Space Affair by Peter Viney. 1.BETA 4297

Дата публикации: Sep 11, 2014 3:17:42 PM

Gareth climbed out of the freezer. He knocked a few I small pieces of ice from his clothes, and stood up. He shook his head. A freezer technician was standing next to him. She was wearing a silver metal suit.

'Name?'

'Gareth … Gareth Palmer.'

'Number?'

'Beta 4297.'

'Job?'

'Garden Technician, Class Four.'

'What are six threes?'

'Eighteen.'

'And nine fours?'

'Nine fours are thirty-six.'

'Where are you?'

'On the New Adventurer.'

'Where are we going?'

'To the star Orelia. Planet Five.'

The freezer technician put down her pen. She turned to the doctor. 'He's all right. No problems.'

She turned back to Gareth. 'You're OK, Beta 4297. You can go to your room. Dinner will be in forty minutes. Report for work at 18.00 hours.'

Gareth walked out of the Freezer Room. He was always a little nervous. It didn't happen very often, but every two or three months, someone didn't wake up, or they did wake up but they couldn't remember who they were or what they were doing. He thought about Philip. Philip was a garden technician, too. When he woke up last year he was like a baby. He couldn't speak or feed himself. They put him in the hospital for tests, but there was nothing they could do. They had to kill him. There was no room on a starship for passengers.

Gareth hurried to his room. He wanted a shower. That was always the first thing you wanted after two weeks in the freezer. He found his room, stopped and looked at the sign on the door.

ROOM 543

ALPHA 3461

BETA 4297

He opened the door and went in. The room, as usual, was empty. He took his key from his pocket and opened his cupboard. He took out a work suit and laid it on the bed, and then he took off the metal freezer suit, and put it in the cupboard. He got in the shower, and turned on the hot water. He felt better immediately. He stood in the shower for two minutes, then the shower turned itself off. Two minutes was the longest time you could have in the shower. Then he saw something in the bottom of the shower tray. A little piece of gold metal.

He picked it up. It was an earring. A small gold earring. 'Alpha 3461,' he said to himself. 'So, Alpha 3461 is a woman.' He smiled. He had never met Alpha 3461, of course. She was in the freezer now. She was going to be there for two weeks, then Gareth had to go to the freezer, and Alpha 3461 could come back to the room for her two weeks. Alpha and Beta workers never met. There were a lot of rules. You couldn't leave anything in the room. Everything had to go in your cupboard. Nobody ever asked about the other workers. It was easier.

Gareth put on his work suit. He put the earring on the table. He looked at it for a minute. He knew nothing about Alpha 3461. They had used the same room for three years now, and they were going to use it for seven or eight years more. He didn't know what she looked like, how old she was or what she did.

Вопросы:

- Guess, what a metaphor of a female freezer technician is? Why is her suit silver metal?

- Why is a special technician questioning awaked people? Why it is not a doctor's duty?

- Why is the number in Beta's nickname so high?

- Suppose, what is a garden technician's duties on the spaceship? How important his work is?

- Why do you think crewpeople have to be freezed? Why do they accept a risk of becoming like a baby?

- Why are there a lot of rules around crew's living cabins? Why nobody have to ask about the other workers?

- Why did Gareth smile when he realized that Alpha 3461 is a woman?

- Why do you think the author use the nickname Alpha for a woman and Beta for a man? Is there an uncontrolled message?

2. Вопросы:

1. What do you guess a metaphor of a female freezer technician is? Why is her suit silver metal?

2. Why is questioning awaked people is special technicians' duty but not doctors'?

3. Why is Beta's ID number so big?

4. What do you suppose a garden technician's duties on the spaceship is? How important his work is?

5. Why do you think the crewpeople have to be freezed? Why do they accept a risk of death?

6. Why are there a lot of rules around the crew's living cabins? Why doesn't anybody have to ask about the other workers?

7. Why did Gareth smile when he realized that Alpha 3461 was a woman?

8. Why do you think the author uses the nickname Alpha for a woman and Beta for a man? Is there an uncontrolled message?

The first question is what a metaphor of a female freezer technician means.

I think that a female freezer technician is metaphor of a mother because the awakening of a person from the freezer is like a birth of this person because there is a little chance of a death or some problem with her or his mind and freezer technician's duty is to decide how normal is a person after the freezer sleep.

Therefore a freezer technician decides about a person to live or to die after the awakening.

2.

The first question is what kind of metaphor a female freezer technician character is.

I think that the female freezer technician is a metaphor for a mother because a person's awakening from the freezer is like a birth of this person because there is a little chance of death or mental problems and it's the freezer technician's duty to decide how adequate the person after the awakening is.

Therefore it's a freezer technician who decides if the person should live or die.

Reported speech http://e-repa.ru/speech-patterns/reported_speech/reported-title.html

The next question is why a female freezer technician suit is silver metal.

I think that the author chose this color because he wanted to show us that the female freezer technician like an angel who decides that a person would live or would die and this color shows us that she is a metaphore of cleanness and purity and she can't make a mistake.

2.

The next question aims at the idea why a female freezer technician suit is silver metal.

I think that the author chooses this color because he wants to show that the female freezer technician is like an angel who decides if a person should live or die and this color shows that she is a metaphor of cleanness and purity so she can't make a mistake.

The next question is why questioning awaked people is a special technician's duty but not doctors'.

I think it is so because doctors is much more qualified profession than a freezer technician who 's duty is simple questioniing of awaked people but not to take care of sick people and I think that the number of awaked people is very big and they are waking up simultaniously. So we need many freezer technician for questioning them.

2.

The next question gives the idea why inquiring awakened people is a special technician's duty but not a doctor's.

I think it is so because a doctor is a more qualified profession than a freezer technician whose duty is to question awakened people but not taking care of them.

I think that the number of simultaneously awakened people is very big. So we need many freezer technicians for questioning.

The next question is why Beta's id number is so big. I think that number means that the total number of the spaceship crew is several thousands

2.

The next question is why Beta's id number is so long. I think that the length of a number means that the total number of the spaceship crew are several thousands

The next question is what a garden technician's duty on the spaceship is.

I think that a garden technician's duty is taking care after plants.

I think it is a very important duty because I think almost all of food in the spaceship is produced from the gardens.

2.

The next question I'm going to answer is what a garden technician's duty on the spaceship is.

I think that a garden technician's duty is taking care after the plants.

I think it is a very important duty because the most part of food in the spaceship is presumably produced at the gardens.