Monday, November 12, 2007

Entry #35

"What a Beautiful Sunrise!
by Ava Douglas


I think it's?.... the sun?... something is wrong.
The clock; the chickens crowing?
Lights, oout.
Dogs restless.
The sky is red. Something..."
       "Train com,ing,,, listen."

"I wish I...; could understand....
Wake up! Something is wrong.."

       "I heard a train..."

"Wake up; clocks are...? No power.
Sky is ALL red; everywhere All around."

       "Roosters crow. Dreaming that...
       What time? 'YaGramdma's Morbier' struck two;
       and I heard a train long long whistle?
       Smoke? it's not fire....

       All electronics shot; watch dead; car's shot.
       Jeep may run? The mantle clock and Morbier, OK."

"I'm frightened!
Terrified."

       "Get your shoes, we're OK,
       let's go outside and watch;
       it..... is..... beautiful...

       No stars;
       clouds;
       and red above the clouds?"

"We are, all alone. I wish the kids were here and the little ones.
Is this one of your precious! GRBs?

Classified? secrets!?
700? 153? Or whatever!?"

       "Give me' second.

       Yes, I believe that it is. But we are, OK.
       It is far away, very far away.
       And not classified NOW!

       We should go check the neighbors.
       I'll check the Jeep; you pack something to eat..."

"We stay togeeeether...
First the Jeep...
Then food."

       "Great, the Jeeeeepe runs;
       also 'traceeetor'.
       Mac the Ham.... we'll hike up 'taMac's while talking';

       Backpacks, flashlights, matches, water......

       Ready?

       Eleven signals beamed at Earth... from 700 to 86,000... light years out;
       '53,000' WAS..... opposite our sun 53,000 years ago?

       All indicated '53' would 'sacrifice'?....

       .....synchronized but different and beaming just arrived in 2004?


[The author writes under the pen name Ava Douglas and collaborates on several projects including The Little Toe.]

12 comments:

Sarah Hina said...

I'm sorry, but I'm honestly confused here. Is this unusual formatting intentional, or was there a mistranslation somewhere? I'm not trying to offend, and maybe my little brain is just missing something, but I don't know what's going on.

I do sense a compelling story in here, but I guess I just need to be pointed in the right direction.

Sorry for any offense.

SzélsőFa said...

I was left eyes wide open, too.
I think, maybe, a spaceship that contains time travellers, lands unexpectedly, while at the same time a family is disturbed by the same ship.
And yes, I'm joining the no-offence policy too.

Jaye Wells said...

I'm sorry to say I have to agree with my fellow readers. I'm intrigued to hear what's going on in this story.

Abhinav said...

  is supposed to be a html formatting tag. That has been put into the textbox and has not worked...

Sherman Jenkins said...

If you see them on your computer,"&" and "nbsp" together should be equal to a space. Error in translating into Word.
Ava

Anonymous said...

HTML formatting is not very kind to text formatting. The only way I know how to create the effect of a tab or indent is to use the non-breaking space code (& nbsp). That will usually do the trick; however, some web browsers don't recognize the code. If you are seeing a bunch of & nbsp codes, then your browser is one of the ones which doesn't support it. Sorry about that. This problem is the reason why fiction on the web is usually not indented and paragraphs are separated by a hard return.

Unknown said...

Jason, I think you might have made an html error. The actual encoding for a non-breaking space ends with a semi-colon, (ie., & n b s p ; without the spaces) like this:

 One
  Two
   Three

You're probably using Internet Explorer as a browser, which may display that as you intended, but it is not the standard. Standards compliant browsers, like Firefox, Opera and Safari get it right.

Anonymous said...

Don, that may very well explain the confusion. I've made the coding correction. Hopefully, it's rendering correctly in all browsers now. Thanks!

Unknown said...

Jason,

Yes it renders perfectly now.

I will leave it as an exercise for your imagination as to why Microsoft would create a software program that purposely produces non-standard html, AND a browser that displays it as if it were correct.

"IT department! Get up here and remove these broken Firefox web browsers. None of them work right. I want only Microsoft products on our computers from now on!"

;^)

Beth said...

Aha, it's fixed ... and I'm still confused. The fault is probably mine as I do not have an abstract mind.

Precie said...

I like how the structure replicates the jumpiness and chaos of the "end of the world" experience.

But I have to admit I don't understand the "All indicated '53' would 'sacrifice'?" The question mark, the single quotes...the syntax confuses me.

Anonymous said...

I think you are showing Armageddon from a gamma ray burst. An interesting take on a fascinating subject.