Nadav Shayovitz
English Creative Essay GCSE Coursework
A Bang and a Shock
Some time, some place, Year 2002...
It was late at night and quiet. I had been playing my favourite computer game. Then my eyes began to feel heavy and the screen blurred. I seemed to be falling towards it...through the screen. Then my head banged against it. I cried out in pain 'ouch!' The shock and a 'three spoons of nescafe' coffee afterwards left me wide-awake and full of energy. I knew I couldn't sleep now. It was either a night watching 'BBC news 24' or a walk in the clear, crisp, night.
Ten minutes later, complete with boots, jacket and my favourite woolly hat (which conveniently covered my fresh bump on my forehead), I stepped out of my front door into the big, dark, scary world. I wandered past the streets I knew so well, past the uninspiring, faceless houses, past the playground, past a farm and beyond. I had wandered out of town. Now my surroundings were unfamiliar and strange. I had never experienced a silence like it. Even the owls seemingly decided to bow to peer pressure, to sleep at night. In the distance I spotted a tunnel I had never seen before- going under a hill. And my being my curious self, I made my way over- through the tunnel to...
Some time, some place, year..?
I was engulfed in a colourful scene with strange little 'bubble' crafts floating about, robotic machines in a human form wandering aimlessly, animals spontaneously combusting and being replaced with a new breed, and a giant 'FUTURAMA' banner made of a bright metal magically suspended in the air. With my mind in a daze, I stood dead, still, gawping at the whole picture. All the neon lights around me had an effect on my brain, I seemed incapable of rational thought.
'Welcome to the future.' I sprung around, scared, ready to run. ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
Some time, some place, year..?
I was engulfed in a colourful scene with strange little 'bubble' crafts floating about, robotic machines in a human form wandering aimlessly, animals spontaneously combusting and being replaced with a new breed, and a giant 'FUTURAMA' banner made of a bright metal magically suspended in the air. With my mind in a daze, I stood dead, still, gawping at the whole picture. All the neon lights around me had an effect on my brain, I seemed incapable of rational thought.
'Welcome to the future.' I sprung around, scared, ready to run.
'I am Morris, your future guide.' Morris was made entirely of metal, his, or its, face on a LCD display, with green lights flashing across at a frantic speed. All I could do was stare. What was happening to me, was it really the future? Maybe simply my overactive imagination playing up again.
The electric voice of Morris brought me back to reality (or fantasy). 'I am your Futurama guide, welcome to the world of Futurama.' Morris then proceeded to give me a speech about this new world. 'The year is 3000, humanity as you know it has died out, and a new race of robots and computers has taken over, and built Futurama.' You are now the only human left, and when you walked through that tunnel to Futurama, you sealed your destiny- to become one of us' As stupid as I may have looked in this hi-tech world, my brain was still just about functioning. They wanted to turn me into a robot- one of them! Suddenly the bright colours of the new world took on a whole new face, they became programmed, emotionless....and evil. I knew I had to fight Otherwise they would rip out my heart and install a processor, I would be incapable of thinking for myself. I watched in horror as I saw the robots all walk the same smooth pace, the same speed, all main the same noise. If futurama had developed to be this perfect, how could I stop them making me one? What was I going to do?
After much deliberating, I knew that my only hope would be to find the tunnel- and get back into my old world. But my guide took my arm and led me to a building, with steel gates, robotic guards, and hundreds of cameras- I was in a maximum-security Futurama prison.
As it turned out, apart from the lack of human presence, there was suprisingly little difference between this prison and the ones in the 'real' world, in 2002, (according to movie representations anyway.) Robots patrolled the corridors, the cell had bars across with just a mat on the floor, and the guards all carried keys. I was even handed a timetable., which was pretty ordinary; my feeding times, the times I was allowed out of the cell, etc. But it contained one specific detail. Tomorrow, at 18:00 Futurama hours, it was labelled 'de-humanisation.' I hadn't much time, I needed to escape...and soon.
After twenty minutes of shaking, sweating and pacing up and down my tiny cell, I finally managed to sit down and set my great mind thinking. Mostly of how they would reach inside my head and retrieve my brain, but in between these gory thoughts, I managed to formulate a vague, hopeful, and probably useless plan to escape.
20:00 hours. Now would be the time which decided my fate. Everything so far had gone according to plan. But maybe that was because my plan hadn't started yet. Surely enough, right on time, a guard came striding down the cell, a tray of food in 'his' hand. Hardly breathing, I watched as the robot methodically entered the keys in the hole, and slowly opened the cell. As he held out the tray I flicked it up and pushed it in his face, bursting past out of my cell. Alarms went off, lights flashed, and in the distance I saw the prison gate-open, but slowly shutting. Feeling like Agent Mulder from the x-files, running from the aliens, I kept plodding along, praying I would make it in time. The gate was still shutting. I could hear its deathly, robotic creak as the space beyond became smaller, my chance for freedom disappearing. When I finally reached the gate, there was till a tiny gap, I dived under it. My escape from prison was complete, but I still needed to find the tunnel. Luckily it was night, and Futurama seemed to be re-charging its batteries (literally.) I briskly made my way to the tunnel, back to my old, boring, safe human world. But could I find it and return to my land?
Yes. This time there was no disappearing act, it just lay confidently there. I made my way through the dark, dark, walls. But, on the other side, would things ever be the same again?
Yes. It was night, and quiet, as I had left it. So I made my way home, the same way through the same familiar streets. But, in the morning, would things ever be the same again?
Yes. Err... I mean, no. I woke to the sound of lazers shooting and robots de-humanising people. 'Oh, for God's sake!' I said aloud. 'All that effort to get back here and I'm gonna be 'robotised' after all'
Which wasn't so bad actually. So there you have it.
