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Fan Fiction & Writing / Trip in Time
« on: January 23, 2010, 09:57:36 PM »
Here's a piece of writing I had to do for my english GCSE coursework. Following on from reading The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, we had to write a short, blunt story on our trip to the future or past, and then somehow persuade the listeners to go there as well. Since my choices were fairly open, I chose the story to relate to things happening now, which you'll see when you read it.
I think it's 676 words in total, so pretty short for my liking. It didn't take very long to thaw out a basic storyline, and then an hour or two to finalize my vocabulary and polish it off a little.
My trip to the future was a very strange one. Using my time machine I managed to travel to the year two thousand, three hundred and eleven. What I saw struck me as devastating. When I first stumbled out of my compartment, dishevelled and disorientated, I blinked a few times, allowing my eyes to adjust to the light of the outside world. I looked around, perplexed, at my environment.
There appeared to be no sign of anything at all. There was only the ground, a few tufts of grass sticking up here and there, and then there was me and my time machine. The obscurity of the moment was unsettling. There was no sign of anything, not a thing in existence.
Maybe I should go back, I thought, but my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see what caused the removal of everything I had known three hundred and two years ago. But with nothing to lay eyes upon as far as the eye could see, there was no hint of where I should begin my journey. Before I could decide on my direction however, I spotted a single tower in the distance.
It sat right on the horizon, no doubt a few miles away, so I set off at a steady pace. On closer inspection of the tower, it wasn’t that high at all. It was perhaps a metre high, with a circular base a foot in diameter. As I was a few steps away I could see that it had a cylindrical button on top. When I reached it, I looked at it for a few seconds. I knew there was no way I could turn back now.
This was the only evidence of life here for miles around. I snapped out of my trance of thought and pressed the button down slowly. As I lessened the pressure and released the button back up I could immediately hear, and feel, the sounds of something mechanical beginning to initialize. The noise and rumbles spread right through the ground, into my feet and body. The vibrations were no doubt coming from the ground.
Before I had a chance to move, the floor literally opened. It turns out that I was standing right next to the entrance. The hole was square-shaped, and opened slowly but surely. The opening revealed a ladder, which I reluctantly climbed, however I did not have any regrets.
Over the next few hours I met something that was at least familiar to me, a fellow human, many in fact. None of them seemed particularly interested in me, but they responded when I asked them what had caused the eradication of the human race above ground. “The war”, they told me. Apparently the decisions to switch to renewable energy sources had failed, and once the fossil fuels had run out, all hell broke loose when countries started fighting each other for the last scraps of energy.
Inevitably nuclear weapons got involved. No one knows who struck first, but they did. The lucky few that had foreseen the earth’s fate had bunkered underground, and started a civilisation there. The people couldn’t venture outside for the fear of radioactivity; they were surprised that I hadn’t contracted any.
They had all the things that I remembered from the year two thousand and nine: Computers, televisions, radios, and telephones. The only difference between their world and mine was that there was no pollution. The people had vowed never to pollute their new subterranean world. They produced electricity by harnessing geo-thermal energy from the core of the earth.
Because it was underground, no one thought there would be any air, but there was, except this time the air was crystal clear of all pollutants, which made it easier to live and work and have fun.
I highly recommend that you too visit this world. It takes a while getting used to, but it’s worth it. It took a lot of self persuasion to come back!
I got an A* for it, if you're interested.
I think it's 676 words in total, so pretty short for my liking. It didn't take very long to thaw out a basic storyline, and then an hour or two to finalize my vocabulary and polish it off a little.
My trip to the future was a very strange one. Using my time machine I managed to travel to the year two thousand, three hundred and eleven. What I saw struck me as devastating. When I first stumbled out of my compartment, dishevelled and disorientated, I blinked a few times, allowing my eyes to adjust to the light of the outside world. I looked around, perplexed, at my environment.
There appeared to be no sign of anything at all. There was only the ground, a few tufts of grass sticking up here and there, and then there was me and my time machine. The obscurity of the moment was unsettling. There was no sign of anything, not a thing in existence.
Maybe I should go back, I thought, but my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see what caused the removal of everything I had known three hundred and two years ago. But with nothing to lay eyes upon as far as the eye could see, there was no hint of where I should begin my journey. Before I could decide on my direction however, I spotted a single tower in the distance.
It sat right on the horizon, no doubt a few miles away, so I set off at a steady pace. On closer inspection of the tower, it wasn’t that high at all. It was perhaps a metre high, with a circular base a foot in diameter. As I was a few steps away I could see that it had a cylindrical button on top. When I reached it, I looked at it for a few seconds. I knew there was no way I could turn back now.
This was the only evidence of life here for miles around. I snapped out of my trance of thought and pressed the button down slowly. As I lessened the pressure and released the button back up I could immediately hear, and feel, the sounds of something mechanical beginning to initialize. The noise and rumbles spread right through the ground, into my feet and body. The vibrations were no doubt coming from the ground.
Before I had a chance to move, the floor literally opened. It turns out that I was standing right next to the entrance. The hole was square-shaped, and opened slowly but surely. The opening revealed a ladder, which I reluctantly climbed, however I did not have any regrets.
Over the next few hours I met something that was at least familiar to me, a fellow human, many in fact. None of them seemed particularly interested in me, but they responded when I asked them what had caused the eradication of the human race above ground. “The war”, they told me. Apparently the decisions to switch to renewable energy sources had failed, and once the fossil fuels had run out, all hell broke loose when countries started fighting each other for the last scraps of energy.
Inevitably nuclear weapons got involved. No one knows who struck first, but they did. The lucky few that had foreseen the earth’s fate had bunkered underground, and started a civilisation there. The people couldn’t venture outside for the fear of radioactivity; they were surprised that I hadn’t contracted any.
They had all the things that I remembered from the year two thousand and nine: Computers, televisions, radios, and telephones. The only difference between their world and mine was that there was no pollution. The people had vowed never to pollute their new subterranean world. They produced electricity by harnessing geo-thermal energy from the core of the earth.
Because it was underground, no one thought there would be any air, but there was, except this time the air was crystal clear of all pollutants, which made it easier to live and work and have fun.
I highly recommend that you too visit this world. It takes a while getting used to, but it’s worth it. It took a lot of self persuasion to come back!
I got an A* for it, if you're interested.
I know that's kind of sad, but I'll try my best to give good feedback, constructive critisism e.t.c.
