Genesis: Chapter 1

The first Chapter of Genesis

So here’s the story. The untouched, honest-to-god truth. If you ever had any uncertainty about what really happened, you’re in the right place. I’m writing this so you’ll always know the truth, so the story won’t be warped, so that I won’t fade into history books and become just another name. This is the story of WWIV, the terrible, horrifying story. Pay attention.

I’ll give you a quick briefing on the fourth world war before we begin, just in case you didn’t know. Adrenilda Alber is the name of the genius who started all of this. She was born with an IQ of 194, and narrowly missed having Huntington’s disease. As she watched all of her siblings waste away, she  dedicated her life to genetic engineering. Eventually, Alber’s work took over her sanity and she became obsessed with perfection, creating the perfect human and eradicating all genetic disease. Her funding was eventually cut,  due to her unorthodox methods of experimenting ( for example adopting babies to experiment on and engineering her staff’s unborn children without their knowledge or consent). This caused her to look for funding elsewhere, turning to convincing the wealthy to back her. Alber was able to convince others to join her in the quest for perfection, and to shun those who were unengineered (although she herself was). The Agency of Genetic Purity was created as a worldwide organization and eventually became a political party. The AGP quickly rose to power and dominated many countries, due mainly to Alber’s campaign monkey  Kenneth Jackson’s charisma and powers of deception. With the funding and political power to do what she pleased, Alber started researching and experimenting again. Not long after, she had created her perfect human who was in fact, beyond perfect. The AGP rejoiced, but quickly changed their tune when Alber refused to share the formula with them. They sent spies to her labs, attempted to steal the child, but when nothing worked they ratted her out to the UN. See Alber was doing some pretty horrible stuff in the countries she was in charge of (given the whole of the AGP was doing pretty horrible stuff but all of that stuff was overlooked because the UN wanted to get Alber so bad that they promised not to bust the rest of the AGP). Unengineered people were either sent to concentration camps or research labs, where they would have torturous, vigorous, and invasive experiments done on them. Those who did not qualify for the experiments just did work, but the hours were inhumanely long and the work was vigorous. Eventually, whole cities were turned into camps, but the only ones who lived like they were in a concentration camp were the young unengineered (old people couldn’t help being unengineered, the technology hadn’t existed) and recent parents that failed to engineer their children. You can imagine how the non-AGP world reacted to this.  Due to the world being still ravaged from WWIII, Alber managed to keep the peace for several years but eventually war was inevitable. This did not sit well with Alber, because her greatest weapon had escaped.

This is where I come in. For a long time now I have been debating where exactly to start my story, seeing as if I start too early most of the information in the book will be irrelevant and no one will read it through to the end. But if I start it too late I might leave out some important details, and I doubt it would serve me well if my story had any kind of hole an a*****e AGP favoring historian might use to tear my story apart. My involvement in the war started the day I was born, or more accurately, made. But I’ll spare you the long story of how I, Alber’s perfect human, managed to run away and melt into society without a trace because as interesting as it is, it’s not important and would be a waste of time.The story of how I ended the war didn’t start until I was 21, and I think the best way to start it is by telling the story of the day before. I was in the Underground level of Detroit, where I had lived. The Underground was built to be another level of the city, for middle class people and s**t and it was a successful little town for a while but it deteriorated after a while and  basically became a haven for runaway kids, homeless people, and gangs. I was barely even noticed to be anything else but a normal person, an a*****e, but still a normal person .There were hundreds of run down buildings and houses , the pavement was cracked to the point that we called it cobblestone, and there was always a sort of darkness despite the artificial light. It was any normal day. I was swindling people out of their money, then they got mad, attacked me, and limped away after I kicked their a*s for trying to kick my a*s. After a surprisingly good day, I had been walking back to my shack when I felt it. Like a chill down my spine, I heard a thought from behind me. I was used to hearing thoughts, but these were different. They were much more organized than regular thoughts, and for whatever reason they seemed to be fake.The  people were thinking things like, wait until the right moment, and , She’s right there, just do it!

I kept walking, more slowly this time. I was too busy trying to think up a clever plan that didn’t involve revealing myself when I was grabbed from behind. My perfectly manicured instincts took over. I threw the lumbering person off of me with all of my might, and they landed about 5 meters away with a loud metallic CLANG! The second one was surprisingly not surprised, yet she still didn’t notice the pipe floating next to her head. I commanded it to swing, and after a couple of hits she was out. On the sleeve of her uniform I saw a shining silver eagle holding branches of something in each hand. I saw the other starting to come to. My footsteps clattered against the cobblestones as I walked towards her. I promised honesty, so I must admit that I had planned to kill the agent. But the drone had powered down before I got the chance to.

Anyways, the morning after I was just sitting in my shack watching the artificial light filter through my quilt ceiling, pondering how a drone could possibly emit human thoughts, when Cam charged in unannounced. My shack was mainly made out of quilts I had found in a dead woman’s house . The back wall was brick, one of the walls of our endlessly vacant library. Another wall was made of wood boxes that I had stacked about 2.5 meters high, with an identical wall on the other side. The roof was a giant quilt strung across the gap and held down with rocks, and the door/front wall was completely made of quilts I had sewn together. The inside was furnished with boxes covered in quilt. Most of kids down here lived together in houses, but as always, I was the exception.

Back to Cameron. Cam was in her late twenties, and was kind of the leader of the Underground. She wasn’t so much a leader, but was the only person the homeless kids who lived here respected. Cam was frighteningly tall, with a pale gaunt face and raven-black hair. I knew Cam well from all of the times she had come to yell at me, and I hadn’t seen her not in a state of fury in years.

“Lisa!” she exclaimed firmly , yanking my quilt off of me. “Did you kill two people last night?”The look in her eyes told me that this question was just a courtesy.

“They were after me, trying to kill me. And besides, they turned out to be drones anyway. ” I said, my eyes downcast.

“Yes, but you thought that they were people, did you not?” I didn’t actually answer her question, but Cam managed to infer the answer after a look at my guilt-bearing face. “I am formally asking you to go.”

“Go- as in- leave The Underground?”

She looked at her toes and said, barely audible above a whisper, the one word I couldn’t bear to hear. “Yes.”

“Where am I supposed to go Cameron? I don’t have a home, I never have. There is nowhere else that will even tolerate me, and you very well know it,” I said, purposely playing the guilt card. “Besides, they were drones and I was defending myself. You should have heard what they were thinking-”

“Thinking! Lisa, I know you never went to school but even utter dumbasses know that drones don’t think! Do you seriously believe that I would buy in to this little story of yours? Drones have never come here, and even if they were drones you thought they were people. As for where you go, Lisa,” She paused, and for a microscopic second, I thought she would feel guilty and let me stay. “At this point I don’t give a damn where you go as long as it isn’t here!” Cam shouted. Her voice was wavering.

“You can’t make me-”I started, in a bold voice.

“ I absolutely can Melisandra. You know I can. I may not stand a chance against you in a fight, but I can make you leave.”

I rose to my feet. I was significantly shorter than Cam but I could tell that she was still intimidated by me. “How do you think you’re going to do that?” I sneered.

Then she said the words I thought I would never hear come out of her mouth: “I’ll tell. I will tell everyone your little secret Lisa. You think you’re an outcast now? Imagine how much more people will hate you when they find out what you are.” She wasn’t bluffing, I could tell from her thoughts. I knew I had to talk her out of it, but I had no idea how.

“Do you think I care?” I chuckled.

“Yes I do. Because you know that even you, with your freaky superpowers, couldn’t take down all of us. They already hate you, they think you’re a monster. Theoretically, of course. When they find out that you are literally a monster, I will have anarchy on my hands. They will call for your death, Lisa.”

I looked up at Cam and took a step back. “What are you trying to say?”

She took a deep breath, as to recompose herself. “I’m not going to kill you. But I promise, if you stay here, someone else will.” She turned on her heel to leave. As she walked out of my makeshift door she said, “You have until noon,” without ever turning back.

Cameron’s reaction surprised me. I had never expected her to throw me out again. After I had confided in her about my powers, she gave me a warning that if I turned out to be dangerous, she would throw me out of her house. When I nearly killed my roommate by accident, my stay there was over. Cameron, being as maternal as she is, couldn’t leave little six-year-old me alone to die though. She helped me find shelter, told me about the lady with the quilts, and kept tabs on me from time to time. I just couldn’t believe that I was not even good enough for the Detroit Underground.  I packed my quilts and set off to a an undecided destination, but I didn’t make it to the surface.

I headed down the shoddy streets, they were covered in dirt and grease and the footsteps of a thousand rejects. The elevators were as huge and looming as I remembered them from 16 years ago. They were made out of some sort of heavy metal, and all of the edges were covered in peeling yellow and black cautionary tape. This time they were more scary. This time, I was not facing freedom, but utter defeat. As I wallowed in my sorrows, I couldn’t help but detect a thought around me. After about 30 seconds of wondering where it was coming from, I figured it out.

The gigantic elevator doors opened, and to my dismay seven people stepped out, all in perfect unison. I had only heard one set of thoughts previously, and I quickly realized that the extra six were androids. The androids all had the same symbols on the sleeves of their black suits as the people I had killed the night before did. A single deep, husky voice emerged from the group. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time, Miss Alber.”  I felt a sharp pain in the neck. The b******s tranquilized me.