Tenth Grade 2019
First Place: Maria Harutyunyan, Yerevan
One day you are exploring the area near your home and find an abandoned village.
Thinking about it now, I really should've tried to pay more attention to the road, but I don't think I regret my poor decisions.
At some point during the summer vacation, I'd come to the conclusion, that I literally have nothing to do. It was a slightly cloudy day, so going out wouldn't be too harmful to my skin. I stuffed my phone into my pocket, put on my earphones, sunglasses, and left the house. The beat of the music made me dance a little, while I went to the field. The field smelled fresh like a cold shower. Suddenly, I noticed a...Was it a house? I'm not sure anymore. I approached it, and opened the door. It led me somewhere, but it definitely wasn't the inside of a building, as the walls seemed to fade into nothingness and the grey sky was still visible over my head. Instead, this placed looked just like the area I live in, but a bit...off. All of it looked a bit off. The air was filled with fine mist, which gathered up a little at my feet, and all the colors looked a bit desaturated.
-"Hello? Is anyone there?," I called out, recieving no response that wasn't my own voice rebounding agaist a wall of some sort. Walking down the main street. It had happened before. I've been here once. Heck, I live here! Maybe I still got sunstruck? Despite the cloudiness of the day? I checked the time: 3:36. Something tells me, that that was the exact time I left the house, but I could've been mistaken. Just as I thought of calling one of my friends, Eric, he showed up right across the street. I ran towards him, not even cosidering the possibity of getting run over by a car in this hellish dimension.
-"Eric! Hey!"
He didn't even bat an eye. He wasn't there. Or rather, I wasn't actually there. Gunshot. Eric drops, dead. I don't think I realized what just happened. A knife materialized in my hand. "For protection maybe?" I thought. I saw my hands--scratch that--I saw my entire body move, independant of my conscience. As I thought I'd reached the end, I checked the time again. 3:36. I didn't have time to think about how there was no concept of time in this place. The music had stopped, but I Was scared to take my eaphones out. From just looking around, I'd concluded that this place souded like an eerie ringing in the ears, and I was sensitive to that type of sounds.
I just stabbed someone. I may be wrong, but I knew that person. It didn't let me stop, I just kept walking. It told me to just move on, that this is nothing to worry about. I just listened to it because it seemed like the most rational thing to do. How pathetic. Run. Don't look at people's faces. All my friends are in my head. I just killed them all, and I can't seem to get out. Where are the houses? Oops, wrong question, the houses are exactly where they have to be. Where is that one specific house that got me here in the first place? It tells me that there's only one target left. I thought I had everyone, though! "It's you." What? "The last target is yourself." I'm not dying for this. "You have to, to defeat the monsters, to stop creating friends." I'm definitely not doing that. "Well, say goodbye."
...Goodbye. Another gunshot A mirror shattered, and I fell down as well. "Good job." Am I alive? "Definitely not"
I woke up in the middle of the field. I checked the time. 3:36. Wait-no, that's wrong. It was actually 6:36. Phew. I asked a passerby if there's an empty abandoned village nearby. They said that there is, actually. I realized, that I'd been daydreaming about that place sire I was little, but it left my thoughts a few years ago. I'd assumed, that this was a manifestation of most of my fears, as I do wonder sometimes, if what we see is real or not, smashed together with my desire to visit the old village. At that moment, Eric called, and asked if we could hang out. How could I explain, that I dreamt that I--or something--killed him? I thought that I could just keep it a secret, unless he brings it up. I texted my parent, then headed over to Eric's house.
Second Place: Hayk Karapetyan, Yerevan
One day you are exploring the area near your home and find an abandoned village.
"The Ruins"
--Project report.--Name. Hayk Karapetyan
Age. 29 Sex. Male
Company. Works individually
Specification.--Archeologism and Bio-chemistry
note. "This is an unscientific describtion of the story"-
To clarify what this story is about, my friend and co-worker in the laboratory-Aren Sedrakyan, and I found out about a very interesting village, located 25 kms south-west from the border of Zambia, Africa. The interesting thing about it, is that after a long research, we couldn't find any evidence, that a human has touched or seen it for already 3000 years, yet it isn't even too far from civilization, it's like the ancient village just appeared from nowhere, or fell from the sky itself. Anyways, I think the real story will uncover more, here we go!
note. "I'm writing this story in real time, and I do not know what is going to happen in the end"
June 30: The first day of our expedition. First off, we-Me, Aren, the helping crew and the specialized dog by the name "Alpaca" (cute), explored the terrain. The road ended about 20 kms before our destination point, however, the sand wasn't much of a difficulty for our cars, despite the fact, that it seemed like it was purposefully getting into our shoes.
The area seemed to be an endless desert, with a couple of bushes arond. We specifically picked this day, for the weather to be calm, there were no sandstorms, which are quite common in this area. As we were getting closer to the village, the green around us was getting thicker, eventually forming a jungle.
The jungle in cooperation with the angle of the cliff we had to go up on made it unpassable for our cars, and we had to continue on foot. As I got out of our van, the breezy air instantly cought my face. The jungle seemed both dry and cool at the same time. I took a deep breath, and started climbing. We didn't have to climb for long, as we reached the top of the cliff, we got an amazingly stunning view of the village, that is when we new, our research padi off.
In 1 and a half hours we actually entered the village, wearing gas masks, to avoid possible intoxification. However, the tools showed, that the village was clearer than most of the world, really.
As we passed by the runes, which once were stunning works of art, we saw many hieroglyphes and carved pictures on the wall, however, they were nothing like what I've seen before. They were more symethric, more thought out, instead of people or mythical creatures, strange looking symbols were carved. The buildings and carvings were stunning in their complexity, as techiques from modern architecture were used.
The aura of the village was so calm, yet so tence, none of us wanted to break the golden silence, and we walked in quiet, with the only thing breaking it, our footsteps on broken crystal statues.
As we reached the very center of the village, we stood in front of a great temple. Two guys stood outside as patrol, while the rest of us went inside. The bright greenish light from the mix of the trees and the sun got quickly replaced by pitch darkness. In the middle of the temple we found a big, square shaped hole, as the flare measured, about 12 metres long.
Aren and I jumped in with a zipline, and quickly found us in a small dark room, as we saw a mysterious looking, egg-shaped material installed in the ground.
We put flashlights around and carefully observed the material Not too long after, we put the egg into a vacuum containing freezer and got back to our vans.
After a week of searching the village, we cut the team in half, to work more concentrated. I was put as a responsible for the actual research of found materials, and so I spent most of my time in the in-van laboratory.
I spent two days researching the materials, but what actually caught my attention, was the egg itself. No matter how hard I tried to take a small sample of it, I could not cut, break or do anything with it. Its normal temperature was 2 times below room temperature, and so I tried boiling or freezing it, still no result, it's temperature stayed the same.
My final hope was to install it into a specialized facility, and wait untill my computer does the work for me, however it was a huge risk, as the research center was demanding the research results in two weeks.
After two days of arguing with my collegues who is going to sleep in the car, and who is going to sleep in van (the car had no cooling system). I opened the computer to see if there's any progress, but the only thing I found, was a chat. A blank chat that I don't recall existed before. And so I typed "hello?", and it typed back,..."hi".
The egg was a new intelligent life form, and it took over my computer.
Third Place: Chistina Keoshgerian, Masis
You find an odd-looking egg in the forest When you take it home, you never could have predicted what was inside it.
The Egg That Took Me to Neptune
"No! I told you I'm not going to that forest at night! Do you think I want to get lost in the dark?" said Tae, my male best friend. I looked at him with a wide smile spread on my lips and answered, "Come on, Tae! Don't be a chicken! The forest is so beautiful at night! I can't even find words to describe the beautiful scene of the sparkling stars in the dreamy night sky..." I clapped my hands in excitement and dragged him with me to the forest.
"Tae, you're hurting me! Loosen the grip on my arm you coward!" I yelled at him. "Hey! I didn't want to be here anyways! I don't even know how you're actually a girl!" he replied angrily. I rolled my eyes and continued walking, until I noticed that Tae stopped. "What happened?" I asked. He just pointed at something he was staring at. I followed his gaze and my eyes widened. "Woah! What's that?!" I asked, curious. "I don't know..." he answered and looked down at me. "I think we should leave..." he said, but I didn't want to leave, I walked towards the weird rock we saw instead. "Hey! Come back here!" Tae shouted and followed me. I touched the rock and said "Tae, I think this is an egg, not a rock." He looked at it and nodded, "I think so too, but should we do something about it?" he asked. I thought for a while and smiled before saying "Let's take it home!" Tae looked at me with an open mouth and yelled, "NO!! We are NOT taking this thing home with us!" but I didn't pay attention and forced him to pick it up as we walked home.
Once we got home, my cat came to me and said, "I'm hungry! I've been waiting for you for hours!" I rolled my eyes and looked down at it while talking, "Shut up Yoongi! You're always hungry!" I turned and helped Tae put the egg on my carpet. Jungkook, my boyfriend, whom I often call Kookie, came to me and hugged me. He then looked at the egg and back to me, "What is that?" he asked. I looked up at him and said, "Kookie, this is an egg! Tae and I found it in the forest!" Kookie looked at Tae, "and why were you in the forest at this time?" he said, getting a bit angry. I hugged him and whispered, "Calm down, Kookie! We were just having fun! :)" He looked down at me and smiled.
We suddenly heard cracking. My eyes widened and I quickly turned to the egg. It was breaking and cracking into pieces. It wasn't long until we saw a beautiful white bunny with cute, small wings, popping out from the egg. I ran to it and patted its head. "Awww!! he's so cute!" I said. "He? How do you know it's a He?! Maybe it's a female" Kookie said. He kind of looked like a bunny. "Are you jealous, Jungkookie?!" I said, changing my voice and making it even cuter. He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "I'm not a female!" said the little cute creature in front of me. My smile got bigger. "You can speak too!" I said, knowing that now I have two pets who can speak. "Of course I can!" it answered. I was about to say something but it cut me off. "I came here for a mission I'm actually from Neptune. There, there's a beautiful village, but it's abandoned. I heard that you, a girl who can talk to animals and other creatures, live on planet Earth. I came to take you with me. We need your help!" I was totally shook. "But, how can I help you?" I asked. "The only creatures who can help us improve that village and make it beautiful and full of life again are the BT21 creatures. Their language is different and hard, but I know you can understand it and help us! Please help us! Come with me!"
I looked at the boys and then back at the cute creature. "I'm in!" I said, excited.
And just like that, I went to help the creatures of Neptune.
But that's another story... :)
One day you are exploring the area near your home and find an abandoned village.
Thinking about it now, I really should've tried to pay more attention to the road, but I don't think I regret my poor decisions.
At some point during the summer vacation, I'd come to the conclusion, that I literally have nothing to do. It was a slightly cloudy day, so going out wouldn't be too harmful to my skin. I stuffed my phone into my pocket, put on my earphones, sunglasses, and left the house. The beat of the music made me dance a little, while I went to the field. The field smelled fresh like a cold shower. Suddenly, I noticed a...Was it a house? I'm not sure anymore. I approached it, and opened the door. It led me somewhere, but it definitely wasn't the inside of a building, as the walls seemed to fade into nothingness and the grey sky was still visible over my head. Instead, this placed looked just like the area I live in, but a bit...off. All of it looked a bit off. The air was filled with fine mist, which gathered up a little at my feet, and all the colors looked a bit desaturated.
-"Hello? Is anyone there?," I called out, recieving no response that wasn't my own voice rebounding agaist a wall of some sort. Walking down the main street. It had happened before. I've been here once. Heck, I live here! Maybe I still got sunstruck? Despite the cloudiness of the day? I checked the time: 3:36. Something tells me, that that was the exact time I left the house, but I could've been mistaken. Just as I thought of calling one of my friends, Eric, he showed up right across the street. I ran towards him, not even cosidering the possibity of getting run over by a car in this hellish dimension.
-"Eric! Hey!"
He didn't even bat an eye. He wasn't there. Or rather, I wasn't actually there. Gunshot. Eric drops, dead. I don't think I realized what just happened. A knife materialized in my hand. "For protection maybe?" I thought. I saw my hands--scratch that--I saw my entire body move, independant of my conscience. As I thought I'd reached the end, I checked the time again. 3:36. I didn't have time to think about how there was no concept of time in this place. The music had stopped, but I Was scared to take my eaphones out. From just looking around, I'd concluded that this place souded like an eerie ringing in the ears, and I was sensitive to that type of sounds.
I just stabbed someone. I may be wrong, but I knew that person. It didn't let me stop, I just kept walking. It told me to just move on, that this is nothing to worry about. I just listened to it because it seemed like the most rational thing to do. How pathetic. Run. Don't look at people's faces. All my friends are in my head. I just killed them all, and I can't seem to get out. Where are the houses? Oops, wrong question, the houses are exactly where they have to be. Where is that one specific house that got me here in the first place? It tells me that there's only one target left. I thought I had everyone, though! "It's you." What? "The last target is yourself." I'm not dying for this. "You have to, to defeat the monsters, to stop creating friends." I'm definitely not doing that. "Well, say goodbye."
...Goodbye. Another gunshot A mirror shattered, and I fell down as well. "Good job." Am I alive? "Definitely not"
I woke up in the middle of the field. I checked the time. 3:36. Wait-no, that's wrong. It was actually 6:36. Phew. I asked a passerby if there's an empty abandoned village nearby. They said that there is, actually. I realized, that I'd been daydreaming about that place sire I was little, but it left my thoughts a few years ago. I'd assumed, that this was a manifestation of most of my fears, as I do wonder sometimes, if what we see is real or not, smashed together with my desire to visit the old village. At that moment, Eric called, and asked if we could hang out. How could I explain, that I dreamt that I--or something--killed him? I thought that I could just keep it a secret, unless he brings it up. I texted my parent, then headed over to Eric's house.
Second Place: Hayk Karapetyan, Yerevan
One day you are exploring the area near your home and find an abandoned village.
"The Ruins"
--Project report.--Name. Hayk Karapetyan
Age. 29 Sex. Male
Company. Works individually
Specification.--Archeologism and Bio-chemistry
note. "This is an unscientific describtion of the story"-
To clarify what this story is about, my friend and co-worker in the laboratory-Aren Sedrakyan, and I found out about a very interesting village, located 25 kms south-west from the border of Zambia, Africa. The interesting thing about it, is that after a long research, we couldn't find any evidence, that a human has touched or seen it for already 3000 years, yet it isn't even too far from civilization, it's like the ancient village just appeared from nowhere, or fell from the sky itself. Anyways, I think the real story will uncover more, here we go!
note. "I'm writing this story in real time, and I do not know what is going to happen in the end"
June 30: The first day of our expedition. First off, we-Me, Aren, the helping crew and the specialized dog by the name "Alpaca" (cute), explored the terrain. The road ended about 20 kms before our destination point, however, the sand wasn't much of a difficulty for our cars, despite the fact, that it seemed like it was purposefully getting into our shoes.
The area seemed to be an endless desert, with a couple of bushes arond. We specifically picked this day, for the weather to be calm, there were no sandstorms, which are quite common in this area. As we were getting closer to the village, the green around us was getting thicker, eventually forming a jungle.
The jungle in cooperation with the angle of the cliff we had to go up on made it unpassable for our cars, and we had to continue on foot. As I got out of our van, the breezy air instantly cought my face. The jungle seemed both dry and cool at the same time. I took a deep breath, and started climbing. We didn't have to climb for long, as we reached the top of the cliff, we got an amazingly stunning view of the village, that is when we new, our research padi off.
In 1 and a half hours we actually entered the village, wearing gas masks, to avoid possible intoxification. However, the tools showed, that the village was clearer than most of the world, really.
As we passed by the runes, which once were stunning works of art, we saw many hieroglyphes and carved pictures on the wall, however, they were nothing like what I've seen before. They were more symethric, more thought out, instead of people or mythical creatures, strange looking symbols were carved. The buildings and carvings were stunning in their complexity, as techiques from modern architecture were used.
The aura of the village was so calm, yet so tence, none of us wanted to break the golden silence, and we walked in quiet, with the only thing breaking it, our footsteps on broken crystal statues.
As we reached the very center of the village, we stood in front of a great temple. Two guys stood outside as patrol, while the rest of us went inside. The bright greenish light from the mix of the trees and the sun got quickly replaced by pitch darkness. In the middle of the temple we found a big, square shaped hole, as the flare measured, about 12 metres long.
Aren and I jumped in with a zipline, and quickly found us in a small dark room, as we saw a mysterious looking, egg-shaped material installed in the ground.
We put flashlights around and carefully observed the material Not too long after, we put the egg into a vacuum containing freezer and got back to our vans.
After a week of searching the village, we cut the team in half, to work more concentrated. I was put as a responsible for the actual research of found materials, and so I spent most of my time in the in-van laboratory.
I spent two days researching the materials, but what actually caught my attention, was the egg itself. No matter how hard I tried to take a small sample of it, I could not cut, break or do anything with it. Its normal temperature was 2 times below room temperature, and so I tried boiling or freezing it, still no result, it's temperature stayed the same.
My final hope was to install it into a specialized facility, and wait untill my computer does the work for me, however it was a huge risk, as the research center was demanding the research results in two weeks.
After two days of arguing with my collegues who is going to sleep in the car, and who is going to sleep in van (the car had no cooling system). I opened the computer to see if there's any progress, but the only thing I found, was a chat. A blank chat that I don't recall existed before. And so I typed "hello?", and it typed back,..."hi".
The egg was a new intelligent life form, and it took over my computer.
Third Place: Chistina Keoshgerian, Masis
You find an odd-looking egg in the forest When you take it home, you never could have predicted what was inside it.
The Egg That Took Me to Neptune
"No! I told you I'm not going to that forest at night! Do you think I want to get lost in the dark?" said Tae, my male best friend. I looked at him with a wide smile spread on my lips and answered, "Come on, Tae! Don't be a chicken! The forest is so beautiful at night! I can't even find words to describe the beautiful scene of the sparkling stars in the dreamy night sky..." I clapped my hands in excitement and dragged him with me to the forest.
"Tae, you're hurting me! Loosen the grip on my arm you coward!" I yelled at him. "Hey! I didn't want to be here anyways! I don't even know how you're actually a girl!" he replied angrily. I rolled my eyes and continued walking, until I noticed that Tae stopped. "What happened?" I asked. He just pointed at something he was staring at. I followed his gaze and my eyes widened. "Woah! What's that?!" I asked, curious. "I don't know..." he answered and looked down at me. "I think we should leave..." he said, but I didn't want to leave, I walked towards the weird rock we saw instead. "Hey! Come back here!" Tae shouted and followed me. I touched the rock and said "Tae, I think this is an egg, not a rock." He looked at it and nodded, "I think so too, but should we do something about it?" he asked. I thought for a while and smiled before saying "Let's take it home!" Tae looked at me with an open mouth and yelled, "NO!! We are NOT taking this thing home with us!" but I didn't pay attention and forced him to pick it up as we walked home.
Once we got home, my cat came to me and said, "I'm hungry! I've been waiting for you for hours!" I rolled my eyes and looked down at it while talking, "Shut up Yoongi! You're always hungry!" I turned and helped Tae put the egg on my carpet. Jungkook, my boyfriend, whom I often call Kookie, came to me and hugged me. He then looked at the egg and back to me, "What is that?" he asked. I looked up at him and said, "Kookie, this is an egg! Tae and I found it in the forest!" Kookie looked at Tae, "and why were you in the forest at this time?" he said, getting a bit angry. I hugged him and whispered, "Calm down, Kookie! We were just having fun! :)" He looked down at me and smiled.
We suddenly heard cracking. My eyes widened and I quickly turned to the egg. It was breaking and cracking into pieces. It wasn't long until we saw a beautiful white bunny with cute, small wings, popping out from the egg. I ran to it and patted its head. "Awww!! he's so cute!" I said. "He? How do you know it's a He?! Maybe it's a female" Kookie said. He kind of looked like a bunny. "Are you jealous, Jungkookie?!" I said, changing my voice and making it even cuter. He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "I'm not a female!" said the little cute creature in front of me. My smile got bigger. "You can speak too!" I said, knowing that now I have two pets who can speak. "Of course I can!" it answered. I was about to say something but it cut me off. "I came here for a mission I'm actually from Neptune. There, there's a beautiful village, but it's abandoned. I heard that you, a girl who can talk to animals and other creatures, live on planet Earth. I came to take you with me. We need your help!" I was totally shook. "But, how can I help you?" I asked. "The only creatures who can help us improve that village and make it beautiful and full of life again are the BT21 creatures. Their language is different and hard, but I know you can understand it and help us! Please help us! Come with me!"
I looked at the boys and then back at the cute creature. "I'm in!" I said, excited.
And just like that, I went to help the creatures of Neptune.
But that's another story... :)