Chapter 9
Julia stumbled through the dim halls, slowly making her way upstairs before she started to hear something. Thum thum thum, it sounded like footsteps coming from around the corner, from where she had just came. It got louder and faster, like the person was getting faster as they drew nearer. She made a few more drunken steps up the stairs in front of her and past the emergency doorway that led up to the ceiling of the installation at the bottom of The Hole. When she reached the top she turned around slowly as the sound got louder and faster THUM THUM THUM THUM.
"Why are you running so fast?" Julia warbled in a shaky voice. Then it came around the corner. It was alive. It wasn't human. Julia's senses barely registered what she was seeing, it was a mass of the grey-black Heliogel. It formed a human-like shape with overly large feet and tubes of different sizes and shapes ran throughout a mass or sacs full of it in liquid form, rooting plates like crusty food, and knotted tangled muscle shapes. A football sized group of the glowing white bubbles pulsed on its lower right abdomen. Julia screamed in terror. The thing was running so fast it slammed into the far wall, and stickily pealed itself off the wall with creeping Heliogel crawling up its surface. She didn't even know it it oriented itself it just started stumbling as quickly as it could towards her. In a numb panic her brain suddenly surged with adrenaline and she slammed her hand on the emergency shut button. It was so close running up the stairs and as the heavy door shut closed 8 or 9 fingertips were caught in the bottom. They separated from the hand and crawled forward like worms before crinkling up and dying, like the worms were exposed to sunlight. They turned bone white. Julia was terrified and she stumbled back before she looked up into the thick glass window in the door. Embedded in the thick black mass that acted as a head was an eye. A human eye. The pupils were dilated but it blinked and twitched. Blood and black oil leaked from the corners.
- By Ashton
The Grey Jack Frost
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
Julia woke once again. She had drifted off after just a couple more minutes, after her brain had been telling her to just lie down and wait for help. Now it was totally dark. She had fallen back inside the office and it appeared as if the door had been pushed close, held only partially open by her foot resting against it. Julia stood up slowly, trying to regain her senses and pushed open the door.
"H-..hello?" Her voice quavered and echoed. The hall was dark except for a fluorescent light, swinging by its remaining cord from the ceiling. The other source of light was what really bothered her. All around her Heliogel seeped from cracks and crevices in the walls. It hung from the ceiling like vines, oozed from the floor like moss, and pulsating holes dotted the gel intermittently, spurting out more Heliogel in a more liquid form. The worst part of it was that every 20 feet or so, small domes of pale blue-white light would pulsate from the growth. It appeared the same as the fragile domes that had emerged from the Heliogel when it was capturing the dark node. She hoped that it was only an after effect, but a part of her knew that the dark node was still down there; chugging along in its happy case. For all she knew it was moments away from another explosion, possibly even worse. Julia also knew that the heliogel had displayed nothing like this in her experiments and limited testing. It always generated in amounts that generated structured, very ordered shapes. Nothing like this dark vomit all throughout the hall of different textures and shades. And it certainly didn't grow to any volume larger than what was administered. Another thing she noticed was that she was alone. Besides the slowly spinning light and parts of the gel pulsating, nothing was moving and there were no bodies on the floor. She supposed grimly that the rest of the group could have woke up and evacuated through the elevator, but why leave her? She doubted that they hadn't seen her, and doubted even more that her friends wouldn't of noticed her absence. Julia had been incapacitated, sure, but their had to of been enough strong people left to carry her. She looked back down the hall to her right where the beam had fallen on the man's arm. Nothing. The gel was for the most part not infecting that area and there was still not any sign of human flesh. Julia stared at the floor unbelievingly.
"How could they of t-taken him and not me..?"
- By Ashton
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Online Colleges Report
I'm writing about several colleges offering video game design and development programs. As I was researching I discovered that many of these programs, and many of the very best and affordable programs, were through online programs because teaching online is a very versatile and easy method when it comes to virtual jobs such as game design and development, so I based my research on these online programs.
Let's look at Baker College. Baker College has an online game development program that is very cheap that offers a bachelor's degree. The tuition is $8,100 a year. It has a very high placement rate at 97%. The program teaches you to create and produce games that you can play on computers, consoles, the Internet, mobile phones, other devices, and even arcades. You can either work alone or with others to develop the visuals, story, and gameplay of the game. After that outline is done you or your team create the animation, audio, and programming. Next you test and debug the game before finally producing it. The program is updated regularly to whatever the industry needs, so you will learn whatever the game industry is looking for at the time. The program also provides a strong foundation in software engineering and program technologies. After that strong foundation has been lied down the student learns game modeling, to animation and programming, and then finally their senior project.
The next college is Daniel Webster College. Daniel Webster College has a bachelors program in Game Design and Development. The program teaches you the skills required to go into jobs like game designers, game developers, graphic designers, storyboard artists, concept artists, and animators. The tuition is $15,630 a year.
Next is the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. The tuition is $17,020 a year. They have programs in Game design and Game programming. Their game design program is something I'm very interested in because it involves the more creative and artistic side of making video games. You start with fundamentals like drawing, color, design, then move on to develop the skills you need in animation game design, scriptwriting, storyboarding, and character design. It also shows you video game programming, production, artistic concepts, and game play strategies that produced games that people enjoyed around the world. You'll learn to make games and your own game levels that you can make into a portfolio of your work. After graduating the program promises the opportunity to enter jobs like a 2D Conceptual Artist, a Storyboard Artist, a 3D Character Builder, 3D Object Modeler, Interactivity Designer, Background Artist, and Gameplay tester. "As a prerequisite for admission to The Art Institute of Pittsburgh — Online Division, students must be a high school graduate with a minimum, cumulative, final high school CGPA of 2.5 or higher, or hold a General Education Development (GED) Certificate, or associate's degree or higher. Students must exhibit competent drawing and design skills by submission of specified portfolio criteria. Drawing and design skills will be assessed using department standards and will determine placement in drawing courses." Based on that criteria the only main thing I need to work on is my actual artistic skill.
The next college is Southern New Hampshire University. They have a program called Game Design and Development for $960 per course. It gives a strong background in core IT concepts. Throughout the program you learn about game genres, platforms, interface design, game theory, game marketing, e-collaboration, and e-commerce. You also learn how virtual game environments create experiences through rule design, play mechanics, game balancing, social game interaction and the integration of visual, audio, tactile and textural elements. The university boasts several benefits such as Affordability, Convenience, Efficiency and Flexibility, Expert Instruction, Networking, a Simple Application Process, Student Support, and Transfer Friendly Enrollment. For Affordability it might actually be one of the cheapest I've seen for a Bachelors degree in this area but the number of courses I'd have to take is unclear and each one is 960$. The program is convenient because you can take the classes 24/7, being an online course. It's efficient and flexible because you can complete the entire program at your own pace. It claims to have expert instruction from instructors with relevant, real-world experience. The networking is interesting because it says that you can "Tap into our nationwide network of alumni for internship and career opportunities." Which is very interesting. The application seems pretty simple, it's just an online application and there's no fee. It says that there is student support with "Count on the ongoing support of dedicated academic and career advisors specialized in your area of study." It's also transfer friendly with the ability to transfer up to 90 credits if I was coming from a different school. The program would also allow me to go into an IT oriented job, and jobs in that area are predicted to grow 22% by 2022.
Next up is The Academy of Art, offering a Game Development program. The School of Game Development provides you with an array of skills required for the gaming industry. Whether pursuing a career as a game designer, game programmer, 3D modeler, concept artist, or UI/UX designer, you get hands-on experience creating a professional-quality art and game design or programming portfolio, and you can also collaborate with other students to produce fun and memorable video games. It costs $835 per unit, 3 units per class.
The website for The Academy of Art also provides useful information on all of the jobs you could go into after this program, or indeed all the other programs I've listed. The first is Game Designing. Game Designing involves balancing gameplay elements, creating in-game economies, improving systems, contributing features, participate in testing, as well as creating immersive worlds that evoke emotion in the player. Job duties include: creating design-centric level layout, creating game scripting, and assisting teams to polish various gameplay aspects. Skills needed for the job include: excellent oral and written skills, understanding of gameplay balancing, and a collaborative and positive attitude.
The next job is a UI/UX designer, or a user interface/ user experience designer. For this job you dictate exactly how the player interacts with the game itself, using knowledge of game features, design, motion graphics, and user paths. Duties include: producing sketches, flow charts, mind maps, and prototypes, working with production teams to smoothly hand-off deliverables, and optimizing interfaces for efficient deliver alt of information. Skills include: excellent oral and written skills, understanding of user methodologies and use bases, strong design and and human-computer-interactivity sensitivity.
The next job is a Character Concept Artist. In this job you create and design characters for interactive games, imagining the visual look of characters using contextual details. Duties include: creating original character designs, evolving designs from concept to production, and communicating ideas and thought visually. Skills include: Strong Knowledge of Anatomy, excellent oral and written skills, and the ability to present and critique objectively.
Next is a 3D character modeler. As a 3D character modeler you build compels character models, organic meshes, and work with a team to rig, light, and texture your characters. Duties include: Modeling and texturing the game, readying assets, building and iterating organic meshes, and working with other teams to maintain a consistent story and vision. Skills include: Low and high polygon modeling skills, strong problem solving skills, and excellent oral and written skills.
In conclusion there are many online colleges and programs offered. There are many benefits and opportunities in online colleges and taking the online route is a god way to get a jumpstart on learning and also lets you be flexible and have a job on the side. The field of game deign and development is also obviously growing and the medium of online classes obviously works very well with teaching the skills needed for this industry. I think that this selection of colleges is wide enough to apply for more information for each of them and decide which one is right for me.
- By Ashton
Let's look at Baker College. Baker College has an online game development program that is very cheap that offers a bachelor's degree. The tuition is $8,100 a year. It has a very high placement rate at 97%. The program teaches you to create and produce games that you can play on computers, consoles, the Internet, mobile phones, other devices, and even arcades. You can either work alone or with others to develop the visuals, story, and gameplay of the game. After that outline is done you or your team create the animation, audio, and programming. Next you test and debug the game before finally producing it. The program is updated regularly to whatever the industry needs, so you will learn whatever the game industry is looking for at the time. The program also provides a strong foundation in software engineering and program technologies. After that strong foundation has been lied down the student learns game modeling, to animation and programming, and then finally their senior project.
The next college is Daniel Webster College. Daniel Webster College has a bachelors program in Game Design and Development. The program teaches you the skills required to go into jobs like game designers, game developers, graphic designers, storyboard artists, concept artists, and animators. The tuition is $15,630 a year.
Next is the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. The tuition is $17,020 a year. They have programs in Game design and Game programming. Their game design program is something I'm very interested in because it involves the more creative and artistic side of making video games. You start with fundamentals like drawing, color, design, then move on to develop the skills you need in animation game design, scriptwriting, storyboarding, and character design. It also shows you video game programming, production, artistic concepts, and game play strategies that produced games that people enjoyed around the world. You'll learn to make games and your own game levels that you can make into a portfolio of your work. After graduating the program promises the opportunity to enter jobs like a 2D Conceptual Artist, a Storyboard Artist, a 3D Character Builder, 3D Object Modeler, Interactivity Designer, Background Artist, and Gameplay tester. "As a prerequisite for admission to The Art Institute of Pittsburgh — Online Division, students must be a high school graduate with a minimum, cumulative, final high school CGPA of 2.5 or higher, or hold a General Education Development (GED) Certificate, or associate's degree or higher. Students must exhibit competent drawing and design skills by submission of specified portfolio criteria. Drawing and design skills will be assessed using department standards and will determine placement in drawing courses." Based on that criteria the only main thing I need to work on is my actual artistic skill.
The next college is Southern New Hampshire University. They have a program called Game Design and Development for $960 per course. It gives a strong background in core IT concepts. Throughout the program you learn about game genres, platforms, interface design, game theory, game marketing, e-collaboration, and e-commerce. You also learn how virtual game environments create experiences through rule design, play mechanics, game balancing, social game interaction and the integration of visual, audio, tactile and textural elements. The university boasts several benefits such as Affordability, Convenience, Efficiency and Flexibility, Expert Instruction, Networking, a Simple Application Process, Student Support, and Transfer Friendly Enrollment. For Affordability it might actually be one of the cheapest I've seen for a Bachelors degree in this area but the number of courses I'd have to take is unclear and each one is 960$. The program is convenient because you can take the classes 24/7, being an online course. It's efficient and flexible because you can complete the entire program at your own pace. It claims to have expert instruction from instructors with relevant, real-world experience. The networking is interesting because it says that you can "Tap into our nationwide network of alumni for internship and career opportunities." Which is very interesting. The application seems pretty simple, it's just an online application and there's no fee. It says that there is student support with "Count on the ongoing support of dedicated academic and career advisors specialized in your area of study." It's also transfer friendly with the ability to transfer up to 90 credits if I was coming from a different school. The program would also allow me to go into an IT oriented job, and jobs in that area are predicted to grow 22% by 2022.
Next up is The Academy of Art, offering a Game Development program. The School of Game Development provides you with an array of skills required for the gaming industry. Whether pursuing a career as a game designer, game programmer, 3D modeler, concept artist, or UI/UX designer, you get hands-on experience creating a professional-quality art and game design or programming portfolio, and you can also collaborate with other students to produce fun and memorable video games. It costs $835 per unit, 3 units per class.
The website for The Academy of Art also provides useful information on all of the jobs you could go into after this program, or indeed all the other programs I've listed. The first is Game Designing. Game Designing involves balancing gameplay elements, creating in-game economies, improving systems, contributing features, participate in testing, as well as creating immersive worlds that evoke emotion in the player. Job duties include: creating design-centric level layout, creating game scripting, and assisting teams to polish various gameplay aspects. Skills needed for the job include: excellent oral and written skills, understanding of gameplay balancing, and a collaborative and positive attitude.
The next job is a UI/UX designer, or a user interface/ user experience designer. For this job you dictate exactly how the player interacts with the game itself, using knowledge of game features, design, motion graphics, and user paths. Duties include: producing sketches, flow charts, mind maps, and prototypes, working with production teams to smoothly hand-off deliverables, and optimizing interfaces for efficient deliver alt of information. Skills include: excellent oral and written skills, understanding of user methodologies and use bases, strong design and and human-computer-interactivity sensitivity.
The next job is a Character Concept Artist. In this job you create and design characters for interactive games, imagining the visual look of characters using contextual details. Duties include: creating original character designs, evolving designs from concept to production, and communicating ideas and thought visually. Skills include: Strong Knowledge of Anatomy, excellent oral and written skills, and the ability to present and critique objectively.
Next is a 3D character modeler. As a 3D character modeler you build compels character models, organic meshes, and work with a team to rig, light, and texture your characters. Duties include: Modeling and texturing the game, readying assets, building and iterating organic meshes, and working with other teams to maintain a consistent story and vision. Skills include: Low and high polygon modeling skills, strong problem solving skills, and excellent oral and written skills.
In conclusion there are many online colleges and programs offered. There are many benefits and opportunities in online colleges and taking the online route is a god way to get a jumpstart on learning and also lets you be flexible and have a job on the side. The field of game deign and development is also obviously growing and the medium of online classes obviously works very well with teaching the skills needed for this industry. I think that this selection of colleges is wide enough to apply for more information for each of them and decide which one is right for me.
- By Ashton
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Julia's other senses slowly returned, along with the pain. The smell in the air was acrid smoke that choked her body. There was a painful ringing sounding in her ears. She tasted coppery blood from a cut on her lip. Pain from the explosion and impact wracked her body in waves. She sat leaning against a splintered door, trying not to feel anything at all. Others started to dimly sit up and she heard quiet yells and shocked, estranged voices over the ringing fading in her head. She wanted to get up and start helping people, maybe see if the person with their arm crushed was still alive, but her senses were still being totally assaulted and there was so much pain she couldn't bear to move a muscle. In all of the noise a single thought rose to clarity "Someone will be here soon. People in 1A would know what had happened because of the constant communication kept up between bases and even if they were too far down to hear the explosion the smoke would soon drift up and out of the hole. Any second now the elevator was going to undock from the relatively untouched elevator platform and shoot upwards, then filled with people that could help them. Any second now. Just wait."
- By Ashton
Julia's other senses slowly returned, along with the pain. The smell in the air was acrid smoke that choked her body. There was a painful ringing sounding in her ears. She tasted coppery blood from a cut on her lip. Pain from the explosion and impact wracked her body in waves. She sat leaning against a splintered door, trying not to feel anything at all. Others started to dimly sit up and she heard quiet yells and shocked, estranged voices over the ringing fading in her head. She wanted to get up and start helping people, maybe see if the person with their arm crushed was still alive, but her senses were still being totally assaulted and there was so much pain she couldn't bear to move a muscle. In all of the noise a single thought rose to clarity "Someone will be here soon. People in 1A would know what had happened because of the constant communication kept up between bases and even if they were too far down to hear the explosion the smoke would soon drift up and out of the hole. Any second now the elevator was going to undock from the relatively untouched elevator platform and shoot upwards, then filled with people that could help them. Any second now. Just wait."
- By Ashton
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
After a few hugs between her coworkers and watching the audience cheer Julia went back to the console and activated a stabilizing field that should keep the Dark Node safely in place inside the cube until research begun.
"Ladies and gentlemen you have now witnessed the first containment of a Dark Node." She said with a smile.
"Are there any questi-" Julia's words trailed off as her gaze wandered back towards the tank. The blue-white patches on the Heliogel had started to pulse and brighten again. Julia looked once again at the console and was getting strange readings. The pulsating started to give off a low vibration each time, like letting a pencil hit the blades on a fan. It started to increase in volume, frequency, and brightness each time. The crowd started looking at the tank with puzzled, slightly worried faces and began to back away. Samuels spoke up.
"Don't you see what's happening we need to get everyone out of here now!" His face was frantic and he backed away from the tank and ran to the door, starting to open it with the small handpad. Julia kept her cool and spoke into the mike at the desk.
"Everybody please calmly and orderly line up behind-" It was a useless effort the group of people was already swarming towards the opening doors. Julia started to follow them at a jog and she looked back at the tank. It nearly blinded her with its intensity and she could feel the vibrations in her torso. She new something was about to happen. Everybody crowded into the hall and started running up the main staircase, trying to reach the elevator. It was utter chaos. People were tripping, alarms were firing, there was yelling and screaming. Scientists and administrators emerged from offices, some of them trying to calm the crowd and some joined them. Even from here the noise was deafening. KRACKOOM. A wave of light and sound hit her like a ton of bricks and she hit the ground hard. The world started to turn to black.
She woke up slowly like she was a creature finished hibernating for the winter. The first thing she saw was darkness. Lights still flickered on and off from the walls and ceiling of the building but she could already tell it was in ruins. A gaping hole was above her head in the ceiling, giving her a view of the elevator that was surrounded by the darkness permeating The Hole. Because the half a year night had begun the only light coming from above were small pinpricks dotting the sides of the hole and running up getting fainter and fainter. She thought it looked like one of those eels that live in the deep ocean, covered in bioluminescence. She groaned and sat up. It looked like she had been blown into an open office room from the hall, she could see a few other bodies lying on the ground in the dim light, motionless or just starting to stir. Her eyes followed a metal beam behind her that one end had fallen from the ceiling. She followed it to the floor where there was only a patch of blood and gore. An arm twitched on her side and she could only assume the rest of the body was on the other side of the beam. She tried her best not to throw up all over herself and wondered. "What the hell just happened. That shouldn't of happened there's nothing about Dark Nodes we know of that could have possibly have caused and explosion like this." She shook her head in disbelief and thought again "We were in uncharted territory. We thought we knew what we were doing. We thought we were safe. We were wrong."
After a few hugs between her coworkers and watching the audience cheer Julia went back to the console and activated a stabilizing field that should keep the Dark Node safely in place inside the cube until research begun.
"Ladies and gentlemen you have now witnessed the first containment of a Dark Node." She said with a smile.
"Are there any questi-" Julia's words trailed off as her gaze wandered back towards the tank. The blue-white patches on the Heliogel had started to pulse and brighten again. Julia looked once again at the console and was getting strange readings. The pulsating started to give off a low vibration each time, like letting a pencil hit the blades on a fan. It started to increase in volume, frequency, and brightness each time. The crowd started looking at the tank with puzzled, slightly worried faces and began to back away. Samuels spoke up.
"Don't you see what's happening we need to get everyone out of here now!" His face was frantic and he backed away from the tank and ran to the door, starting to open it with the small handpad. Julia kept her cool and spoke into the mike at the desk.
"Everybody please calmly and orderly line up behind-" It was a useless effort the group of people was already swarming towards the opening doors. Julia started to follow them at a jog and she looked back at the tank. It nearly blinded her with its intensity and she could feel the vibrations in her torso. She new something was about to happen. Everybody crowded into the hall and started running up the main staircase, trying to reach the elevator. It was utter chaos. People were tripping, alarms were firing, there was yelling and screaming. Scientists and administrators emerged from offices, some of them trying to calm the crowd and some joined them. Even from here the noise was deafening. KRACKOOM. A wave of light and sound hit her like a ton of bricks and she hit the ground hard. The world started to turn to black.
She woke up slowly like she was a creature finished hibernating for the winter. The first thing she saw was darkness. Lights still flickered on and off from the walls and ceiling of the building but she could already tell it was in ruins. A gaping hole was above her head in the ceiling, giving her a view of the elevator that was surrounded by the darkness permeating The Hole. Because the half a year night had begun the only light coming from above were small pinpricks dotting the sides of the hole and running up getting fainter and fainter. She thought it looked like one of those eels that live in the deep ocean, covered in bioluminescence. She groaned and sat up. It looked like she had been blown into an open office room from the hall, she could see a few other bodies lying on the ground in the dim light, motionless or just starting to stir. Her eyes followed a metal beam behind her that one end had fallen from the ceiling. She followed it to the floor where there was only a patch of blood and gore. An arm twitched on her side and she could only assume the rest of the body was on the other side of the beam. She tried her best not to throw up all over herself and wondered. "What the hell just happened. That shouldn't of happened there's nothing about Dark Nodes we know of that could have possibly have caused and explosion like this." She shook her head in disbelief and thought again "We were in uncharted territory. We thought we knew what we were doing. We thought we were safe. We were wrong."
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Julia pulled herself out of the nausea and slight headache from returning to her body and peered at the computer monitor in front of her. The group, for the first time since the tour began clapping and cheering, crowded around the tank and watched the Heliogel form around the cube on the pedestal. It formed relatively fast, making different three dimensional matrixes around the cube composed of more two dimensional polyhedrals. It continuously built more and more onto itself and thin, ribbed, structure tubes began to sprout towards the roof and sides of the tank. As the Heliogel formed a black-grey shape around the size of a beach ball and several supports of varying sizes had been created it slowed down and the monitor in front of Julia lit up. The data was very promising as the conditions in the tank neared perfect.
Two of her closest friends, Samuels and Kate came up behind her. Samuels was an engineer and worked closely with Julia to develop the testing room and tank capable of utilizing the Heliogel; he's always been very quiet and rather secluded but after working so closely with Julia he had started to come out of his shell and quickly became part of Julia's group of friends, herself, him, Kate, Sarah, Bentley, and a few others. The group was much like a band of friends in high school and when worked to keep each other sane, lessen each other's workloads, work towards deadlines, and went why had time off, just have fun. Kate is technically the head of the project being performed at the station but after Julia's miraculous discovery of the Heliogel the position has been rather contestable. Kate was not EXTREMELY competitive but there had been slight animosities coming from her direction after all the attention Julia's gotten from the invention. Despite that minor conflict right now both of her friends looked excitedly on at the experiments progress and congratulated her intermittently. Sam gave her a thumbs up and started speaking into the microphone attached to the console.
"As you can see ladies and gentlemen the Heliogel is creating an ever growing-matrix around the containment receptacle, making perfect conditions to attract a Dark Node."
Suddenly the status bars on the screen lit up and shot up and down across the screen; the number indicating overall status slowly centered on extremely close to perfection. The Heliogel began to pulse and patches of it started to turn a sickly-pale blue that was almost white and it changed texture into something akin to fragile, burnt food. The pale blue patches glowed, pulsating, and the once rigid, patterned shapes, began to randomize, melt, and rapidly grow into something more similar to spiderwebs or crystals. The cube inside was now completely out of sight. Without any warning at all the numbers on the screen reached the peak conditions and the Heliogel glowed extremely bright. The audience was silent and as the gel began to settle on this brightness, the monitor made a sound in front of Julia. They had captured a Dark Node. They may have captured the secrets to the universe
- By Ashton
Julia pulled herself out of the nausea and slight headache from returning to her body and peered at the computer monitor in front of her. The group, for the first time since the tour began clapping and cheering, crowded around the tank and watched the Heliogel form around the cube on the pedestal. It formed relatively fast, making different three dimensional matrixes around the cube composed of more two dimensional polyhedrals. It continuously built more and more onto itself and thin, ribbed, structure tubes began to sprout towards the roof and sides of the tank. As the Heliogel formed a black-grey shape around the size of a beach ball and several supports of varying sizes had been created it slowed down and the monitor in front of Julia lit up. The data was very promising as the conditions in the tank neared perfect.
Two of her closest friends, Samuels and Kate came up behind her. Samuels was an engineer and worked closely with Julia to develop the testing room and tank capable of utilizing the Heliogel; he's always been very quiet and rather secluded but after working so closely with Julia he had started to come out of his shell and quickly became part of Julia's group of friends, herself, him, Kate, Sarah, Bentley, and a few others. The group was much like a band of friends in high school and when worked to keep each other sane, lessen each other's workloads, work towards deadlines, and went why had time off, just have fun. Kate is technically the head of the project being performed at the station but after Julia's miraculous discovery of the Heliogel the position has been rather contestable. Kate was not EXTREMELY competitive but there had been slight animosities coming from her direction after all the attention Julia's gotten from the invention. Despite that minor conflict right now both of her friends looked excitedly on at the experiments progress and congratulated her intermittently. Sam gave her a thumbs up and started speaking into the microphone attached to the console.
"As you can see ladies and gentlemen the Heliogel is creating an ever growing-matrix around the containment receptacle, making perfect conditions to attract a Dark Node."
Suddenly the status bars on the screen lit up and shot up and down across the screen; the number indicating overall status slowly centered on extremely close to perfection. The Heliogel began to pulse and patches of it started to turn a sickly-pale blue that was almost white and it changed texture into something akin to fragile, burnt food. The pale blue patches glowed, pulsating, and the once rigid, patterned shapes, began to randomize, melt, and rapidly grow into something more similar to spiderwebs or crystals. The cube inside was now completely out of sight. Without any warning at all the numbers on the screen reached the peak conditions and the Heliogel glowed extremely bright. The audience was silent and as the gel began to settle on this brightness, the monitor made a sound in front of Julia. They had captured a Dark Node. They may have captured the secrets to the universe
- By Ashton
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
The elevator steadily zoomed downwards into the icy rock. The Antarctic sunset giving light above slowly became a pinprick above them with only large porthole-like white light embedded in intervals into the rock and blinking red lights in the elevator cart. For around 5 minutes the elevator whirred away and every so often Julia would pinprick the silence by droning on about the experiment. Finally the elevator lowered itself onto a metal platform that was the roof of a few floors above the experiment room and the bottom of The Hole. A door opened a few feet away from the elevator and a new group of her fellow co-workers accepted the group inside, and Julia was every grateful not to have to take care of the sheep anymore. After entering the cold white floor Julia went over mental notes on how the experiment would run and took an alternate staircase to enter the experiment room. She had a few minutes to get everything set up while the group was being shown what little was interesting outside the experiment room.
The room was laid out like an amphitheater with a tall ceiling and dark grey paint. A crescent moon shape for people to watch surrounded the tank where the Dark Node would be caught. The tank was a smaller circle than the room itself pushed up against the back wall. Inside the tank was a pedestal with a transparent cube on sitting empty on the small grey platform. Inside the cube was a transparent coolant and the last defense they had against penetrating radiation, the other two being their location and the tank itself. 4 large enormous mechanical arms were attacked the tank and a console and a neuro-seat was up against the front. The mechanical arms while being controlled by the neuro-seat user would draw Heliogel from 4 large tanks of it across the room and swing back and lock themselves inside the top of the tank. From there the user would further insert the arms into holes in the floor of the tank and the Heliogel would inject itself into the floor mechanism and out of a large grate underneath the pedestal. From out of this grate the Heliogel would emerge and matrix itself around the cube on the pedestal and fill most the tank, penetrate the cube, and create perfect conditions for a Dark Node to be captured.
Julia sighed and smiled, feeling more confident of the experiment's success every second. She sat down in the neuro-seat and the group began to file in. They all looked in awe at the clean splendor of the large room before their gazes rested on her in the chair. All of them expected her to speak but instead she just smiled and leaned back, letting the neural connectors against the base of her skull load her brain scan into the computer console. A few unsettling moments went by of trying to adjust her brain to the thought that her body was indeed not floating in the air where the cameras were but was indeed still in the chair and she was occupying a machine, but she quickly got used to it again. Through loudspeakers across the walls of the room she could speak to the group of people and because it was her own brain scan in the computer it even sounded like her own voice. She explained to them the procedure and lifted her heavy four arms out of the casing around the tank. She stretched them towards the tanks of Heliogel and pierced the syringe-like endings into the receptacles. After a minute of extracting the required amount she moved the arms back to their original position and swung them up so that they poised over the roof of the tank, like venomous snakes ready to strike. The group looked on in awe, even the investors, and she slowly inserted the arms into the tank. They appeared inside the glass and the tank roof sealed around them. Julia moved the arms into the four holes at the tank bottom and she pushed the Heliogel out into the apparatus. At this point Julia was done and everything was self automated so, shaking, (even though technically she wasn't, a machine for God's sake), she separated herself from the computer and let herself flow back into her body. Opening her eyes Julia saw the Heliogel, appearing as a black-blue-green, shiny ooze, rise up out of the grate and form complex shaped and wiring around the cube. What might be the most important experiment in the last century was beginning
- By Ashton
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