248. When alone
Here you have a comp I had to write for my program of English, C-2 Level, at Centro de Lenguas Modernas, Universidad de Granada. I will present it to my teacher after Christmas vacation. The student has to continue the given beginning of a novel. 11 beginnings are shown, and you got to continue the one of your choice.
From the Teacher’s Book – 3: Communication – Telling stories
Begun on 21 December 2009
Student: Fernando Díez Gallego
Let’s have a try. I am taking 1984. And digging some remembrance of a film I saw many years ago, when a child myself. However most of the stuff is of mine. Ah, there is some streak of I am legend, 2007, starring Will Smith.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen… I awoke at that sound, but remained very still in bed, eyes wide open. Listening. A metallic striking. So cold a morning. Windows wide open. For granted, I every day heard some other clocks striking, far, in the distance, in some corner of the ship.
Oh, shhh, I had been overslept. Again. I once again remembered that the magnetic clocks would go their own self-programmed wish to strike. Totally alone. Nobody else. I had achieved to bury, so as to say, all my human-race mates.
Nearby my beloved family: Sarah, that, my gorgeous wife, and my children, Elliott, Evelyn, Eugene, Eve, Eliza, Ettienne, Emile, Emily. Everyday I visited them, recalling their adored names.
Alone. To be honest…, no, no way, I was with Someone. And the Other, was with me, I knew. At those moments, was it in April 1984? I started to be, to feel – somehow – closer to my Father, more than ever since.
Well, and closer to my Crade IV. Yet, this latter one was No One, just a funny synthetic robotic being. However, that stack of screws and plates of synthetic plastic, made me some companionship. He (he?) did most of the routines a synthetic being can carry out: roles too mechanical. In that way, I delegated on him whilst I was committed with more human, creative tasks.
After something more private which I did that early afternoon, too private to write to you here, to someone strange to me – I guess I’ll let someone know, some day, all about me. We will share everything. No good for Man to live alone. That someone, human, anywhere, will pop out, in the huge extensions of the outer space. Sent by my Dad. I have that hope.
Within my ship, 200 acres… of earth for me, alone. Beneath a big dome. Some 75 of those acres, as a large garden, under the big semi-spheric plastic dome. I used to grow some living, with Crade’s help: potatoes, some wheat… I have never been a person with a big knowledge about what goes fine for a balanced diet.
Ok, that afternoon, at 13.15 I headed to our garden (Our garden, Dad, I know, thank you, I love You and You love your child, and here I am, alive, ultimately, totally in your Hands), and reached the dashboard: What rain today? I suppose I should have asked my human-fellows about this, before the virus thing. Ok, some gentle rain. For my vegetables. The sun, Sirius, shone blisteringly through the transparent plastic cupola. Sirius: 10 times our beloved sun’s size. In my ears, some lingering humming, by me, of Bob Marley’s sticky melody and voice. Soon, quite soon, I could smell the scent of the wet lawn. I breathed in, deeply. Crade right behind me, sounding his processing bowls. I tapped on top of it. Crade, are we going hunting some venison in our garden today? Some shrieking metallic processing sound as all reply. Ok, Crade, you win: We´ll go. Get ready, because I can feel fewer and fewer targets, after Sirius’s everyday’s sunset.
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