Corruption

Written 54-D20 [2022-11-01], Edited 54-F27 [2023-01-03]

Image credit: Twitter Twemoji

George, age 4, excitedly grabbed the green crayon and slammed it into the paper.

His hand zipped across the page like a dragonfly, changing directions almost every moment.

There were a rare few seconds when George’s hand hovered over the page, as he contemplated the next section of paper to visit.

George, age 16, groaned as he reached for the pencil.

As per the exam regulations, the writing was all in pen but the diagrams, those tedious diagrams were all pencil.

He struggled to remember the various organelles of a plant cell he needed to depict for this IGCSE Biology question.

I definitely need to include the chloroplasts for full marks he thought. And the nucleus, duh.

But what about mitochondria, do plant cells have those again?

George, age 20, grinned to his coworkers as he reached for a marker.

“In order to allow us to pick a different JSON library in future,” he explained. “I suggest we add a middle layer!”

He rose his voice and changed his tone to sell the lie.

George wiped out a line on the board and replaced it with a rectangle labelled “middle layer”.

He drew with false urgency, and he jumped in a fit of fake joy. But he didn’t care anymore.

Notes

This was written in 15 minutes during a Joy of Writing meetup.

Feedback from the Joy of Writing group

• Read Transformer by rick lane
• expand on how different utensils feel
• “power”
• sense of agency missing