On Your Heals, Part 2

Continuing from where I left off, comments welcome.

So, I opened some of the cabinets and drawers. Seeing watches, socks and magazines in these drawers would have surprised anyone in an empty hospital. But, my mind was serene. My body trembled only slightly , though I know I am supposed to be afraid of this desolate yet lived in place. I wouldn't have felt any worry to find out that the beds and chairs were still warm. I sat in one of these chairs, and felt as if seeing through the eyes of someone else. It was a surreal experience, to know that my body was the same yet these feelings were owned by someone who wasn't even present. I decided to continue through the seemingly abandoned hospital , to find the people whose presence could still be felt.

My footsteps echoed through the hallways , heightening my underlying sense of dread. Though the rooms were lit, the hallways stayed dark. I had been looking for a flashlight or even working light switches, but none I had come across seemed to work. The odd thing was that the light switches in the lit rooms didn't work either. I looked for batteries to see if the flashlights were just drained. The ones I did find didn't work either. I happened on one of the freight elevators , so almost involuntarily I pressed the down button on the panel. I had expected the doors to stay closed, so when the elevator shaft came into view, I was genuinely surprised. I looked down the dimly lit shaft with the thought that it may very well go on forever. There was no way I would go down that shaft so I left the elevators and began my search for stairs.

I had now reached the west wing of the floor; the ICU area. After spending an hour searching for some sign of life, I thought I would find something in the ICU. Maybe a doctor , I was hoping. The double doors had large windows to see into the rooms. All the rooms were lit by moonlight, and the curtains were all pulled around the beds. Once again I couldn't hear a single sound. I pushed against the double doors but the were securely locked. I proceeded towards the nurse stations to use their phones. I had spotted one at the end of the hallway I was walking when suddenly I saw a shadow move. It seemed that I had missed someone turn the corner, since the shadow was growing smaller. I approached the corner to see where the shadow was coming from . Several meters away from me, I saw the shadow once again. I nearly choked when I saw it. The shadow wasnt cast by anything. It was just freely there with no bonds to the physical realm. It was amorphous and shifted shape slowly. I felt like jumping yet I was fixed to the ground. I could now feel my heart beating faster and sweat running down my back. The shadow turned into a circle in the middle of the hallow. It began to beat to the pace of my heart. My eyes began to burn , while my vision began to fade. My head became light and I lost conciousness.

When I woke up I was sitting with my back against the nurse station. I tried to stand but my body was tired and my head was feeling dizzy. I grabbed hold of a chair and climbed onto it. My body was cold from profusely sweating. Chills were rushing over my body with my hair standing in goose bumps. I tossed my arms onto the desktop and laid my head down. My head started to intermintently throb painfully. I fumbled around on the desk finally pulling out a drawer. My hand searched for anything it could find that seemed like a bottle of medicine. I pulled my hand out and found a cellphone in my palm. The throbbing pain was calming down enough for me to open the cellphone to discover it still had a charge. I brought the phone to my ear when I heard the sound of static eminate from the ear piece. The static rose and fell till it came to a steady low hum. I looked at the display and found that it was receiving a signal from a cell tower. I dialed my home number and put the phone back to my ear. The low hum was still present, with no ring tone to indicate a call had gone through.

The static suddenly grew louder. I put the phone down and looked forward. The black dot on the floor was back. But it was floating now, in the air. It became too obvious that this wasnt a shadow. But, what I saw next was unmistakenly just that. The dot casted a shadow some how, of a figure. The outline of the figure had a strange form jutting out of it. It looked a bit like a rectangle. Then the light reflected of the floor and I immediately knew what I saw was a cleaver. I picked up the phone and ran out of the ICU. I found a doorway into a staircase and smashed it open with a fire extinguisher. Once through ,I ran down the stairs to be stopped by a black gap in what was supposed to be the steps. It went down into a chasm that had no end. I ran back up past the broken door to the next floor up. I kicked the door down and found myself in the maternity ward. The phone was wildly screeching as I ran down the hallways. At the corner was a door slightly ajar with light streaming out of it. I jumped in and locked the door behind me. All I could hear was my heavy breathing.

Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen review

Alright, this is going to be a hard review to do. Its hard to describe Transformers 2. First some numbers.

On the Decepticon side, there were about 30 robots, with only 5 named bots. On the Autobot side, there were 9 bots, 8 of whom were named (I count a team of 3 bikes as one, as they were just called "Team Arcee"). Of the bots from the previous movie, only Blackout, Megatron,Starscream and Scorponok showed up, while the new named bots were Soundwave and Devestator.

Ok, I give up. There is just too much stuff going on in this movie. We have dozens of un-named bots getting pulverized, some ethnic stereotyping and lots of purile sex comedy. Mr. Bay went as far as adding wrecking balls as testicles for Devestator and a sexpot humanoid decepticon. Its like all of these things were tossed into a blender, and then the resulting puree was a two and a half hour movie. Nearly half the movie was just dumb, with flash cuts to the most retarded things IN THE MIDDLE OF FIGHTS. When Bumblebee shows up first, we get a slow motion shot of a .....doghouse blowing up. Yes ,slow motion dogs.

I cant understand what made Mr. Bay do this. This is some of the worst editing Ive seen in his movies. When his filmography is compared to Transformers 2, you get an appreciation for his other movies like The Island and Bad Boys 2. Why? Those movies werent loaded with garbage that lengthened their run time. The story in this movie was nearly useless. It didnt provide any solid reasoning for anything happening. Bay tossed in stuff that totally makes everything else senseless.


There were humping dogs, humping bots, two ghetto cars with Uncle Tom faces. I half expected them to have giant pink lips. They did have massive overbites and a single gold tooth to make up for the lack of blackface.

This was a rather ridiculous movie, which was so ridiculous, it wasnt enjoyable. Some scenes you can see the CG actually malfunctioning. If you watch the Egypt scenes , you can see that the bots are rendered incorrectly due to their reaction lighting and shadows that completely break their presence in the scene. There were also very important plot points that were completely bungled. One character states that another source of Energon was discovered on Earth. 2 hours later, that new source is actually the Sun. Which isnt on the Earth. Other boondoggles include excruciating attention to the two Uncle Tom bots, at the expense of Ironhide, Ratchet and ,unbelievably, Optimus Prime.

After thinking things through, I think the reason Mr. Bay included the ghetto bots was to spite the people who said that Jazz was too stereotypical. So, to make those critics eat their words, he added TWO racist depictions of black people. This reinforces my feeling that Mr. Bay is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing two-tone director.
Ugh, only watch this movie if you like lowest common denominator movies, and laughing at the audience as they laugh at gay jokes.

On Your Heals

This is the first entry for my literary posts. The following selection is a story that takes place in a seemingly abandoned hospital , with a lone patient dazed from anesthetics trying to understand the situation. The main goal of the introduction passages is to show a patient waking up from anesthetics and finding the entire hospital to be seemingly abandoned. There are surreal signs of the hospital rooms being only recently occupied, causing this person to feel a surreal presence as if those people were still there. The passages after this introduction would be used to explore this strange setting while progressing through the hospital , perhaps towards the main entrance , to find the truth behind this situation. The further out towards the entrance, the patient experiences even more surreal moments. I wont spoil the rest, as the story is still in its planning stages.

My vision's blurry. My head has a throbbing sound , like the whooshing from an echo cardiogram. My body is listless , with no amount of will to force it to movie. My vision is slowly coming back to normal, with the images of a room forming a coherent sight. That feeling of wanting to vomit was also numbing as my vision recovering. I cant hear anything, and the room is only illuminated by the pallor of the moon light. I can see a guard rail on either side of me, and what looks like a heart monitor and some other medical equipment. There didn't seem to be any IV lines on my arm , thankfully. Why am I in a hospital bed, in a badly lit room? And for that matter, where is everyone else? The headache is back, and the throbbing sound in my ear as well. My clothing was lying on a chair next to me bed, so I dressed in my slacks and polo shirt before walking out the door.

I couldnt see through the hallway; it was dark as night. The windows were all shuttered and the blinds closed. It did feel a little creepy , with the atmosphere chilling the sweet on my forehead in an equally strange manner. I swept my hand over my forehead, and the realization that I was still sweating made me feel uneasy. I was physically in terror, but the anesthetics kept my mind from feeling it. There was something wrong, I didnt know what. This entire hospital seemed wrong. I pushed forward, dragging my body along. Several rooms had their doors unlocked, with their lights on. I checked on of these suspicious rooms. There was nobody in here, but the bed looked messy , and a chair was pulled up towards it. It looked as if two people had been in here, concevably talking to each other. I continued searching for signs of people.

So, I opened some of the cabinets and drawers. Seeing watches, socks and magazines in these drawers would have surprised anyone in an empty hospital. But, my mind was serene. My body trembled only slightly , though I know I am supposed to be afraid of this deselate yet lived in place. I wouldnt have felt any worry to find out that the beds and chairs were still warm. I sat in one of these chairs, and felt as if seeing through the eyes of someone else. It was a surreal experience, to know that my body was the same yet these feelings were owned by someone who wasnt even present. I decided to continue through the seemingly abondoned hospital , to find the people whose presence could still be felt.

Walking death machines of James Camerons Avatar

For the last 10 years, James Cameron has been working on a movie titled Avatar. The movie features an alien world called Pandora (Id like to call this blunt subtlety) and involves aliens, power armor and ,possibly, a lot of explosions.

Last weeks E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) featured the first reveal of the power armor used by the US Marine Corps on the planet Pandora.

As a fan of giant robots and power armor, I just have one question. Why is there a glass pilot cabin? Wouldn't you want to cover that part up with lots of armor?


[Collider courtesy of io9]

Star Trek : The belated review

I had watched Star Trek about 2 weeks ago, so I apologize for any factual errors.


Star Trek, by JJ Abrams, is not a reboot. A reboot would be a movie that takes the original concept and "updates" it. No, thanks to some temporal shenanigans, this Star Trek has no connection to previous ones, other than names and pivotal events. So what is it? Its an alternate universe. Where as a reboot would create a new universe , this movie didn't do that. A temporal anomaly created a subtly different universe, where in James T Kirk had developed differently.

In the original series, Kirk was a boisterous and confident womanizer, who looked up to his father and was inspired by him to became a captain. In the new Star Trek, Kirk never met his father due to time travelling Romulans. As such, he was boisterous and a womanizer but most importantly , he wasn't confident in himself. JJ Abrams Kirk was a rebellious yet unmotivated individual , content with being the big fish in the small pond that is Kansas. Though brilliant in comparison to his peers, the alternate universe Kirk decided not to push himself further.

A chance meeting with Captain Pike though, changes his mind. Pike's recollection of George's Kirks 17 minutes of bravery, that saved his pregnant mother and the 800 member crew of the Kelvin. Pike , in essence, asks Kirk "Can you do better?".

Well, he certainly does just as well as his father. The alternate reality Kirk just as easily cheats on the Kobayashi Maru exam, beds beautiful women while skipping classes at the Star Fleet academy, and is boisterous as ever. But, he is a bit more jaded than the original Kirk. Without his father to lead him into adulthood, he is less than appreciative of authority and treats Spock like a chump.

Spock is just as screwed up as Kirk. Being a human-Vulcan hybrid , his peers tormented him into exercising his more human aspects, a very unfavorable set of uncontrolled emotions. Spock becomes cynical, if a Vulcan is even capable of cynicism. This is a departure from the cool and confident Spock of the original series.

The major temporal fissure is the destruction of Spocks home world. This is the major turning point that splits JJverse from the original series. The culprits were time travelling Romulans seeking revenge for the destruction of their own home.

Battles are fought, and technology still beats numbers, as the technology on a mining ship from about 100 years into the future can take out the combined arms of half a dozen Starfleet ships.

Our heroes save the day, with a new timeline birthed. This is an alternate universe, not totally new, but not a reboot. Its the same world, just a little (a lot) different.


Liked :
New Story : This isn't the old Star Trek, but it also has many of the qualities of it, most importantly the characters. It was genuinely interesting to see a story that never appeared in the previous series. This is a big plus for me, because many of the previous movies were just terrible stories trying to fit into an established time line. With a new timeline, we don't have to worry about fitting things, so good stories can flourish.

Battle sequences : Its been so long since Ive seen ship-to-ship combat in a big budget movie. The effects made the action positively amazing.

Presentation : The movie had high production values, with great vistas and long shots that revealed a subtly futuristic landscape. Music was great as well, and so was the acting for the most part. The main players ,Kirk and Spock, were handled very well.

Didn't Like:

Villains : The villains were miners on board a Romulan mining ship. The leader, Nero, was a sort of WTF character. He lost his wife and child in the destruction of Romulus, so he spends 25 years trying to destroy his universes Spock, and Vulcan. It would have made more sense if he had lost more (maybe his honor, or something), to elicit this kind of deranged response from a civilian, of all people.


Overall, the movie was great, and its sure to be a classic in the alternate universe of JJ Abrams. It would be very interesting , though, if the alterverse had hints of Mirror, Mirror, perhaps a stand-off between an ultra-xenophobic Terran Empire analogue and Starfleet.

Grand Opening

Welcome to Quantum Sentience, a personal blog about science, science fiction, science fantasy (you'll know what I mean by this further down this post), entertainment and general stuff. Since I'm a budding writer, Ill also be posting excerpts from drafts of some stories I have written. I'll start off with the self-contained short stories first, so that I can write up longer stories while reviewing your comments and suggestions.

I mentioned science fantasy earlier. What is it? Well, its fictional stories that use magic or technology settings to develop non-fictional worlds. For example, steampunk would be more science fantasy than normal fantasy, as steampunk stories revolve on clockwork, magitech (magical technology) and steam-powered technology. The stories don't necessarily rely on any advanced science concepts (like wormholes, nuclear fusion, genetic engineering etc.) but they produce stories that take place in settings not possible with current technology (or magic, if you believe in it). Now, you'll ask, why not just say that they're plain fantasy? A lot of these stories often use these settings to do nearly the same thing that science fiction tries to do, which is to discern human nature and the human condition. That is to say, to put people in a situation, and observe how they react.

Is there a lot of science fantasy? Not all steam-punk stories are like I described. Often they are more thematically similar to thrillers. Some though do , like the book "Alchemy of Stone" by Ekatarina Sedia. This book takes place in an alternate world where there are clockwork robots powered by alchemy. The main character, Mattie , has a dilema. Her creator holds the literal key to her survival, but she wants to follow her own will and not of her masters'.

The idea of enslaved machinery is common in SF, but often the machinery are shown to be hostile and threatening to us fleshy humans. We have Mattie. though who is just as much a robot as any other, but more sympathetic to us humans. Her story is a slaves fight for freedom, something people understand to be a distinctly human story.

This reminds me of a concept known as the Uncanny Valley . The concept revolves around the social interaction of robots with humans. At first the robots are inhuman with bare minimum interaction, then comes a point where the robots have physicaly unthreatening physiques and imperfect human interaction. Humans would feel comfortable with these robots, as they would be pleasing to look at and interact with. The trough in this valley is then a point in the development of robotics that creates robots that look nearly human, with equivelantly near perfect interaction. Its the imperfections of these almost-human constructs that frighten people. Ill talk more about this concept in a later post.

Anyways, welcome to my blog. You can give me suggestions on what you want me to cover next. I will try to post at least once a week, though this is my first "real" blog, so please be gentle on me.