Introductions
The year is 2046. We never asked for the war. Once, we didn’t believe in aliens. We didn’t research them, and we didn’t search to find them. We never found them. But they found us. They had found us, and that stirred up suspicions.
We first saw them in Dallas in the year 2026. The United States government sent over a couple of scientists, government agents, and even the local police department to see what these creatures wanted. What we thought would be a breakthrough for man, turned around on us to be our destruction. The local police force, as well as the agents, and scientists were killed. All except one, my father.
My father was researching how space and the moon affect Earth and other planets. After the attack on Dallas, my father switched jobs to study these new alien invaders. My father works for the E.P.A.U.H.L., which is the Earth Protection Against Unidentified Harmful Life. This program convinced the world to stop building the latest technology, and go on to building the world’s greatest weapons.
Every organization within the world changed from whatever they were working on before to making weapons to defeat the enemy. The enemy began to strike back at the organizations, causing us to hide underground in dug out tunnels, where we began to hide in secret. That’s when the bombs started, but we tried not to give up hope on winning the war.
Automobile companies began to make guns, Farmers began creating new oils, and technology companies began making programming. After trying again and again with several types of these beasts, our enemy prevailed. Millions lost their lives in remote controlling or driving these robots, and their lives we were sure would not be in vain. The world government was becoming restless, and we had almost lost the war, with the outside world slowly crumbling.
The E.P.A.U.H.L. had decided to surrender, but my father had one last project. He had been studying our enemies weaknesses and had discovered a plan that worked.
We call them the Inferno. They are our protectors and our watchers. My father created them with genetic programming to permanently allow them to possess enough power to protect us from the aliens from the outside. Their powers were both very deadly, and quite aggressive. They started out as normal people, like you and me, but they are genetically engineered to become deadly weapons, basically my father made them from human DNA from volunteers. They were programmed to have no human emotions, and to keep their mission going no matter how many lives they have to take in order to complete their goals. That’s when we started winning.
We created over one hundred twenty five of these genetically modified humans and placed them above our underground borders. The cannons stopped, but we never heard again from the Inferno. Some think they were destroyed in the battle, others think that the aliens destroyed them and fled.
After the cannons stopped twenty years ago, we’ve lived underground in our city named Unceasing Shield. In that time, I was born. My name is Edna Wendy Crosswood, daughter to Dr. Percy Crosswood, who is now head of the E.P.A.U.H.L and is known for his work in computer science, and my mother, Lucy Crosswood who died a year after I was born. My father is teaching me to become an advanced hacker at the E.P.A.U.H.L, and I would be the youngest a fifteen years of age.
Recently, things have been going well at “Unceasing Shield,” and we have been doing normal business. We have been training, just in case the aliens return. There is always a chance, that is what we most fear. You can do any of the three options:
Stop reading and put the book down, sell it for some cheap cash, and go back to living your normal life.
Don’t heed the warnings I’m uncovering, and let the book rot for another hundred years until another person finds it.
Really listen to what you read and figure out how decision making can lead onto the deadliest of consequences.
I hope you chose Option Three. I also hope you are ready to bear what you are about to hear. The Good, and the Bad.
It all begins at my school. My dad made it for skilled hackers and programmers, future video game designers, and just computer nerds in general. My kind of place. I walk out of the house for the first day back from winter break, when my dad comes rushing outside.
“Edna! You must never forget your mother’s bracelet. She wanted you to always wear it. I’m begging you. For your mother’s sake, child, please don’t forget it again!” my father pleaded with me.
“Why do I have to wear this? Can’t we just keep it in a box like all of the other ugly things she had? Seriously Dad, I’m fifteen! Don’t you think that I’m getting a little too old to wear silly things like that anymore?” I asked.
That bracelet. That silly, stupid, ugly bracelet! It doesn’t even look like it was hers! In fact, it looks like it was made for a glitzy girl in prison. The bracelet was metallic silver with a gold chain that hung off the side. It also had one red jewel within the middle of a turquoise spiral chain. I never liked that chain, but it’s the closest thing to my mother that I own. The only thing that I owned.
I watch as my dad put on the chain, and turn around to leave him to ride the hovering school bus that in our driveway. We can’t really fly a school bus underground, but as for hovering, that’s a different story.
“You know that she always loved you, Edna. Now, you be careful out there! I don’t want you getting into any more trouble!” my dad calls back at me.
“Dad, I’m almost sixteen. I’m bound to get into a little bit of trouble!” I tell him before I hopping onto the bus.
The bus is enormous than that of the school buses there once was in my dad’s time. The bus is broad, with blue and white stripes running throughout the course of the vehicle. At this time, I trip and the kid coming in behind me catches me before I landed on my face.
“Hey, I could have caught myself! There is no need for you to--” I begin to say as I turn around to find my friend Daffodil.
Daffodil and I have been friends since I was in middle school. She always has been there to catch me, sometimes that’s actually taken literally. She has very long wavy jet black hair as well as piercing gray eyes. Those eyes are one of a kind, and I have no clue why everyone thinks they’re weird, because I think that they are pretty cool. They remind me of gray wolves walking through a newly fallen snow on a cool, clear night above surface.
The surface. I have never thought above the surface before. All I have ever seen of it is in the pictures of it we find in textbooks. Had it changed from the explosions or did it still have the pretty fields in the summer with multicolored flowers? That is a question I am desiring to answer, although my father will never allow it. I just can’t help myself in thinking about the surface world. Sometimes I even daydream in class from thinking about it too long.
That is when I realize I was daydreaming again, and everyone was still waiting for me to get to my seat on the bus. Daffodil smiles at me and we start walking through the crowds of people to our seats.
“You need to be careful, Edna,” my friend pauses, “ You know what will happen if you get into trouble again.”
I had forgotten about that. If I got into any more trouble, my father warned me he would remove me from E.P.A.U.H.L’s hacking program. My school. I won’t be able to see my friends, including Daffodil again. I can’t get into any more trouble and let these daydreams get into my head.
