Short Story Collection

A Change of Scene

Well, I had to write a story for science, and I had "brain fart." I had no clue what I was going to talk about. I whipped this together, legit, 7 hours before it was due. You all might think it's lame since it's all scientific and schoolish, but whatevss. I just wanted to put this up just so you guys can get a sense of what my writing style is. So, here you go!!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Cells. We all learned about them at one point in our lives. You know, those microscopic things that everyone is made up of? You know what I’m talking about, right? Yes? Good. Well, I’m now in college, trying to become a science major. I want to be a microbiologist. I know a lot about cells. So, today, my college professor told my class that we had to put ourselves in a cell for a day. Pretend you, and everyone around you, are organelles. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. I can’t do that! I have no imagination what so ever! I failed my Creative Writing class in high school. People kept telling me that I had to use my imagination. It could make or break my life. Well, this is that make it or break it point in my life. I’m in my last year at college. Graduation is in two weeks. I have to do this project, or I’ll fail.

After my little panic attack during class, I decided that I would just sleep on the subject, hoping that something brilliant would come out of my unimaginative mind. First, I had to finish my homework. It took hours! About five to be exact. Biology, Latin, Math, and my other science classes. After all those subjects were done, I headed down to the mess hall for something to eat. As always, I sat with my one other friend, Holly. Yea, she had more friends, but she felt bad for me, so she ate dinner with me. I never ate breakfast at college or lunch. I would make myself something or go out to eat. I’m just the quiet kid who doesn’t give anyone a chance. Just the odd one out.

After a dinner of a leafy green salad (because I’m a vegetarian), I headed back to my single dorm room and fell asleep. I had no one to contact. No friends from home, they never talked to me anymore. They all had “better” friends at their different colleges. So why bother anymore. I spent three years trying to get their attention. Why do I even care?

When I woke up, I noticed that something was different about my dorm room. My bed was gone, but I still felt comfortable. Actually, everything was gone. As I went to go stand up, I noticed that there was no floor. The “ground” was the same foggy gray as the “walls” around me. It felt bizarre, wherever I was. I soon realized that walking was no good, so I decided that I had to swim my way through this goop. After about five minutes of “swimming,” I noticed something in the distance. A big ovalish shape. As I got closer, I realized that it was violently shaking. This odd object looked vaguely familiar. Where had I seen this before? Math? No… Books? No… Science..? Yes! It was science! This object was the… the… Mitochondria of the cell? But why was there a giant mitochondria right in front of me? Suddenly, it jerked quickly towards the right, then the left. No wonder it was moving so, the mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cells. I decided to grab on and see where this brought me. Suddenly, we were off.

The mitochondria moved fast, but jerky. We passed many other things I knew; the ribosome, small circle like objects that makes the protein for a cell, the ER, or Endoplasmic Reticulum, long tubes running through the cell in order to transport things throughout the cell, more mitochondrion, and lysosomes, small (but larger that ribosomes and smaller than mitochondrion) oval objects that hold the waste for cells. Then suddenly, it hit me. The goopy stuff I was floating in was the cytoplasm, which suspends the organelles. Duh! I can’t believe it took me this long to realize what I was touching at all times.

Before I knew it, the mitochondria stopped short and I was sent flying through the cytoplasm until I hit something hard. I quickly grabbed onto it, only to realize that it had holes that I could grab onto. As I flipped myself around, I noticed that I was hanging onto the nucleus, using the nuclear pores as holds. I had reached the brain of the cell. Where everything that goes on in the cell was controlled. The large, circle (not counting the bumps all around it) not only controlled the cell activity, but it also held DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic Acid, the nucleolus (which makes ribosomes) chromatin, and chromosomes. This is, by far, the most important organelle.

As I pushed off the nucleus, I swam for a bit until I hit, yet another organelle: the Golgi Apparatus. The Golgi is what packages the proteins. I remember one of me previous teachers referring to it as the “UPS man” of the cell. That’s one way of explaining it. I just kept swimming after that. I realized that some organelles in here I did not see were chloroplasts, the other plastids, and a vacuole. I must be in an animal cell. The chloroplast is what a plant cell uses in the process of photosynthesis. It makes the food for a plant. The other plastids are leucoplasts, which store starch in a plant cell, and chromoplasts, which store pigments for plants. Also, the vacuole holds the water in the cell. It’s the largest organelle in the plant cell. There are many more cell parts, but I don’t want to get into them. I just had a two-hour lecture on cell parts…

Eventually, I started to get tired from all this swimming. Try swimming in Jell-O and tell me how you feel. Just as I was about to give up and fall asleep, I hit something. I looked up and noticed that I had hit the end; the cell membrane. An animal cell only had a cell membrane, which hold everything in a cell, while a plant cell has a cell wall along with a membrane to give it structure. Then, I passed out.

As I woke up, I noticed that I was in my own dorm room and it was the next morning. Did that cell adventure really just happen? Was it a dream? It must have been. I couldn’t have gone into a cell. They are microscopic! But one positive thing came out of it. Want to know what it is?? Sure you do.

I figured out what I’m doing for my biology assignment!