2nd place || 2024
7th through 8th grade

SLIDING DOORS

by Sebastian Minehart

Frederick Poplar walked toward the Engineering Building at the University of Narehavenno. He had been working on his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering for two years now. As he reached the doors, a siren blasted out a message, “Warning! Automatic doors opening! Caution!” As usual, Frederick paid no attention to the alarms because he knew that the doors were all automated at this college. However, when he entered the building, he paused for a moment and noticed the old, knowledgeable Professor Weatherspoon advancing slowly to the exit door. The familiar siren blared, but this time the door did not open.

Seeing the problem, Jessica, the front desk associate, sighed.

“These doors always seem to have problems. They claim that they are opening the doors, but they run out of batteries, and I have to charge them.”

Frederick walked over to the door and gave it a push, but it would not open. He tried the entrance door as well, but they both failed to give a response. Somehow, the sirens still blared.

“I can’t even let my students mix chemicals that burn because these sensors are everywhere,” complained the Professor. “Last time I tried, the mixture caught on fire and, like usual, the Fire Department came in and sprayed their big hose right in my face.” The ‘Fire Department’ was really a three-foot tall gleaming white robot with a cannon on the front. Usually, the robot sprayed water anywhere a fire alarm blasted.

Jessica reluctantly went over to the charging port and picked up a large green battery. She then removed the old battery from the sensor in the ground and replaced it with a new one. The doors immediately opened, and sirens blared.

“Here you are, Professor,” she said, “Now you can exit the door.”

The Professor walked to the door, stepped through, and then slowly walked out of the next exit door, when to his dismay, the door suddenly closed and caught his finger inside. He tried to yank it out, but nothing worked. He had no hope except for the ‘help’ button on the fence. He pressed it with his free hand, but nothing happened—the button had lost its battery.

Just then, a student, Katrina, walked up to the building and noticed the Professor struggling with his finger. She ran over and used her metal ruler to pry the door open.

“Thank you,” the Professor said gloomily. “These doors don’t let people hold them for you, they hurt you, and they cause you to be late for your next class.”

“I agree,” Katrina said. “Hey, why are they called the ‘Fire Department’ anyway? It’s not like they mostly fight fires.”

“It is an old term,” the Professor soberly replied. “Back in the day, strong and fearlessly trained people would fight fires. If only it were like that now.”

Frederick’s ears perked up and thought, what if it could be like those days right now? The next day, after class, Frederick saw Jessica at the front desk and asked her if he could have a look at the controls and system for the electronic doors.

“Sure!” said Jessica. “Please try to fix it and see what is wrong. It can’t be that hard, can it?”

After a few moments, Frederick had plugged the connection cord into his computer and the coding for the doors popped up. He did a search for the words ‘open’ and ‘close’ and found this sequence:

sequence/order

»open when sensor activates

»close when sensor activates

»open for average time of human-walking-pace-5.6-seconds

»lock at 08:00 PM.

Frederick glanced at the ‘-walking-pace-5.6-seconds’ part and deleted it. A student who happened to be at the door right then exclaimed, “Ugh! It! Will! Not! Open! Again!”

“Shh!” Jessica said as she pointed at Frederick. “He’s fixing it.”

Frederick thought about it for a second. He realized that the sensors ran through the whole floor underneath the doors because sometimes he took longer or shorter strides through the doors and the sensors were still activated. All he had to do was type in this code:

»open until sensor is deactivated

After doing so, Frederick unplugged the computer and got up. He walked towards the door. As usual, five feet before the door, the sirens blared.

“I’ll fix that later,” he said. As he walked through the first door, nothing felt different. When he got through the second door, he realized that the doors stayed open until he was ten feet away from the building. This happened again when he re-entered. Frederick’s job was still not done. He still had to deactivate the sirens and extinguish the ‘Fire Department.’ Even though the electronics were still there, he had saved the dozens of engineering students from getting their fingers stuck in the doors again.

Today, Frederick currently cooperates with several colleagues, including Jessica, to eliminate the automatic systems in people’s homes and businesses. Although many people have objections, he and his team still strive for the brightest future in Narehavenno because when we remove the ability to be charitable and simply open the door for others, we lose a part of what it means to be human, that is, the capacity to love and be loved in return.

Sebastian is in the seventh grade and loves to play many musical instruments such as the piano, saxophone, flute, bassoon, and cello. He enjoys birdwatching, gardening, and reading at his home in Northern Virginia.