2

Editor’s Note

The Bug is back! This time, as always, with a brand new theme, “Alternate Worlds”. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a strange theme. It’s broad and vast and has literally infinite possibilities. I should also mention that this theme lies quite close to my heart and thus this editor’s note might be a bit longer than most.

From the multiverses we see portrayed in comic books to the worlds of Tolkien to simply the lives of others, all present an example of a different world, a reality other than our own. In a way, this issue is an exploration into the many possibilities of what could have been. At the same time it is a celebration of the human imagination. The idea of alternate worlds has given us, as a society, an incredible amount of inspiration, fear, happiness, sadness, and curiousity to name just a few.

I’m currently taking a class in transmedia storytelling where we’re studying precisely how stories are told across mediums and as a result, we talk a fair amount about the impact that the creation of alternate worlds has upon an audience. Each time I go to class I’m amazed again as I see the passion other students have for such fictional character and fictional worlds. Alternate worlds means more than just fictional worlds, of course, but it certainly is a large part.

Naturally, it’s not always the most intelligent idea to make general assumptions, but I like to think that there isn’t a single person in the world that isn’t spending their time in some alternate world. Whether that means an obsessive addiction to the world of Harry Potter or just the occasional daydream about an alternate time-line, I think it’s relatively safe to say that we all in some way value the power of alternate worlds.

At this point in my introduction to the issue, I’d like to take some time to point out the cover. It’s not a subject that I normally breach, but I think this time is a bit of an exception, in part because it’s the first time we have a drawn cover, submitted by Meike ter Haar, which is awesome. However, the main reason I’d like to reference it here is because I cannot think of a better representation of the concept of alternate worlds.

The reflection of the walking man, like a flipped paper cutout, is obvious enough in its meaning, but more strikingly are the tentacles that reach out. Like a wrathful kraken, they slither through the air like menacing dragons. But more so they are an allusion to one of the most inventive and creative writers I know, H.P. Love-craft, and in particular, one of his most terrifying creations, Cthulhu.

Although his writing and imagination were not largely recognized until after his death, Lovecraft has undis-putedly helped revolutionize the worlds of fantasy. While his works were focused particularly on themes of horror, terror, and fear, his influence has, much like Cthulhu’s tentacles, reached far beyond his own genre. Through intricately detailed descriptions and use of an incredible lexicon and dastardly dark imagination, Lovecraft has had an immense impact on writers like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Alan Moore.

Perhaps it is simply through my own love for Lovecraft that I draw this connection, but nevertheless I can’t help but appreciate the perfect link to our own ode to alternate worlds. If you haven’t had the chance to read his work, I would highly recommend it, although I should state that it’s not an easy read. With that all being said, I now want to encourage you to flip over to the next pages and join us through a slightly eclectic explo-ration of alternate worlds.

Noah BloemEditor-in-Chief of The Bug

3

Tabl

e of

Con

tent

s

Editor’s Note by Noah Bloem

Student Opinions

What If The Allies Had Lost WWII? by Samantha Vos

Phishing for the Compass by Anonymous

The Odyssey by Niko Skoulikaris

Home Life vs Student Life by Claudia de Hartog

The Baddest Villain

Which Fictional World Should You Live In? by Noah Bloem

The Little Cafe by Hann

Films, Series, and Books in the Modern World

by Claudia de Hartog

On Matters of Missing Matter by Hann

3

6

7

8

10

12

14

16

18

19

235

66

Mr. Keating (Played by

Robin Williams in Dead Poets

Society)31%

Wolverine7%

Ms. Frizzle8%

Professor Snape15%

Yoda23%

Walter White8%

Professor McGonagall

8%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

EdwardCullen

Chewbacca Winnie thePooh

HermioneGranger

Pink Ranger Patrick (fromSpongebob)

Jacob (fromTwilight)

Who is the most attractive fictional character?

S T U D E N T

O P I

I O N S

With this month’s theme being ‘Alternate Worlds’, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask some

students to answer questions about exactly that topic.

After all, who doesn’t want to hear the opinions of EUC

students? Or perhaps the better question is, which

EUC student could pass up the opportunity to

present their opinions?

Curious about their

opinions? Well here

they are!

What would you do in world without responsibilities?

Spend all the money and get all the boys I want.

Always spell correctly, and play golf in the White House.I would chill and travel

and help people with re-sponsibilities and enjoy the ride. The end.

I would gallop around showering everything with an assortment of flowers while screaming “Catharsis!”

I would always come late to everything.

I would watch Netflix most of the time and travel to warm countries.

I would play the EUC piano in the middle of the day.

I would travel extensively and just fully invest myself in things I believe: Visiting friends, family, FairFight, and more!

Join the looting. World’s going to hell now anyway.

Ideally I would be relaxing, eating and sleeping. More believably, struggling to survive the uncaring anarchy of a world where no one feels responsibility.

Sneak into the bathroom whenever my roomates are in the shower.

I would just sit on the couch all day watching Netflix.

I would game all day. I’m not kidding. It would be pathetic and sad.

Who would you want as a teacher if you lived in a fictional world?

6

7

What If The Allies Had Lost WWII?by Samantha Vos

Today we live in a largely interconnected world where Western influence extends around the globe in almost all aspects of our daily lives. Whether it’s media attention, films, music, technology, clothing, geopolit-ical policies or economic dependency, there is a considerable impact that comes from Western culture. This is indeed a widely accepted phenomenon, but the real question is, why is it even so? The fact that a collection of nations in a single political region can have such an international significance is the result of many different factors; however, I believe one of the most significant elements can be traced back to a notable event, namely, the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II.

Now, that might seem like a bit of a stretch, but it does bring up the idea that maybe, in an alternate world where Germany and Japan win the war, the world would be astoundingly different than it is today. One could even suggest that every historical event since 1945 would have been completely flipped: instead of a cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it could have been between Germany and Japan, or there could have been an occupied United States instead of an occupied Germany. Britain and France may have lost

their importance as political and economic powers; China may never have become communist and Korea might never have been divided into the North and South. There would be no United Nations, no NATO, and perhaps even no al-Qaeda, Tali-ban, or ISIS.

For me it is interesting to think about what events would have had to occur to prevent the Allies from winning the war in order for there to be such an enor-mous twist in 20th century history. Let’s assume that FDR would have had to be assassinated in the early 1930’s, before he had a chance to bring the U.S. out of the Great Depression, so that they would not have had the military or economic power to send troops to Europe while simultaneously fighting off the Japanese in the Pacific. With FDR dead, Truman would not have subsequently taken office, possibly leading to continued isolationism and therefore possible unpreparedness for an attack on U.S. soil. The United States may not have obtained the atomic bomb, leaving them with no distinct advantage over the rest of the world. In turn, the Allies may have been overextended fighting off the Nazis in Europe.

Operation Barbarossa— the attack the Germans had planned against Russia— would also have had to be successful, which would have allowed Hitler to expand his empire across the entirety of Eastern Europe and Russia itself, allowing Germany to gain considerable influence over nations like China, North Korea, and most of southeast Asia. Extermination of immense amounts of Jewish and Slavic peoples would have been well within his realm of power.

With all of that triumph between the Axis powers and the inevitable surrender of Britain and France, their attention could then be turned toward attacking the U.S. from both sides, a military tactic that Hitler himself sought to avoid between France and Russia. A relatively defenseless United States, with no atomic bomb and weak economic standing in this alternate timeline, would provide little resistance, giving rise to two new great empires: Germany and Japan.

The idea that a single event in history could lead to a domino effect changing our whole timeline is nothing short of incredible. We tend to take our familiar reality for granted, but this reality exists thanks to the well thought out or rash decisions that a few people in history have made. There are certainly several oth-er points in time that, had they gone differently, would have us living in a completely alternate universe to the one we live in now. Can you think of any others?

8

Phishing for the Compassby Anonymous

Chapter One - Jack Fishow

In an alternate galaxy far far away, Jack Fishow was swimming for his life. He had once again lost his transport, the ‘Black Oyster Pearl’, and all he had left was his jar of dirt. Inside the jar of dirt, he hid his famous compass, which pointed any human, animal, and alien in the direction of their greatest desire. The Suicide Fish Squad (SFS), was very interested in this compass, so the day came when the SFS attacked our hero and his jar of dirt from under water and pulled him down into the great abyss, and dragged Fishow deeper and deeper into the depths.

Chapter Two - Al Pacino Swordfish(Setting: A Round Table in a Dark Fishy Room)

Only a part of the face of Al Pacino (A.P.) Swordfish, the boss of the SFS, was showing. With his one eye, that survived the attack of the seagulls in 1942, he stared fiercely around the circular table. Still gloating about his successful heist of Jack

Fishow’s compass, he made an offer nobody could refuse. Deep down he knew that each SFS member was there to take the compass home with them, but he had a

plan, so he laid out the offer. The reaction of his squad was as he expected, he could smell the fear in the water. He glanced around the table again, facing every

individual of his squad. His gaze stopped when his eyes met Forrest Shrimp.

Chapter Three - Forrest Shrimp

Forrest Shrimp was nibbling his bubbagump shrimp with full satisfaction when his boss laid down the craziest offer he’d ever heard. The deal meant that he would be unable

to afford continued production of his all time favorite product, bub-bagump shrimp, indefinitely. He found it a crazy idea and thought to himself: “A.P. Swordfish must have had one fight too many with the seagulls”. Cautiously, he reached underneath his chair and quietly pulled out his shrimp pistol, which “stuns prey with ‘sonic booms’” (2015, Phishipedia, p.1). “I am not going to stop producing my shrimp. My shrimpies are worth dying for,” he thought to himself. He secretly prepared himself for the worst, even if that meant going against his big (badass) boss – A.P. Swordfish.

Chapter Four – Godzilla

Whilst tension had begun to build up amongst the other SFS members around the table, Godzilla couldn’t stop thinking about his IB score. 34, how the hell could

he have gotten 34? Taking HL Math was the worst decision he’d ever made, especially being the only non-Asian fish in class. Given that the only thing he desperately wanted in the world was a 35, he thought, “maybe it isn’t so important that I wreck havoc upon this city for a mere

point on my IB, maybe next time I should consider paying a shitload for a regrade, instead of hurting all those innocent Japanese fish.” So he opted out of A.P.’s plan.

9

Chapter Seven - Conclusion

In the confusion created by A. P. Swordfish’s offer to give the compass back to Fishow in return for an autograph, Forrest could not hold his anger anymore. He fired his shrimp pistol and the sound of the shot scared Godzilla who was still alone in his thoughts. As a reaction to the sudden bang, he lost his balance and his massive body slowly crashed down to the song: “Chariots of Fire” (which had replaced Nyan Cat’s theme song). The fact that Nyan Cat’s theme song had disappeared meant he sadly passed away due to injuries induced by F. Shrimp’s shots. Al Pacino saw his life flashing in front of his eyes, as the shadow of Godzilla’s stomach dawned upon his face. The end had come; everyone blew their last breath out under his scaly green belly, which was as sharp as ninja swords. Godzilla, in fear, sadness, but also satisfaction, stole the compass, sold it to Fishow (who surprisingly recovered from the dark abyss), and used the money to cover the costs of his IB HL Math retake. While it sadly did not result in a change of grade, fortunately this cost him only the compass and his friends’ hopes and dreams.

Chapter Five - Patrick Star

Patrick Star was able to decipher everything that was happening; Forrest was sneakily pulling out his shrimp pistol and Godzilla was wandering in thought about his IB score. In a split-sec-ond decision, P.Star fiercely attempted to jump on the table but fell. Quickly he stood up, but given that P.Star was always winning at life, he actually majestically picked himself back up, which made his entrance into the conversation that much more epic. Ready to speak,

he slowly turned his head towards the boss shouting: “Shrimp guns stun!”. Confused, the others ignored him assuming it was another weirdo moment of P.Star.

Chapter Six - Nyan Cat

Nyan Cat has always been known to be the super absolutely not annoying guy of the squad, adding a colorful touch to every heist they undertook. As he opened his mouth,

in hopes to bring some irritation to the situation, his theme song started playing in the background. And he said, “in the name of the nation due to this irritation of this situa-tion and in proclamation of my train station I vote for the creation of a search for the new

PlayStation by using the stolen compass.”

The Odyssey by

Nik

o Sk

oulik

aris

I stumbled upon this pond speckled with rose petalsI’m left guessing,

It imitates my actions and daily progression into the collective reflection of perception,The great mirror beckons.

On all fours, I crawl to the lakes edgeAnd to my surprise I stare into my own eyes,

Time slows to a stop,Freeze-frames.

I find myself standing straight,Spinning outward and inward simultaneously,Perception shifts through my hazel windows,

My iris is now an island in a silent oceanAnd my vibration sends ripples in motion,I leave behind me a trail of echoes crying

Like spectral screams piercing desolate silence.

This desert kisses the horizon,And as I walk I notice the landscape inclines,

Suddenly my body is trying to climb to the apexBut this desert’s an hourglass

There’s no way to escape itIt’s odd.

My spherical coordinates are rotating starsAnd from these angles my mind tangles into thought;

I feel Fear,It asks me what I want to be:

One that embraces this cosmos,Or roots inwardly in captivating paranoia.

Submerged in a realm of possibility,In a land where dripping sinks extinguish constellations,

I magnetize towards temptation,But my mind fixates on chasing patience.

10

11

by Niko Skoulikaris

Dwelling in my thoughtsI witness the materialization of a cave enslaving a flame,

And I could feed a forest to this inferno,This sensation burning eternal, that’s

Spraying shaded patterns scattered in the cavernSetting ablaze the grey matter of my imagination

And as I age,These walls glow with illumination,

Until they reach a lucid state.

Mountain ranges collide to form my spine,Time wrinkles canyons on my complexion

And rivers course through my veins,The blazing ember guides me through a celestial scape

And through the millennia I travel to distant placesUntil I reach a sanctuary,

An isolated oasis,Flourishing with regenerating vegetation;

A cataract cascades vertically,Crashing in torrents of reverberation,

Suddenly a ghost flickers through its surface,I feel my purpose is to chase it,

So frantically I race to see who is thereOnly for my eyes to be met by a clone pair.

One thing we all have in common at EUC is that we are all students, right? The one thing, possibly the only thing we have in common, is that we are all attending the same universi-ty right now. But wait, maybe going to EUC isn’t the only thing we have in common. We are also all living in the lovely city of Rot-terdam right now. So, arguably there are two things we all have in common, we study at EUC and we live in Rotterdam. However, before we went to university, what did our lives look like then? Can we say it looked a ‘world’ away from our situation right now? For me anyway, there are cer-tainly some groundbreaking differences between my ‘world’ here in Rot-terdam and back at the home basis. I think these differ-ences may apply for some of you too.For starters, we don’t live with our families anymore. We might have cre-ated new families here in Rotterdam, but it’s not the same. We don’t live with the people who brought us up anymore, those people being our parents or guardians. For those of you who, like me, have lived with their families for all of their life, it’s a new and different experience not to see parents and siblings daily. We don’t see them during breakfast or supper anymore. We basically only see them whenever we manage to get back to the home basis. Which definitely isn’t every day. Luckily for us, there are such things as mobile phones that help us keep in contact with them.

Taking the no-parent/guardian situation, another great change is that we have to take care of ourselves now! This involves many different aspects. One of those aspects being that we have to buy and cook our own meals now, while previously our parents/guardians took care of the job and provided us with all of our nutrients.While on the one hand it’s nice, because we aren’t bothered by our parents trying to force us to eat ‘healthy’ all the time. We can actu-ally choose to eat pizza all week long and no-body but ourselves are responsible for that. However, the downside is that we have to provide ourselves with that food. And food unfortunately costs money. And money un-

fortunately doesn’t grow from trees. Another aspect is, that we have

to do our own laundry. This was something new

for me anyways. I knew how to do laun-dry and occasionally did it at home. But that was more me just helping out my par-ents, than it being a real task I had to do. Now, I HAVE to do it, or face not having clean clothes. But I mean, if something

smells okay, who cares how often that piece of clothing has been worn!Another aspect of having to take care of our-selves is the kitchen situation. I’m sure by now we all experienced having cooked a re-ally nice meal, being really pleased with

12

Home life

Student life

13

how we did that all by ourselves and naturally enjoying eating the meal immensely. Only af-ter having finished that meal, we are left with the chaos of the kitchen itself. Why is it al-ways so easy to make a chaos of the kitchen, yet it takes so much time and effort to clean it again? And now we don’t have said parents/guardians to lend a hand in cleaning. We have to do all of that part all by ourselves too.Taking care of ourselves also takes with it the aspect of responsibility. We are now complete-ly responsible for everything we do. There is no parent/guardian, checking if we are going to sleep before midnight any-more. We can choose to stay up and watch Netflix or just plain old TV until the early hours ev-ery night (probably not very advisable though). Further-more, we are now also responsible money wise, liabil-ity wise, and health insurance wise. All that grown up stuff you never stand still to think about before actually being faced with it.

Lastly, I’d like to compare our homes, the plac-es we live in now, and where we used to live in before. I mean, back at the home basis you probably had your own bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, probably also a sep-arate toilet, a hallway, a garage, a basement/storage place, and all other aspects a house or apartment has.

Now, we have all those things combined into a few areas. Our kitchen may also function as basement/storage place and living room and hallway. Our rooms now also might function as small living rooms and/or study area. So, the layout of our new homes is probably dif-ferent in many ways from our previous home basis.

So, do you think your life has (drastically) changed since coming here to EUC and Rot-terdam? Or has everything stayed relatively the same to where you previously came from? Are they truly two different ‘worlds’ or is it not that extreme?

By Claudia de Hartog

Home life

Student life

14

The Baddest Villain!

We asked all of you to create your own villains, complete with superpower and name. Our favorite entry has been promised a wonderful prize, namely some awesome movie vouchers! We received a significant number of entries, so unfortunately we can’t present everyone’s villains, but here are the top three alongside some honourable mentions that we just had to share with the world!

First World Problem Man! (Thijs de Jeu) An invisible villain who causes very annoying

minor inconveniences, but not “real” problems. Examples: He won’t steal your socks, but he’ll mis-match them all. He won’t steal your pens, but he’ll

make sure that the first one you try is always empty.

T H E W I N N E R !

The Mastermind (Thomas Ure)His ability makes people forget about him.

They cannot recognise his face, his voice, or even his name. Because it’s hard to keep a job

when no-one remembers you, he decided to make the most of his skills and turned to

crime in order to survive. Anyone that tries to stop him always finds that, by the time they arrive, he’s been long gone. Of course, they never realise they’re

rescuing the same “civilian” over and over. He always finds their

confused expression entertaining.

2 n d P L A C E !

2-Dimensional Man (Niko Skoulikaris)He traps himself in 2-dimensional planes!

HE COULD BE ANYWHERE!

3 r d P L A C E !

15 15

The Ant-tagonizer (Tristan Davanzo)Has the power to enslave ants.

Honourable Mentions

The Ejectifyer! (Xandra Daswani) Ejects victims out of any type of seat.

The Ejectifyer torments citizens, hijacking anything that is considered to be a chair or seat to take control of being able to sit

wherever, whenever. With this he can take over cars, planes, trains, and even political

chairs to be able to rule the world!Farting Joe (Anonymous)

Powers: Fart in people’s faces and gas them. Use farts to fly.

The Exam Table! (Laurent Masson) You thought I was just a regular table?

Think again. I’ll never let you write without a little shake. I’ll never be straight. My superpower? You fail.

The Rainiator (Claudia de Hartog) Superpower: Enforce the Dutch rains and

winds on unsuspecting people. Always when you think the weather will be great on a sunny day, beware of The Rainiator that can come by and ruin the hair and

make up you spent an hour on.

Dr. Cerebrum (Julia Söhnholz)He has the ability to freeze someone’s

brain in the moment it is most needed, for example in exams, shortly before dead-

lines or while presentating.

Terrible Acoustic Guitar Player Man (Maike Jager)

Forces everyone to listen to his awful songs and nobody can stop him.

The Philosopher (Doni Georgiev) Superpower: Mind Blast

Description: This villain can make people go really wild and crazy. While walking

around people, he can infuse thoughts in their heads which can make them para-noid, nervous, stressed, lost or just make them act like wild animals. He is basically

blasting people’s minds with different philosophical thoughts and playing with them, making people go nuts. His most powerful mind blast can even cause a

vegetative state and locked-in syndrome.

Mr. Quibbles! (Noah Bloem)A hamster that seems innocent while he is “locked” in his cage. But in truth, he has

the ability to control minds and makes the humans wreak havoc across the city and eventually help lead Mr. Quibbles to be

the ultimate leader of the world!

16

Which fictional world should you live in?

Are you a boy or a girl?

Swords or Sandals?

What type of sword?

The glowy one! It lights up and goes

‘b-zshoo, vmmmm, kshhh’!

Ok...I guess the world of Harry Potter then.

The Dark Souls World.

The World of Pokemon!Umm....

The pointy kind, of course. With sharp

edges and stuff.

Yes!

What sort of a ridiculous question is that?

Stop questioning the quiz, no one likes a smart ass.

Swords! Sandals, obviously.

A wand!Umm...you know that’s not a sword,

right?Shut up.

Tamriel! From the Elder Scrolls Series.Sorry, what?

Does the idea of dy-ing excite you?

Of course, I like to welcome death with open arms.

The Star Wars Universe.

By Noah Bloem

© Besthesda Software LLC

© The Pokemon Company

17

Really? Sandals? Yes, really. Stop judging me.

What sort of sandals?

The colorful ones that light up when you step!

The World of Disney/Pixar!

That can’t be a real thing.

The awesome powerful ones that give me super powers

when I wear them!

It definitely is.

Fine, I’ll accept it. Batman or Dr. Strange?

Batman!

Marvel Universe.

DC Multiverse.

Dr. Strange!

Who’s Dr. Strange?

You don’t deserve to live in a fictional world.

© Marvel Entertainment, LLC

The Little Cafe.Hann

In the alternate world, I would be a barista. A

motherf***ing barista with a diamond ear-piercing on one side and an emo style undercut side-part.

Sometime ago, I was inspired by an episode in X-files where a Genie within a lamp grants her own wish: to sit at a cafe and watch the world goes by. The dreamy image stays with me and has been my go-to place when things get heavy in the world. This is my truest wish, amidst all the selves that I’ve thrown away, amidst all the walls I’ve built around me.

I want to have my own quaint, little cafe --

where it’s nothing but coffee. I want to

provide that space for people to just shed their

daily baggage even just for a while. A place for lovers, a place for writers, a place for

the world to stop.

This will be a place where coffee is the common

thing that brings people together.

There is no need for words

to be exchanged for travellers

to understand each other. This

is a shelter from all demands that were placed

on your shoulders, a shelter to shed tears and a shelter

to recharge.

This is my sincere, humble, honest

dream. A little cafe. The little cafe.

18

Films, seriesand booksin the modern world By Claudia de Hartog

19

ome of you might have heard or even seen it, I’m talking about TV-series ‘Once upon a time’. �e series is basically about fairy-

tales, children books, and personages from Disney �lms that come to life in the ‘real’ world. �e story is slightly more complicated than that, but the main idea is about �ctional people that exist in modern and ‘real’ life. �ese �ctional people in the series came from a di�er-ent place, another universe so to speak, called the ‘Enchanted Forrest’ and were transported into this town called ‘Storybook’ because a curse was laid upon them. I love the series, however in my opinion the graphics could have been better, which is a shame. But, neverthe-less the idea and the main concept of the series seems really intrigu-ing to me. I mean, admit it, we have all once imagined ourselves in a Harry Potter or Star Wars world, right? So in that sense the series de�nitely contributes to the fantasies we have all had. ow cool would it be if the world of Harry Potter and Star Wars and all our favorite characters from �ctional books and �lms would come to our world?

If we believe in the multiverse theory, and just ignore all evidence against for a moment, a universe should actually exist where all fairy tales can, in fact, come to life! I mean, if there’s an in�nite amount of universes out there, so why shouldn’t there be one which �ts to the standards of fairytales? Let’s dive into the thought of this multiverse theory and believe that indeed the possibilities of encountering char-acters from fairytales and other �ctional stories are endless. ‘�e (multiverse)sky is the limit’ to our imagination. Who would you like to meet on the street or at the counter in your supermarket?

For starters, I would really love to meet almost every character from Harry Potter. Most of all Hagrid. I mean, imagine Hagrid at the gro-cery store. Happily bleeping your shopping with his big, clumsy hands and squished into the small seat behind the counter.

S

20

He’d say something like ‘G’day to you, what can I do fer yer today?’ And you’d happily chat away with him about all kinds of terrifying yet amazing animals on earth. As you walk out of the store you see an oversized boar-hound lying on the �oor, happily drooling on a piece of bone in the autumn sun. Staying on the topic of Harry Potter just a little while longer, how cool would it be to meet Dumb-ledore in real life? With his crooked nose and blue twinkly eyes looking at you behind half-moon specta-cles. To have him as a tutor

in your PBL classes, just infusing us all with his tremendous wise-ness and serenity. But then at the same time also constantly taking away and restoring the lights with his put-outer.

What other �ctional characters would be awesome to encounter in ‘our’ world? Not that I’m the biggest fan of Star Wars, but it would be pretty cool to meet Yoda for example. Seeing Yoda would also imme-diately be an indicator of being in another universe or world. Seeing as Yoda is kind of green and obviously doesn’t look like anything earthly we �nd in ‘our’ world today. Imagine Yoda being a barista at your favorite co�ee place. �is tiny creature behind the counter taking in your order. He would probably say something like “With an extra shot of expresso, here, your cappuccino.” He wouldn’t give you your drink just like that, because that would entail you bending down to get it from him, no, he would use the force to place your drink neatly in your hand. Extra shot of expresso and all.

© Warner Bros.

21

When you visit the market on Saturday, you decide you want some �sh, and walk over to one of the �sh stands where this sweet girl Arya is selling oysters, clams, and cockles. A really good deal actually, since she sells them cheaply and fresh from the harbor!

However, the way she eyes some passersby… you would almost say she wants to skin them alive – and knows how to do it.

So, here I have blended my favorite characters from well-known �lms, series, and books in modern day functions. Which of your favorite �ctional characters would you like to encounter on a regular day? How would you react if they were actually there? But don’t get too caught up in these dreams, a wise man once said: “it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” (-A. P. W. B. Dumbledore)

© Lucas�lm Ltd.

Background Artwork by Martina Stipanhttp://t1na.deviantart.com/

22

The night sky has always captured the imagination of dreamers and scientists. Then came the birth of the telescope and the era to find answers begun thereafter.

Cosmic microwave background. A con-cept that every student at EUC should be familiar with by now. It was the remnant radiation, left behind when the universe was only 400,000 years old. Early scans have shown hot and cold spots speckled throughout the universe, but a scan using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe show a significantly large cold spot. The same cold spot was observed by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite, too. It presents quite a mystery.

The most promising proposal was the supervoid theory, a tear in the universe of nearly a billion lightyears across and extremely scarce in matter (relatively, in astronomical terms). The photons which were used to measure the distance of the objects across universe experienced a loss of energy, causing them to show up as cold spot. This would essentially put the method of measuring universe via redshift in a questionable position: what if the redshift is not caused by objects stretching further away because of the expansion of the universe but because of extra dimensions stretching the natural wavelength of the light?

OnMatters

ofMissing

MatterHann

23

CreditsEditor

Noah Bloem

CoverMeike Ter Haar

WritersClaudia de Hartog

HannNiko Skoulikaris

Noah BloemSamantha Vos

DesignersNoah Bloem

Hann

Special thanks to everyone else who contributed, whether anonymously, through our survey, or with ‘Baddest Villain’ ideas!