I love Pepperridge Farms Goldfish, bubble-wrap, shrimp crackers, Marché's dill sauce grilled salmon mushroom pasta, cinnamon hearts, candy canes, swivel chairs on wheels, blueberries, instant noodles, icecream, the new-car smell, the Sharpie smell, blue, black, red, Canada, my family, my friends, staying up late, sleeping in, doodling and drawing random pictures, kiwis, dark chocolate, Tim Horton's Ice-Caps, cats, dogs, birds of paradise, Spongebob, Coffee Crisp, my long-lost knife, floating in pools, the smell of pool chlorine, skating, ice, snow, winter, snow days, pens, my scanner, my stuffed animals, my room, my red pants, my red fingerless gloves, the neighbourhood demon-cat, chocolate chip cookies, etc.
Books
Expendable [James Alan Gardner]
Dead Romance [Lawrence Miles]
The Colony [Rob Grant]
The Free Lunch [Spider Robinson]
The Pigman [Paul Zindel]
Losing Joe's Place [Gordon Korman]
Happiness (TM) [Will Ferguson]
Neh. Went to see The Lion King last night. It was okee, but I didn't really.. well, I liked Phantom of the Opera better. It's awkward when you're in the audience, and at the end, when you're clapping, people start standing up to, you know, give a standing ovation and stuff. Then other people start standing up because they a) want to stand up, but were slower than the other people who are already up, b) are submitting to peer pressure, or c) want to make the standing ovation look better, you know, large chunks of people standing up instead of a scattered bunch. And even though I didn't find it that great, I ended up standing anyway, because the stupid people in front of me were blocking my view of the bowing actors. Yar.
And recently, like, last weekend or something, I saw a Chinese movie on TV. It was a really funny, rocking movie, except it was all about mahjong, which I don't know how to play. There'd be a big, tense closeup of a tile, and I'm sitting there going, "Gah! Is that good or bad? Good or bad? Damn! I wish I knew how to play mahjong!". Fat Choi Spirit, or something, it was called.
Uhm. I was at work during the blackout. The air conditioning turned off, and we were all like THANK GOD! Because the air con was usually turned really really up, and it'd be really really cold inside the building and yar. So my mom and my sister came to pick me up, and they told me that none of the traffic lights were working and there was a blackout.
So we went over to Adrian's house for reasons I can't remember now. And he's got a new puppy! Yay! It's a husky and it's cute. It chewed on my hair and stuff. Yar. I haven't seen Adrian in like, a year. Even though he lives like, right across the street from me and stuff. It's cause his other dog's really big and scary and stuff. So we sat around and played with the puppy and the Gameboys. We left at seven, I think. Uhm. For dinner, we had fruit. There was nothing to do, so I went to bed at 9:30.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 09:44 p.m.
Today was See-People-You-Never-Expected-To-See Again-Day! I saw:
1. SHME! :D
2. Andrew Rhino! I know that's not how you spell his last name, but who cares! And I'm not 100% sure it was him! So it could have been someone who LOOKED like him! :D
3. That Len guy! From Spanish! He's taller now! And the only things I know about him is that his name is Len! And he was shorter before! :D
Yeah, the camp trip today was to Stouffville. Magic Hill and stuff. It was hot and tiring. And hot. And tiring. The kids seemed to have fun, though.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 09:44 p.m.
Today was See-People-You-Never-Expected-To-See Again-Day! I saw:
1. SHME! :D
2. Andrew Rhino! I know that's not how you spell his last name, but who cares! And I'm not 100% sure it was him! So it could have been someone who LOOKED like him! :D
3. That Len guy! From Spanish! He's taller now! And the only things I know about him is that his name is Len! And he was shorter before!
Wednesday, August 13, 2003 07:06 a.m.
Wow. I just realised that there are only 3 weeks left until school starts again. Ew. My summer's turned out to be a tiny bit disappointing. But still! I don't want to go back to school!
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 07:34 a.m.
Urgh... so, to continue on from that Thursday entry, here's what I did on Saturday! Like, last last Saturday (the 2!). I did absolutely nothing. And then at six, I went to Joan's bday hotpot thing!
There was tons of stuff to eat, but not enough mushrooms. And I had fun with eggs. My favourite thing to do now is to crack them open over the boiling water! I've never done that before! And everyone kept on telling me that, no, eggs don't have to be cooked to be eaten, B! But I didn't trust them, even though I know they're right.
We also had a bunch of seafood, which some of us violenty abhorred. Well, not violently. I just wanted to say that. We did boil some clams, which KT ate, I think. Yell made Christian the Clam--who had a piece of raw meat for his tongue! We also had a great time guessing which glasses had normal iced tea in them, and which ones had iced prune juice.
And then Joan opened her presents! Which were riddled with repeats! As in, everything I got her was completely redundant! Because other people'd bought her the same CD(s) I bought her! And not just one or two people, but FOUR--you know who you are! Damn. And I was so proud that I'd actually went out and bought her stuff! Heh. Anywho, bowling was bowling and I left at 9:30.
Uhm. I'm not remembering what happened the next day or the day after that. But I DO know that I went to Ontario Place on Tuesday with my mom, sister, and Tiffany and her family! We did a whole bunch of stuff. Like... go to the water park! go to the pedal boats! go into a really really dark, nasty, smelly tunnel in the pedal boats! lose our parents! debate whether or not to use a payphone to call our parents! deciding to go and see what the Atom Blaster thing's all about instead! get pelted by semi-soft, brightly coloured foam balls inside the Atom Blaster! meeting up with our parents! going to the MegaMaze to avoid the rain! Yar. There was more, but I forget. The highlight of my day was the beaver tail, though. Mmm... beaver tails... "taste it once, crave it forever!"
Monday, August 11, 2003 07:37 a.m.
So it was winter and I was running around the SVP yard, when suddenly, over the hill, I see a backyard with their fence broken down, and people there are yelling my name. On closer inspection, I see that they're my group of kids--Arleen and Andrew most prominent--and they're telling me to come over to their house. So we trudge through the snow, to the church parking lot, where someone's mom lets us all pile into her SUV, which must have magically expanded to fit the 10+ kids now sitting behind me and her. As we're driving out of the church parking lot, a thought hits me, "Hey, if the kids were in their backyard, which is adjacent to the school yard, why would you have to drive us back to their house? Wouldn't it be easier if I just... walked in through the backyard?" She said no, but wouldn't say why not. Instead, she drops me off in my street. Okee, whatever. I'm at one of the houses near the walkway, sort of across from Adrian's house. Except, instead of Adrian's house, there's a bunch of tall townhouses. So as I'm walking to my house, I bump into a little old lady. We smile and make smalltalk or something, and then she leaves. I reach my front door, but I can't remember if I went inside or not, because the next thing I know, I'm at some large corporate convention with Hal from Malcom in the Middle. In a large corporate hot tub convention, I guess, because I'm in a large pool that's really warm and filled with middle-aged men. All of a sudden, people start getting out of the water, and I realise that there was some sort of announcement telling people to get out of the water that I didn't hear. There's a semi-mad scramble for the elevators. I end up in one with Hal and two other corporate guys that he's still sucking up to. I mean, I don't actually hear anything they're saying, but I know Hal's sucking up. We get off the elevator in some subway station, and get on a TTC bus. Then Hal and the two corporate guys are nowhere in sight. My dad's on the bus, as is this other guy, late twenties, white, friendly. I forget what we're talking about, but we get to what I assume is the white guy's house, and he has this... thing in his front yard, that I forget what it looked like or what it was, but I remember red, and some water being involved. And I ended up screaming out the window, "Hey! I know another guy who has the exact same thing!", and he waved at me as a silouhette from his front bay window. The bus rounds a corner, and all of a sudden it's a large log ride, and my sister's there. On a track that's running sort of parallel to us, but a bit lower, someone gets shat on by a bird, and my sister and me laugh. We get into a fight for some reason, and my dad yells at us. Then I wake up. The end.
Thursday, August 7, 2003 10:59 p.m.
On Friday (last Friday), we all went over to the Lui house to check out their renovations and shat. Kelly has her own bathroom! Kyle and Kelvin's room is suddenly twice as big! Their TV loft has hardwood floors now! They're living the Ikea Dream! Also, they were dogsitting a very pretty husky, and we (Kelly, Tiffany, my sister, me, Derek, Kelvin) took her for a walk! And we walked past these three guys on the street, who stopped to say hi to the dog, and then Kelly and Tiffany started talking loudly about them before they were out of hearing range. Is that the way it works, people? No, seriously, I personally have no experience here, though I thought it was a bit rude... "The one in the Lakers jersey..?" "NO! Gawd, that one's so ugly!" Well, gee.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003 11:24 p.m.
Today blah blah blah trip to Cullen Gardens blah blah "Cullen Gardens and Miniature Village! Beautiful! Magical! Fun!" commercial remembered from early childhood blah blah blah crazy die of thirst sweaty whiny hot blah blah blah treated like a friggin pack mule laden with brightly coloured evil backpacks blah decided in a fit of irritation/exasperation never to have kids ever blah blah.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003 10:37 p.m.
Today I learned that taking care of little kids is fun until...
a) you drop one. ("Ooooops... okee! Who wants a boost up to the monkey bars next?")
b) one of them purposely makes you drop your cookie. (Hey, if anyone can have an epileptic fit over dropping the last chewy cookie, it's ME. I'm immature, alright? I admit it.)
c) they piss their pants (okee, so only ONE of them did it today, and it was resolved quickly by her dad driving to the rescue with a new pair of pants. Funny how only Gloria [the other helper-person] and I were made semi-uncomfortable--well, speak-in-hushed-tones uncomfortable; someone just pissed their pants, you know?--Kristine, "SO, [SHE] PISSED HERSELF, HUH?" within hearing distance of other little kiddies.)
Sunday, July 27, 2003 10:48 p.m.
Treble Charger - Brand New Low. Stuck in my head. I heard it on the radio today for the first time in like, years, and I was like, "!! I remember that song! ^_^". Tomorrow after work I'm going to Markville to buy Joan a CD. I will also buy myself one, even though I'm still in debt to my mom again.
Friday, July 25, 2003 05:37 p.m.
Today I made myself a shitty bracelet out of gimp. Also, there was a water fight on the big field. I got wet even though I wasn't in the actual fight--evil kids picking on people with no water guns. And we had chinese food for lunch! Free lunches rock; it's why I took the job ^_^ Oh yeah! And yesterday, some psycho threw a rock into our room. A psycho with good aim. I mean, we're on the second floor, and the rock narrowly missed poor Eric's head, and landed in the garbage can across the room. Quick reflexes, that boy Eric.
Wednesday, July 23, 2003 10:21 p.m.
Today at work I fell asleep on the carpet. If you'd been in my shoes, you'd have fallen asleep too.
I got there at eight, kept a few select kiddies amused until nine. I also had to write a bunch of crap on Lisa's blackboard. I would have had to do Graham's and Jonathan(Lincoln-lookalike)'s and that other room too, but Jonathan'd left his list at home, so Kristine pretty much said screw it.
Only six kids from our group showed up today: Gabrielle, Andrew, William, Wei You, Eric, Monica, and Robbie/Arlene. Er... we all had to wear yellow laminated nametags, except they weren't really nametags because they didn't have our names on them, just the name of the camp. Weird. So yeah, the whole camp set out at 9:30. That was probably the longest walk of my life. From Birchmount and Risebrough Circuit to Birchmount and McNicol... with kids. Holy crap, kids walk slow.
But it was fun when we got there. Kids changed behind my back while I was holding up their towels. They'd say, "Wrap the towel more around!" and I'd say, "Well, excuse me if my arms can't bend backwards that way!" Pfft. Yeah. And I had to be a role model and slather on sunscreen. I hate sunscreen. Before the kids got in the water, they fortified themselves with Doritos and oatmeal cookies. Those were some good cookies, dude.
Anywho, by the time we got inside the water park (Kidstown, or some name like that) there were other camps and other groups of people hogging all the towel space under the shade, so we had to plunk down in the middle of the grass, where there was practically zero chance of shade, even as the sun moved around in the sky.
Though I did wear a swimsuit underneath, on the offchance someone would splash me, I hadn't planned on getting wet, but guess what? I got completely soaked. You know that giant bucket thing they have at Wonderland? The brightly coloured water-full play..structure thing? And the bucket fills up with water and then tips over onto the people below? Yeah. That. It happened while I was running around helping Gabrielle look for Monica. So after that, what's the point of trying to stay dry? The only other counsellor that I could see who went as all out as me was Graham.
I love my red pants. They dry out so quick--they were mostly dry by lunch! We ordered around forty hotdogs from the hotdog stand outside the park. Me and what's-his-face had an assembly line thing going on--he'd put the hotdogs in the buns, and I'd put ketchup on and pile them up on plates. No, seriously, I don't know his name. Three days of casual aquaintance and I still have no clue! Every time we have to do stuff together, it's always, "Beatrice, go help *background noise/mumbling/I have bad hearing/I'm not paying attention* with that", and then near-complete silence as we do it. Yeah. Mine was the only hotdog with mustard on it, and we had an entire plate of relish.
After lunch, Lisa took the boys back to the water, and I stayed and played cards with the girls (excluding Gabrielle; she never wants to do anything).
Left the water park at around 3:15-ish. As is the case with any large group of young children leaving an area, stuff was left behind. Our camp left two caps and a pair of underwear (ew) at our picnic tables. Before we left, I bought a Drumstick. Yum. On the way back, Wei You decided to count the number of steps it would take to get from the water park to his seat back at camp. 4945 steps. Number of steps times Wei You's average stride of half a meter, but then times two for the trip in the morning=4.945km walked today. Crazy. And to think I'd almost actually considered giving piggyback rides.
So yeah, by the time we got back to the school, I was pretty much dead. Lisa wanted to kill the last half hour by reading to our group on the carpet. And so I fell asleep, and woke up to little kids poking at my stomach. Oh! In after-care today, a boy ran into a desk or something and bled all over the place. It was riveting in a car crash sort of way; blood was running down his face from his forehead. Yar, so I decided to clean up the blood from the floor. It was like a trail of blood across the room. The blood looked really... bright on the floor tiles, and some of it was congealing by the time I got to wiping it up. Oh well. It's a step up from barf.
Sunday, went over to Bion's house. Sally, Yell, Tim, Arthur, Matt and Cousin were there as well. Evening was a blur of strawberry smoothies, watching Arthur eat with sick fascination, reading that new Harry Potter book (Bion's copy), etc. It was good to see people again. I swear, people's faces were getting fuzzy in my memory. And! And! Tim said I grew! Because! Because! I'm not as short next to him anymore! Woo!
Job going okee. Little kids are like monkeys. Especially the boys. Crazy monkey kids ^_^
Sunday, July 20, 2003 12:37 a.m.
I've been reading a lot lately. I took out like, twenty books (mostly sci-fi), and am steadily working my way through them. Here's a short from The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time, a "savage story, a mocking parody of Ray Bradbury's more famous 'A Sound of Thunder,'[which] was, remarkably, published four years before the Bradbury, thus being one of the very few works of art which responds devastatingly to that which has yet to occur." Hey, typing it up requires less thought than my trying to catch up with what I've been doing lately, so I thought, hell, why not?
Brooklyn Project
William Tenn [Phillip Klass]
The gleaming bowls of light set in the creamy ceiling dulled when the huge, circular door at the back of the chubby man in the severe black jumper swung the door shut behind him and dogged it down again.
Twelve reporters of both sexes exhaled very loudly as he sauntered to the front of the booth and turned his back to the semi-opaque screen stretching across it. Then they all rose in deference to the cheerful custom of standing whenever a security official of the government was in the room.
He smiled pleasantly, waved at them and scratched his nose with a wad of mimeographed papers. His nose was large and it seemed to give added presence to his person. "Sit down, ladies and gentlemen, do sit down. We have no official fol-de-rol in the Brooklyn Project. I am your guide, as you might say, for the duration of this experiment--the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations. My name is not important. Please pass these among you."
They each took one of the mimeographed sheets and passsed the rest on. Leaning back in the metal bucket seats, they tried to make themselves comfortable. Their host squinted through the heavy screen and up at the wall clock, which had one slowly revolving hand. He patted his black garment jovially where it was tight around the middle.
"To business. In a few moments, man's first large-scale excursion into time will begin. Not by humans, but with the aid of a photographic and recording device which will bring us incalculably rich data on the past. With this experiment, the Brooklyn Project justifies ten billion dollars and over eight years of scientific developement; it shows the validity not merely of a new method of ivestigation, but of a weapon which will make our glorious country even more secure, a weapon which our enemies may justifiably dread.
"Let me caution you, first, not to attempt the taking of notes even if you have been able to smuggle pens and pencils through Security. Your stories will be written entirely from memory. You all have a copy of the Security Code with the latest additions as well as a pamphlet referring specifically to Brooklyn Project regulations. The sheets you have just received provide you with the required lead for your story; they also contain suggestions as to treatment and coloring. Beyond that--so long as you stay within the framework of the documents mentioned--you are entirely free to write your stories in your own variously original ways. The press, ladies and gentlemen, must remain untouched and uncontaminated by government control. Now, any questions?"
The twelve reporters looked at the floor. Five of them began reading from their sheets. The paper rustled noisily.
"What, no questions? Surely there must be more interest than this in a project which has broken the last possible frontier--the fourth dimension, time. Come now, you are the representatives of the nation's curiosity--you must have questions. Bradley, you look doubtful. What's bothering you? I assure you, Bradley, that I don't bite."
They all laughed and grinned at each other.
Bradley half-rose and pointed at the screen. "Why does it have to be so thick? I'm not the slightest bit interested in finding out how chronar works, but all we can see from here is a grayed and blurry picture of men dragging apparatus around on the floor. And why does the clock only have one hand?"
"A good question," the acting secretary said. His large nose seemed to glow. "A very good question. First, the clock has but one hand, because, after all, Bradley, this is an experiment in time, and Security feels that the time of the experiment itself may, through some unfortunate combination of information leakage and foreign correlation--in short, a clue might needlessly exposed. It is sufficient to know that when the hand points to the red dot, the experiment will begin. The screen is translucent and the scene below somewhat blurry for the same reason--camouflage of detail and adjustment. I am empowered to inform you that the details of the apparatus are--uh, very significant. Any other questions? Culpepper? Culpepper of Consolidated, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir. Consolidated News Service. Our readers are very curious about that incident of the Federaton of Chronar Scientists. Of course, they have no respect or pity for them--the way they acted and all--but just what did they mean by saying that this experiment was dangerous because of insufficient data? And that fellow, Dr. Shayson, their president, do you know if he'll be shot?"
The nam in black pulled at his nose and paraded before them thoughtfully. "I must confess that I find the views of the Federation of Chronar Scientists--or the federation of chronic sighers, as we at Pike's Peak prefer to call them--are a trifle too exotic for my tastes; I rarely bother with weighing the opinions of a traitor in any case. Shayson himself may or may not have incurred the death penalty for revealing the nature of the work with which he was entrusted. On the other hand, he--uh, may not or may have. That is all I can say about him for reasons of security."
Reasons of security. At the mention of the dread phrase, every reporter straightened against the hard back of his chair. Culpepper's face lost its pinkness in favor of a glossy white. They can't consider the part about Shayson a leading question, he thought desperately. But I shouldn't have cracked about that damned federation!
Culpepper lowered his eyes and tried to look as ashamed of the vicious idiots as he possibly could. He hoped the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations would notice his horror.
The clock began ticking very loudly. Its hand was now only one-fourth of an arc from the red dot at the top. Down on the floor of the immense laboratory, activity had stopped. All of the seemingly tiny men were clustered around two great spheres of shining metal resting against each other. Most of them were watching dials and switchboards intently; a few, their tasks completed, chatted with the circle of black-jumpered Security guards.
"We are almost ready to begin Operation Periscope. Operation Periscope, of course, because we are, in a sense, extending a periscope into the past--a periscope which will take pictures and record events of various periods ranging from fifteen thousand years to four billion years ago. We felt that in the view of the various critical circumstances attending this experiment--international, scientific--a more fitting title would be Operation Crossroads. Unfortunately, the title has been--uh, preempted."
Everyone tried to look as innocent of the nature of that other experiment as years of staring at locked library shelves would permit.
"No matter. I will now give you a brief background in chronar practice as cleared by Brooklyn Project Security. Yes, Bradley?"
Bradley again got partly out of his seat. "I was wondering--we know there has been a Manhattan Project, a Long Island Project, a Westchester Project and now a Brooklyn Project. Has there ever been a Bronx Project? I come from the Bronx; you know, civic pride."
"Quite. Very understandable. However, if there is a Bronx Project you may be assured that until its work has been successfully completed, the only individuals outside of it who will know of its existence are the President and the Secretary of Security. If--if, I say--there is such an institution, the world will learn of it with the same shattering suddenness that it learned of the Westchester Project. I don't think the world will soon forget that."
He chuckled in recollection and Culpepper echoed him a bit louder than the rest. The clock's hand was close to the red mark.
"Yes, the Westchester Project and now this; our nation shall yet be secure! Do you realize what a magnificent weapon chronar places in our democratic hands? To examine only one aspect--consider what happened to the Coney Island and Flatbush Subprojects (the events are mentioned in those sheets you've received) before the uses of chronar were fully appreciated.
"It was not yet known in those first experiments that Newton's third law of motion--action equalling reaction--held for time as well as it did for the other three dimensions of space. When the first chronar was excited backward into time for a length of a ninth of a second, the entire laboratory was propelled into the future for a like period and returned in an--uh, unrecognizable condition. That fact, by the way, has prevented excursions into the future. The equipement seems to suffer amazing alterations and no human could ever survive them. But do you realize what we could do to an enemy by virtue of that property alone? Sending an adequate mass of chronar into the past while it is adjacent to a hostile nation would force that nation into the future--all of it simultaneously--a future from which it would return populated only with corpses.!"
He glanced down, placed his hands behind his back and teetered on his heels. "That is why you see two spheres on the floor. Only one of them, the ball on the right, is equipped with chronar. The other is a dummy, matching the other's mass perfectly and serving as a counterbalance. When the chronar is excited, it will plunge four billion years into our past and take photographs of an Earth that was still a half-liquid, partly gaseous mass solidifying rapidly in a somewhat inchoate solar system.
"At the same time, the dummy will be propelled four billion years into the future, from whence it will return much changed by for reasons we don't completely understand. They will strike each other at what is to us now and bounce off again to approximately half the chronological distance of the first trip, where our chronar apparatus will record data of an almost solid planet, plagued by earthquakes and possibly holding forms of sublife in the manner of certain complex molecules.
"After each collision, the chronar will return roughly half the number of years covered before, automatically gathering information each time. The geological and historical periods we expect it to touch are listed from I to XXV in your sheets; there will be more than twenty-five, naturally, before both balls come to rest, but scientists feel that all periods after that number will be touched for such a short while as to be unproductiveof photographs and other material. Remember, at the end, the balls will be doing little more than throbbing in place before coming to rest, so that even though they ricochet centuries on either side of the present, it will be almost unnoticeable. A question, I see."
The thin woman in gray tweeds beside Culpepper got to her feet. "I--I know this is irrelevant," she began, "But I haven't been able to introduce my question into the discussion at any pertinent moment. Mr. Secretary--"
"Acting secretary," the chubby little man in the black suit told her genially. "I'm only the acting secretary. Go on."
"Well, I want to say--Mr. Secretary, is there any way at all that our post-experimental examination time may be reduced? Two years is a very long time to spend inside Pike's Peak simply out of fear that one of us may have seen enough and be unpatriotic enough to be dangerous to the nation. Once our stories have passed the censors, it seems to me that we could be allowed to return to our homes after a safety period of, say, three months. I have two small children and there are others here--"
"Speak for yourself, Mrs. Bryant!" the man from Security roared. "It is Mrs. Bryant, isn't it? Mrs. Bryant of the Women's Magazine Syndicate? Mrs. Alexis Bryant." He seemed to be making minute pencil notes across his brain.
Mrs. Bryant sat down beside Culpepper again, clutching her copy of the amended Security Code, the special pamphlet on the Brooklyn Project and the thin mimeographed sheet of paper very close to her breast. Culpepper moved hard against the opposite arm of his chair. Why did everything have to happen to him? Then, to make matters worse, the crazy woman looked tearfully at him as if expecting sympathy. Culpepper stared across the booth and crossed his legs.
"You must remain within the jurisdiction of the Brooklyn Project because that is the only way that Security can be certain that no important information leakage will occur before the apparatus has changed beyond your present recognition of it. You didn't have to come, Mrs. Bryant--you volunteered. You all volunteered. After your editors had designated you as their choices for covering this experiment, you all had the peculiarly democratic privilege of refusing. None of you did. You recognized that to refuse this unusual honor would have shown you incapable of thinking in terms of National Security, would have, in fact implied a criticism of the Security Code itself from the standpoint of the usual two-year examination time. And now this! For someone who had hitherto been thought as able and trustworthy as yourself, Mrs. Bryant, to emerge at this late hour with such a request makes me, why it," the little man's voice dropped to a whisper, "--it almost makes me doubt the effectiveness of our Security screening methods."
Culpepper nodded angry affirmation at Mrs. Bryant, who was biting her lips and trying to show a tremendous interest in the activities on the laboratory floor.
"The question was irrelevant. Highly irrelevant. It took up time which I had intended to devote to a more detailed discussion of the popular aspectsof chronar and its possible uses in industry. But Mrs. Bryant must have her little feminine outburst. It makes no difference to Mrs. Bryant that our nation is daily surrounded by more and more hostility, more and more danger. These things matter not in the slightest to Mrs. Bryant. All she is concerned with are the two years of her life that her country asks her to surrender so that the future of her own children may be more secure."
The acting secretary smoothed his black jumper and became calmer. Tension in the booth decreased.
"Activation will occur any moment now, so I will briefly touch upon the most interesting periods which the chronar will record for us and from which we expect the most useful data. I and II, of course, since they are the periods at which the Earth was forming into its present shape. Then III, the Pre-Cambrian Period of the Proterozoic, one billion years ago, the first era in which we find distince records of life--crustaceans and algae for the most part. VI, a hundred twenty-five million years in the past, covers the Middle Jurassic of the Mesozoic. This excursion into the so-called 'Age of Reptiles' may provide us with photographs of dinosaurs and solve the old riddle of their coloring, as well as photographs, if we are fortunate, of the first appearance of mammals and birds. Finally, VII and IX, the Oligocene and Miocene Epochs of the Tertiary Period, mark the emergence of man's earliest ancestors. Undortunately, the chronar will be oscillating back and forth so rapidly by that time that the chance of any decent recording--"
A gong sounded. The hand of the clock touched the red mark. Five technicians below pulled switches and, almost before the journalists could lean forward, the two spheres were no longer visible through the heavy plastic screen. Their places were empty.
"The chronar has begun its journey to four billion years in the past! Ladies and gentlemen, an historic moment--a profoundly historic moment! It will not return for a little while; I shall use the time in pointing up and exposing the fallacies of the--ah, federatoin of chronic sighers!"
Nervous laughter rippled at the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations. The twelve journalists settled down to hearing the ridiculous ideas torn apart.
"As you know, one of the fears entertained about time travel to the past was that the most innocent-seeming acts would cause cataclysmic changes in the present. You are probably familiar with the fantasy in its most currently popular form--if Hitler had been killed in 1930, he would not have forced scientists in Germany and later countries to emigrate, this nation might not have had the atomic bomb, thus not third atomic war, and Venezuela would still be part of the South American continent.
"The traitorous Shayson and his illegal federation extended this hypothesis to include much more detailed and minor acts such as shifting a molecule of hydrogen that in our past really was never shifted.
"At the time of the first experiment at the Coney Island Subproject, when the chronar was sent back for one-ninth of a second, a dozen different laboratories checked through every device imaginable, searched carefully for any conceivable change. There were none! Government officials concluded the time stream was a rigid affair, past, present, and future, and nothing in it could be altered. But Shayson and his cohorts were not satisfied: they--"
I. Four billion years ago. The chronar floated in a cloudlet of silicon dioxide above the boiling Earth and languidly collected its data with automatically operating instruments. The vapor it had displaced condensed and fell in great shining drops.
"--insisted that we should do no further experimenting until we had checked the mathematical aspects of the problem yet again. They went so far as to state that it was possible that if changes occured we would not notice them, that no instruments imaginable could detect them. They claimed we would accept these changes as things that had always existed. Well! this at a time when our country--and theirs, ladies and gentlemen of the press, theirs, too--was in greater danger than ever. Can you--"
Words failed him. He walked up and down the booth, shaking his head. All the reporters on the long, wooden bench shook their heads with him in sympathy.
There was another gong. The two dull spheres appeared briefly, clanged against each other and ricocheted off into opposite chronological directions.
"There you are." The government official waved his arms at the transparent laboratory floor above them. "The first ocsillation has been completed; has anything changed? Isn't everything the same? But the dissidents would maintain that alterations have occured and we haven't noticed them. With such faith-based, unscientific viewpoints, there can be no argument. People like these--"
II. Two billion years ago. The great ball clicked its photographs of the fiery, erupting ground below. Some red-hot crusts rattled off its sides. Five or six thousand complex molecules lost their basic structure as they impinged against it. A hundred didn't.
"--will labor thirty hours a day out of thirty-three to convince you that black isn't white, that we have seven moons instead of two. They are especially dangerous--"
A long, muted note as the apparatus collided with itself. The warm orange corner lights brightened as it started out again.
"--because of their learning, because they are sought for guidance in better ways of vegetation." The government official was slithering up and down rapidly now, gesturing with all of his pseudopods. "We are faced with a very difficult problem, at present--"
III. One billion years ago. The primitive triple trilobite the machine had destroyed when it materialized began drifting down wetly
"--a very difficult problem. The question before us: should we shllk or shouldn't we shllk?" He was hardly speaking English now; in fact, for some time, he hadn't been speaking at all. He had been stating his thoughts by slapping one pseudopod against the other--as he always had...
IV. A half-billion years ago. Many different kinds of bacteria died as the water temperature changed slightly.
"This, then, is not time for half measures. If we can reproduce well enough--"
V. Two hundred fifty million years ago. VI. A hundred twenty-five million years ago.
"--to satisfy the Five Who Spiral, we have--"
VII. Sixty-two million years. VIII. Thirty-one million. IX. Fifteen million. X. Seven and a half million
"--spared all attainable virtue. Then--"
XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. Bong-bong-gong bongbong-bongongongngngngggg...
"--we are indeed ready for refraction. And that, I tell you, is good enough for those who billow and those who snap. But those who billow will be proven wrong as always, for in the snapping is the rolling and in the rolling is only truth. There need be no change merely because of a sodden cilium. The apparatus has rested at last in the fractional conveyance; shall we view it subtly?"
They all agreed, and their bloated purple bodies dissolved into liquid and flowed up and around to the apparatus. When they reached its four squared blocks, now no longer shrilling mechanically, they rose, solidified, and regained their slime-washed forms.
"See," cried the thing that had been the acting secretary to the executive assistant on press relations. "See, no matter how subtly! Those who billow were wrong: we haven't changed." He extended fifteen purple blobs triumphantly. "Nothing has changed!"
I hate mosquitos, stuffy rooms, overhead projectors, mud and nasty pebble grit, wearing shorts, wobbly desks, yams, centipedes, mosquitos, drying my hair, Chinese mushrooms, shrimp, crab, seaweed, sushi, doing homework, intense sunlight reflected off snow, my swimming goggles fogging up, the smell of roses when I'm hungry, being late, the school's toilet paper, bibliographies, losing things, having both feet fall asleep, wearing skirts or dresses, wearing high heels, walking down stairs in high heels while being pushed along by an exiting crowd, sweltering hot summer days, melted snow, walking through slush, makeup, etc.
