February 3, 2100 – February 7, 2100
James Stone
When I was ten, I hated having such a boring dad. He wasn't one of those fun fathers who would spin you around by your arms until you were dizzy. He didn't build me a go-cart or throw a ball around with me. He wasn't the type to gush over my art work or inflate my ego in any way. Mostly I only saw him on the weekends when he fell asleep in front of his soap operas, beer in hand and chips scattered in easy reach. That was then. Today, two years later, I hard-wish that were still the case. Now, I hardly see the bastard as a dad. All I see is the monster he's become.
Clank, clank.
Behind the front door, my mother and I heard my dad fumbling with his keys on the porch. Mom had finished cooking dinner for us a few minutes ago. Most people had a Magic Meal in their homes to materialize different types of food on demand; or so I learned in school. Sadly, our poverty forced my mother to cook.
A minute went by before my dad bumped through the door and stopped to see us waiting for him. His drunk stare had us sitting with our feet on eggshells. Stumbling and struggling to make it to the table, he fell over his chair before sitting. Shaking in my shoes, I sat as still and upright as I could, yelling internally at each of my muscles to relax. The soft fumes from my ramen noodles hugged my nose.
Dropping his silverware, my dad looked at my mom. "Sarah, I was fired t'day. Er'since Earth started allowin' aliens t'live wit us, da qwayks hav'ben takin' our jobs. Now, it was my turn. Dose white-haired qwayk bastards are jus'… too… damn… smart fa screw-ups like me." He slurred his words due to his drunken state before studying my mother's face for a minute. I knew he was going to go off any second. After all, he had a hard case of the aggressive drunk cliché. His cheeks boiled red. "Hey! Yah wanna say somethin', den say it!"
"I don't have anything to say," she mumbled.
"Wha was dat?" He positioned his ear closer to her.
"I don't have anything to say," she repeated, a bit louder.
My dad pointed at her face and shook his hand. "Yah hav dat look again."
"I don't have any look." Her eyes began to shine from the forming tears.
"Wha… wha do yah want fra me?" He stuttered his words and shook his head in disbelief. She sat silent, unable to think of what to say. Fueled by alcohol, his anger burst into flames. "Yah dink Imma failure, don't yah?" He grabbed his plate and hurled it across the room, sending a tension-buffing shatter throughout the room. Standing up, he screamed, "Yah dink I lost ma' job 'cause Imma failin' husband who can't support us!"
My mom sat in her chair in tears. It only added to his fire. Marching to her side of the table, he snatched her by the hair and pulled her to the floor. I jolted around in my chair, crying rivers of tears as he beat on her. This was the sixth time this month. He pounded away, bounced her head to and from the hardwood floor. Blood dyed her hair a scarlet red. One of her eyes was swollen, and her nose was crooked.
After she stopped struggling, he released his grasp and yelled, "I gav up everythin' fa dis family… fa you… fa him! I spent every dime on both of yah, n' wha hav yah two done?" He pointed at me but stared at her. "Yah sit on yah ass every day n' defend dat disgrace ov a child. He'll end up like me, a failure, n' yet yah support him!"
"Dad. Stop, pl-please," I begged, balling my hands into fists.
"James. Sh-shh--" My mom coughed through the blood running down her mouth.
Letting go of her, he turned to me. "I knew it was a mistake to hav yah! Yah nothin' more dan a screw-up, like yah ol' man!" As he stumbled toward me, I fled the chair and sprinted toward my bedroom. "Come here, yah li'l rat!" he hollered.
As soon as I reached my room, I grasped the door by the knob and tried to slam it shut - but my heart skipped a beat as the door was blocked by my father. I froze. Next thing I knew, he backhanded me to the ground.
On my knees, adrenaline pumped into my veins. Only, there was something else, too. I felt a burst of strength and energy like I'd never experienced before.
Kneeling down to face me, my dad said, "Come on. Imma takin' yah to a dump where yah belong."
Before he could grab me, my mom crawled back in the room from the kitchen. "Don't you TOUCH him, Henry!"
"I swear'da God, Imma gonna KILL yah, too!" He turned to look at her.
"No! NO!" I wailed, punching him as hard as I could in the eye just as he turned back to face me.
I never expected what happened next. From the sheer force of the impact, his skull caved inward. His now lifeless body dropped to the floor. As his head banged against the carpet, his crushed brain swooshed around in his head. A line of his blood formed into a teardrop on my fist before falling. It plopped against the base of his eye socket and dripped to the carpet moments later.
"He's… h-he's d-dead! W-what did you-- H-how did you--" My mother's eyes beamed up at me, then back at him; over and over.
"I-I-I d-don't know. I-I didn't think that… that would happen. I-I--" I stared with wooden eyes at the pool of blood that formed around my dead father's head. "Jesus. What have I done?" The words bounced around in my head.
My mom used the wall to force herself up; her legs were noodles under her weight. Powering her way to me, she placed her hands on my shoulders and knelt in front of me. "James... James. Look into my eyes." I did as instructed, only to see the same guilt I had reflecting back at me. "Whatever this is…whatever happened…how it happened…it doesn't matter. We can… figure it all out later. But now… in this moment, we need to get rid of the evidence. What you did and how you did it may scare a lot of powerful people if this was ever discovered. So, I need you to follow my every instruction. I know I'm asking a lot, but you can't be a kid for this. Do you understand?"
I nodded.
"Good. Now come on, help me load him into the car."
I'd seen enough crime shows to know she wanted to hide the body. And that was just what we did.
⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕
One foggy morning, four days after I'd killed my father, I jolted awake, screaming from a nightmare. My mother sprinted into my room and saw the sweat dripping down my chin and neck. Even with the cover over me, I had cold chills crawling around my torso.
"Honey, it's okay. It was just a nightmare. You'll be fine." She put her arms around me, holding me as I settled down.
From the adjacent room, my grandparents sprinted in to see what the commotion was all about. "James, Sarah. Are you two alright?"
"Yes. Can you give us a few minutes? I got it handled," my mom responded.
She and I had been staying at her parents' house while she looked for a job. Two days ago, she'd put our house up for sale, saying it held too many negative memories.
About two hours later, I woke up again, this time to a pleasant dream. It was a Sunday, so I didn't have school. I took a shower, ate breakfast, then went to play with my toys. At least I'd planned to play with toys; instead, I just stopped and stared at them. How could I go back to playing with toys after what had happened with my father? How could I imagine an ideal world using these toys when I could see all the flaws in this one, the real world? To me, it felt as if something pulled away some of the color from the world the moment my father died in front of me. I couldn't bring myself to play with toys, so I just switched on the holographic projector for some television.
A few minutes later, my grandfather came into the room and sat on reclining couch in the corner of the white-walled, pictureless living room. "How'yah doing, sonny?"
I switched off the holographic projector. "How would you be doing if you killed somebody? I mean, I hated his guts for everything he put Mom and me through. Still though, he was my father. Mom always said I act much older than I am, but… I just-- It's hard."
His eyes were locked on me, studying me for a minute. He then glanced to the other room, checking to see if anyone was there. "Your mom would kill me for saying this to you, but I do believe it may help. I-I was in your position once before."
"Jesus, Grandpa, you killed someone?"
There was pain reflecting in his eyes and through his voice. "Did your school teach you about World War III yet?"
"Heard about it. But the school system usually holds back on the details until high school. You know, with it being human history's most brutal war and all that jazz."
"For good reason. Human population was at almost twelve billion souls on Earth before the war and declined to under five billion - sixty percent gone in the first few years. Rivers ran red."
"That is some next level bloodshed. Even still, I expected more from you given your disclaimer at the beginning."
He grinned. "You weren't kidding when you said you act older than your age." His grin flashed away, and his eyes jumped back to the past. "The year is 2067. There were two sides: The United Nations of Democracy, we called them the UNOD, and the Selection of Communist Parties, or SOCP. I served in the former. World War III began due to years of tensions over resources - mainly around energy sources. At this time, we had yet to create a successful fusion reaction, and geothermal power was too unstable and unreliable. In other words, Earth couldn't sustain its population any longer. Because of this potentially world-ending conflict, times were sour and bleak of joy. It wasn't until 2068 that I was drafted, and it was the second worst day of my life. The first came on the day of September 9, 2072. After my unit was hit by an ambush, my best friend and I… w-we were all that remained." There were tears in his eyes. "I-I knew the stubborn son of a gun all my life since… since growing up in the city together. And here we were, at war, just us two, and an enemy squad chasing us. But the kicker… the kicker is, he wasn't as lucky as I was. See, I was hit, sure… with blood pouring down my shoulder. But he was wounded so badly that I was carrying him down a path through a forest. We could hear the voices of the enemies getting closer, and he said… and I-I will never forget this: Put a bullet in me, I'm only going to get us both killed." There was a pause, and the hairs on my neck stood tall. "If the enemy captured him, his remaining days would be filled with torture as they extracted information from him. So… so I set him down, looked into his brown eyes, and watched as the life left them the moment I pulled the freven trigger. I killed my best friend that day, only to live my life with that memory stuck in my head. James, sonny, it won't be easy living with what you did even though your father turned out the way he did, but I can tell you that you still made the right decision. Take solace in that."
"Jesus." I was at a loss for words.
"By 2079, the UNOD defeated the SOCP and united the entire Earth under one senate and one judicial branch. I remember days… no, weeks of celebrations. For the first time in the history, Earth was united. And in that victory, my friend's death didn't go wasted. Make sure you take something positive away from your dad's death."
I nodded but was still interested, so I asked, "And the aliens? When did they make their grand entrance?"
"Near the end of World War III, advancements in slip space technology, or warp drives, took off. Two years after the war, humans made their first successful jump to Mars. Three days later, the qwayks landed on Earth, coming in peace. They offered humans an alliance with them, and the other two species allied with the Alliance of Republic Worlds for reasons I'm unclear on. After months of debating, Earth's new senate accepted the alliance. Ever since then, our worlds have become more and more integrated. The only exception has been the maelkii. They mostly keep to themselves on their home planet, Maelkiin, instead."
When Grandpa finished his story, I got up and walked toward the kitchen.
Knock, knock, knock.
The thuds came from the front door. My mother came into the kitchen and headed for the front door; her rushed steps clanked against the wooden floor. "Who could that be at such an early hour in the morning?" she asked herself. I followed her. When she opened the door, two men in GDI uniforms were standing there. "May I help you?" my mother asked them.
Showing their badges, both men introduced themselves. One then followed up by saying, "We're from the Global Department of Investigation. Are you Sarah Stone?"
"Yes," she answered, a bit nervous.
"When was the last time you saw your husband?" they continued.
"Well, he's been missing for a few days. I filed a report." My mom told them half the truth.
"Yes, we have that here." One of them pulled up the report on their cyberwatch. "It says you filed it three days ago, is that correct?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry to inform you, we found him dead just this morning."
Taking a few seconds to respond, my mom pretended to be shocked and even managed to form up a few tears. "Y-y-you did? I ca-can't believe it." She stuttered the words.
"Yes, ma'am, we are truly sorry." They comforted her for a moment. "I know this is hard for you, but we need you and your son to come in for questioning. You see, he was murdered, and we need all the info you can give us to find his murderer."
"Sure, ah… no problem. James, come on."
She put her hand on my back, and we walked with the investigators to their car, passing the bushes that brushed up against the walkway. One of the GDI agents opened the back door and gestured for us to get in. He closed the door, then entered the front of the vehicle with his partner. Thick metal bars separated us from them, probably to protect them from someone trying to escape the vehicle.
My mom and I sat in silence. And it wasn't until now that I realized silence can be deafening. All the thoughts I had, all the nightmares, played on a loop in my head throughout the car ride.
Eventually, I was pulled back to reality when my mom leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Do not say anything to them. I'll do all the talking."
After a long drive, we arrived at the GDI interrogation station. They led us into the building, through guarded doors. Inside the common area, many GDI officers rushed around the desks, while others typed against holographic keyboards; everyone was hard at work. Each room was enclosed with reinforced walls made with concrete blocks and some form of metal I'd never seen before. There were guards with rifles strapped over their backs posted around each room. Each door required a GDI agent to open it with an eye scan and badge swipe. Upon arriving in the interrogation area of the building, the GDI agents separated me from my mother and forced us into two different rooms. Unable to think, I followed the agent and looked back at my mother with wide eyes. She began to struggle with another agent as he pulled her away from me.
They placed me in a room by myself, where I sat for over an hour. Through a window, I saw various men enter and talk with my mother in the room across from me. I tried to make out what they were saying but failed miserably.
I almost fell asleep from boredom before two GDI agents entered the room and sat across from me. One even brought me a glass of water. After a few days of living with my unnatural strength, I'd learned how hard to grip items such as glass. I cautiously wrapped my hand around the glass of water and lifted it to my mouth for a drink.
The two agents introduced themselves to me before proceeding. "So, your mother in there," the agent pointed to the room, "just admitted to the murder of your father, Henry. However, a few things don't quiet add up." He slid a folder over to me. Inside, a picture displayed an imprint of something I couldn't make out. "This is an imprint we found engraved in your father's skull, which was shattered into quite a few pieces." He pointed to the picture. "It took us a while to figure it out, but we finally came to the conclusion that… that it's the imprint of a child's fist… probably around your age."
Both agents searched my face and awaited a response. I clenched my fist against the cold metal bars of my chair. It took every bit of courage I had to keep myself from shaking.
"We found DNA samples of two individuals still on the shirt, despite it being wet… a beauty of modern science. Your mother was a match. I wonder if you will be, too." My inner voice was practically screaming. "Look, James. You're just a kid. All we want is your story to clear things up. If it happens to be self-defense, then let us help you. Besides, we're quite interested to know just how you killed your father." This is what my mother warned me about. If they were to find out the truth as to how I killed my dad, what would they do, self-defense or not?
Only a second later, another agent entered the room and whispered into the ear of one of the other agents. "Excuse me," he said to me, then they all left the room.
My mind screamed, "Run!", but my body wouldn't move. Anxiety built with each passing minute until a human and qwayk escorted my mother into the room. These two were wearing suits, not the uniform worn by a GDI office. What was going on?
Remembering my studies at school, I was able to tell this qwayk was a female because of her smaller size and green eyes. I knew males could only have teal or blue eyes, and females could only have green or yellow-green eyes. That and the obvious three knockers on the qwayk female. Other than the thinner frame, gray skin, and vantors covering their faces, qwayks were very humanoid in appearance. The man with the qwayk was a black male; brown eyes that jumped with enthusiasm and a flat top hair style that stood tall and stiff. He spoke first.
"Incredible. The odds of encountering two gingers these days are borderline miniscule - a consequence of nano-immunal technology."
"Who are you?" my mother asked, getting right to the point.
"Pardon me. My name is Kalvin Keefe, the Director of the Order of Aegis. This is Jean'ma Plow."
My mother stopped him. "What's Eye-Just, Ah-Just, whatever it's called?"
"Aegis," Kalvin corrected her. "Make no mistake, we are not an agency of the government. The Order of Aegis is a privately subsidized organization tasked with the development and research of technology and artifacts in order to support the well-being of the Alliance of Republic Worlds, or ARW for short. Humbly, we take every measure to service all species affiliated under the ARW document."
"And what are you doing here?" she asked, rushing them to their point.
"Our organization was informed about this astonishing case, and I had to glimpse it for myself."
"Now you've seen it. So why else are you here?"
"Madam, we have confirmed that James," he looked at me now, "murdered his father. Moreover, we confirmed the marks left on the both of you prove that atrocious excuse of a male was abusive. Lastly, after we explored your longstanding home, we acquired evidence that proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the father was killed in self-defense," he leaned in a bit closer, bragging almost, "some of which was expertly planted by us." He leaned back out. "Being a privately subsidized organized has its advantages - one of which is leeway. We have obtained the right to take James under our watch for research purposes. We--"
"You can't take James! He's only twelve years old!" my mom started to beg.
"Madam, please, let me finish. We recognize for a fact that there is something exceptional about James, and we plan to uncover that." This was what my mom and I feared. "Whether it be by force or your consent, we will have James in Project Ace. Nonetheless, if you would prefer, we can establish visiting days. The more you cooperate with us, the more benefits we can offer you, understand?"
"NOT ON YOUR LIFE! You have no right to take James! I'll bring the GDI into this matter!" My mother flew up and booked it toward the locked door, where she started to bang her fists against the glass. Kalvin sat still and looked at her with disappointment. "Where is everyone? I don't see any GDI officers anywhere!" She banged louder and faster.
Kalvin pulled out a piece of paper and slid it over to where my mother had been sitting. "I request that you scribble down any substantial information about James: Daily routine; necessities; anything you can recollect. In addition, I want you to scribble down a precise time and day during the week when you would prefer to visit James."
My mother ignored him and ran over to the security camera. "Help! He's going to take my son!"
The camera was shut off. It was hopeless! She looked back at me with a look I rarely saw, yet it was all too familiar – a combination of pursed lips and a deadpan gaze. Her eyes drifted into thought, and she bit at her lips; this meant the matter was far from over.
"Madam, please have a seat." After a long wait, my mother finally took a seat. Her eyes shot balls of fire at Kalvin. He either didn't care or didn't notice. With a bit of flare, he gestured to Jean'ma Plow. "This is our lead researcher at the Aegis Research Center, and she will have the responsibility of researching and caring for James. Our research center is a mere couple hours away from your current residence. I took the liberty of jotting down the center's address on that paper I handed you. Since James has not attended high school yet, I am curious: Does he own a render chip at the current moment?"
"No. I couldn't afford one, and since high school is the first place where he'd be in an integrated school with the other species, I figured I could wait to get him one." My mom hid the anger and sorrow from her voice.
"Madam, you are in luck. I just happened to bring along the newest model." Using a utensil, he pulled out a microchip smaller than a grain of rice from his bag. "This is the tiniest model to date, and it is programmed with every identified language in the galaxy. It should have no trouble translating every identified species' native language into English for James to comprehend." He looked at me. "Lean over, James. I promise this will not be painful."
He placed a render chip in each of my ears. Once inside, small legs tickled my skin as they crawled farther down my ears and planted themselves near my eardrums. At first the sensation was unusual; soon I didn't even notice it.
My mother spent the next twenty minutes listing everything she could think of on that paper. Meanwhile, Jean'ma ran a few minor tests on me, taking my blood pressure and listening to my heart. Afterwards, they gave me and my mother a few minutes to say goodbye.
My mother removed the cross from around her neck and placed it in my hand. "James, I want you to keep this until I figure everything out. I don't want you to worry. They said I can visit you every week. I want you to be strong for me. Behave, and follow everything they ask you to do."
She couldn't keep from crying as she hugged me one last time.