Balloon Girls by Darrell Pitt

Author:Darrell Pitt [Pitt, Darrell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

ALL AND the girls returned to her place to view the footage. They grouped around the gondola in Ally’s room as Harmony carefully removed the memory card from the camera.

‘I’ve never seen a memory card like this before,’ she said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘Dad had a bunch of these lying in a drawer,’ Ally said.

They inserted the card into a slot on Ally’s laptop. Ally double-clicked on the movie file and it started to play.

‘That’s us!’ Ping squealed.

The image briefly captured glimpses of them before reeling about to show the sky. Then it wheeled downwards again to show a closeup of brown grass and dozens of pairs of feet as the gondola was placed onto the ground. A few minutes passed as the balloon was inflated. A shoe blocked the view of the camera.

‘That’s my shoe,’ Harmony said.

‘It needs a clean,’ Ping said.

‘Now you’re sounding like your mother.’

‘Forget I said anything.’

They heard Harmony’s voice as they prepared to release the balloon.

‘Let’s do it,’ she said.

The image shifted sharply and they saw a flash of the crowd, the field—and then nothing as the screen went blank. The girls stared at the dark screen.

‘What’s going on?’ Ping asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Ally said.

She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach as she started the file again. It played perfectly, showing the same piece of footage before dying once more.

‘What’s wrong?’ Harmony asked. ‘Is it broken?’

‘I…don’t know,’ Ally said. ‘It seems okay.’

At that moment, Russell appeared in the doorway. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

The girls explained what was happening, and Russell sat down at Ally’s laptop. He examined the video. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘The file seems okay. I think the problem is the size of the card.’

‘The card?’ Ally said.

‘Where did you get it from?’

‘One of the drawers in the lounge room.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘What? What’s wrong?’

He examined the file properties. ‘This is an old memory card,’ he said. ‘It’s working fine, but these old memory cards don’t store very much. They’re fine to hold a few photos, but video takes up far more memory, especially if it’s being shot at high-definition.’

Ally felt sick. She had deliberately switched the camera to high-definition mode. She’d wanted to make certain they captured the best quality footage possible.

‘So…it hasn’t worked,’ she said in a small voice.

‘You need a bigger capacity memory card,’ Russell explained. ‘You can probably afford to shoot at a slightly lower resolution too. That’ll extend your recording time.’

Ally felt like bursting into tears. Their efforts had been wasted, and it was all her fault. Russell explained it was easy to find larger capacity cards.

‘Don’t be too disappointed,’ Russell said to the girls. ‘You’re conducting an experiment, after all, and learning is part of the process.’

He left them, offering to make some of his famous hot chocolates.

‘It’s my fault,’ Ally said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Harmony said. ‘We’re all responsible for everything that happens. We’ve still got plenty of money left from car washing. We can easily buy a larger capacity memory card for the camera.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.