Week 6 Theme

"There's a place so dark you can't see the end"

I watched the robot make it's way down the narrow tunnel, darkening until I could just barely make out its dim form at the end of the blackness. I hurried after it, and scooped it up. I carried it back into the brightly lit classroom.

"It works!" I exclaimed to my partner.

"Let's see it," he commented.

I had been assisting teaching these junior engineering programs for several years, and this one was more for people who had taught or were really smart for the most part, only about six or eight people. I had designed the program and thought I had it good. It was by far the most difficult program I had ever embarked upon, considering that most programs were relatively simple. I started it and set it towards the wall. It drove forwards, and halted a short distance before the wall as its ultrasonic sensor sensed the wall. The robot then spun in a circle until the ultrasonic sensor saw nothing within several yards, then it went straight again. And it worked. Unlike most times we would use the robots, I could walk away and leave it, and come back and it would not have hit a wall yet. My partner, who really knew these robots and their programming, declared that my program was "Brilliant". To me now it seems exceedingly simple, but at the time I was highly excited at the weeks long process finally working, just on making the program.

***

"There's a place so dark you can't see the end"

Someone had evidently thought it would be funny to turn off the light in the hallway. My vision down the passageway ended quite abruptly, seemingly where all the people were, who would suddenly emerge into me. I slipped through the door to the calculus class. I recognized the other students, but was a little discombobulated in that they were seated facing the wrong direction. The chalk board was behind them. I turned a chair around and sat down facing the correct way that the teacher always taught.

"Do we sit this way?" one of the other students asked.

"Yes," I replied.

The other students turned their chairs around to face the proper way, and I wondered how after two classes, they could not remember which way to sit.

***

"There's a place so dark you can't see the end"

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could barely make out the end of the teacher's table in his office. He exited his office, and came over to us.

"Well, there goes the power," he remarked. "

"Good thing the laptops are full power," Felica said.

"So you can keep doing math, right?" he asked.

"Yes, we are all set," Felicia said. "You can really hear the rain in here."

"Yes, the rain always sounds especially loud in here," he said, "But it really is coming down, isn't it. You're all set?"

"Do you have a calculator?" I asked.

"Oh sure."

"My calculator runs on solar power, and doesn't have a battery."

The teacher laughed. "Okay, I have one."

"Do you have another one?" someone else asked. "I think mine runs on solar power too."

***

"There's a place so dark you can't see the end"

I was in a halo of light, which extended only in a several yard radius from me. Beyond was nought but pitch. Ominous shapes loomed beyond, and Linkin Park's "Forgotten" played in my head. The darkness extending after my light was so complete that I could feel myself staring at individual pieces of dark- never a good thing. The light I was in was strong, yet was fading against the onslought of iniquity ahead.

"Felicia!" I called, "Turn on a light, are you nocturnal or something?"

She looked up (presumably) from the living room.

"Oh, I hadn't noticed."

"There's a place so dark you can't see the end"