Archive for July, 2008

The Death of The Bear

Published at July 20, 2008 in Fiction and Science. 0 Comments

Okay. I admit it. I wrote this for school. But, though it was the last paper of the year and I didn’t really need the grade that comes with hard/good work, I applied the latter nonetheless. I don’t like wasting time. So I might as well write science fiction that passes for a term paper if given the opportunity. The assignment was to observe, analyze, or explain the death of Old Ben in The Bear, a short story by Faulkner in Go Down Moses. So I made it a science fiction story. If you know the work I speak of, check out the parallels. If not, I hope you can enjoy it as a stand-alone piece. Read on…

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Beep…beep…beep…

Private Josh Kalder turned over underneath his blanket, simultaneously inhaling a lungful of crisp, faintly metallic-smelling air. Of course, he no longer sensed any variance from conventional air; the erstwhile tellurian had long ago become accustomed to the conditions of an interstellar lifestyle. It had been a good fourteen years, give or take a month or two, since his childhood departure from Planet Earth, and recollections of all but the most visceral aspects of mankind’s shared homeland had slipped away with the time.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

Kalder laboriously dragged himself from the depths of somnolence to sit up and press the small orange button on the side of his bunk which deactivated his personal alarm. 0600. Time to rise and shine. It was today that they would go after The Bear. Continue reading ‘The Death of The Bear’

What Happened? A Mystery…

Published at July 1, 2008 in Fiction and Science. 0 Comments

I was just recently browsing my old Google Documents account for anything interesting I could find, and I was pleased to find something that was interesting indeed. It was something I wrote back in sophomore year, apparently on the 9th of January, 2006. At that time, I was about half way through a terrible biology class; terrible in the easy, boring, and utterly noneducational sense. Anyway, the teacher had asked me (and a friend, one David Kwan, who served as an excellent editor) to write a narrative exemplifying the process of scientific investigation. Disgusted by yet another easy and meaningless assignment, I took it upon myself to write a blatantly tongue-in-cheek response to the prompt. As I recall, she loved it. I now provide it for your reading pleasure; please excuse all overt bull and ostensible errata found within - you can be sure they were intended.

It was a bright and sunny day in my neighborhood. I was lounging at our picnic table in the back yard, studiously completing some very boring homework for a class whose unworthy name shall not be mentioned. I felt my consciousness begin to slip, and as my head gradually grew closer and closer to the surface of the table, I began to doze. Suddenly I awoke with a start! Something had happened! But what was it?

Continue reading ‘What Happened? A Mystery…’