英语作文 Directions:Write a composition on the following topic P

英语作文
Directions:Write a composition on the following topic Putting An End to Tardiness in no less than 150 words.Base your composition on the outline given in Chinese below.
1.迟到有悖于我们的行为准则.
2.迟到带来的具体负面影响.
3.如何杜绝迟到现象?

In some Government offices the clerks, upon arrival in the morning, have to sign their names in an "attendance book". This book provides space for signature, time of arrival, and "remarks." Ten minutes after the hour and official draws a red line under the last arrival"s name, and all those coming subsequently are expected to furnish an explanation of their tardiness in the "remarks" column.
When a real "London particular" occurs the number "below the line" is legion; the first of them writes: "Delayed by fog," and the rest scribble a "ditto".
One morning -- a foggy one -- Mr. Jones became a proud father; but even this only caused him to be about eleven minutes late. Proudly he wrote in explanation: "Wife had twins," which was followed in due course by the usual string of "ditto"s".
Fast Forwarding

Written by Chen Qian
Translated by denovo

“No, you can’t die in my office.” I said.
The man across the desk grinned. He had a popular face and a even more famous name: Li Duo. “Hey doc, you’ve got to take me in. Remember, I’m your Frankenstein.” He said.
It’s a joke between us, dated back to when he was 18. Now his face looked 90 years old above the collar of a neat grey Mao suit [1].
I had known him before he was born.
But I wasn’t old enough to qualify for my pension yet.
Li Duo’s clock clicked faster than most of ours.


Part I

Chapter 1

The story told from the beginning.
My real name is a long tongue-twister in Montsilate, so people just called me ML. In ’64, I retired from the army to my hometown, Westford, a level-3 space colony with a population shy of twenty thousand, and succeeded the previous community medial officer.
In the August of ’73, a young couple walked into my clinic. They looked older than their ages – normal for the outer space workers. The husband, Li Jian, was a 25-year-old mining engineer. His wife Lin Liang was 22, their first kid in her bulging belly.
I drew some amniotic fluid, and told them not to worry. “Babies conceived in the outer space are more liable to abnormality” was pure rumor without any statistical backup. The nervous couple tried to smile. I understood their anxiety. The genetic screening of the embryo should have been conducted at the first sign of pregnancy, when it was emotionally easier to give up a flawed baby. The young lady kept stroking her belly softly on her way out. She might have already picked a dozen names for her or him.
The results came out the next day.
I called the Li couple.
“This is ML, the community medical officer. I’m calling to inform you of the embryo screening results. Everything’s normal.”
“Oh.” The phone was muffled for a while. I imagined the husband turning to the wife, frantically nodding. Two overjoyed faces.
“Thank you so much, doctor. We are so relieved. We weren’t sure about keeping the baby, you know, there’s no genetic screening facility in the field.” He almost choked. “God, I’m so glad we kept him.”
When he calmed down a bit, I told him it’s better to pursue a full screening in Asitec. We were after all on a level-3 colony, and could only screen for the common genetic defects.
“What do you mean by common?”
“With a prevalence higher than 1/400.” I said.
“Oh. Do you think we should go for it?”
I hesitated. “Not really. The routine screening caters to the needs of most people. Neither of you have a family history of genetic diseases, do you?”
He said he’d consider. And tons of thanks.
I put down the phone. We met frequently in the following months. Lin Liang, the mom-to-be, chose me as her Ob/Gyn. Every examination came out fine. Li Jian never mentioned Asitec again. He might’ve quoted the price for a full genetic screening, a quite significant amount for a newly settled young couple. And the probability of 1/4,000,000 seemed infinitesimal.

In the spring of 2074, Lin Liang gave birth in the medical station. The labor went smoothly, and the boy weighed over 6 lbs. He cried out loudly.
The next day, Li Jian stopped me in the corridor of the medical station with a handful of reddened eggs [2]. He shuffled the eggs to me asking: “how do you like the name Li Duo?”
A fine name, I said.

One week later they were released from the hospital. I saw Li Duo several times during the seasonal vaccinations amongst the flock of babies in the waiting room. He looked pink and fat. It took quite some effort to have him swallow the sugar-coated drugs: he learnt to hide the tablets under his tongue and spit them out unnoticed.

In the summer of 2076, Westford was outrageously hot. I was overwhelmed by dozens of sunburn cases each day.
The receptionist told me a mom with a kid had waited for several hours. I howled that let’em wait unless there’s an emergency – then I saw the baby.
I’ve never seen a baby so skinny. It reminded me of the African refugees in the documentaries from last century. A two-year old should be fat and cute, but the fat tissue of this baby had vanished like ice under the sun.
Frankly, the first possibility I considered was child abuse. I looked at the mom.
It was Lin Liang. Tell me what’s wrong with him, doctor, she said.
I carried Li Duo into the room. He was almost weightless. “When did it start?” I asked.
Lin Liang said that he started losing weight abruptly months ago, when she tried to replace synthesized mile with another type of milk-substitute – since she read a magazine article “How does synthesized milk kill your baby”. So she thought it was the normal reaction to the diet change. But he kept losing weight. She went back to synthesized milk, and took him to pediatricians. They had no answer for her. He became too skinny for her to even lay her hands on.
Then she started weeping softly like a girl crying out her terrors.
I was not a pediatrician. I couldn’t help if they didn’t find anything wrong. Li Duo lied on his back, his oriental eyes seemed unreasonably large, rolling around and sparkling with interest in the medical equipments.
“Where’s the father?” I asked.
“On an assignment to the Orion district four. Not coming back till September.” She said.
I told her to take the kid to the level-1 medical site at Asitec. The kid needed immediate diagnosis. “Someone will take you there,” I motioned her to sit, “just one moment.”
I called the Disease Control Office in the next room. “Unidentified disease found. The patient is a child, both parents serving outer space missions. No, not contagious. OK, I’ll wait for your agents to arrive.”
Several hours later, the disease control agents took them away. I promised Lin Liang her baby would be offered the best treatment. But she stared at me like a beast suddenly aware of a trap. The disease control agents were over-reacting, unfriendly, and wrapped head-to-foot in white insulation suits -- all habits forged handling lethal contagious diseases.
This woman disliked me since. I didn’t blame her. I’d be the same in her shoes.
I called Li Jian, telling him his wife and child had been sent to Asitec for medical treatment.



The next day, Li Duo was diagnosed progeria.
The Disease Control Office honored my “elevated alertness” and suggested a lecture on progeria to sooth the community. I forced a smile.
The full name of progeria was Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome, which causes accelerated aging since childhood. Rare and lethal, but caused by a single mutation in the LAMINA gene. The prevalence is 1 in 4,000,000 to 8,000,000.
I was a doctor. I told Li Duo’s parents everything was fine. Progeria was not included in the routine screening, but it could have been detected at Asitec. Li Duo’s father asked me whether the full screening was necessary.
Sometimes people trust you just for your uniform, your white coat, and your certificates on the wall. I told myself again: Li Duo’s father made the decision on his own. My comment was just a suggestion. How could I predict the future? I was a doctor, not a shaman.
Damn it.



Chapter 2

Now I must say something about myself. In contrast to Li Duo’s, my life is of little interest to most people. Who are you but a community medical officer?
But I had never thought of becoming a doctor, at least not before joining the army. I majored in biochemical pharmaceutics in college, so after the mandatory military training I was appointed to the “Factory No.1”, a.k.a. the Institute of Biochemical Weapons. Don’t lecture me on the ’90 Pact. We are all over 5.
Our advisor was Leica – this name sounded like an ancient camera brand. He was a colonel, but didn’t mind being called Leica. Since the first day he kept yelling “caution is bravery, young men!” It was indeed a perfect motto for a virus lab.
I sat right onto the smoking barrel by pouring a bottle of bacteria into the garbage can. “It’s just E.Coli.” I tried to explain.
That didn’t help. Soon I was transferred to the “vacation house”, a dying project for lazy jerks. On my first day, I was astonished to see our project manage cooking soup in the sterile lab, wearing a long shirt.
“Welcome to the rest area of Factory No.1.” He patted on my shoulder and smiled. In a few sentences he described the project, which could be summarized with one word: hopeless. They were studying T-agent, the internal time accelerant.
Weaponry was the only goal of the military funded research, and T-agent didn’t show any promise for such applications. In the animal test, the rats became either dumb or manic after the injection. “We had expected enhanced mobility. Imagine, if the movement of a tennis ball seems much slower to you than to others, won’t you easily beat the world champion?” The manager grabbed a rat with bare hands, “but look at this buddy.” The rat did not even try to hide from him. “DOD won’t reward us for such soldiers.”
He tossed the rat back to the cage, and sipped his soup. “Young man, the funding can support us for another half year. Then you are done with your service, and I can go back to my school as a lecturer. This is a nice place if you aren’t ambitious.”
I located my bench piled with empty Coke cans, and found some T-agent and messy experiment logs. Although not a peace advocate, I had no interest in developing a biochemical weapon either. However, my love for biochemistry was genuine.
And T-agent was the only thing accessible.


The bell rang for a long time before the footsteps sounded. The blocks were empty in the four-hour short night of Westford. Most residents here were affiliated to the mining company, their prefab houses all in the same style.
The door opened for a crack, and a stony face emerged. “Thanks for caring, but we are sleeping. So…”
He paused. “It’s you.” The door opened widely. “These days there were too many visitors, including strangers. Sorry doc.”
I went in with Li Jian. The community lecture on progeria was 1 week ago. Curiousness succeeded the fear for contagious disease, and everybody wanted to have a peek at the “old baby”. Serious genetic disorder was unheard of in ages. A reporter contacted me for an interview, which I rejected without telling Li Jian couple. The benefit of the mining company could cover the medical treatment for Li Duo. They needed no charity, therefore no publicity.
Lin Liang was watching TV in the sofa. I glanced at the screen and an old movie on. The colors shaded on her face, but I doubted whether she saw the program at all. Two other doors were closed.
“Want a drink?” She asked abruptly, and went into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
“Is she OK?” I asked quietly.
“Kept crying for a few days. Better now, but still traumatized. You know,” Li Jian said, “Asitec told us it’s incurable.”
“I can prescribe some mild sedatives, no side effect.” I said.
Li Jian shook his head. “No need. She’ll pull through.”
We sat silently for a while.
“What medicines is Li Duo taking?”
“Do you want to see him?” Li Jian stood up.
We stepped into a side room. The baby slept soundly in his crib. Some bottle dotted the side table. I read the labels: Vitamins, anti-oxidants – so-called “placebos”. Li Jian bent over the crib.
“What’s your plan?”
“You mean— ” Li Jian motioned to the small hump under the blanket.
I nodded.
“Do we have options? They said he could live to 14 or 15 under sufficient care. Medical research progresses rapidly, so they can find a cure in these years, right?” He said expectedly.
“The possibility is low.”
“Why?” He gazed at me.
“Progeria is not a Mendelian disorder. We knew a gene essential for progreia, but there are other auxiliary genes unidentified. No one is working on this. Cases are rare especially after the prenatal genetic screening were standardized. There are probably 5 patients in the whole world, and no pharma company would develop a drug for such a population. Finding and replacing a specific gene is several years’ work load for a whole lab. Costs billions.”
“The orphan drug problem.”
I didn’t speak. Certainly he had done his research. There was a card under a water bottle, with familiar character strings – a password to a personal search account in the medical database. He became an expert on progeria and gene therapy in weeks. But sometimes knowledge was despairing. Money was just one of the obstacles, even with 3 billion cash he couldn’t accelerate the R&D. To insert specific genetic fragments and repair the damaged site, the only available method was trial-and-error. The number of failures Edison endured before inventing the light bulb would be nothing in the pharmaceutical industry.
“I have a proposal.” I said, “He could live longer, in a sense.”


Chapter 3

T-agent was incredible. I read all available literature. It was derived from the hallucinogens of 1970s.When the perception of time shifted profoundly under the drug-induced ecstasy, a second could become eternity. The subjects reported the visualization of extraordinary scenes and the experience of fantastic expeditions, although in sober eyes they just drooled in the sofa for 10 minutes.
With the implication that adjusting the internal time perception was possible, T-agent was conceived. This synthesized molecule was stable and succinct with strong chemical bonds. What a great job! I wish I could meet the designers.
On my hard work the manager’s only remark was “Newcomers. Buddy, hang on!” Then he put all cages under my supervision. The previous custodian of these animals had a weird nickname: Civet. Probably an ex- medical student, Civet despised my clumsy animal skills. “Wanna play poker?” He asked, tapping on the cards.
I shook my head. The whole lab laughed.
I sacrificed all the dying animals – without well-organized logs those experiments were simply wasted. A new batch of rats arrived, and I injected various dosages of T-agents into each age group. Nobody was willing to help, so I had to grab a rat with one hand, inject with the other, and murmur the parameters to a recording pen for future references.
Half of the rats died the next day. Some fought to death, the rest unhurt. I dissected the second group and analyzed their body fluid and tissues.
The manager strolled to me, rolled his eyes across the corpses, and strolled off again, mumbling something like “lots of work”. I could not find the cause of death, but the recorded parameters indicated that they were all adults.
Anyway, that was some finding, so I told myself.


“T-agent?” Li Jian asked.
I told him about my military affiliation, and that I had the access to some new drugs as a pharmaceutics researcher.
“He could live for only 10 years but feel like 20 years, since his percepts time at double speed. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Then with 10-fold speed, his would feel a standard life span?”
I had never considered such an extreme situation. “Theoretically, yes.”
“Then is it safe?”
“I don’t know.” I admitted. “There was no obvious side effect in animal trials, that’s the only thing I’m sure of.”
“I see.” He pondered for a long time. I didn’t urge him.
“He will still die in the teens even if he has lived for 60 years in his own time frame, is that right, doc?”
I nodded.

Li Jian didn’t make a decision that day. He said that he would consider.

I received a call from Li Jian half year later. He told me to bring “the previously discussed item” over. There was an odd smell from a boiling stone-pot in the living room. Li Jian was embarrassed, but I just smiled. People turn to alternatives when modern medicine disappointed them. And I became one of the miracles to seek for in their desperation.
“His mom took him to the hospital.” Li Jian said, “I explained it to her. She had no objection.”
I took out a bottle full of small plastic packs, several tablets in each. “Some drugs must be taken simultaneously. I prepared his daily dosage, and here’s an agenda for you. I’ll visit often should you decide to take this therapy.”
He took the bottle. “Doctor, are you putting yourself in danger for this?”
I shook my head. “I’ve left the army for a long time. And this isn’t listed as an illegal drug. The risk is on you and your kid.”
He smiled, showing two deep lines by his mouth. It struck me that he’s only 28.
“There are some disclaimers I need to make. The effect of T-agent on the central nervous system is permanent. The acceleration of the subjective time frame is noninvertible. He is the first 3-year old child taking this drug. Your family may suffer from the effect. There will be troubles.”