finally Stephanie got her legs to move from under the covers, the warmth of that soft and inviting cocoon, into the less warm and less inviting world. She made her way to the door, turned the handle, and headed towards the bathroom. What she needed was a nice cold shower to get herself fully awake and functioning. Only, make the water not so cold... a little warmer... a little warmer... yeah, that's it. Don't want to wake up in too big of a hurry, leave that job for the coffee she'd make. Was there time for coffee? Yes, her first class didn't start until 9:30 today, so that left at least an hour to get ready for school. Ugh, thought Stephanie, why couldn't the weekend be three days long?

Friday, November 6, 2009

Season Two Episode Twenty Four


It was good to see the sun rise again, it has been too long since anyone had seen it last. Three years, five months, three weeks, two days, five hours, and forty-five minutes. We don't know why the sun stopped rising in the first place but ever since the first day it didn't rise, there have been those of us who have been waiting for it to rise again. At first there were only a few thousand of us who knew there was something wrong, right away. On the third day the news was confirmed worldwide that the sun was not rising, that there was something wrong. By that time we had already been looking into several theories as to why the sun was not rising. We could see the sun, so why wasn't the earth getting any of its light?

At first we thought something was blocking the sun's light from the earth, but it only took two hours to find out that no, there was nothing blocking the sun's light. Nothing visible by any tools found on earth. We then thought it had something to do with the earth's orbit, maybe it had gone off course. Then the question came up: why now? Why did the earth come off it's orbit so suddenly? Wouldn't it be a gradual action, that days would get shorter and shorter over a long period of time? Also, how would the earth get off it's orbit in the first place? What change was there in space that could have caused the earth to go off its orbit? Scientists all over the world, those who were more informed, took to inspecting the space around the earth, around other planets, at other planets and their orbits (had any others changed their orbit?), at the moon (was earth any closer or further from the moon?), calculating distances between planets to see if they had changed, and checking if the earth's axis had changed at all. We looked over all these things from the earliest recordings until Day One, or Eclipse Day One to some of us. My team was in charge of checking the distances between the other planets and the sun, and if any of the planets were getting sunlight.

At the same time of all this research, there was a team set up to figure out what we would do, how long we would last, and if there was a way around the lack of sunlight. Could an artificial sun be considered? Was it possible? How quickly could green houses be set up to preserve the earth's plant life? What could be done about the forests, jungles, mountains and plains? By the second day, Day Two, it was clear that there were many questions needing answers, and there were very few answers, or at least none that were halfway feasible. One part of me really wanted to be involved with coming up to solutions, and the other part really didn't. On the one hand, I found it much more important to come up with a solution rather than look at the cause, but on the other hand, I didn't want to have to take responsibility for any of the bad ideas ("solutions") that were being presented.

:Pause Transmision: