When Emily participated in the 2006 UIL Ready Writing competition, she was in the fourth grade at Rock Prairie Elementary

What do you think the world will be like in twenty years?
The world has changed a great deal in the past twenty years. Write a paper describing how you imagine the world will be different twenty years from now and what you think you might be doing then.

When Emily participated in the 2006 UIL Ready Writing competition, she was in the fourth grade at Rock Prairie Elementary. Her teacher was Mrs. Weidenbach. Her UIL coach was Ms. O’Neill. She had 1 hour to write about the future. This is what she imagined:

Evan Bowan, 30, stepped out of his mechanical home and into his compucraft. The year is 2026, and much has changed in the world. Houses have been turned into mechanical machines that can do anything if you punch a button. Robots will automatically dress you, do your chores, and make your meals for you. Instead of using modern-day transportation such as cars, planes, and boats, scientists have invented compucrafts, which can transform into any type of transportation. Most people such as bus drivers and engineers that steer trains have lost their jobs because of this new “Golden Age.” Evan was a zoologist who studied all species of animals, but he mostly loved wild cats and traveling to the African savannah and to rainforests and jungles to study them. He had become secretly famous among the scientists because he gave them the information they needed to make robotic chimpanzees, cats, and several other types of animals. Evan loved his work, but he had decided to stop giving scientists what they needed to make robotic animals. This was because the human civilization was trying to replace real, living, breathing animals with robotic ones. Some species of animals were becoming endangered and other types had already gone extinct because of the robots. Evan wanted to stop the scientists from killing all the animals in the world one by one and he was willing to risk his life and his freedom to do so. He already had multiple animals hidden in his secret basements such as the last of the chimps, two anacondas that trusted him and were having babies, and four sea turtles. Evan had several basements, all of which were tremendous in size, and had built habitats for the animals inside. He had been careful not to place natural enemies in the same concealed basement, because he didn’t want to arouse the fighting and disrupt the peace. All the animals felt secure and at home and trusted Evan. He had trained his gators not to bite, as well as all the other animals that were poisonous or dangerous, and taught all the predators to eat vegetables and fruits, but he didn’t take any chances with predator and prey. Evan had an undercover job as a mail carrier, and so far no one knew that he was committing what was now considered a crime – protecting animals. The sun was setting in the horizon and Evan was putting the last letter in the last mechanical mailbox-chute. Whenever you put a letter in these M.C.’s, (That’s what they were called.) it would slide down through the chute and pop out the end, landing in one of the rooms of the house. The owner of house would set the chute so that the mail would land in the room of their choice. Evan drove his compucraft back to his house and parked it in his small garage; a day of his undercover mail carrying job had just ended, and his time of being an outlaw animal protector had just begun. He immediately entered one of the basements that had its entrance hidden in the garage and climbed down the ladder, shutting the door behind him. As soon as he reached the bottom step, Michaela the baby chimp jumped up, embraced him, and scurried back to her mother as she did every time he came down there. Evan beamed, knowing that even though what he was doing was now illegal, it was still right.
Note to Judges *Evan Bowan does everything I would want to do in this story – I patterned him after me.
		Emily won first place in this competition. It was her third year of UIL writing!