Friday, January 31, 2020
Political Regime and Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words
Political Regime and Business - Essay Example By an examination of the political regime, one can therefore make the decision to invest or not to invest in a given country. Most countries often have political regimes that are different and diverse in their ideologies and in their practices. An example of two countries with different ideologies is the United States and China. Given the different ideologies in the two countries, the business environment in the two countries is likely to be very different. The changes in the political environment of a given country usually have an impact on the business environment of the country. A stable political regime often means that there will be less tension which will in turn create a positive business environment. The stable political regime also means that it will be easier to start up a business in this environment. The two governments (the Chinese government and the United States government) usually put in place different ideologies that have different impacts on the business environmen t as will be discussed in the paper (Collins and Block, 2007, p. 130). The term political ideology refers to the set of beliefs and ideals that seek to explain or direct how the society should work and how power should be allocated to the different sectors of the society. A political ideology is therefore a collection of ideas and thoughts on how the society and the different sectors of the society should function and on how best to achieve this ideal functioning of the society. The differences in ideologies followed therefore form the basis of the differences in political regimes. In most political regimes, the old policies that have proved to be ineffective are often replaced by newer policies in an attempt to improve the situation. The political regime of a given country usually has a direct impact on the practices that will be followed in the country which will in turn affect the business. This effect is usually felt in the types of employment contract that are in place in a giv en country which affect the way that a business hires and treats its employees. The effect is also felt in the human rights treatment which affects the environment under which the business is expected to operate. The political regime in the United States is characterised by a mixture of liberalism and a high level of individualism in their practices. There is also a high emphasis on individual rights and liberties which translates even in the business environment in the country. The country was founded on the principles of democratic republic. At present, the major political parties in the country are the Republican and the Democratic parties. The democratic situation in the United States encourages private ownership of property (Jennings 2010, p. 69). The United States also adopts a free market policy. This means that the prices and other market conditions are regulated by the laws and forces of demand and supply. The government does not interfere with the means of production, and these means are controlled by the private citizens. In this free market, the prices of commodities in this market are as a result of voluntary transactions as opposed to being subjected to government control. Such a policy opens room for competition among various entities. The liberalised government system of the United States presents prospective businesses
Thursday, January 23, 2020
The Brontë Sisters and Their Work Essay -- Biography Biographies Essay
The Brontà « Sisters and Their Work       As the three famous Brontà « sisters grew up, they wrote stories even as      young girls. They developed their characters and plotlines over the years,      and these three works would later become either their best or only works;      Charlotte with Jane Eyre, Emily with Wuthering Heights, and Anne with      Agnes Grey. Focusing on the key works of Charlotte and Anne, readers get a      glimpse into the writers' opinions of being a governess and perhaps life      in general.       Of the three sisters, Emily produced the least amount but was also the      first to pass away. All three did see some of their poetry published      before taking to their final resting place, but Emily published only one      novel. Anne only published two, but the second novel The Tenant of      Wildfell Hall was a much larger work than her first. Charlotte saw three      of her novels published, Shirley, Villette, and Jane Eyre, and the fourth,      The Professor, was released after her death. Charlotte was obviously the      more productive one, but she lived to be 39, while Anne died at 29 and      Emily at 30.       Charlotte and Anne spent a great deal of their adult lives as governesses,      while Emily tried the profession once for six months. Looking exclusively      at Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre then, one can see that the writers used much      of their own lives and experiences in their works. The protagonists of      both books become governesses at a young age (Charlotte and Anne took      their first positions both at 19), and if Jane a... ...ot have any feelings for him. Her      and Rochester's personalities fit together, and Weston is nothing like      Rochester. Miss Murray would still marry Lord Ashby, so Jane would      probably look for another position.       In conclusion, Charlotte may have toned down her experience for the sake      of the complexity of the novel, considering she never in real life fell in      love with her master and then went on to marry him only to find out he was      married to the wild beast in the attic. Anne's portrayal would be the more      realistic of the two, considering Agnes' story is not beyond the realms of      reality. Through these two works, however, one can get a sense of the      Brontà «s' experience as governesses and their opinions of the profession.     Â
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Bail Application Larceny
This matter is an application for conditional bail your honour. Mrs. Ayoub is a 51 year old divorced woman that lives on her own and has been charged with larceny under section 117, common assault under section 61 and resisting arrest, under section 58 of the Crimes Act 1900. Your honour, I submit my client has neither presumption in favour or against bail as she doesn’t fall under sections 8 to 9. Therefore Mrs. Ayoub has no presumption for bail however, under section 13 of the Bail Act, my client is still eligible for bail despite having no entitlement, therefore I plead for bail to be considered granted to my client.Has your honour been made aware of the facts of the case? * The alleged incident took place after a substantial amount of alcohol had been consumed, putting my client in a different state of mind. * It was not Mrs. Ayoub’s intention to steal the radio as she placed it in her shopping bag and was then distracted by a conversation. She then walked out of My er forgetting to pay for the radio which is when she was confronted by the security guard causing her to panic and push him away. * As a result of this, police arrived and Mrs. Ayoub was in a state of distress and the police struggled to escort her to the police vehicle till she calmed down.Your honour, the criteria to be considered in Mrs. Ayoub’s case regarding section 32 1) a) states â€Å"the probability of whether or not the person will appear in court in respect of the offence for which bail is being considered, having regard only to†: Subsection i. â€Å"the person’s background and community ties, as indicated by the history and details of the person’s residence, employment and family situations and the person’s prior criminal record†Your honour, my client was left by her husband many years ago and as a fifty one year old woman, resulted in psychological distress leading her to psychiatric help while he lives in America.She has no sureties or property as her only form of income is her pension cheque. She has no other immediate family in Sydney and resides at a unit in Parramatta but my client’s daughter keeps in contact with her mother and is willing to let Mrs. Ayoub reside with her in Melbourne. Due to this arrangement, my client will not breach such ties with her daughter by not appearing in court on set dates as it could strain the relationship with both parties. My client does have a criminal history over twenty years with ninety convictions of arceny, mainly shoplifting, however, none of the convictions consisted of assault or resisting arrest. Section 32 1) a) subsection ii. states â€Å"any previous failure to appear in court pursuant to a bail undertaking or pursuant to a recognizance of bail entered into before the commencement of this section†Your honour, my client has never failed to appear in court even though she has a medical certificate fr om her previous psychiatrist stating that she had a nervous breakdown when her husband left her.Section 32 1) a) subsection ii. reads â€Å"the circumstances of the offence (including its nature and seriousness), the strength of the evidence against the person and the severity of the penalty or probable penalty†Your honour, my client’s offence of assault and resisting arrest were as a result of the alleged larceny as she had no intention to steal the radio, there is no evidence to prove that my client’s intention was to permanently deprive the owner of that property.The mental element of committing the crime is not present as my client was in severe distress when she had forgotten that it was still in her bag. Mrs. Ayoub was taken by surprise when the guard approached her and didn’t intend any harm towards him when she pushed him away as she panicked. When the police arrived, she struggled as they escorted her but didn’t try to resist, preve nt or oppose her arrest as she only just struggled till they calmed her down.Under these circumstances, my client was misunderstood as she was in a different state of mind and doesn’t deserve the severity of these punishments including larceny under section 117 carrying a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, common assault under section 61 carrying a maximum of sentence of two years imprisonment and resisting arrest, under section 58 carrying a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.Section 32 1) b) reads the interest of the person having regard only to: Subsection iv) â€Å"whether or not the person is, in the opinion of the authorised officer or court, incapacitated by intoxication, injury or use of a drug or is otherwise in danger of physical injury or in need of physical protection†Your honour, my client has an ongoing problem with alcohol leading to intoxication which may lead to making unsound judgements/decisions and for this reason may ne ed professional help or counselling regarding her alcohol problem as her addiction may get worse if it is not treated properly.Section 32 1) b1) subsection i) states the protection of â€Å"any person against whom it is alleged that the offence concerned was committed†In regards to the protection of the security guard, my client has no intention to harm him or any intention to revisit that store as she is willing to move to Melbourne to live with her daughter.Section 32 1) c) subsection iv) reads â€Å"the protection and welfare of the community, having regard only to whether or not it is likely that the person will commit any serious offence while at liberty on bail, but the authorised officer or court may have regard to this likelihood†Your honour, my client’s history of larceny may be an issue but to stop my client from reoffending, her daughter is willing to let my client live with her which will influence her to the good as she wonâ⠂¬â„¢t put strain on the relationship she has with her only family.As this is an application for conditional bail, under bail conditions section 36 2) a) one or more of the following conditions only may be imposed on the grant of bail; that the accused person enter into an agreement to observe specified requirements as to his or her conduct while at liberty on bail, other than financial requirements. Your honour, my client is willing to enter an agreement concerning residing at a specific premises and entering a rehabilitation program for her alcohol abuse which will prevent my client from panicking in certain situations causing her to cause harm to others.Section 36 2) a1) states that the accused person enter into an agreement to reside, while at liberty on bail, in accommodation for persons on bail. As mentioned before, my client has agreed to reside with her daughter at 12 Brown Road, Brownfield 3425 in Melbourne. Living with her daughter will influence my cl ient to obey the laws and prevent her from shoplifting which may have a positive impact on her life. This way, Mrs.Ayoub’s pension cheque won’t be her only form of income as her daughter will provide for my client which will minimize the chances of my client wanting to shoplift. My client agrees to appear in court when needed and will sign in at an assigned police station if granted bail. Section 36 2) b) states â€Å"that one or more than one acceptable person (other than the accused person) acknowledge that he or she is acquainted with the accused person and that he or she regards the accused person as a responsible person who is likely to comply with his or her bail undertaking. Your honour my client’s daughter has acknowledged her mother as a responsible person as she wouldn’t be willing to let her stay if she wasn’t likely to comply with her bail conditions. To conclude my submissions, I would like your honour to take into considerat ion the misunderstanding of the three offences as my client expresses great remorse and is embarrassed that her intoxication led to this stage. If your honour has no further questions, that concludes my submission.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Apple Inc. Is The Most Valuable Brand On The Planet
Introduction: Apple Inc. is an American technology company founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976 in Mountain View, California (Apple Computer Company Partnership Agreement, 1976). Initially created for the purpose of developing and selling personal computers, Apple has grown into the world’s second-largest IT company by net sales revenue with its $182.7 billion made in 2014 (Apple Inc. 2014, p. 27) and the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor (Framingham, 2014). It runs 437 stores in 16 countries (Apple Inc. 2014, p. 32) and produces a wide range of goods, including personal computers, smartphones, digital music players and media tablets, all of which are working on Apple’s own operational†¦show more content†¦2014, p. 7). Therefore, Apple’s profits and the ability to produce and transport its products depend on political factors, such as new international tax, trade and labour laws, international relations bet ween the USA and other countries and political stability in countries that produce or buy Apple products. Apple also manages to exploit international laws for its advantage; for example, to use tax loopholes by setting subsidiaries in Ireland for international sales, not claiming tax residence and avoiding U.S. income tax by taking advantage of the difference between Irish and American tax residency rules (Kanter, J., and Tomas Jr, L., 2014). Economical Factors: Global Financial Crisis has led to high inflation rate, increased unemployment and reduced consumers’ buying power. Apple Annual Report (2014) states that the company’s performance depends significantly on global and regional economic conditions and a number of other factors, such as energy and real estate costs and state of the labour market (Apple Inc., p. 9). The company’s main areas of interest are the United States, as it is where its headquarters are located, and China, that produces the majority of Apple’s products. Apple ‘considers a relatively strong U.S. dollar to be a threat to its business overseas’ (Reynolds, 2014), as it may reduce the demand for their products overseas due to higher prices, and ‘uses derivative instruments, such as foreign currency forward and option
Monday, December 30, 2019
Isoelectronic Definition - Chemistry Glossary
Isoelectronic refers to two atoms, ions, or molecules that have the same electronic structure and the same number of valence electrons. The term means equal electric or equal charge. Isoelectronic chemical species typically display similar chemical properties. Atoms or ions with the same electronic configurations are said to be isoelectronic to each other or to have the same isoelectronicity. Related Terms: Isoelectronicity, Valence-Isoelectronic Isoelectronic Examples The K ion is isoelectronic with the Ca2 ion. The carbon monoxide molecule (CO) is isoelectronic to nitrogen gas (N2) and NO. CH2CO is isoelectronic to CH2NN. CH3COCH3 and CH3NNCH3 are not isoelectronic. They have the same number of electrons, but different electron structures. The amino acids cysteine, serine, tellurocysteine, and selenocysteine are isoelectronic, at least with respect to valence electrons. More Examples of Isoelectronic Ions and Elements Isoelectronic Ions/Elements Electron Configuration He, Li+ 1s2 He, Be2+ 1s2 Ne, F- 1s2 2s2 2p6 Na+, Mg2+ 1s2 2s2 2p6 K, Ca2+ [Ne]4s1 Ar, S2- 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 S2-, P3- 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 Uses of Isoelectronicity Isoelectronicity may be used to predict the properties and reactions of a species. It is used to identify hydrogen-like atoms, which have one valence electron and are thus isoelectronic to hydrogen. The concept may be applied to predict or identify unknown or rare compounds based on their electronic resemblance to known species.
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Persuasive Essay On Naps - 1598 Words
Naps. Everyone has taken naps at some point in their life. We take them after a long day of school, a long day of work, or when we didn’t get enough sleep the night before. We take naps all the time, but do we truly know how naps affect our body? Do we truly know how we benefit from naps? Sleep is a complicated process that many of us take for granted. Without sleep, we would die. Sleep has many benefits, but unfortunately some people with sleep disorders or people with night shift jobs are unable to experience the benefits of sleep. The majority of people in the world face sleep deprivation because they do not get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night. Since many people are constantly in a sleep deprived state, they are unaware†¦show more content†¦When we take naps, we are contributing to our brain forming these key memories. When conducting a study, researchers found that our memories are formed and consolidated in the REM and Stage 2 NREM categories of sle ep. They discovered that â€Å"REM and Stage 2 NREM support a variety of powerful sleep-dependent memory processes that act to (i) enlarge the neural networks in which memories are stored, (ii) integrate these new memories with other, older memories, into rich semantic networks, and (iii) extract patterns and rules from large bodies of encoded information†(Stickgold). When we enter REM sleep or Stage 2 during our naps, we undergoing these processes and consolidating memories that we will utilize in the future. Along with memory consolidation, research has also â€Å"emphasized the importance of NREM sleep including stage 2 for efficient motor consolidation†(Debarnot). Motor imagery goes along with our memories. Studies were conducted and they showed that daytime naps helped with not only memory consolidation, but with our motor imagery. The results proved that daytime naps helped people perform different motor skills and tasks after following their nap. When researchers compared the data with people who had not taken a nap, they saw that by not taking a nap, their ability to perform the same tasks was actually slowed down compared to those that had taken a nap (Debarnot). This researchShow MoreRelatedStephen P. Robbins Timothy A. Judge (2011) Organizational Behaviour 15th Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall393164 Words  | 1573 PagesCommunication 341 †¢ Nonverbal Communication 341 Organizational Communication 342 Formal Small-Group Networks 343 †¢ The Grapevine 343 â⠂¬ ¢ Electronic Communications 345 †¢ Managing Information 349 Choice of Communication Channel 350 xiv CONTENTS Persuasive Communications 351 Automatic and Controlled Processing 351 †¢ Interest Level 352 †¢ Prior Knowledge 352 †¢ Personality 352 †¢ Message Characteristics 352 Barriers to Effective Communication 353 Filtering 353 †¢ Selective Perception 353 †¢ InformationRead MoreLibrary Management204752 Words  | 820 Pagesfactors that make it more necessary than ever to systematically plan and develop library and information services? In thinking about the assignment, and before even reading articles and treatises on change, what are your initial reactions? Present a persuasive argument to the group as you break out into discussions on this theme. Such a dynamic environment provides new challenges and opportunities to revitalize and redefine organizations as well as reinvent information sources and services for both growth
Friday, December 13, 2019
Sunshine Chapter 25 Free Essays
I nodded, probably too vigorously, because his smile faded. â€Å"Something wrong?†Nothing that wasn’t wrong the last time you asked me that question, I thought, only it’s got wronger faster than maybe I was expecting. I shook my head, trying to be less vigorous. We will write a custom essay sample on Sunshine Chapter 25 or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"No. Thanks.†He swallowed the last of his coffee, put the mug down on the ground, and came over to me. â€Å"Sure?†â€Å"Sure. Yeah.†I put my arms around him, leaned my face against his shoulder (my forehead against the oak tree that was visible beneath the torn-off sleeve of his T-shirt), and sighed. He smelled of food and daylight. I could feel his heart beating. He put his arms around me. â€Å"Probably just lingering indigestion from eleven-twelfths of a Bitter Chocolate Death yesterday,†I said. I felt the small kick of his diaphragm as he laughed – he had a sort of furry-chuckle laugh – but he knew me too well. â€Å"Try again, Sunshine,†he said. â€Å"Do blue whales OD guzzling all that sea water? Your veins run chocolate – finest dark semisweet – not blood.†Pity it looked red, then. It gave vampires ideas. I didn’t say anything. â€Å"You can tell me about it on Friday, okay?†he said. I nodded. â€Å"Okay.†If I said any more I would probably burst into tears. I drove home slowly. I thought of going by the library, but decided Aimil came into the â€Å"too difficult†category, and she might conceivably make some kind of guess what I was feeling so gloomy about and I didn’t want to take the risk. What a really awful reason not to see someone for the last time. But I was so tired. I sat in the car again at home and watched the leaves turning. It seemed to me a lot of autumn had happened in the last two days. I thought of the two days out of time I’d had after Con had diagnosed me and before he was supposed to come back and cure me. I’d known I was dying, but it kind of hadn’t mattered. It wasn’t only that I believed Con would find a way to heal me. It was that there wasn’t anything I could do. I didn’t have that luxury this time. I was going to have to go through with it, whatever it was. I’d always scorned the stories where the princesses hung around waiting to be rescued: Sleeping Beauty, spare me. Tell the stupid little wuss to wake up and sort out the wicked fairy herself. I found myself thinking that sleeping through it sounded pretty good after all. Yolande was looking out for me, and her door was open before I’d climbed out of the Wreck. I walked draggingly up to her. I didn’t even know that it was going to be tonight. I remembered those extra nights I’d waited for Con, with death lying on my breast like a lover. What a long time ago that seemed. I tried to make this a hopeful thought, but it refused to work. It was like trying to blow up a popped balloon. Hello, Death, you again. Just can’t keep away, can you? Saints and damnation. Mostly damnation. Yolande drew me into her workroom. There was a little heap of†¦sunlight on her desk. What? I blinked. It looked like†¦as if there was a chink in the blind, letting a single ray in to make a pool there: except it wasn’t a pool, it was a heap, and there was no ray of sun. I could feel my eyes fizzing back and forth like a camera’s automatic lens, trying to find the right setting and failing. The heap cast no shadows. It was a small domed hummock of pure golden light. I had stopped to stare, and Yolande went to her desk and picked it up. It seemed to flow over her hands, slowly, like rivulets of warm honey, or small friendly sleepy snakes. It was, I thought, as it separated itself over her fingers, a latticework of some variety. The filaments met and parted in some kind of pattern, and the filaments themselves seemed to carry a pattern, like scales on a snake’s back. It moved slowly, but it moved; it curled round Yolande’s wrists. My strange sense of it – them – being friendly but half asleep remained. â€Å"It will wake up when it touches you,†she said, as if reading my mind. â€Å"We had to put it together in great haste, and it’s not yet used to being – manifest.†She came toward me, stretching the light-net gently between her hands like a cat’s cradle, and – threw it over me. For a moment I was surrounded by twinkling lights; and then I felt it – them – settling gently against my skin, delicate as snow-flakes, but warm. Bemusedly I held one arm out to watch the process. You know how if you watch, if you concentrate, you can feel when snowflakes land on you, feel the chill of them, almost individually at first, till your face or hand or arm begins to numb with the cold, and then they melt against your skin and disappear. So it was with these tiny lightflakes: I saw them as they floated down, shimmering down, felt them when they touched me, lighter than feathers or gossamer, and over all of me, for clothes were insubstantial to them. But they were not merely warm, a few of them were uncomfortably hot, and left tiny pinprick red marks; and while they dissolved on contact like snowflakes, they appeared to sink through the surface of my skin, leaving nothing behind, no dampness, no stickiness, no shed scales†¦After they’d all vanished , if I turned my arm sharply back and forth I could just see the webwork of light, like veins, only golden, not blue. I itched faintly, especially where belt and bra straps rubbed. Yolande let out a long slow breath. I looked at her inquiringly. â€Å"I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I told you we had to put this together very quickly.†â€Å"What – is it?†Yolande paused. â€Å"I’m not sure how to explain it to you. It is not a ward, or only indirectly so. It is a form of comehither, but generally only sorcerers ever use anything like it. It – it gathers your strength to you. It taps into the source of your strength, more strongly than you can unaided. â€Å"Most magic handlers have a talent for one thing or another, and it is drawn from one area of this world or another. A foreseer with a principal rapport with trees may see visions in a burl of her favorite wood, for example, rather than in the traditional crystal ball. A sorcerer whose strongest relationship is with water will be much likelier to drown his or her enemy than to meet them in battle, although one with an affinity for metal would forge a sword.†â€Å"Affinity,†I said bitterly. â€Å"My affinity is for vampires.†â€Å"No,†said Yolande. â€Å"Why do you say that?†â€Å"Pat. SOF. That’s why they want me. Because I’m a m-magic handler†– I could hardly get the phrase out; handling seemed far from the correct term in my case – â€Å"with an affinity for vampires.†Yolande shook her head. â€Å"The hierarchies of magic handling are no particular study of mine. But your principal affinity is for sunlight: your element, as it were. It is usually one of the standard four: earth, air, water, fire. Sometimes it is metal, sometimes wood. I have never heard of one for sunlight before, but there are – are tests for these things. Yours is neither fire nor air, but a bit of both, and something else. While I was doing the tests and coming up nowhere, I thought of sunlight because of all the days I have seen you lying in the sun like a cat or a dog – I have only ever seen you truly relaxed like that, lying motionless in sunlight. And you told me once about the year you were ill, when you lived in a basement flat, and how you cured yourself by lying in front or the sunny windows when you moved upstairs. I thought of your nickname – how I myself had relied on your nickname to tell me the real truth about you, after the vampire visited y ou†¦ â€Å"As for your – let us call it counteraffinity: your counteraffinity may be for vampires. I have never heard of this either, but I do know it is often a magic handler with a principal affinity for water who can cross a desert most easily; a handler with a principal affinity for air who can hold her breath the longest, someone with an affinity for earth who flies most easily. It is the strength of the element in you that makes you more able to resist – and simultaneously embrace – its opposite. You are not consumed by the dark because you are full of light.†I didn’t feel full of light. I felt full of stomach acid and cold phlegm. I knew about the four elements, of course; I even knew a little about this counteraffinity thing. Magic handlers with a principal fire element never get hired by the fire service; fires tend to be harder to put out with them around. But an Air or a Water is a shoo-in for the Fire Corps because Airs never seem to suffer smoke inhalation and water seems to go farther with a Water. A lot of lives have been saved by the Airs and the Waters in the Fire Corps. I’d never thought of it as having to do with counteraffinities though. But then I had never thought a lot about magic handling. I had always been too busy being fascinated by stories of the Others. â€Å"I can see in the dark – er – now,†I said, not wanting to get into how it happened, â€Å"but it makes me kind of nuts. In the dark it’s okay. But I see in – through – the shadows in daylight too. But I see through them – strangely. I mostly can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.†Or if I can I don’t know if I’m imagining it, to make it make sense. â€Å"And most of them wiggle.†Yolande looked interested. â€Å"Perhaps you will tell me more about that some time. I may be able to help.†Some time, I thought. Yeah. â€Å"The shadows on you don’t wiggle though. They just lie there, like all shadows used to.†â€Å"Ah. That will perhaps be the purification process of wardskeeping. If you become a master, as I eventually did, you go through a series of trials that are to make you what you are as intensely as possible. You would not be able to do what a master does without this. I imagine you will see other masters of their craft as you see me.†I still hadn’t decided if the shadows that fell on Con moved around or not. Dark shadows were different from light shadows. So to speak. If they didn’t, did that make him a master vampire? What is a master vampire? SOF used the term for someone who ran a gang. I held both arms out and admired the faint twinkly gold, felt the faint prickly itch. I pulled a handful of my hair forward where I could look at it and it too was laced and daubed with gold. Maybe Yolande could sell the process to a hairdresser: bet you didn’t have to touch it up every few weeks. Pity I wouldn’t be around to demonstrate. The sun was near setting. I dropped my arms. â€Å"Thank you,†I said. â€Å"That is so feeble. But – thank you very much.†â€Å"You’re very welcome, my dear,†said Yolande. â€Å"I must go now, I think.†â€Å"Yes. But I hope you will come back and tell me about it.†I met her eyes and saw with a shock that she did know. I tried to smile. â€Å"I hope I will too.†I sat just inside the open doors of the balcony, cross-legged, hands on knees. I didn’t bother to try to align, to ask him anything, to tell him anything. He would be here soon enough. He would be here. This time what was doomed to happen wasn’t going to be put off. It would begin tonight. And, probably, end there too. The sun reddened the autumn colors on the trees. The shadows darkened and lengthened. PART FOUR Perhaps the flakes of light had settled in my eyes too when Yolande’s web had fallen around me. Sitting still and waiting, watching the sun set, I hadn’t thought much about the way the shadows fell and moved; it was always easier when I was motionless myself. But I saw him clearly, this time. I saw him, and not merely by a process of elimination, one wiggly shadow moving in a specific direction. He was a dark figure, human-shaped. Vampire-shaped. He was Con. A dark figure: dark with glints of gold, as if lightflakes fell on him, sparked like struck matches, and fell away. Did I hear him or not? I don’t know. I had a feeling like sound of him, as I had a feeling like sight. I saw him disappear around the corner of the house. He would be coming up the stairs now; I felt his presence there. He would be opening my door – hmm, did he open doors to walk through them? No, wait. Vampires couldn’t disintegrate themselves – I didn’t think. A few sorcerers could, but they were the really crazy ones. If you’ve invited a vampire across your threshold, maybe the door simply didn’t exist for him any more? Or anyway why did the front door always whoosh gently when I opened it but not when he did? And I knew when he was standing behind me. It wasn’t that I heard him breathing. But the vampire-in-the-room thing was unmistakable. I stood up and turned around. He looked different. It might have been the lightflakes but I don’t think so. I probably looked different too. If you’re going into what you know is your final battle maybe the preliminary loin-girding always is visible. My experience is limited. I don’t know that I would necessarily have identified the way Con looked as a vampire prepared for his last battle, but as a thumbnail description it would do. I was always surprised at how big he was. That’s probably something about the way vampires move – the boneless gliding, that human-spine-unhinging creepy grace. You didn’t believe it, so you made the vampire smaller in your memory to make it a little more plausible. (Uh. I don’t know about the generic you in this case. So far as I knew I was the only human, so far, who’d had the opportunity. Or the need.) It’s funny, vampires have been a fact of human existence since before history began, and yet in our heart of hearts I don’t think we really believe in them. Every time one of us meets up with one of them we don’t believe in them all over again. Of course in most cases a human meeting up with a vampire is looking at their immediate death and so not believing it is the last forlorn hope – but I’m here to say that being acquainted with one doesn’t lessen the feeling much. I didn’t believe in Con. Tricky. I believed in my own death more. I stretched my hand out and put it on his chest, where no heart beat. He was wearing another one of his long black shirts. It might have been the one I had worn a few nights ago, except that that one was hanging in the back of my closet with the cranberry-red dress. My vampire wardrobe. I let my hand drop. But he reached out and picked it up. There was a fizz, a shock, as his skin met mine. I felt him twitch – ever so slightly – but he didn’t loose my hand. He turned it over instead, and then laid it gently, as if it had no volition of its own, in the palm of his other hand. The invisible spark happened again, but he didn’t startle this time. My back was to the fading twilight, but in the shadow of my body the occasional gold glints of the web were just visible. â€Å"What is this?†he said. â€Å"Yolande gave it to me. She said it would help me draw on the source of my strength.†â€Å"Daylight,†he said. â€Å"Yes. Does it hurt you?†â€Å"No.†I thought about that no. It sounded a little like the â€Å"no†of the kid playing so-called touch football who has just had the three biggest kids in the neighborhood tag her by knocking her down and sitting on her. They asked me after they let me up if I was hurt. I said no. I was lying. â€Å"Let me rephrase that.†A small shiver in his breath. Really quite a human noise: audible breath with a catch in it, like a muted laugh. â€Å"When you are a little too hot, a little too cold, does it hurt?†Old Mr. Temperature Control, I thought. What do you know about too hot and too cold? No, I still wasn’t thinking about any of that. Delete that thought. â€Å"Or if you pick up something a little too heavy for you, does it hurt? It is only a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself.†I liked that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood†¦ I was raving, if only to myself. I took a deep breath. Okay. My new light-web was to Con no worse than hauling an overfull sheet of cinnamon rolls out of the oven and making a run for the countertop before I dropped them was to me. I looked into his face, dully lit by the last of the twilight, and realized, with a shock, that I had no doubt: the shadows there lay quietly too. â€Å"Ready?†he said. I smiled involuntarily. Are you joking? â€Å"Yes,†I said. â€Å"I have taken what you showed me and†¦measured it, by the ways I know. I believe that between us we shall†¦attain our goal.†Our goal, I thought. I didn’t translate this into practical terms. â€Å"We do not travel in your nowheresville, but I fear the way we are going is nonetheless†¦unpleasant. I will need your assistance. It will not be easy both to travel that way and to guard our presence from too-early detection.†I closed my eyes – hurling myself into this, to stop myself from thinking about it – took a firmer grip on his hand, and began to search for the alignment. This was very different from the fuzzy non-telephone line I had used to talk to Con; for that I could just go to the edge of whatever it was that was out there, and grope. This was more like walking through a snake pit with a forked stick, hoping you could sneak up behind the snake you wanted and nail it with the stick before it nailed you. Meanwhile hoping that none of the other snakes saw you first. I glanced apologetically at the ever-so-slightly-like-the-back-of-a-snake pattern glinting faint gold against – in – my skin. I said one of my gran’s words: it was only a little word, a little word of thanks and of settling, settling down, settling in, but I thought the light-web might like it. Then I closed my eyes again. There. This may have been the light-web too, or it may have been that I’d now done my compass needle maneuver several times and was getting the hang of it, or it may have been Con. Some of it was Con; I could feel the faint scritchy buzz of connection through our palms. There seemed to be a variety of paths laid out before us: there was the totally evisceratingly worst, the slightly less worst but worst enough, the still really bad, the only basic deadly dire, and probably a few others. I was looking at the Catherine-wheel glitter of the way that had blown out SOF HQ and at the looming thing that was our destination as Con arranged us on the boundary of one of the other, the quite-awful-enough-thanks ways. The looming thing and its guardians didn’t look so much like an aquarium this time – or if it did, those fish were sick – more like the special effects in one of those postholocaust movies. Any moment now the ghastly mutants would come lurching on screen and wa ve their deviant limbs at us. I wished it was a movie. â€Å"Come,†said Con, and we stepped forward together. By the time we’d walked off the edge of the balcony we were firmly – if that’s quite the word I want – into Other-space. Vampires probably can bound lightly down from third stories, but I didn’t want to try it. As it was I was immediately having a precarious time keeping my feet; there didn’t seem to be any up or down – although this is a good thing when you’ve just walked off a balcony – or sideways or backward or forward for that matter, other than the fact that we had backs and fronts and our faces were on one side of us rather than another. This path, whatever it was, was a lot worse than Con’s short way home the other night. At least I had feet, which was an improvement on nowheresville. Hey, not only did I have feet, I got to keep my clothes on. I could still see the looming thing that was what we were aiming for, and since I didn’t know anything about the protective detail I assumed that my function was to keep watching it. Con propelled us. Presumably forward. He seemed to know up from down and sideways from sideways. I felt things whiz past me occasionally, and while I couldn’t’ve told you what they were, I could guess they weren’t friendly. Every time I set my foot down it seemed to resolve the place I was in a little more, as if my invading three-dimensionality was making my surroundings coagulate, and little by little there seemed to be another sort of stepping-stone system after all, although rather than the ordinary world sluicing by between the stones it seemed to boil up, and become part of the no-up-no-down-no-anything-else. I felt as if I would like to be sick, but fortunately my stomach couldn’t figure out which was up either, so it stayed where it was. After some kind of time there began to be half-recognizable ordinary things in the careening entropy: a street lamp. A corner of a dilapidated building with a revolving door, one of whose panes was broken. A stop sign. A road sign: Garrison Street. We were in No Town. As we went on (â€Å"on†still used advisedly), we flickered more clearly into No Town. Sometimes we took a step or two on broken pavement as if we were actually there. Maybe we were. There were now other people sporadically present also. I didn’t like the look of any of them. We passed several nightclubs with people wandering in and out. There were bouncers at the doors of some of them, but that mostly wasn’t the style in No Town. If you could walk, you could walk where you wanted to. Even the seriously flash spartan clubs, the places where people who lived in downtown high-rises went when they wanted to feel like they were slumming but were still willing to pay thirty blinks for a short glass of wine to prove they were slumming only because they wanted to, had more subtle ways of getting rid of you. Meanwhile, outdoors, if you fell down, you lay there, and people still ambulatory stepped over you: horizontal bodies were part of the ambience. Maybe you got rolled, while you were lying there being ambient. Maybe you got taken home for dinner. To be dinner. It wasn’t a good place to linger in for anyone – anyone alive, that is – but there was another myth, that if you were high enough, the suckers would leave you alone, because your blood would screw them up. I don’t think this is something I’d want to rely on myself. There are ne’er-do-wells among the Others like there are among us humans, and my guess is there are suckers who have developed a taste for screwed-up blood. Also, if you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat anything, right? And a still-breathing body facedown in a gutter is real easy to, you know, catch. I was having trouble staying upright as we winked back and forth between worlds. If when visible I was staggering a little, I would fit right in. I was a little afraid I might see someone I knew. Gods and angels, never underestimate the power of social conditioning; even under the circumstances, when I was fully expecting never having to face or explain anything to anyone again after the next few minutes or hours or time-fragments splintered by chaos-space, I was worried about this, that I might see Kenny, or his friends, or some of the younger, dumber regulars at Charlie’s; or even what remained of a few of the guys my age I knew who hadn’t got back out of drugs again. What was I afraid of? That they might see me too – holding hands with a vampire? That I would look as if I was merely under the dark and going to the usual fate of a human seen in the company of a vampire? I was supposed to care? I didn’t know what any humans might be making of us. But I began to see vampires looking back at us. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing them. I didn’t know if this was because they weren’t bothering to try to pass, or if I just knew a vampire when I saw one these days. I didn’t notice when the first one did more than look, when the first one came at us. I didn’t notice till Con had†¦never mind. He did it with his other hand, and with the hand that held mine, jerked us back into chaos-space. He wiped the splatter of blood off his face with his forearm, except there was blood on his arm too. I was afraid I’d see him lick his lips. I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t watch long enough. Maybe, you know, used blood isn’t of much interest. My hand trembled in his: in the hand of my lethal vampire companion. I was alive, human, with a beating heart. I was all alone. The next time there were several of them. This time Con jerked us out of chaos-space, because he then had to let go of my hand. I was glad I didn’t have to find out what would happen if I got left there alone without him. I wasn’t glad for very long. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do: note to myself, in my next life, get some martial arts training – get a lot of martial arts training – just in case. Again, as with the first vampire who attacked us, something happened – quicker than I could follow – quicker than I wanted to follow, and I yanked my gaze away, afraid of what my dark vision might make out for me. There was blood, again, but there was also at least one vampire left over while Con was otherwise engaged, and he was looking at me. I looked at him, not thinking about anything but my own terror, my eyes wide open, open so wide that they hurt. He met that gaze – hey, he knew a human when he saw one, and he knew he was a vampire – and I saw him falter, and then Con had turned from whatever he was doing and†¦took care of that one too, too fast for me to look away. I think I probably cried out. Jesse wasn’t going to rescue me, this time. I wasn’t going t o come to myself with human arms around me and a human voice shouting in my ear, It’s all over. You’re all right. How to cite Sunshine Chapter 25, Essay examples
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