Phoebe’s Post: Fix You – Coldplay

I left the Ark fuming and started wandering in the busy city centre streets, wishing that Alex would run after me to apologize. He did not of course ―I was the one who started the fight after all― and that made me even madder. I walked and walked and walked, having no idea where I was going, until my feet… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: Charles Bukowski

I think I want to become a poet when I grow up. For me poets are creatures of power. With just a few words they can change the world. Their verses are like little candles that shed some light to the darkness that has covered the past. When I feel lost or low or just fed up, I find comfort… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: The Ark

Huge. Imposing. Magnificent. And full of treasures. I spent hours wandering in there. Admiring, smelling, touching, watching the accompanying videos, absorbing as much information as I could, wondering what the world of the old looked like, how was life back then. I suppose every great adventure starts with a tiny little spark. I think that spark was ignited that day.… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: William Shakespeare

Not really that long before my time, 77 miles away from Cambridge, lived a great man whose talent is still widely celebrated all over the world today. His name brings into mind famous lines from his work and is associated with the best ever written theatre works there have ever been. His name William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, whose birthday is unknown,… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post:Vincent Willem van Gogh

19th century painter. He was born in Holland in 1853 and was brought up in a religious environment, as his father was a pastor, and he himself aspired to be one. He only discovered his artistic gift later in life and started drawing at the age 27. Within a time span of 10 years he created thousands of works of… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: My 14th birthday

It was my fourteenth birthday. We were staying still at the place Flavio offered us at the favelas area. I had slept in late. When I got up I realized I was alone at the attic. I headed to the small furnished area that served as both our kitchen and our living room, made myself a nice cup of tea… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post:Tattoos

I suppose it is a fact not commonly known among 16th century girls, but the art of tattoos is among the most ancient forms of art in the human history. Scientists trace it as far back as the 5.000 BC. It was used as part of religious rituals or as a symbol for social status, or simply for aesthetic reasons.… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: Being a Girly Girl

Here is the thing. I can’t be a girly girl. I can’t do girl-talk, flash my eyelashes, flirt or pretend to be a damsel in distress. I don’t change the tone of my voice when I speak to boys or try to attract their attention. I don’t look intensely at people for no reason or use a mysterious smile when… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: Appearances can be deceiving

It’s strange how the change in my appearance changed people’s attitude towards me. It was as if they now took more notice of me, as if they paid closer attention. It kind of bothered me. For me it’s the inside that matters, not the outside. Appearances create illusions that can be dissolved within a blink of an eye. A word… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: Changing also on the outside

Sooo, as I said, just as I changed on the inside, I also felt the need to change on the outside. I didn’t want to be called or be treated like a little girl anymore. Cause I wasn’t. Alex was regarded with respect in our new neighborhood because of his confidence, his fearlessness, his easy and friendly ways towards everyone.… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: My worst fears

People talked often about the Covent Garden Square. It was laid down in 1630s, and the first small shops around it had already made a name for themselves. People always talk about the good things when they want to forget all the tragic ones. I must have been less than 12 months old, in 1665, when the Great Plague came… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: Living in the streets – p3

(continuing from part 2…) That split moment before the police officers attacked us, Alex made an unexpected move and dashed sideways into the couple next to us. I took a deep breath, blocked my brain from thinking anything, and rushed to the opposite direction. We started pushing people on to one another and then slip away, grabbed anything we could… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: Living in the streets – p1

Living in the streets was like taking a deep breath, jumping from a high cliff into deep dark cold waters, struggling to emerge on the surface, feeling that you are running out of oxygen and just when you feel that everything is lost, your head is out of the water and you are breathing again. After escaping from the orphanage,… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: The Emerald Tablet

It’s been some time since I first found small hints in Isaac Newton’s work referring to Alchemy! To be honest I always had my suspicions, mainly due to what my father told me about him. He seemed always to be hiding something. Most of the people thought it was just his discoveries and experiments. But I knew it was more… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: The night of our escape-part 2

… (continuation of the post: The night of our escape) Every minute seemed like a small eternity. My heart kept beating like crazy, my imagination run wild, coming up with a billion horrible scenarios for Max’s fate. “Where is he, Alex?”, I muttered, my voice strained with worry. “Right behind you!”, a small voice answered making me and Alex jump.… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: The night of our escape

Even now, years after our escape from the orphanage, the night of our actual escape seems to me like a far dream; like something that happened to someone else, long ago, something I’ve read about it, or heard of. I am proud of it though. I just do not believe we fount the strength to go on with the whole… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: London Bridge is falling down

Dear diary, While waiting in the museum today for Alex to finish his morning shift, so we could enjoy our lunch together I happened upon a family of 4 – the parents, along with their twin baby girls , of about 3 years of age. The little girls were playing with a tablet (something which still surprises me to see…honestly…every… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: like Alice in Wonderland

My mom loved books, especially the old-fashioned ones. You know, the ones made out of actual paper. The ones that survived the flooding of the old world. Battered, worn, dirty as they were, but beautiful. So beautiful! Now a days, in Virtus everything is in digital format. You just project out of your smart watch on to any surface and… Read more →

Max’s Post: When you’ve got no-one to follow

Being alone seems in the beginning an easy way out. You do not mingle with anyone, you do not make friends, no feelings, you don’t risk of getting hurt. Then, you need to find things to do. I mean other than just attending school and everyday stuff. Really something to do to keep your mind occupied at all times. Science… Read more →

Max’s Post: All the Lonely People

Beatles in the 1960s wrote: All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong? I found out about loneliness long after discovering how angry I was. For months the only thing I felt was anger. Not for the people in the orphanage, nor for all the older boys who teased… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post:The day I met Alex

It was during one of those long grey early evenings ―when I spent hours trying to keep Max away from the bullies and to make him interested in the world again― that it happened. I arrived late at the yard, having being held back at the art class to help clean the mess some of the youngsters had created. I… Read more →

Max’s Post: Alchemy… the origins

Kheme in Ancient Egyptian language means ‘black earth’, as opposed to the red earth, the sand in the desert is the Egyptian name for ‘Egypt’. Kheme means Egypt. From that the ancient Greeks created the word Chemia (which means Chemistry in modern Greek). The Arabs borrowed the Ancient Greek word Chemia to interpret ‘not the black earth’, but the ‘Black… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: At the orphanage part 1

The first blow was the separation. For the first time in our lives Max and I were forced to split. Max cried and screamed and I begged them not to do this. We had just lost our parents; we couldn’t bear to lose each other as well. My pleas fell into the void. Our guardians were unmovable. “These are the… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: When it all started

Three years. That’s how long Max and I remained in the orphanage. Three years that stunk of fear and hopelessness. Three years full of a cold silence, cruel faces, darkness and a constant feeling of pain that turned into physical pain. They could drive you mad. Some of us did go mad. You could tell by the feverous gleam in… Read more →

Max’s Post: Understanding the Universe in Renaissance

Trying to understand the universe when one can not understand the natural laws of Earth seems almost impossible. But Renaissance is very much about trying to understand how the Universe worked and then create formulae that could describe and explain it without contradicting religion. Was Earth the center of the Universe or the Sun? Was the planets made of the… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: Dear Diary… where am I?

Hmmm…busy, busy, busy…so many things to catch up on. Had a wonderful spring break with my friends, just chilling in Virtus but in the meantime all the things that I have yet to discover… The things I missed in all those years. Scientific discoveries, world wars, kingdoms falling apart, books and poetry.. Thankfully, with all the help I can get,… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: The Squatter Cities.

Hey there, I want to point out a TED X talk by Steward Brand, an environmentalist & futurist. It is really short 3min https://www.ted.com/playlists/29/our_future_in_cities He talks about the Squatter Cities. Ghettos, poor cities where people live in any way they can. In any case his points are a few but mind blowing! Take care world! Listen and think before it’s… Read more →

Max’s post: How we measure time – linearly…

Hmmmm…to all my fellow astronomy geek-lovers out there, this is dedicated to you my friends. It’ about time we talked about… well time really, or better the way it is measured in Earth – linearly, with clocks and things like that. Not time travels. This is for later! The division of the day into 24 hours originates from the Babylonians,… Read more →

Phoebe’s Post: A room for youngsters

Hi guys, for all of you who know our story please excuse the fact that you may know some of this, for all the other visitors here is a short description of what happened to us, me and my brother Max: Our parents died during an experiment. They got infected by a deadly virus that killed them within a couple… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: What is forever?

“One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheelwork of the universe […] and the very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery”.  – Nikola Tesla   I remember sitting by the fire when my Dad explained again and again physics and mathematics, all of the secrets of… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: My kaleidoscope

How unbelievable my life turned out to be? It’s really hard to imagine, even now that it’s been quite some time since Cambridge…well I wouldn’t want to dwell on that now though. My thoughts today revolve around my kaleidoscope. Ever since I can remember myself, my father – quite a brilliant man and scientist – would potter around the house,… Read more →

Rosie’s Post: Newton part II: the «Philosophiæ Naturalis Principiæ Mathematica»

Newton’s most important work is the ‘PRINCIPIA’ or the ‘Philosophiæ Naturalis Principiæ Mathematica’ which means Mathematical principles of the Physics Philosophy. With this work he established the foundations of mechanics using a very strict but also analytic model. These foundations were so rigid that lasted at least 250 years. The first earthquake came by Albert Einstein in 1905, with his… Read more →

ROSIE’S POST: Sir Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was born on Christmas of 1642 according to the old English calendar, in Woolsthorpe of Lincolnshire. This was the year Galileo Galilei died. He was a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, alchemist and theologian. Obviously in the times You live in, times of extreme specialization this seems almost impossible. But back then (and believe you me) in times that… Read more →

MAX’S POST: MICHAEL FARADAY

  In our journey we’ve met several scientists as you’ll discover by reading BOOK ONE, but there are also many that we haven’t got the chance to meet – yet. One of them is definitely Michael Faraday, born 1791 in Surrey of South London. He was born poor, much like me and my sister Phoebe. He wasn’t an orphan though.… Read more →

ROSIE’S POST: I was born in the Renaissance.

Some believe that the Scientific Renaissance (1450-1630) is the first part of the Scientific Revolution which started in the 17th century. I was born in Cambridge (England) at the end of the Scientific Renaissance, just as we were passing on to the next level of scientific discoveries. And then something remarkable happened and I was given the chance – a… Read more →