My name is Elias Tern, and this is the story of the redemption of Earth.
It was 2045. Humans were thriving. We had mastered starship technology, and were studying genetic editing. There was no more hunger, war, or poverty. We were living in blissful harmony.
I had good friends at the science lab, and we all got along. I had a great job, bettering the world, improving science for the good of the people. I was paid well, and things were, in my opinion, perfect. I was happy and fed, and had a good home.
And then the fateful day, December 16th came, and the aliens along with it. At some points thousands died from one shot of their weapons. Their fleets almost instantly overwhelmed even our best defenses. Their starships bombarded our inferior defenses. We lost.
My good life was blown away in an instant. The bomb raid sirens rang across the world. People ran screaming, in every direction. There was only acrid-smelling dust where massive mountains and cities were. We all struggled to survive. People fought for food, with any weapon they could salvage from the wreckage.
Then, two months later, the aliens left their ships and came down to Earth. Everything changed once more. They used their superior ground forces to obliterate our troops and tanks. Their air forces destroyed even our most advanced fighter jets, and were resistant to missiles, guns, and some of their machines could even deflect nuclear bombs.
Nobody fought against each other anymore. What was left of our government came together and built new materials and weapons that could match their forces. We used neural technology to make massive, metal human-robot hybrids, made faster and stronger fighter planes, and much, much more in an attempt to down the aliens.
They managed to repel the forces for a while, but even they could not do the job forever. Now out of options, the government relocated as many people as they could and themselves to hundreds of strong, massive bunkers built around the globe, with a good amount of entire cities built inside them.
I was one of the people that was picked to live inside one of the bunkers, and was driven there in an armored transport. As the massive metal blast doors closed behind us as we drove into the bunker, I said my goodbyes to the outside world.
And then it was 2051, 6 years later. Only 30.4 million people survived, compared to the many billions that once walked the earth. We studied ways to survive, in those bunkers that are impenetrable to mostly anything. We developed new, devastating weapons in secret. We started brave and desperate riots against the alien bases with our new tech.
It wasn’t enough. Thousands of our best fell in each riot, falling one by one.
Our months of study were blown away in an instant–every time.
Recently, we found a classified document on genetic editing in a broken laboratory building in our expeditions. What we found inside could be our only hope.
A few animals could still live in the limited trees and plants left, including the common tree frog. We found one sitting on a small fern, blissfully unaware. I am envious of the animals. They didn’t know how much we suffered. We took the frog and some frog spawn and drove on a cracked and dusty road back to our base in what used to be the Rocky Mountains.
Next, we took a sample of the DNA of our lead researcher, Jeremiah Arius. He was solemn and determined for our last chance to, maybe, take back our wonderful earth.
We also found a piece of surviving technology that could fuse DNA and inject the prepared hybrid fluid into an embryo. We placed the frog spawn into a solution in a small glass tank, closed the door, and prepared the plasma samples of frog and human.
We carefully placed the samples into a compartment in the complicated steel machine, and watched as the machine hummed to life. Then, we waited for the embryo inside the frog spawn to develop with the mutated fluid injected into it.
It was a tense long year.
Our brave fighters continued to die, and bunkers had been attacked all over the world, completely wiped out.
And finally, the machine beeped to signal the hatching. It was time for Stage 2.
We took the sedated tadpole, which for now looked normal, and dropped it inside a giant plexiglass tank filled with a solution mimicking the environment of an egg. We sat at simple plastic desks, and typed at our computers, frantically monitoring the heartbeat and status of the embryo as it developed.
Our bunker was huge, with 5 enormous self-contained “cities” with artificial clouds, rain and weather systems, and a dynamic hi-tech holographic sky. There were many buildings and small shops and residences, and streets with cars and trucks driving around.
Everybody inside those cities was wracked with constant fear.
They all knew what happened to some of the unlucky bunkers.
Then, an undistinguished scientist shouted at me that it was time, about 5 weeks later, snapping me out of my nostalgic remembering. I, one of the researchers, ran over to the giant, cavernous chamber.
The solid iron blast doors of the entrance to the lit, sterile chamber slid open, and all the researchers were in a hustle and very excited. They frantically scanned their monitors, and wrote messy journal entries and observations on pastel yellow sticky notes plastered all over their desks.
One was typing so fast I could barely see her hands. Some shouted things like, “The project is growing at an exponential rate,” or “The heartbeat is slowing by 5 BPM,” or “Stop shouting,” which was ironic.
And above it all, I could see the massive humanoid shape tossing and turning inside the tank. It was massive, maybe 40 feet tall. I gaped in wonderment.
“Amazing, right?” My friend, a scientist named Jack Teapin said, panting between words. Jack was a nice and slightly shy person, and I’d met him 12 years ago at a science convention about the applications of hover technology.
“Yeah,” I said, barely able to take in the chaotic scene. I grew a little lightheaded, and had to steady myself against the wall.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Just dizzy,” I replied, with a shaky voice.
Then, somebody shouted, “It’s time to release it!”
Everybody fell silent, stopped what they were doing, and looked at the tank with anticipation.
Pumps in the tank started to suck up the fluid, and when the tank was dry, the doors slid open. We drew a collective gasp.
It was massive, with long, slender yet strong arms, ending in three webbed fingers. It had two powerful legs, with no feet. It had a light greenish hue in its smooth, damp skin, and an eerie intelligence in those black eyes of it. It had a typical frog head, but a humanoid body.
I had a momentary shock from the sight. Then I recovered, but was still amazed.
Jack told me, “We can control it with a portable computer, or any monitor, really.”
Wow.
Then, all the scientists in the room erupted in cheers and applause, throwing their papers and pencils in the air. “We did it!” one shouted. Another took out a hidden pillow from his bag, laid it on the table, and fell asleep instantly, out cold, from working at his computer day after day with no sleep.
Yet another threw a massive handful of confetti in the air, cheering. They still knew that they didn’t yet know if the newly-named E 17 would be effective, but felt that they deserved the brief respite.
And they did.
I plopped down at my own desk, watching the silent giant in amazement. I stared at my metal nameplate, producing the words “Elias Tern”, which was my name. I considered the implications of our creation carefully.
We had a chance now!
A week later, a large team took the elevator up to the surface, armed with our best inventions, like plasma, laser, and rail guns, and our most advanced combat armor, which could withstand a good number of blasts from the enemy. But not enough. The armor had a built-in HUD, and statistics of everything from the other teammates’ heartbeats and stats, to types of enemies in a 5-mile vicinity.
We had to lift the massive 150-ton hybrid using 4 of our biggest, most powerful transport starships, and even then, it took 30 minutes for them to lift it to the surface of the scarred and scratched earth. E 17 remained still through the journey, hanging by strong cords wrapped around its limbs.
As I saw the surface of the earth again, I sighed. What used to be a thriving, perfect planet was now dusty, scarce of animals and plants.
When the hybrid finally landed on the dusty surface, the transports’ bays opened, and more of our troops jumped out, using built-in boosters to slow their descent. Then the sleek, strong transports flew back through the surface entrance by which they arrived.
No chance to turn back now.
We drove for an hour in a giant wheeled transport. Little trails of dust were created from the giant treaded tires rolling. Inside, we sat by a white, secured table, where our commander was explaining our directives.
“My name is John Alpius. I am your commander. When I ask you to do something, you will say, “Sir, yes sir! Got it?”
“Sir, yes sir!” We all shouted.
“Good. We must infiltrate a key alien fortress. Our E 17 here (It was walking behind our transport at a steady pace) will help infiltrate the fortress and take it over.”
“Sir, yes sir!” We shouted again. He explained everything else in the 5 hour trip to the outskirts of the fortress.
When we arrived, we jumped down onto the dusty, rocky surface of the now mostly barren earth with our hi-tech gear and armor.
Instantly, I could see data and mapping surfaces being projected on the glass of my armoured helmet. Everybody was still alive, according to the data the helmet showed. Not for long.
I could see the silhouette of the E 17 moving behind us as we walked toward the enemy fortress. Because of our powered armor, we could use our jetpacks to fly a very long distance at a very fast speed. We all activated our jetpacks, and long blue flames flew out of nozzles on our backs.
Instantly, I could feel myself lifting into the air. The ground was a blur as we flew at a nice fast speed toward the fortress. I could see E 17 running behind us, ridiculously fast for its size. It quickly caught up to us.
I wondered who was controlling it back at our base. Suddenly, I heard a large boom, and saw a bright explosion in the corner of my vision in the helmet. We all quickly switched our jetpacks to hover mode, and as we slowed, I could see burning debris falling down to Earth from my high vantage point in the air.
I could see one of our teammate’s heartbeat flatline, and there was a shrill beep. I could also see a few groups of trees, and patches of grass, and some small animals scurrying away from the source of the noise.
“Were’e under fire!” One man yelled frantically. In the distance, I could see 3 more pencil-shaped shapes rocketing toward us from a large dark shape, becoming visible quickly.
“Missiles!” I yelled, and we all started panicking. The large dark shape must have been the fortress. I could see the missiles clearly now. They came toward us at a breakneck speed.
But before the missiles could kill us, a giant green arm swiped at the missiles. The missiles all detonated against the arm, attached to… E 17.
Its arm was now injured, parts of its flesh gone. But as I watched in amazement, I could see the flesh regrowing right in front of my eyes.
“What!?” I yelled in terror and amazement. Everybody else was stunned at this show of power as well. As I expressed my surprise, the skin had already finished regrowing.
Now, I couldn’t see any trace of injury at all. “Oh my…” I gasped. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Perhaps I had already been blasted out of the sky, and this was a dying dream. But I didn’t feel any pain or feel dreamlike. I pinched myself, and concluded that I was still alive.
“How?” said Jack through the suits’ built in comms, his suit hovering to my left. I tried a few more tests to see if I wasn’t dead, just in case. I recited my name, Elias Tern. Then I tried recalling my profession, astrophysics.
I recalled that some amphibians related to frogs could regrow their body parts at amazing speeds, some could do it in two weeks! The hybrid fluid must have multiplied that factor a hundred-fold, or more!
If we ever survived this, I would have to document this. We could create super-soldiers! We could defeat the aliens with ease!
But first things first.
We started flying toward the base again, but this time with caution. Every 10 minutes or so, we had to evade enemy missiles, dodging them and letting E 17 hit them. Its arm was, at first, severely injured, but it grew the missing chunks back at ease in seconds.
It never failed to impress.
After an hour or so, we were shell-shocked and riddled with terrified fear (except E 17), but most of us had made it. We landed a good 40 meters away from the base.
We quietly turned off our boosters and landed on the dusty dirt. Few plants were growing around us, so we couldn’t hide anywhere to scout the enemy’s defenses, and the towering, not-so-jolly green giant behind us wasn’t making our situation any better.
We crept as best we could behind what was once known as a ‘palm tree’, specifically the coconut tree, which was known to have this weird, large, and green fruit growing from it. They were hard, and back then were a significant danger to our heads.
I also knew that they held a delicious, clear, and sweet liquid inside them.
“Hey, what’s the status of our water supply?” I asked.
“Not good,” said John Alpius, sounding slightly concerned.
“Well, I read in the nature documents that those big green fruits you see here hold this sweet, clear water inside,” I replied.
“Well, what are you waiting for then? Let’s get harvesting!”
“Yes, sir yes!” we all replied.
We spent the next half hour quietly using our laser pistols to sear the branches holding the promising fruit, and catching them carefully, as even though we had the hi-tech armor and helmets, we didn’t want to make a big ruckus.
All this time E 17 was standing some distance away from us, watching. It was a miracle we hadn’t been spotted yet. When we had a good 35 coconuts, from the tree we spotted and others we found later, Jack took a very durable and sharp utility axe.
Chopping the coconuts in half, he spilled some of the juice, but retained most of it. When the work was done, he handed us makeshift bowls made of the shells of the coconuts. “Let’s drink up!” He said. I pulled off my helmet, and it slid off with a hiss.
The air smelled dusty and slightly old, but it was definitely breathable. I lifted the coconut to my face to inspect its contents. The liquid had a pleasant fragrance, and I had learned the white flesh on the inside was edible too, and it was soft and sweet. I took a small sip. It was tasty, sweet and filling, and I drank more. Some time later, we had finished the sweet water, and were eating the flesh.
“Ahh, I’m filled!” Said one of us. We all expressed our agreement. I enjoyed this little get-together.
But it was time to move on, and we had our duties to fulfill.
We started moving again, crouching slightly as we quietly crept toward the entrance of the fortress. I winced as E 17 made huge, booming steps toward the entrance. I frantically motioned the E 17 to quiet down.
Too late.
The blaring alarms sounded, and alien guards stormed out the entrance, speaking in a weird, guttural language. Then, I got my first real glimpse of an alien.
It was much taller than us, slim, with 4 long and strong arms, and at least 6 ant-like legs. It had a face like an ant, with 2 large eyes on the side, and a stinging pair of powerful jaws. It had 4 antennae, and a human-like body, but, like before, 4 ant-like legs below.
It was covered in a sleek black armor plating, and had a massive blaster nearly as tall as itself strapped to its back. The blaster was the same black material as the armor, and had a sharp tip at the end, making it an effective melee weapon as well as a powerful ion gun that could blast through a foot-thick wall of solid cast iron.
Our armor wasn’t made of conventional materials. We had experimented with combinations of elements, while creating newer, stronger materials much stronger than even diamond.
We took the best, most compatible of these materials and smashed them together, creating an alloy we know as akatatalytosite, or Greek for “indestructible”, though even it could stand, at best, only 50 shots from the enemy’s blasters, though when the blasters were charged up to full power, the armor could only possibly stand 3 shots from a blaster.
Not to mention their other weapons, like bombs that would vaporize anything in its vicinity, starships that, with their weapons, could demolish cities in one shot, and their vehicles, especially the tanks, were nearly impenetrable and could reduce you to atoms with their deconstruction laser beams.
We stood almost no chance.
Except for our little surprise for them today.
E 17 charged ahead, crushing an alien under its massive legs. An enemy tank surged ahead, firing a red pulse, and destroying one of E 17’s arms completely. But, it regrew in seconds. The ground forces were trying desperately to gain the upper hand, and pummeled E 17 with their forces. Little wounds were made in E 17’s legs, regrowing in a flash.
E 17 pounded the ground with its arms, killing 5 of the aliens and scattering the others. The tank tried to shoot the freak of nature again, only to be smashed under a 25-ton foot, splitting apart into pieces. We charged ahead, shooting any alien we could find.
Already, 2 of our soldiers had fallen, and more were injured. But we kept moving forward, unrelenting. I had downed a few aliens myself, and was targeting another.
Jack was shooting with fire in his eyes (I thought so; his visor was blocking his eyes), and our brave commander was blazing with glory, ending enemies left and right.
We reached the entrance to the fortress, charging inside and pulling the blast door made of the black material closed with a bang. We had to infiltrate the fortress and capture it while E 17 was providing a distraction. Our team had started with 50 men, but we now only had 35 of them still alive and fighting.
I panted heavily. I was very, very tired. I sat down on the hard alien floor of the fortress, and removed my helmet. Instantly, I couldn’t breathe. I scrambled over to my helmet, gasping for air. I finally got my helmet on, and sucked in fresh air.
Jack looked concerned (at least, that’s what I guessed) and frantically asked if I was okay. “Elias? What’s wrong?” he said, looking nervous. I did a scan with my sensors, and through the built-in display saw that the air was 90 percent carbon dioxide. “It seems like our alien friends breathe a different gas than us.” I replied. “Hmm, that’s interesting.”
Jack commented, “If they breathe carbon dioxide, either when they’re outside of their vehicles or bases they’re wearing helmets, they can breathe two different gases, or they can extract the carbon dioxide from the air using some kind of gill.”
This could be useful in our fight against them, I thought. If they were wearing helmets or had gills, we could aim for their heads to destroy the helmets and choke them, or damage their gills and render them dead meat.
We ran at a steady pace through the shiny black halls, navigating with a holographic map being projected on our visors from a quick laser scan of the base. Suddenly, 12 guards appeared in front of us. They aimed at us, but I shot at their heads with a hand-held railgun, trying my new tactic.
One of the guards’s heads suddenly had a hole in it, and white gas spilled from the crack. It suddenly toppled over, stumbling backwards for a moment before falling on its back.
It didn’t move anymore. I shouted through the comms, “Aim for their heads!” My comrades obeyed, suddenly shifting their tactics. They switched out their guns for more piercing weapons, firing white-hot bolts of energy into the aliens’s helmets.
They fell one by one, trying to fight back but quickly being overwhelmed by forces nearly double their size. They fought fiercely, and some of our teammates died, with holes blasted straight through their chest in the weak points of their armor.
But we eventually got through, and the final alien dropped. I checked the casualties, and realised with a pang of sadness five of our liberators had died. Bodies, alien and human, were sprawled across the floor.
I had a sudden thought. “John, should we take the alien weapons?” I asked. He thought, and said, “Hmm, that’s an interesting idea. Alright people, let’s gear up!” “Yes sir yes!” We all shouted, with renewed vigor.
I lifted up one of the alien blasters. I had expected to not be able to lift it at all, due to its gargantuan size, but I realized with surprise it weighed less than a small dog. I was still shocked by the sheer complexity of alien technology.
The blaster was sleek and shiny, with a fierce tip at the end for impaling. I noticed a small bump on the side, and felt it. Suddenly, a blinding red blast of energy shot out at amazing speeds, and hit a nearby wall. Now, the shiny, black, smooth surface of the material was smoking, red-hot, and completely destroyed.
“Careful!”, one of the soldiers exclaimed in terror. I was fascinated and terrified at the same time. I started experimenting with it. I found out there was a sort of dial on the back of the blaster that could change the power of the blaster, and the bump was a button that you could hold to charge up blasts.
It turned out that the blast I had just fired was the minimum power setting, and I was afraid to know what the maximum was. Once we had sort of figured things out, we started moving again. We didn’t encounter too much resistance along the way, and we soon arrived at our target, the control room and central core.
Our plan was to clear the room and take control of it, and then reboot the core so it would follow our command. The core was a central AI of sorts, which could control these drone starships, which were usually massive, nearly 20 kilometers long, and carried heavy weapons and thousands of smaller fighter drones, which were like unpiloted starfighters.
This base was a major one, and its AI had control over a hundred drone starships, which would be more than enough to win the war against the aliens. But the AI could sense whoever was in the room, and try to fight us.
We finally arrived at the doors to the central core. They were locked down, only authorized to the highest ranks in the base. Getting in would be a problem, if not for the alien blasters we had.
Oh well. If I die here, at least I tried.
I set the blaster mode to maximum and charged it up to total maximum. When it could charge no more, I braced…
And released the button.
Instantly, I felt a huge wave of scalding heat, even through my suit. And then I couldn’t see anything but white. It was so bright, I had to close my eyes. And then I heard the explosion. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard. I was thrown back so hard, I blacked out as I hit the ground at the speed of a car.
When I came to, there was dust everywhere. My suit was dented and scratched, my visor was cracked, the holographic statistics flickering on and off, and all of my muscles ached. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was laying on my back in a pile of rubble, looking at the ceiling. I was sprawled out on the floor.
I groaned in pain, but forced myself to stand up slowly. How long was I out? I tried to walk, but felt a splitting pain in my ankle. I shouted in a moment of agony. But I composed myself, and limped over to Jack, who was also laying on the floor. All around me, everybody else was either unconscious, dead, or groaning, sitting up with their armor all broken.
I was so lucky that my helmet didn’t crack, otherwise I’d already be dead from suffocation on the floor.
“Ughhhh…” Jack said, sitting up slowly. He slowly stood up, but seemed to be intact except for a bunch of aching muscles. I couldn’t say the same. My ankle was broken, and I could have had a concussion.
I just had to check…
And then I saw it. Where one was a door was now a smoking, jagged hole. Despite my scalding pain, I still managed a smile.
“Are you okay?” asked Jack, obviously worried about me. “No, I have a broken ankle and my head is probably bleeding.” I replied with a weak voice. “But, we still have to do our job.” I added.
We went over and woke up everybody else. When everyone still alive was awake, we marched in with a sense of determined finality. Then I saw the core.
Inside the massive, spherical room, I could see antigravity-affected control rings slowly spinning around a giant, glowing sphere. It kind of looked like Saturn. There were screens lining the rounded walls.
Suddenly, they flickered to life. What looked like a simple face with two circle eyes that looked like o’s and a small line beneath. It almost looked cartoonish if it wasn’t evil advanced alien tech. “Well, hello,” said the AI. I flinched in surprise.
I didn’t think the AI knew our language. It kept on speaking. “Kind of interesting that you made it this far.” It seemed to be thinking. “Maybe I underestimated my foes.”
“Why did you invade our planet?” I asked, anger starting to fill my thoughts. “Oh, because we want the resources.” Said the AI in reply. “It’s that simple.”
“But enough.” The AI said, in a business-like tone. “Time for you pests to be crushed under the foot, that is the power of the Ailrechirisoian!” Well, at least that’s what I thought it said. It said that in a garbled, weird tone.
There was no time to reminisce on the name of our foe, because suddenly, the screens zapped off, and the large sphere started to tremble. 3 crab-like mechanical legs suddenly stretched out of ports on the bottom of the sphere. A large, circular red light blinked on in the middle of the front of the core.
The core rose up, taking one massive step with its massive legs. “Prepare to face the might of the-” The voice of the AI suddenly cut off, because a massive explosion knocked us all off our feet. Standing in the giant hole was…
E-17, back to save the day.
It wasted no time stomping over to the core, and delivering an uppercut to our massive foe. There was a resounding clang as the core tipped over. “What is this abomination!?” The core screamed, sounding furious. It righted itself over, and a hidden laser sprouted out of its side.
I watched in shock as the laser severed E-17’s arm off at the shoulder, the massive limb toppling to the ground. The core laughed in triumph. But the core wasn’t happy for long. The arm regrew in 10 seconds flat, already whooshing at the core as it regrew.
Pow! The powerful blow damaged the core’s laser, denting it as electricity shot out from the crippled weapon.
“What are we doing!? We have to help!” Jack shouted in haste, snapping us out of our shocked state. So we ran quickly (some of us moved slower because of our injuries) to a spot where we could find cover. “I have a plan.” I said, crouching behind what appeared to be a desk. “We need to install the hard drive so we can take control of the core, and gain all the information we need to defeat the aliens from its database.”
The rest of us nodded in agreement, and we set off at a swift pace to move behind the core. There, I could climb up the core with the hard drive and gravity amplification boots, and install the hard drive.
I pulled on the boots, and somebody handed me the hard drive. I stuck it in a padded case, to protect it until I could get it up there. My ankle was still in blistering pain, and I was sore and tired, but I had to ignore it. For the sake of the planet.
I limped as fast as I could toward the core. It was locked in a furious tussle with E 17, which would make it hard to get up there while it was moving vigorously. The core was screaming in frustration, trying to kill E 17 with all kinds of weapons.
I took a deep breath, and jumped onto the smooth leg of the core while it was stationary. I struck it, and quickly activated the gravity boots. Immediately, I could feel a change. I was now walking up the side of a massive core’s leg.
This was ridiculously weird. I could not believe I was doing this. Humankind had advanced very well, managing to make this miracle of technology. I ran, actually ran, as fast as I could up the smooth surface of the core’s leg, reaching the body quickly. I jumped onto the body, and continued my perilous journey across the core.
I felt a huge jolt, and I shook a lot as the core suffered another blow to its side, stepping back and crushing a piece of rubble. It was damaged significantly by now, sparks coming out of smashed weapons ports, and plating coming off. E 17 wasn’t looking too good either, now boasting a deep wound across its chest that it couldn’t seem to heal.
I was nearly thrown off the side of the core, but the boots held firm. I had to hurry! There it was. The top was a little more flat than round, for whatever reason. But it worked to my advantage. I could stand a little more stable on the top, making it easier to insert the hard drive.
I recalled what Jack had told me to do. According to him, I was supposed to remove a panel in whatever way, and insert the hard drive into a small port on something that sort of looked like a jet engine combined with a motor that was mixed into a supercomputer.
I was fairly certain that the whackadoodle was some sort of processing brain. I crawled over to the spot. Hanging by my side was an assortment of tools, all set to do the same job.
I could see faint gray lines tracing along the spot, outlining a squarish shape. If I was seeing straight, that would be the panel. My heart started beating wildly. If I inserted that little chip, Earth would finally be saved.
I took it out of a padded envelope, looking at it with reverence. Then, I set to work using a hi-density laser cutter to saw off the sealed-in panel. As I was almost done tracing a molten line across the panel, the core finally felt me on top of it.
“You thought you could trick me!?” It screamed in indignation. Lots of tremors and quakes nearly threw me off the massive sphere, plummeting to my death below. The suit’s thrusters didn’t work anymore, probably since they were crushed beneath my weight as I had flown at tremendous speed into a very hard floor after I fired a destructive blast from an alien gun at a pesky door earlier.
Luckily, the air tanks and replenishers still worked, otherwise I would have died unconscious within minutes. I started cutting even faster, while the core was trying to shake me off it.
“I have had ENOUGH!” Blasted the core in blazing anger. “I’ve been using all my weapons on you pathetic scum, but it seems that’s not enough to kill you!” I looked up, and saw E 17 had a lot of small scars from that weird weapon that caused injuries that E 17 couldn’t heal.
Its hand was severed, and it seemed to be growing back much slower than it was supposed to. It kept delivering blow after blow to the core, yet it wouldn’t go down. They were currently locked in a raging battle, and the core was trying to use two of its four long tendrils to choke E 17 out.
I kept working at it. And then…
The panel slid right off. “Nooooo!” yelled the core in obvious disbelief and horror. I looked for the port on the connection capsule. There were lots of them, so I frantically started trying to match them together. Now the core was getting desperate. It extended one of its tendrils, and started to try to smack me with it.
They were as thick as one of those massive chemical vats, and very, very long. I could see the shadow covering me, slowly rising. I tried one more port, and then quickly shoved the hard drive back into the padded envelope.
I jumped out of the way as the limb crashed where I just was with a resounding crash. There was a massive dent, but I assumed that the core didn’t care. As I ran back to inspect the connection module, miraculously, it was still intact.
I assumed that in order for the limbs to hit with such accuracy, there would need to be cameras spread across the limb, and probably all across the core. I was right when I counted 15 black rounded dots making a line from the tip of the tendril to the base at the bottom.
I had a plan. I grabbed a small experimental ion pistol out of a compartment in my damaged suit, and pulled the trigger. A blinding blue beam of destructive light zipped out, and proceeded to completely miss the target by 10 meters.
The limb was rushing toward me again. I jumped out of the way, but the limb clipped my armored boot, and created sparks. I heard the crash behind me again, and was thrown back by the force. I checked the small display on the back of the slim experimental pistol.
Due to some damage it probably sustained along the way, instead of a hundred rounds there were now only 18 left, probably because the energy had leaked out of the battery inside at some point. Well, 17 rounds now. My plan was to destroy all the cameras so I could buy myself more time.
I aimed as carefully as I could, and fired 2 shots as the limb started to rise again. They both hit the cameras, and I watched as the cameras sparked, fizzled out, and proceeded to burn into a crisp. 13 cameras left, and 15 shots left. I would need to be very careful.
That dratted limb came after me again. This time it swept over me, and I ducked down as low as possible, and the metal tentacle passed right over my head, clipping the tip and denting it.
“You are like cockroaches.” Said the core. “I’ve analyzed the species, and found that they’ve been living for up to millions of years ago, and even survived our assault and are currently thriving. No matter what, they won’t die! They survive their heads being cut off, and scurry in every crack and crevice they can find like cowards! They just won’t die!”
The core was seething in anger, it seemed to me. As the tentacle raised again, I took aim, and fired 4 blasts. 3 of them hit. The fourth missed, and hit one of the screens with the now angered face on it. It cracked, and then exploded into ten million shards of alien screen.
Welp, only one more shot to spare. Suddenly, I toppled over, my gravity boots struggling to compensate. E 17 smashed into the core, obviously trying to push it over. Uh-oh. I was like a tiny ant in comparison to the green giant. I knew somebody was controlling it, so I needed to get through to them that I would be crushed to a pulp if the core toppled over.
Wait. Now was my chance. The core was distracted by E 17. I ran up the steep surface as fast as I could, and found the module. I searched for the port. Come on…
And then I found it. It was the perfect size. I rushed to pull out the hard drive. I held it in my hand. It glinted a little. And then I gloated a little. “Cockroaches, huh?” I said. “Well, we cockroaches have single-handedly ended your little rule here on Earth.”
The core finally saw what I was about to do. “Nooooo!!!” It screamed. I jammed it in as fast as I could. E 17 was still trying to push the impossibly heavy sphere over. And then I heard a new voice. “Reboot initiated. 30 seconds to completion.” The core was now inactive and limp. I guess I didn’t have to destroy all those cameras after all.
E 17 finally managed to topple it over before I could react. I was thrown off the side of the core, and was about to enjoy a nice death plummet to the floor covered in rubble. As I saw myself falling nearer and nearer, I was just glad I could help to save the earth, and lots of regrets flashed through my mind. I felt a huge jolt, a flash of pain, and everything went dark.
<shifted to 3rd person perspective>
The commander was dead, impaled on a sharp piece of rebar. Jack felt sick to his stomach as he watched, seemingly in slow motion, as an explosion carried him off his feet, directly onto that murderous spike of a bar that eviscerated him. Jack heard a sharp tone in his helmet speaker, signifying that John Alpius had flatlined.
2 minutes after Elias started her risky climb up the core, a group of aliens had flooded the room, letting disaster ensue. Jack hid behind a giant block of stone, and waited until one of the aliens ran past him, then pulled out their stolen alien blasters and shot it in the back, killing it instantly.
As another saw and ran toward him, he ran to another piece of rubble and fired back from his vantage point. He missed 3 times before finally hitting the alien in that weak spot, and its suit’s pressurized gas flooded out, choking the alien out.
He didn’t wait around to see its fate, instead running to help two of his crew that had fallen into a deep spot of trouble, surrounded by ten aliens. He ran over and shot two in the back, before jumping through the opening and joining his team in the bloody battle. He shot them, but the armor deflected most of the blasts, and only one fell to his assault. His teammates didn’t do any better, downing 1 each. 5 left.
He had three super-grenades in a compartment in his suit, which had miraculously not detonated when the giant blast Elias shot at the door nearly killed them all. Now seemed like a good time to use one.
He pulled one out, and threw it on the floor at his feet. Then, in what seemed to be in slow motion, he shouted for his comrades to take cover, then ran himself toward a giant, sturdy chipped block of some unknown alien material where they were also hiding. He pulled himself behind the block, curled himself into a ball, and counted to 3.
One… two… three… Boooooooooooooooooom!
When the dust cleared, he checked with his teammates that they were okay, looked back, and saw that there was a 2 foot deep smoking crater that spanned 5 meters in diameter, and there was no trace of a single piece of alien.
E 17 was doing very well in the fight, and it clashed with the core in resounding booms. Jack watched in amazement. Wait… Was the core smacking itself on the head?
Against his own precautions, he decided to get a little nearer to investigate. And then, the core went limp, all its light shut off, and it started to fall. He could faintly see a human figure falling off…
Oh no.
That was Elias.
Before he could register his shock, the core hit the ground. A massive shockwave knocked him off his feet, and dust spread everywhere. He laid sprawled there for 5 minutes, completely dazed. When he came to, he immediately got up and ran to where he thought he saw Elias fall.
He stopped. She was there, sprawled on the floor on her back. Her suit’s armor plating was all shattered and pulverized, and the visor was miraculously not cracked. Jack checked his HUD, and saw, with great joy, that Elias was still alive.
But for how long?
By now all the aliens in the room had either died or ran away. Jack shouted through his comms for them to evacuate the base and leave in their transports. E 17 was just standing like a massive statue next to the fallen core.
Did Elias complete her job, or did she just short the core out? He, as gently as his suit allowed, hoisted up her limp body and carried her out the exit. All was silent except for the soft hissing of the air being replenished in the suit.
They finally left the dark tunnel, and walked into the front yard outside of the malevolent base, where signs of carnage were still strewn about before them.
They had to hurry, otherwise Elias might not make it. As they neared the closest transport… It exploded into a massive fireball the size of an office building, debris flying everywhere. Luckily, he thought as he sat up, nobody was inside. And he was lucky Elias hadn’t been hit by shrapnel. He laid her down and looked around.
Nobody was hurt, luckily. He looked around for the source of the attack. And then he turned cold. A small army of aliens was marching out of the base right for them. We’re all gonna die, he thought, and it’s gonna be my fault for holding them up. He braced himself and was ready to fight to the death…
If the core hadn’t exploded out of the building and vaporised a third of the enemy forces. Elias did it, he happily thought, as gore and violence took place outside the base.
When the deed was finished, the massive sphere stamped toward them loudly, and said, “Hello, how can I help you?” Of course. They had to use an upgraded “ChatGPT” module, some sort of AI from some time ago.
At least the impossibly complicated logic and thought of the alien creation still remained to be mixed in with the AI mind into a mix between the two with both ups and downs of either.
E 17 followed behind, and the transports set off. All the time Jack was terrified and anxious for their arrival back at the base, where they had the tools to fix Elias back up to normal.
When they finally arrived, he was the first to take the lift back down, along with others to help carry Elias on a gurney. They travelled to the hospital inside Dome City 2, where the doctors and nurses said they’d do their best, but it wasn’t certain she’d survive, due to 14 broken bones, a completely destroyed arm and both legs, half of her spine fractured, and some of the fragments of her own bones that impaled several of her organs.
They rushed her into the emergency surgery room, and Jack was forced to stay outside, and decided to go to his apartment inside of Dome City 4, in the middle of the city. He drove in a magnicar through the dark tunnels, thinking. When he arrived outside his abode, he grabbed his keys and turned the knob, and breathed in the scent of the home he had been in for more than 6 years.
He couldn’t sleep at night, filled with worries for his friend from before the invasion. He tossed and turned, wondering what was to become of the world. But finally, he tired himself out, and drifted off to sleep.
<shifted to Elias’s perspective>
Huh. I never imagined that death would be so dark. It kinda felt like I was in a bed. I blinked to clear my eyes, and opened them. Wait…
I was still alive??
I heard a small beeping, and felt soft sheets. The room seemed to look like a hospital of sorts, and I could see through a window that it was dark out. I recognised some of the lit-up buildings. Wait. This was Dome City 2.
Did I do it? That was what I thought as I tried to sit up and stretch, but felt a throbbing pain in almost all of me. I plopped my head back down on the pillow. I was still so tired. I sighed, and rolled over to sleep.
The next simulated sky’s “morning”, I woke up in time to see a doctor examining a sheet of paper over my bed. He looked up, and noticed I was awake. “Oh, you’re awake,” he said, mildly surprised. “I need to give you a glass of water and this sheet.”
He went out to fill up a cup of water. When he came back, I asked in a rough voice, “What’s in the sheet?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” replied the doctor, sounding very enigmatic.
I drank down the cup of water thirstily, then took the sheet and read.
“The patient has been sleeping for 3 days. Status: alive. Injuries: 14 broken bones, unrepairable arm and legs, organ damage due to bone shards, internal bleeding, completely destroyed spleen, one lung, and liver. Order: Bionic arm and legs, mechanical organs.
Weird. Why was it blacked out? I asked the doctor, and he said that somebody named Jack Teapin had specifically asked for the part to be blacked out. He didn’t know why.
So, I rested in the hospital for another week, until Jack came to visit. He was hysterical with joy as he burst through the door, obviously trying to restrain himself from running around the room at full speed.
“Oh, am I happy to see you alive!” exclaimed Jack, and then noticed me looking at him weirdly. “Oh, wait, I’m being too crazy.” The first thing I asked was, “Did I do it? Did I complete the mission!?” Jack looked happy. That was a good sign.
“You did!” He exclaimed! And then we both lost it. I squealed with joy while he waved his arms around. After 2 minutes of crazed madness, I finally calmed down enough to ask him, “What happened in those 3 days I was out?”
And he retold the story of how, apparently, the day after he dropped me off at the hospital, he and the others set to work building a terminal and attaching wires to the core, to fully upload all our data into the core and fully edit its program.
After that was done, their first order to the core was to take control of the 10,000 gargantuan drone warships and use them to attack the other manned alien space forces.
Within the hour, all the enemy spaceships and space stations were either taken control of or the ones that couldn’t be hijacked were overwhelmed and destroyed by the growing forces.
Then, the next order was to take control of all the alien drone air forces and ground forces, which were unmanned jets, bombers, carriers, big robot mechs, robot soldiers, and about everything of on Earth with any sort of AI, (even when the craft were piloted) that belonged to aliens were the humans’ after a day.
Then, all the stuff that was controlled by the humans was used to attack any of the alien bases and forces on Earth that couldn’t be controlled for some reason, and by now there were more alien forces that belonged to the humans than the aliens.
This would also be good in the long run, because if the aliens brought reinforcements, they would be repelled by the sheer number of their own technology, and also the humans could study the technology of the aliens and advance themselves.
I was overjoyed. This plan had worked so well, and much better than we expected, with no downsides and side benefits. But I needed to ask Jack one more thing right now.
“Hey, Jack. Why was that part blacked out on the paper?” His face immediately turned sheepish.
“Uhhhh, you’ve healed enough to walk, right?”
“I mean, how will I walk with an arm and both of my legs crushed to bits?”
“You should just try.”
Now that I thought of it, I could still feel my legs and my arm, and there was no pain. I tried flexing them. No problem. I didn’t bother to lift the sheets to see my arm’s or legs’ conditions, partly because I thought it would gross me out a lot. But smashed limbs don’t exactly move like this, do they?
“Wait. What did they do?” I asked, becoming nervous.
“Uhhhhh…” Jack sounded even more nervous than I was.
“What. Did. They. Do.” I shouted.
“You should look for yourself.” He said.
So, I yanked off the sheets (don’t worry, I was clothed in a hospital gown) and froze. Wait… what? How could this be?
In place of my left arm and both legs, there were…
Robotic limbs!?
Now that I thought about it, this wasn’t so bad. I was just being kind of dramatic. Jack still cowered, as if he expected me to lash out at him, grab him by the neck of his collar and crack his neck.
“Uhhh… hello?” I asked.
“Wait. You’re not going to lash out at me, grab me by the neck of my collar and crack my neck?” he asked tentatively.
“What!? No!” I yelled.
“Oh.”
He stood up again and rubbed his neck. I could tell he was really embarrassed by this act of cowardice. or was he? But why so much? I was his friend, and there was nobody else in the room to watch this embarrassing scene.
I sat on the side of the bed, and tentatively placed one steel foot on the floor. Slowly, I put my weight on it. Then, I put the other foot on the floor. Slowly, I stood up. My robotic legs were shaky, so I tried to stabilize them. And then, slowly, the shaking stopped.
I stretched out one leg while standing on the other, and then started to walk. “Whoah!!!” I said, as the first step sent me flying. I flew at least 2 feet before I screeched my metal feet on the ground, sending sparks flying. “Man, these limbs are powerful!” I exclaimed. “Where did you even get them!?”
He explained how after he heard my diagnosis he drove to every lab he could find in the giant bunker until he found one who was just about to incinerate their newest prototype cyborg limbs, in an effort to make a cyborg superhuman, which were very, very powerful generally but ineffective against alien tech, so they tried to toss it.
Since he was a fellow scientist and they didn’t need them he happily thanked them as he walked out with the limbs, drove back to the hospital, and paid an extra tip to the surgeons and the doctor to attach the limbs, black out the mention of the bionic limbs on the list of orders needed to be shipped to the hospital for them to attach or put inside me (like medication, bionic parts, implants, and all that) to keep the secret from me.
I tried to put less force into walking, and after a few bouts of crashing into the ground, I finally mastered the hang of it. And then I tried to test my new legs’ abilities. After I melted a chair somehow, Jack suggested we go outside to try it.
I signed myself out of the hospital, while all the employees were looking at me with awe, because the news had been spread that we had taken Earth back, and that we would move back onto the surface in a few weeks.
After we took a magnicar to the park inside the bunker (yes, I was still in the bunker), I tried the limbs out. I discovered that I could jump more than 10 feet forward with the all-powerful prototype bionic limbs, I could run more than half the speed of a car on the highway and probably much more (since I hadn’t used the full power mode and used 35 percent instead for fear of causing property damage).
There were small but versatile rocket boosters on the bottom of the feet, and when I activated them at quarter-power and hovered 3 feet above the air, charring some grass. The arm could lift more than 300 pounds, as we tested with some objects we found in the park, including a boulder.
After we were spent we fell straight on the grass, panting and huffing. “Whoo! I’m spent!” Jack said. “I didn’t sign up for this for a heart attack!” “Oh, come on. You can handle it.” I said. Don’t you go to the gym every day?” “How’d you know that!?” He exclaimed, sitting up, sounding nervous, which was weird.
“Your day planner is on your worktable where everybody can see it.” I replied. “Oh. Right,” he said, calming down significantly. But why that reaction? Just like when he was embarrassed in the hospital earlier today.
I tried to piece the information together. He was embarrassed when doing something wacky in front of me, a friend he knew very well. And before all the infiltration of the alien base, when we were just scientists making new stuff to fight the aliens, he always seemed like he was being careful around me.
So what was going on? Was it jealousy? Was he faking being my friend? Was he-
And then I figured it out.
10 months later
Elias’s perspective
We had done it. We had saved Earth. By now all the forces still on Earth were either imprisoned or obliterated, and we seemed to have sent the message that we were not to be trifled with, because they haven’t come back yet.
We broadcasted the news to every shelter on the planet, and everybody started to leave the bunkers and marvel in the fresh air. In the first 3 months without alien influence all the plants and animals on Earth multiplied a thousandfold, and now the Earth was starting to brim with life once more, a stark contrast to the barren Earth we had to endure for a few miserable years.
There was grass, shrubs, and trees everywhere we could turn, and there were animals of all kinds swimming, hopping, running, or buzzing around, filling the world with life again. Large bushes and tiny shoots grew on the wreckage of the buildings and cars and houses.
When all of us around the world used all the transportation we could find in each of our respective bases to gather on one continent, we formed groups for us to start building again.
Within 3 months, refurbished alien tech changed for a better purpose combined with our own determination and our own tech helped us to start rebuilding the world.
Many houses were built, residences, inns, shops, farms, gardens, and more. The massive bunkers were now being repurposed as energy generators and massive farms due to their gargantuan reactors and all the farms inside needed to support the population that used to live there.
The bunkers were even still being used as megacities due to them each being able to hold around 1.5 million people each, and having many facilities, stations, labs, and everything they would need to maintain the population and the bunker itself.
The bunkers’ labs were very advanced, and the cities very spacious for something buried in the ground. Everything in the bunker had a new purpose, and the weapons we invented that were useless against the aliens turned out to be very effective for defense and military purposes against our own kind.
But for now we didn’t need them, as everybody was united in rebuilding the world.
We made trillions upon trillions of discoveries and innovations with all of the tech we had, which turned out to be a lot, from blasters to intact alien destroyers.
By the time we sorted through, inspected, tested, and took apart each piece of advanced alien technology, our technology was more advanced than if we had made innovations and discoveries over the next few millenia.
I was now living in a nice big house in a newly created neighborhood near the newly created Liberty City, and it was still smelling like fresh paint and wood dust, no matter how much I tried to air it out.
My stomach was rumbling a lot, probably because I went and tested out my bionic legs even more and did a lot of fun stuff with the new abilities they granted me for an hour or so a little earlier. My metal legs were propelling me faster than any regular human, though I still missed the real flesh and blood.
I checked my holographic screen and saw there was somebody outside with my pizza, still a favorite despite it being invented like 300 years ago. I opened the door and saw the person, barely a teenager, holding my pizza in one hand and texting rapidly with another.
He noticed me and yelled very loudly in surprise. “Uhh, your pizza arrived.” I couldn’t help but smile a little as I said, “I know, and so does everyone else in the neighborhood.”
His face reddened. “Sorry. I was a little busy.” I took the pizza and handed him the check, plus 2 quarters in tip. After the exchange was done he practically scrambled back to his bike, something very outdated but still useful.
I chuckled a little as he pedaled furiously away, and sat down to open the cardboard box. The familiar scent of warm pizza wafted into my nose. I took a bite out of the mushroom-spinach-bacon pizza, made with lab-grown mushrooms chock-full of nutrients, greens grown straight from the bunkers, and lab-grown meat, because there weren’t enough farms or materials yet to start raising a lot of animals, so there was limited fresh actual meat.
The new city I was now living in was very near the bunker I used to live in, only 5 miles away. By now, all of the world had received the news that we had won, and they all traveled to North America to start building and repairing.
The long-term plan was that we would focus on rebuilding one continent at a time, and the vote was in favor of North America. The world’s population currently all gathered in North America had already repaired 40 cities and were building many more.
There were 32 million people here all working together to build up our world. Many of us used our maps stored in the bunkers’ databases along with a lot of other data to recover the worldwide communication and network system, so we could now communicate from long distances.
In every bunker there was a massive supercomputer maintaining the systems in the massive bunkers, since not all people in there could be everywhere at once. They also held all the stuff about Earth, from records of every earthquake in history to the usual temperature of the sun.
It did the purpose of all the early-day websites there were, except the websites each held their own few pieces of information that all came together to form a massive collection of data you could search for in a “search engine”, whereas the supercomputer database was something you asked for information and that it would give you, not a list of websites that you had to manually click on to look for the information you needed.
We brought back all the websites, apps, search engines, and other files from the database (that held all the computer files and software on Earth as well) and started manufacturing hardware to be able to interact with the websites and apps and things, just like old computers.
Soon we were able to search up anything that all and every one human once knew about and now knew about and everything they could create and everything in between at a whim on our own devices in our own new homes, and we had all the information we needed and once remembered to look for and repair the cities that were high-priority.
Life was coming back to Earth.
I voraciously devoured my slice of pizza then went to the heater and warmed a can of pork, chicken and celery soup. As I waited, I munched down another slice.
E 17 was now back in the massive tank with the liquid in the lab again, as we were studying the jacked-up amphibian for evidence of how the regeneration and super strength worked, hoping to use it for more of our experiments.
But I already had enough of science for a while. The core in the meantime was acting as a temporary new supercomputer, maintainer, main system node, and central AI of a city recently built, but it was regularly brought to the labs for more reverse engineering of its systems and composition.
I checked my memos and remembered I had a date with Jack later, as well as a bunch of random appointments and junk mail that were completely and utterly useless.
I was now just a regular citizen. Just then, I heard the heater make a tinny ding, so I went to take out my steaming soup and happily chowed down on my food in a warm ray of the afternoon sun.
End. or is it?????????