星火30篇文章貫通考研詞匯11
Unit 11 Edward and His Incredible Black Hole………177
愛德華和他那難以置信的黑洞
小時(shí)候，最吸引人的童話故事或者動(dòng)畫片總是與星空和宇宙有關(guān)。很多人在童年里都做過飛上太空?探索宇宙的夢(mèng)想。愛德華將夢(mèng)想付諸實(shí)施，雖然其結(jié)局是悲慘的，但誰能說，他的科學(xué)探索精神不是可貴的?
Edward had a marvelous plan. He was going to create a genuine mini Black Hole, right here on earth.
Edward lived alone in the suburban sprawl(無規(guī)則蔓延)of a large city. His father had experimented with inventions in his large steel garage. Because of this, his mother had left home four years ago. He missed his father who had died of a heart attack two summers ago.
Edward worked during the day as an attendant at the City Library where he taught himself technology so that he could understand his father’s notebooks. At home he stumbled around in track-pants(運(yùn)動(dòng)褲)and a T-shirt and busily modified his father’s equipment.
Edward put coils of copper tube, large permanent magnets, sheets of aluminum foil, old iron tubes full of silicone(硅樹脂) sealant(密封劑) together to construct a two and a half meters high intricate apparatus, putting a copper vertical horn on top. The horn, like the front of a large trumpet, was pointed towards the ceiling.
Today was Edward’s twenty-second birthday, remembered only by the lovely Fiona, the Circulation Librarian. At lunchtime, Fiona had kissed him on the cheek in front of everybody in the tearoom. Edward had flushed crimson(深紅色)with embarrassment.
But now was the moment. He climbed the stepladder(活動(dòng)梯子) and peered into the trumpet. The curved mirror at its base magnified his reflected image and he admired his golden curly hair and his green eyes, but loathed(討厭) his big ears.
Edward sipped on a glass of cheap soda and whispered, “Black holes are the mysteries of our universe. Everything that enters them never leaves——even light.” He had a collection of hardware items arranged near him so that he could throw them into the Black Hole and watch them disappear. Edward sat at the computer controls for the Black Hole Generator.
“That’s one small step for a man…” Edward intoned(拖長音) and double-clicked on the start icon. There was a loud vibrating noise and a strange glaring effect in the horn. Edward didn’t realize that a simple software mistake had reversed the polarity(極性) of his black hold generator. Yes, he could see that the interior of the horn was indeed the deepest, blackest thing that he had ever seen, but within the blackness he could soon make out sparkling points of every color imaginable.
“Stars?” he thought just before he died. Within a few seconds, around a hundred million colorful ballpoint pens shot out of the horn, bounced off the roof and filled up the garage, spearing poor Edward to death. As every lost ballpoint pen in the world poured out of the black hole, the pressure blew the top off the garage and the mountain of pens continued to grow.
Soon every lost sock in the world flew into the air from the trumpet, and covered the mountain of pens. Then a great number of shopping lists fluttered into the air, followed by an emission of lottery tickets, and train, tram, bus and concert tickets. This was followed by every letter, telegram and E-mail that had never arrived.
Edward’s garage then collapsed as millions of metal keys shot out of the horn and rained down---lost front door keys, car keys and locker keys. The overflow continued as sewing needles, cuff(袖口) links, pencil sharpeners, razors and lost passports, followed by countless of pins.
Can openers, bottle openers and corkscrews(開塞鉆) were followed by sink plugs and remote controls. As these flooded over the local community, they were covered by clothes pegs(衣夾), the caps of toothpaste tubes and a flow of overdue(過期的) library books.
A veritable(真正的) mountain of lost-receipts needed by the taxman was followed by every lost screw nut from a world of car engines, household appliances and technical instruments.
As the city sagged(下陷) beneath the weight of all these lost things, millions of credit cards fluttered into the air and rained down.
Edward would have been amazed, except that he was long dead.
Finally, just before the black hole generator disappeared in a puff of smoke, every lost love in the history of the world was expelled into the air and rained down in an overflow of desolation.
