Tales of the Gobi Desert
Pui Kiu College, Matthew Chan Lap Hung, Fiction: Group 2
O
nce upon a time, there was a city in the middle of a large plain, the population was
about 100 000 000. Their technology was advanced and their city was tremendously
big. There was a mansion on top of a hill and the person living there was the mayor of
Diamond Ville. Although the city had advanced technology, there was little food because
everyone wanted to work indoors so the city couldn`t solve its hunger problems. The mayor solved
the problem temporarily by trading precious minerals for food. After some time, scientists gave
a report that predicted the trading would let them trade for 2 more years. People started buying
huge amounts of food from the mayor and stored them up. The food wasn`t eaten so it started
to rot and the food problem got more serious. Scientists predicted that if the population didn`t
decrease in half, they were doomed. The president announced the first scientist who found a way
to solve the problem would be able to live in a villa next to the mayor`s house.
Scientists began researching and rushing into labs, trying to discover the way to solve the
problem. A scientist named Gobi invented a ray gun which would turn any type of atoms into
a different type of atom. He tried the gun on a piece of rock and set the setting to gold, he fired
the ray gun and it turned into a lump of gold. Gobi was extremely pleased with his invention.
Another scientist named Ivan genetically modified the watermelon with wheat and planted 1000
watermelon reeds. Each watermelon reed grew 3 feet high and had about ten football-sized
watermelons hanging off it. The mayor was extremely pleased. He said,” Both of you have done
well, but there is only one mansion.” The two scientists argued about whose invention was better,
at last, they decided to let the public decide which invention was better.
The next day, the civilians of Diamond Ville gathered in the market square to decide which
invention was better. Some civilians thought Gobi`s invention was better because it could let them
keep on trading precious minerals for food, but some civilians thought that the watermelon reeds
could let them produce food themselves so they could keep the precious minerals for themselves. The
mayor liked Gobi`s invention better so the civilians who thought Ivan`s invention was better made a
plan to make the traders stop trading with them so the mayor would have to use Ivan`s invention.
The civilians crept to the local inns and beat up the merchants; the merchants and traders
left hastily and swore to never come back to Diamond Ville. The civilians cheered at the sight
of the leaving traders and merchants. The next day, no merchants showed up at the market, the
same thing happened for three days. The civilians who supported Gobi suspected Ivan had done
something wrong. One of the civilians decided to investigate and after questioning innkeepers,
he found that the civilians who supported Ivan had chased the merchants away. He shared the
information with other civilians and they decided to poison most of the watermelon reeds. At
midnight, a silent mob of civilians crept into Ivan`s greenhouse and used rat poison to poison the
watermelon reeds.
At daybreak the next morning, Ivan walked into his greenhouse to find all of his precious
plants dead. He swore revenge on Gobi (he didn`t know it was the civilians.). Later that day,
he bought a screwdriver from a shop. At twilight, he crept into Gobi`s workshop and used a
screwdriver to dismantle the ray gun. As Ivan crept in from the windows, he thought of how he
would destroy the ray gun. He could just unscrew everything and throw it away or he could steal
