Of Scheming Siblings, Wrathful Wishes, and Catastrophic Consequences

The flames flickered, the wax dripped, and the icing melted on my birthday cupcake as I sat all alone in a rundown cafe, scoffing bitterly as I wished myself a wonderful year ahead.

My parents, for what seemed like the thousandth time now, had proven their preference for my simpering suck-up of a sister yet again. Ever since my mother had given birth to the little devil, she and my father had shoved me aside like an outgrown, unwanted piece of clothing. While they bought my baby sister Emma brand-new rompers and frocks, I was forced into second-hand garments. While they drove Emma to preschool every morning, I travelled the five kilometres to school on a rickety old cycle. While Emma was showered with attention and affection, I was ignored, dismissed, told that I was “far too old to expect constant entertainment”. For five years now, I’d watched, helpless, as the scheming shrew usurped my position in my family.

But today, I decided, it had gone too far. It was my fifteenth birthday, and my parents had taken my sister out to a Build-A-Bear workshop, forgetting to wish me a good morning, let alone a joyful birthday. The situation would be ridiculous if it weren’t so devastating.

I checked my watch - it was eleven o’clock, the exact time I had come into existence fifteen years ago. Then, I blew out the candles on the sugary confection in front of me, and wished with all my might for Emma to disappear - to go somewhere far, far away and never come back.

After hours of silently stewing in my misery, I paid my bill, left the restaurant, and strolled down the street towards my neighbourhood. My parents were probably back home by now, taking an endless stream of photographs of “the lovely little darling” as she messed around with another new toy. I wondered if they would even notice my return.

When I entered the house, however, it was empty. Perplexed, I called out for my parents, but received no response. Whatever could be keeping them out so long? It had been more than three hours since they’d left, and they still weren’t back. I phoned both of them, but to no avail. Eventually, I flopped down onto a sofa beside the window and peered out every few minutes, hoping to catch sight of their car pulling into the driveway. Then, suddenly, I heard the sound of an automobile driving down the narrow street leading up to our gate. I bolted outside, desperate to see my family. But to my shock and horror, the vehicle reversing into our drive was not my mother’s cherry red mustang. It was a police car.

A willowy woman in a cop’s uniform approached me warily. “Are you Mr. Gardner?” She enquired. I nodded, too nervous to form words. “Well then,” she responded, “I’m going to need you to come with me.” I followed her into the police car, terrified. “What’s going on?” I asked, as soon as I had found my voice again. “I think it’s best you hear it from your parents, dear,” the woman replied sympathetically. But why was she sympathetic? Was there something for her to be sympathetic about? What could have happened that called for her sympathy?

The drive to the police station seemed to last years, although realistically, I knew it was an hour at most. I chewed on my nails, tugged at my hair and fidgeted in my seat all the way. When we finally reached the precinct, I darted out of the car, not bothering to wait for the policewoman to follow me. I had to know what had ensued, right away.

The receptionist, taking in my frenzied appearance, wordlessly showed me into a lounge decked with colourful curtains and flamboyant cushions. In direct contrast with the general cheeriness of the atmosphere were my parents, huddled together on a couch as if they’d seen a ghost. “Mum!” I exclaimed, feeling relief, then confusion, and finally even more worry wash over me. “Dad!”

My dad glanced up at me with haunted, unseeing eyes, but my mother continued to stare at the ground as if frozen in time. Dread began to seep through my skin, squeezing the air out of my lungs and trickling steadily down my spine. Something was terribly wrong.

“Dad, what’s happened?” I asked, panicking. When he didn’t reply, I turned to the secretary who had led me to them. “Please tell me what’s happened!”

“Mr. Gardner,” the lady began cautiously, “I’m so very sorry, but your sister... well, your sister’s dead.”

I stared at her disbelievingly, incapable of comprehending her words. Emma wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. She was alive, and she’d come waddling through the doors any second now, whining that she was hungry. This lady was barmy if she thought Emma was really gone.

“Your parents were searching for decorations for your birthday party later this evening,” She continued. “It was a surprise, apparently, organised by little Emma.”

So they had remembered my birthday. It seemed a silly thing to fixate on, but it was the only thing my shellshocked mind could grasp at the moment. My parents were planning a party for me. Emma was planning a party for me. Realising that the woman was still speaking, I shifted my focus back to her.

“The girl spotted some fancy streamers in a shop window, and the next thing your parents knew, she was halfway across the street, right in the path of an SUV.”

“They tried to rescue her,” she continued. “She was rushed to the hospital, and for a while it seemed like she had a chance of survival. The doctors truly believed she was steady, but at eleven o’clock, her heart unexpectedly gave out.”

“It’s ironic,” Mum finally spoke, her voice scratchy and hoarse. “She died at the very same moment you were born fifteen years ago.”

I didn’t reply, too occupied with making sense of the whirlpool of thoughts and emotions flooding my brain. Emma had died. She had disappeared. She was gone forever, never to return. I had wished for that, hadn’t I? I had wished for her demise at the exact timing of my birth, and my wish had come true. So why wasn’t I whooping in joy? Why did I feel instead like the weight of the Earth had been cast upon my shoulders? And why did I want, more than anything, to hurt myself just as much as I’d hurt my innocent little sister? I had no answers.

The situation would be ridiculous if it weren’t so devastating.

Amal Shafiq and the Cat Burglar

It was eleven o’clock in the night and the village of Alfriston was as silent as a graveyard. In the upstairs bedroom of a rundown little cottage lay Amal Shafiq, a girl of twelve with far too much imagination and far too little sense.

Amal had been tossing and turning in bed for hours, terrified at the thought that she was all alone at home. Her family had relocated to this part of East Sussex a mere month ago, and she had already heard stories of the skilled cat burglars who frequented the area. She had brushed them off as tall tales then, but now that she was all by herself in her spooky new house, they seemed a lot less likely to be fabricated.

Just as she was finally on the verge of sleep, Amal heard a loud, crashing noise from the driveway. She shot up immediately, scrambled out of bed, and stumbled down the creaking staircase. Someone was outside the front door! The scared twelve-year-old peeked out of the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the intruder. Unfortunately, the foggy air outdoors made it impossible to catch sight of anything other than vague silhouettes.

Amal collapsed on a sofa, overwhelmed with terror. She was home alone in the middle of the night, with a robber outside who could break in at any moment. She had no way of contacting her parents, as the ancient telephone still hadn’t been repaired. Amal racked her brains, trying to come up with a plan. She decided to be brave, and live up to the example set by Jo March and her other role models. So she crept into the kitchen and grabbed the deadliest-looking knife she could find. She would sneak out through the back door and attack the looter from behind. Hopefully, the element of surprise would be enough to defeat them. If it wasn’t... well, at least she’d go down in history as a true heroine. With her family’s social standing, she may even be featured in the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls series.

Silencing her daydreams before they could carry her away, Amal turned the knob of the back door and slipped into the narrow lawn outside. She slunk around to the front, ready to pounce as soon as she saw the invader. She took one step further, expecting to finally encounter them, only to see the tail of a cat disappear around the corner, leaving behind the debris of a plant pot it had destroyed minutes ago.

The Future of Transportation: Boring?

Did you know that depending on where you live, you could spend upto 243 hours in traffic every year? Yes, it’s true! This means that you may have wasted upto 10 days a year stuck in a vehicle. This may seem inevitable, but what if I told you that there could be a solution to the problem of soul-destroying traffic?

Elon Musk, best-known as the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, believes that the answer lies in underground transport. Since 2016, The Boring Company started by the American multi-millionaire, has been designing and constructing “safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost” tunnels for transportation. Along with this, Musk has come up with an effective means of movement through these tunnels - a speedy yet safe system he calls Loop. If The Boring Company succeeds, the issue of traffic will be resolved for good. But is this success possible? It’s time to find out.

First, let’s understand what sets The Boring Company apart from other tunnelling corporations. The Boring Company, unlike most other companies in the burrowing business, is constantly modifying its methods to reach maximum efficiency. So far, it has iterated three generations of Tunnel Boring Machines - Godot, Godot+ and Prufrock. According to Elon Musk, each of these machines was “developed to further increase tunneling speed and reduce tunneling cost”. Most tunnelling companies spend between $100 million to $1 billion per mile. The Boring Company, however, has brought tunnelling prices down to 10 million dollars per mile, which is far cheaper than they have ever been.

The Boring Company dreams of not only improving the efficiency of tunnelling, but also revolutionising transportation today. Thus, its tunnels will be built to accommodate Elon Musk’s new transportation apparatus, Loop. Which brings us to our next question - what exactly is Loop and how does it work?

According to The Boring Company’s website, Loop is “an all-electric, zero-emissions, high-speed underground public transportation system,” that uses Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEV), Tesla creations that can travel up to 150 miles per hour. These vehicles will “operate autonomously within the Loop system”. Every vehicle will carry a limited number of passengers, who can enter and exit the machine at surface stations, subsurface stations, and subsurface open-air stations. Each station will be approximately the size of two parking spaces, as it only needs to hold one AEV at a time. This is an advantage, as it means a station can be built anywhere from outside a school to inside a parking garage. Now, how is Loop different from a subway or metro?

Source: https://www.boringcompany.com/loop

In the words of Elon Musk, “Loop resembles an underground highway more than a subway system.” While in a subway, a train stops at multiple stations before reaching a final destination, Loop consists of smaller, car-like vehicles that, carrying upto 16 passengers per ride, travel directly to their terminus without stopping at each station on the way. For example, I imagine that if there were three groups of 16 people in a station, each group would be assigned to one AEV. The group travelling to the furthest location would set off first, followed by those headed for a midpoint, and finally the group going to the closest stop.

 Thus, using Loop is far more convenient than riding a subway train, for an equal or lower price.

 The Boring Company’s triumph would mean the eradication of traffic, which in turn would significantly lessen pollution, wastage of time, and road accidents.

The last question we must ask ourselves is, is “The Boring Company” a suitable name for this institution? My answer to that is yes, definitely. My mind almost turned to sludge while researching it. I have taken a major risk for your entertainment, and all I ask in return is that you share your feedback on this blog.

The innovations we need to avoid a climate disaster: A TED Talk by Bill Gates

Ever since the mid-twentieth century, humans have been at risk of a major climate disaster caused by global warming. Several philanthropists, including Jeff Bezos and Jeremy Grantham, have donated millions of dollars to the prevention of this calamity. One such benefactor is Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, who has not only funded the fight against climate change, but has also written the book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster”. In this 47 minute podcast, Bill Gates explains the actions we must take to preempt a climatic catastrophe.

Gates, who has invested two billion dollars in combating climate change so far and plans to continue funding it, speaks about the “green premium”. This term refers to the additional cost of choosing a product with no emissions of greenhouse gases, such as an electric car, over a product that is not environmentally friendly, like a car powered by fuel. As the green premium drops, it becomes easier for ordinary people like us to switch to green products. Thus, Gates suggests that our goal should be to bring the green premium down to zero. To accomplish this, we need:

• people designing eco-friendly technology - Innovation
• investors funding these designs - Supply
• and customers choosing to buy these items - Demand 

Some of Bill Gates’ other priorities when stopping climate change are a) creating green hydrogen (a form of hydrogen that comes from renewable resources and can provide clean power for manufacturing, transportation and more), b) practising direct carbon capture (filtering the air, removing carbon dioxide, and sequestering it into a pressurised form for millions of years) and c) developing nuclear energy. He believes that he is doing his part to avoid a climate disaster by taking the above measures.

Gates tells us that we must begin fighting global warming now, as there is so much to work on, and so little time, before a climate disaster occurs. If we manage to prevent such a disaster, it will be one of humankind’s greatest accomplishments - far greater than even the prevention of World Wars.