Goodbye Cruel World

It was early in the morning and the fog was slowly lifting. The sun gloomily streamed down through black clouds giving the earth a dead feel. There I stood on the drop off ledge near the house the cool rain licking at me and making my clothes stick to my skin and droop.

My body started convulsing and burning tears flared down my cheeks and mixed with the rain. My hands clenched tightly in balls at my side my arms were in no mood to budge from their position. My thoughts were mixed with loss, anger, and confusion at myself; the tyrannical presence in my mind urged me on closer to the ledge until I sat down on the cool cinder blocks.

I perched myself there for what seemed to be ages wrestling with my own mind trying to understand the concept of what I was attempting to do. An image of me falling off flashed through my mind and fear welled up and coursed through me. My head turned ever so slowly and my wide, reddened eyes stared at the vacant spot where a car was supposed to be. My hand shook uncontrollably either from fear or the cold air. Even though I was scared there was still that presence goading me on and overpowering my other thoughts.

My breath caught itself and wavered almost to asphyxiation. A resurgence of tears burst from me and my body convulsed anew. I scooted myself forward until I was teetering on the edge. The same image played through my mind a million times and each time a deep voice tried to convince me that it was the right path to take, “Why live in such a cruel and unforgiving world? You can end it right now.” I shook my head violently causing me to slip a little. Panic and fear ran rampant and my heart slammed in my chest.

I scrambled off the ledge onto the ground panting heavily, and my heart beat was the only noise I could hear. The voice that was urging me on seemed to get enraged before I mustered up the strength to shut it out for good. My hands shook so violently it felt like they might fall off as I moved them up to my face and cried even more.

A while later bright beams of light from a car enveloped around me and I looked up from my position against the wall to see my furious babysitter. She briskly walked up to me and violently grabbed me by the arm. The rest was blurred as she yelled and chided me, but I didn’t hear what she said because a wall had gone up around my mind making everything numb to me.

Sensory Detail: Sound (intercepted signals)

http://margaretnoble.net/blog/intercepted-signals/#comments
The Android lies still on the cool floor of the tech lab. Its core hums and pulses unceasingly as slowly the upper functions come to life. A crackling noise from the audio receptor invades the rhythm of the core. The hum from the limb motors whirs itself into existence every so often. Occasional rumbling from outside just reminds the android of what has happened. Squeaks fade in and out from broken computers all throughout the lab. What sounds to be a fading helicopter engine is actually the noise of multiple system failures of the android. The sound of air floating by seems to slightly penetrate the stillness. Static flares into existence more and more as the systems boot up. A sharp ping noise rips into the near silence as the visual systems creak into life. A barely audible click emerges for a split second as errors flood the androids vision. The cores rhythm deepens a little as more and more programs become active. The rhythm seems to become off balance and out of sync as the android attempts to repair itself. The rhythm itself quickens its pace until it appears to be one complete sound. The core attempts to sustain itself but it eventually succumbs to the silence and dies.

Locker Problem

The way I got the answer was that after doing it through 16 times I found that a pattern emerged. This pattern shows that out of 1000 lockers there are only 31 of them that remain open. The 31 lockers are made up of all perfect squares. The perfect squares are all unique compared to the rest of the lockers. All their factors add up to being odd. For example, 16 is made up of one times 16, four times four, and eight times two; As you can see it has a odd number of factors instead of the usual equal amount of factors. It seemed to me that every time you go through the odd ones would get skipped the next time around leaving them open as my diagram below clearly shows.