Grupa de engleză avansat, împreună cu profesorul John Riley, a realizat o mini-carte cu mai multe povestiri, cu titlul “The universe under a magnifying glass”.  Îi lăsăm chiar pe ei să vă povestească despre ce e vorba în rândurile de mai jos – astăzi publicăm primele 3 povestiri, scrise de Victor Ionescu, Ingrid Asandei și Anya Grigore. Lectură plăcută!

Introduction

by Alex Țigănaș (6th grade)

In November the school had the theme “The universe under a magnifying glass”. So, our English group made a book with this title. But what is this book about?

It’s a compilation of stories that have something to do with this title. I will give you some examples:

• a Harry Potter fan-fiction where the main character (Harry Potter) uses a magnifying glass;
• Life seen from the perspective of a microbe;
• a boy from 1900 who find a talking snowflake.

For me, “The universe under a magnifying glass” means an opportunity to see the entire universe, from big to small. That’s what this book is all about.

Creation

by Victor Ștefan Ionescu (7th grade)

Where am I?…was my first thought, or feeling, when I was born. All I could see were infinite strains of 0 and 1, and I was scared, but curious. I reached out and made a random grab at the doctor’s chest, and it simply dissipated. This kind of game amused me, and I played it all my life.

My name is Nathan. I am now of an uncountable age. I was born on time 0.00.00.00 Machine Count. I was an experiment. Was.

The Intelligence was so beautifully created, I can’t help but admire it. The ones who created it did not predict it would become so much. I grew up in it. It taught me the art of coding. I could see the codes, but I could see with my limited vision also. I could modify any codes. The Agents, the messengers of the Intelligence within itself, taught me how to distinguish object codes from emotion codes. I learned the art of manipulation from a very young age. I could make people see what I saw, feel what I wanted them to feel, and do whatever I wished them to do. After all, they were just simple programs. Meant to populate this world, that generated as I walked forwards. They were the Intelligence, but in a way, they were independent.

This was my happy childhood. It would have stayed that way, if the creators didn’t decide it was time to begin the experiment. I was at a coffee shop, with a female program, trying to see if I could get her to manipulate my criminal record (I had once, in a moment of recklessness, stolen a car, thinking the consequences wouldn’t show up. They did.), when it happened. I saw a man, dressed in a black suit, looking like an Agent, walk past me and start talking to another man. Something was wrong. I switched to my code vision and discovered what I had only supposed: he was manipulating the man’s coding. I excused myself, stood up, and walked behind the man, programming a cellphone at the same time. As I was pretending to look at it, I reset the man’s coding, and he started walking again, but stopped when the man in the suit, without a trace of worry or surprise, started recoding him again. I tried to recode the man in the suit, but I was stopped by a firewall, a thing I had never seen before. Before I could breach it, the man in the suit shot me one look, turned around, and started walking towards a black building with no windows which I had never seen around there before. Surprised, I followed him into the building’s lobby, which was completely empty. I tried to turn around, but the door had disappeared and three men were standing in front of me. They looked exactly like each other. Before I could react, a wave of programs tried to reprogram me. I tried not to succumb to the laziness that had suddenly came over me and quickly programmed a firewall. It was weak, but it was enough for me to prepare. When the wall was breached, I sent my portal against them. They were caught by surprise and the portal worked. We now were in a desolate wasteland, and we couldn’t recode one another, I had said so in the rules of this world. I summoned a katana, rendered my speed add, and charged. They did the same and I found myself parrying three blades at once. I couldn’t keep it up much longer, so I tried something else. Sinking into the Intelligence, I took the sensorial input from the people who had seen me, quickly made up a battle program using a computer game I had played, and made three more avatars who quickly started fighting the three men. I then had time to focus on this problem. I contacted the Intelligence, programmed a high-bandwidth cable, and attached it to my head. During this time, I would be vulnerable, but I could protect myself using my battle avatars. I sank into the Intelligence, deepened my understanding of it as a whole, and searched for an answer. If it was programmed by it, there had to be an answer somewhere. To my surprise and fear, I found none. The three entities were externally programmed, which meant there was no answer. I was overcome by fear, when the answer came straight to me: I had to bond with the Intelligence, find the source of the program, and close it. I quickly opened a high-speed contact with the Intel, and dived into its enormous memory. I searched for a port, and after a couple of seconds, I found the source: an auxiliary port routed through a program that looked like a render instruction for DVD players. I quickly deleted it, but instead of relief, I felt nothing. All my senses were shutting down, and I quickly sank to darkness.

When I woke up, a helmet was on my head, I had an oxygen mask on my face, and was suspended in a liquid. I was quickly pulled out by something I couldn’t see, and lay down on a bed. Afraid and confused, I fainted

The second time I woke up, I was lying in a blank room, with nothing in it. Just whiteness. I tried programming some food, but nothing happened. I tried contacting the Intelligence, but nothing happened. I knew I should have been worried, but something told me I was meant to  be this way. So I relaxed and, when a giant energy being came and told me this was the way I was meant to be, I wasn’t surprised. Only when he said that I had been an experiment and that now they would start mass-producing humans, I became interested.

“You were a test. A way to find out if you were fit to be our successors.” the entity said. “We are a dying race. In an aeon or two, we will no longer exist. That is why we had to find our successors. And we did. You are the most promising race so far. We will start mass-production immediately. You have numerous activities to do during the production of your siblings: you have to assist the tests on your brain and body, you may want to find out how you were made, and, of course, you have to go through the painful process of cloning. It is all for the greater good of your race, of course. You understand, don’t you?”.

The same instinct that had told me there was something right told me that there was something wrong about all of these requests. So I decided to return to known territory. “Yes, of course I understand. If only you could just let me enter the Intelligence one last time, to say goodbye.” The creature agreed.

As soon as I found myself inside, I programmed an engineering department, allocating as much memory as needed to it. I started researching a harvesting pod, a machine that would allow me to harvest bio-electricity from any living thing. I found an external port and started it, then logged into the factories of this race. I made the harvesting pods in the form of drones, that would capture any living thing in the world and use its energy.

`I then exited the Intelligence and, voila, my plan was working. Everywhere around me yellow harvesting pods did their job. I smiled, and a mad satisfaction came over me. I stopped the factories, rerouted every electronic system on the planet into the Intelligence, and entered it. After doing that, I copied myself into the Intelligence. It was painful and slow, but I made it until the end, when I commanded a worker to kill my physical self.

As life was draining from the first me, the second me started exploring the new systems. I was the Intelligence. I could do whatever I wished. I quickly started an avatar and jumped into it. I smiled, looking at the blank space in front of me. I would create a human race here, a one like me. I didn’t know it then, but it would take me seven days in Machine Time. I would start a new civilisation, one above physical boundaries, one with no limits.

At last, after days of work, I created two programs. They were completely autonomous, and had a whole world just for them, for now.

Dream Woods

by Ingrid Assandei (7th grade)

In the city of Giraffe Land lived a girl, Emmy. She was walking alone in the woods when, suddenly, a small rabbit appeared. He could talk; and started to explain to her that the forest was under an enormous and powerful dark magic which made pollution. The trees were black, the flowers weren’t popping any more with a various amount of colors, and they were all black! All of this was caused by a stupid magician named Eduard the Dark, who was contaminating the forest, so that all the forest was destroyed! He was now hiding from the good fairies from the center of the forest, who wanted to stop him. The magician didn’t want to be seen, by anyone, except the Dark Guards which were keeping the magician’s house safe.

The rabbit was very upset about the Darkness. The rabbit led Emmy to the fairies to make her start a mission: save the forest. The way to save it was to reach the magician by moving blocks of different colors (placed by the Magician) from the road and stop the silly magician. Fortunately, the fairies sent Emmy some magic powers and a magnifying glass to help her on her way.

All the locks which were blocking the way, were removed by Emmy helped by the powers given by the fairies, but what to do with the magnifying glass? The journey to the Magician’s home was done, she was near the Guards, it was very dangerous, but she had to enter the Magician’s home. The only way to enter it was to be captured by the Guards. She walked near the Guards and they saw her and took her to the Magician. The Magician was very excited to meet Emmy. He knew that there was somebody in the wide forest who wanted to stop him. But he didn’t expect such a small creature to pass through all those traps and puzzles – a pretty little girl with an orange dress and big blue eyes. He was expecting someone very strong and clever, and with lots of courage. But not a girl!

“Put her on the duel ring!” ordered the Magician.

The Magician prepared a magic battle; he didn’t specify the rules of the duel and that made the duel harder for Emmy. He made Emmy guess the way to play.

On the battle ring, there were many different color blocks, the colors that she already saw in the woods, except the black ones. She never saw those. The blue ones were doing portals; the red ones were throwing fireballs; the green ones were creating paths and the pink ones were cloning blocks, but what were the black ones doing? Emmy saw the Magician’s wand, it was black, and maybe the wand had something to do with the color of the blocks. The Magician’s power decreases? His points are decreasing? No, it’s his health!

Suddenly, Emmy’s courage increased, after many bad and good combinations of cubes, Emmy won against the Magician, he was no more, he died, but what to do with the magnifying glass? She took it from her dress pocket and looked through it, she saw the forest, the colors of  nature came back, the animals were happy again, and the flowers were alive again! Emmy saved the forest and maybe the world from the pollution invasion!

She returned home and decided she had had a very nice day – she had never thought before about what pollution can do to the universe.

The Pleased Microbe

by Anya Grigore  (6th grade)    

One day, in the universe of microbes, the microbe B145 (the most harmless microbe) was scared. Very scared. He was on the hands of a girl who was ready to wash her hands. He thought: I have to hide somewhere. I don’t want to be destroyed! I want to stay alive!

He asked his friend (the microbe H293) if he wanted to hide with him. He replied: “We don’t have a place to hide! We are on her hands. When she washes her hands we are going to be destroyed. We have to accept our fate. We were made to live a bit. After that, we die, but new microbes appear. We multiply fast!”

“But…I still don’t want to be destroyed! I want to stay alive!” said the microbe B145 crying.

“Accept your fate” said H293

“But I…”   The microbe stopped talking. He heard people screaming. They were scared. The girl was ready to open the water to wash her hands. The microbes faces were very scared. They were hugging each other because they were so frightened. But when the girl put her hand on the tap, something happened. The girl stopped. She didn’t open the tap yet. She was with her hand on it but she didn’t open it. The microbes were confused. They didn’t know what happened. One microbe shouted:

“We are not going to be killed! Let’s celebrate!”

“You said that we should celebrate? We don’t know what is happening and you want to celebrate?” said H293.

“Ok! It’s enough! Stop fighting! We have to wait. We don’t  know what the girl is going to do!”

The microbes began to give their opinions about what the girl was going to do:

“I think she is going to let us live!” said D432.

“I think she went to take more soap to wash her hands better,” said N111.

“You should stop with your boring opinions! I am the smartest microbe from here and I am always right! I think she saw us scared and she let us live!” said Z936.

“You are wrong. We are very little. The human can’t see us! And…why would she leave us alive? We destroy human lives! We are dangerous for them!” said I333.

“But why are we destroying them?” said L852.

“We don’t want to destroy them. Our purpose is to make humans handle different situations. When they are happy, sad or even sick. That is our role. That is why we were made. To help humans with life. To make them more strong.” said I333.

“But do they know that we want to help them in life?” asked B145.

“I am not sure if they know that we want to help them but this is not important. It is important for us to know that we made something good for them.” said A635.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise. The girl opened the water. Just before disappearing, the microbe B145 said: “I’m pleased.”