科幻小说《The secret of Zoom》

"The Secret of Zoom" is a  sci-fi book. "Zoom" is a mysterious type of rock that will turn into liquid when it hears a G sharp and responds to thought waves as well. Unfortunately, the drops will cause a minor explosion if they hit the ground.The owner of an orphanage, called Lenny Loompski, wants to find a way to turn zoom into fuel so he can be a billionaire. Lenny coerced them to collect zoom by singing, and traps Christina's mother where nobody will find her. Christina is a ten-year-old girl who is the main character in this book, and she rescues all the orphans despite the dangers. The ending is a comical one, where every orphan flies in a little plane made by Leo and pours a canister full of liquid zoom on Lenny’s head. The zoom immediately turns back to rock, so Lenny ends up as a statue made with zoom. Serves him right, the villain! After all, the amount of wicked things he did is bigger than the amount of zoom dumped on his head.

《The Secret of Zoom》是一本科幻小说。书中提到的Zoom是一种神奇的石头，当它听见#G这个音符时，就会变成液体，而且它还能被人的意念控制。需要特别注意的是，当Zoom融化以后如果摔在地上就会爆炸。孤儿院的院长Lenny 是个阴险狡诈的坏家伙，他想找到把Zoom变成燃料的方法，那样他将会成为亿万富翁。于是院长强迫孤儿院里的孩子们通过唱歌来收集大量的Zoom，并且把小女孩Christina的妈妈给困在一个没有人知道的地方。Christina，也就是故事的主人公，她通过各种努力最终救出了孤儿院里所有的孤儿，还有她自己的妈妈。故事结尾很滑稽：孤儿们都驾驶着Leo发明的神奇小飞机，把一桶一桶的液态Zoom倒在院长Lenny的头上。这些液体马上凝固成石头，院长变成了一个Zoom做的雕像。谁让他做的坏事比他身上的Zoom还要多，活该！

Lenny's uncle is a scientist, Leo Loompski. Leo invents a small plane powered by zoom that can effortlessly be controlled by the pilot's thoughts.Christina discovered the plane by chance. When Christina sings the first note, the plane will start to activate and begin humming the same note. After she has put on a special helmet and finished singing all the notes in the E7 chord, all she has to do is think “Fly”, and the plane will do so, still humming a chord. Unbelievable, isn’t it? Actually, Leo's other inventions were much weirder. There was a rocket powered baby carriage (For taking the baby for walks on Mars?), and a “Kidapult” for getting to school. (Probably makes the child decide to walk instead.) Both of these inventions are as strange as preferring to eat plastic fruit.

院长的叔叔Leo是个科学家，他发明了一种用Zoom作燃料的小飞机，让驾驶员可以轻易地用意念来控制飞行。Christina无意中发现了这架飞机。她唱出第一个音时，飞机接着她的声音哼唱，并且开始启动。Christina戴上特制头盔唱完E7和弦的全部音时，脑子里再给个起飞的念头，飞机也哼着和弦起飞了。很不可思议？实际上，Leo发明了不少更稀奇古怪的玩意儿。他发明了一个用火箭推动的婴儿车（这是准备推着宝宝去火星上散步吗？），和一个送孩子上学的“投娃机”（估计孩子宁愿自己走路去）。这些发明就跟有人喜欢吃塑料水果一样奇怪。

 

Even though this is nothing but a fictional story, zoom might actually exist. The power of sound can sometimes result in avalanches. In real life zoom could just be a substance very sensitive to sound and thus is able to be controlled by it. Christina's dad explained to her: "If I keep slapping this table with my hand, quantum mechanics says that one day my hand will go right through the table." If such astonishing things can happen at an atomic level, it's no wonder that miracles happen at the level of thought. Thought is faster than anything, even light. Light has to take eight minutes to run to the Sun. In that time thought can do the same a gazillion times. If things controlled by thought and sound are mixed together, the outcome might be similar to zoom. There may be unexpected results, though. Salt is a mixure of two different poisonous chemicals, which somehow turn into a healthy substance.

Of course, both of these two things are yet to be discovered. However,there might be something similar to zoom in the future. And who knows? Maybe that’s what they’ll name it – zoom! Nothing’s impossible.

虽然这只是一个科幻故事，但Zoom也许是真实存在的。声音的能量有时会引起雪崩，现实中有可能真的存在某种物质像Zoom一样，对声波特别敏感，可以被声音控制。Christina爸爸给她解释：“如果我不停地拍这张桌子，按照量子力学的规律，总有一天我的手会穿过桌面。”小小原子之间能够出现如此神奇的事情，那么比原子更小更小的思想颗粒，一定会造成更有意思的情况。我猜想，思想的速度比光速快N倍，从书桌前飞到太阳上去，光得跑8分钟，思想在这时间里可以跑无数个来回了。如果某种物质是由可以被声音、思想控制的两种物质结合而成，那它几乎就和Zoom一模一样。两种元素放在一起说不定有意想不到的结果，盐就是由两种有剧毒的化学成分结合在一起，不知道怎么就变成一种有益健康的生活必需品。以毒攻毒就是这个意思吗？

当然，到现在为止，科学家还没发现这两种物质。未来说不定会出现和Zoom类似的东西，大家会不会真的叫它Zoom呢？万事皆有可能嘛！

One of the parts I like best is, after Christina's mom disappeared, her dad was worried about Christina‘s safety. He decided to not send her to school, but made Christina learn using various computer programs instead. Her favorite was music since she got to be taught by a real person. Even her dad had to admit that the computer can't teach piano. Christina's dad wanted her to be interesting in math and bought many math books. However, Christina hated math. I feel sorry for Christina, and I don't blame her for hating math. Her math program is rubbish. Bad math programs can either be falsely cheerful, starting with: Math is fun, fun, fun! The more you hear it the more you think that it's not fun at all. The other type is tedious, which always begins with: Today we are learning about blah blah blah blah blah. Mine is the second type, Christina’s is the first kind + the second kind. The program is supposed to build self-esteem, but it does its job too well. It goes “Awesome!” or "Great work!" whether you do it right or not. If I had to use that program, I wouldn’t be very excited about math either. 

我觉得有趣的一部分是，妈妈失踪之后，爸爸很担心Christina的安全，决定不让她去上学。几乎所有科目Christina都是通过电脑软件来学习。结果，她最喜欢上音乐课，因为只有这门课是真人教，连她爸爸也得承认电脑教不了钢琴。Christina的爸爸尤其希望她喜欢数学，买了很多很多数学书。可她最最讨厌的就是数学，我真的好同情Christina，不应该怪她讨厌数学，她的数学软件实在是太烂了。通常很烂的数学软件分两类：一类是在你做题时，软件一开始就会不停告诉你：数学非常好玩！数学非常有趣！越这样说就让人觉得一点也不好玩。另一类是题目非常无聊，每次都是这么开始的：今天我们要学习…… 我平常用的软件是第二种。Christina的软件是第一种+第二种，这个软件设计者的本意是鼓励孩子爱上数学，可是干得有点太夸张了。不管做没做对，它都会说“太棒了，你是数学高手吧！”“干得漂亮！”，就是一只“复读鸡”。如果让我用这个软件，我肯定也不会喜欢数学的。

I know an app for learning instruments and it works pretty well. So there, a computer can teach piano. I hope her dad doesn’t hear about it though...

我倒是知道一个可以学乐器的软件，而且挺好用的。看来，电脑是可以教钢琴的。希望Christina的爸爸永远也不会知道……