| Eclipse |
November 8, 2017
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| He liked to study the history of his country. Through history, he could learn various things, i.e. how the country has developed since the ancient ages. He thought there were so many mistakes by the government and so many misjudgements by the people in the society, so they had to learn from history and should do their best not to do those things again. Anyways, he liked to learn old things because it was full of surprising events. On this day he went to the library in his city to see a special video that the library recently made. Precisely, the National Library Association created a video series and lent them to each library. Like commercial movies, they took money from the viewers. As the quality of the videos were high and elaborate, there were lots of viewers. The fees gained from the video became the library's extra budget. He received a set of machines: a tablet computer and a wearable monitor and sat down on the sofa in one of the blocked corners. He put on the headphones and goggle-type monitor. He turned on the tablet and chose an event from a list of events which were the big events of this country. His choice was the one from the ancient times, when the queen ruled a large area of the country by ritual prayer. He touched the 'START' button. On the screen in his goggles soon the instruction  appeared, "This movie was made in the present era with the understanding of the history of this era. Because of this, there are some predictions in the movie ... As the scenes might be so different from modern society, if you feel uneasiness, we recommend you to stop watching in the middle of ... This movie was made with a subsidy from the Education Ministry ... " Then the bigger letters, "The event was in the morning of September 5th in AD 248." He breathed deeply.The screen faded out and turned black, then it started to become brighter little by little. There appeared a scene from the outside of a large wooden building. It was dark outside. From this one story structure, lights emitted from the gaps between the series of sliding doors. The sound of a female voice chanting sounded. The camera went into the building. There were a hundred women sitting in a semicircle on the big floor of the building. They wore simple beige cotton clothes like a tunic, and chanted after the woman who was sitting in the center. The woman in the center was wearing colorful clothing wear. The upper part was like a kimono with long sleeves, red colored. The lower part was a long skirt, light green in color. She was wearing a coat with marks. She also wore a colorful hair band. She looked in her late forties. Other tunic-dressed girls looked in their late teens or early twenties. It was dark inside, only a little wood was burning in the certain areas. In this era, candles hadn't been introduced yet in this country. He guessed. Outside was dark. He knew that this day was the 1st of September on the lunar calendar. In a lunar calendar, one month has 30 days. The first day is completely dark, and the 15th day is a full moon. So using 15 days, the moon becomes fatter, then using 15 days, the moon becomes thinner. Maybe they, those women knew this rule but they didn't have a calendar, they didn't even use written characters. Of course, they could talk as they were now chanting. The camera angle resumed to the outside. The outside now started to be brighter. The sunrise started. Little by little it became brighter. From the inside of the building, the chanting continued. One of the tunic women started to open the sliding doors. Now the sun was about to rise. The sun started to rise. The sun shone the inside the room. There were several round mirrors made of bronze that were set around them. Some of them changed the mirror's direction accordingly in order to adjust the sun rays to the direction of the queen. Now the queen became like the sun itself, shining beautifully. But suddenly, the sun shine became calmer. Because of a cloud? No. The sun started to be covered by a round black thing. There was a big commotion from the women who were sitting in the outer area of the room. And they started to stand up and went outside. Others followed. And, at the end, the queen stopped her chanting and went outside. She was looking at the sun, which was now hidden by the black circle. What was happening? They became panicked. The queen ordered them to calm down, but there was no calm. After a few minutes, it became completely dark. Only loud voices sounded. After another minute, the sun started to shine. But the chaos didn't stop. The chaos spread, and they rushed in the building, killing the queen. It was a shocking last scene. There might be some opinions that this was not suitable for the library. But he liked this effort that the libraries studied and showed their fruit in a way which people could easily understand. |
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*eclipse :日食
*i.e. :すなわち
*ritual :儀式
*prayer :祈り
*prediction :予想
*uneasiness :不安感
*subsidy :補助金
*resume :再開する
*tunic :袖のない膝までくるかぶり式の衣類
*semicircle :半円