Starlence looked back at Mars one more time before the rocket launched. She grabbed her seatbelt, feeling sick. Beside her was Axel, her second cousin. He looked at her and grinned. As the rocket slowed down, Starlence looked outside. Stars shone everywhere. She wanted to put some in a jar, so she could look at them everyday.

“So how’re you feelin’?” Axel asked.

“Uh… I dunno. It feels… weird,” Starlence mumbled.

“Yeah.”

Starlence didn’t know what to expect. It had been so long since anyone went to Earth. According to the satellites, Earth was far too polluted for a human to be safe. The footage showed that Earth had toxic gasses that can cause fatal injuries. But, the scientists on Mars created a toxic-proof jumpsuit that could allow humans to go onto the dangerous planet.

“It’s hard to imagine our great grandparents livin’ in such a horrendous place! The videos we saw make Earth seem awful,” Axel said.

“Mm-hmm,” Starlence replied distractedly.

After the explosions, humans fled to Mars on defective spaceships. 9/10 of them crashed, but one made it to Mars and the humans settled. They planted food, and built buildings. But, what does Earth look like now?

“Hey, looks like we’re almost here, Star,” Axel’s voice woke Starlence up.

The rocket landed. But, there were no gasses. There was a stunning green everywhere. It rained sunlight. Vines and ivy were woven into the ground. Trees grew and birds sang.

“Magnificent,” Starlence whispered.

Nimue woke up, she was in a place she didn’t recognize. She walked to the mirror and closely examined herself. She had a million questions; what’s this place? Why was she here? She was in a strange girl’s body.

“But I was dead.”

Nimue decided to go downstairs.

There, she saw him.

The memories came back as she recalled the man.

That night, thunder roared, rain poured down. Nimue hastily ran inside a dark valley. Soon enough, Nimue was cornered by the witch hunters. With no weapon to defend herself, she was left absolutely helpless. “Master Marvin, kill this witch!” With the swish of Marvin’s Soul Sword, Nimue’s lifeless body crashed to the cold hard ground.

The wind blew gently. The thunderstorm calmed down…

Nimue stared at the person standing in front of her with deep hatred. It was Marvin, leader of witch hunters; the person who took her life. Nimue could not believe this–was she actually alive? In the body of a young girl, living in the same place as him.

“Good morning.” Said Marvin.

Nimue asked herself. “Why am I with this stupid man? That detestable imbecile!”

Nimue couldn’t control herself like a wild animal set free, she had to escape. She ran into a room that was pitch black. There was a machine. She walked to it, it said:

TIME MACHINE

Nimue knew this was her chance to get revenge. She carefully pressed the open switch, and jumped into the time machine. Revenge.

“Update your chip today! Have 20 terabytes more of memory storage,” the giant advertisement blared.

I bolted towards my tiny apartment where my parents and I lived. For such an advanced country where everyone is chipped, rich with all the knowledge you could ever dream of, we still can’t fix tiny, basic problems, like housing, or complex ones, like war. Maleb, our small country, has been at war with Calliette for several years. Our army is much weaker than theirs, and Maleb is on the brink of surrender.

“How was your ride, Lyla?” my mom asked as I walked through the door.

Folding up my bike, I replied, “Good. There’s another chip update.”

“Well, thank goodness you don’t have that silly chip, or else who knows what you would want to purchase.”

She was correct– I’m not chipped because I’m an unregistered citizen. I was secretly born, and my parents hid me away, so I didn’t get chipped. Being unregistered is illegal. If I was discovered by anyone, I could be jailed, tortured for evidence or forced to be “chipped”, but I would rather be dead than potentially be controlled.

Suddenly, my mother’s eyes widened. My mom messily jerked, grabbed the government supplied taser, then she uniformly marched away, following everyone else. I glanced outside– thousands and thousands of people were walking in orderly lines; each carrying a weapon.

The nightmare has come true.

Everyone is being controlled.

Everyone, except me.

The ball was launched in the air so high that it went above my head and landed all the way over by the old red barn. No one wanted to go there, for there was a rumour that the barn had been at one time invaded by extraterrestrials.

“You’re a bunch of scaredy cats,” I said as I ran over to get my ball back. The ball was nowhere in sight. I tripped on what appeared as a giant hatch door. “What’s this?” I thought. I pulled on the door. A ladder came out of the wall. I climbed down and saw another big locked metal door. Luckily, I had a pocket knife and I used that to pick the lock. I saw several of what looked like charred computers and destroyed screens. One thing in the bunker was still intact. An old hard drive. I grabbed it and climbed up the ladder, slammed the hatch door and ran home. I plugged in the harddrive to my computer. There was a sudden sound, my screen scrolled row after row of numbers. There was a bright flash! In big red letters amid the rapidly changing numbers PREPARE FOR THE EVENT…

A series of images popped up on my screen, one I recognized. It was the field where I had been playing, but all the grass was just ash. I noticed a timestamp on one of the photos: Jan 4, 2046 I looked at my calendar. It said Dec 24, 2045.

Sweetie frantically pressed the buttons on the control pad. The black hole was coming at her at full speed. Then everything went dark.

She woke up on a planet. She looked at the remains of the spaceship. She gasped when she found out that the ignition key was missing.

Sweetie tiptoed and found herself at the edge of a clearing. She saw green creatures with back-shells working hard. They were the size of a space hopper. She scrambled out of the greenery. She asked them questions, they didn’t understand.

She followed the creatures, in her invisible cloak. She went into a magnificent building and saw a golden space-hopper creature. Sweetie then realized that it was probably the leader. She then saw her key nearby.

She crept past the guards. The guards were stacking on each other, and it was impossible to get through them.

She climbed up the staircase and took out a length of rope. Sweetie then slid down the rope and reached out to grab the key. No such luck. There was a force field around it.

Giving up she walked back to the spaceship and couldn’t believe her eyes. Tons of space-hopper creatures, fixing the spaceship. The golden one handed her the key. She thanked the creatures and gave them her cloak as a gift. Time to take off!

Sweetie soon became a bestselling author with her book: Spaceus Hopperus, thanks to her truly memorable experience.

It was self defense?

A knife impaled Angelina’s back. Blue blood began to bleed from the wound.

“Oops... sorry! My hand just slipped.” Shrugged Tera. “I totally didn't do it on purpose.”

Her friend Cedrella was appalled. “Teraaaaaaaa... Seriously? Remember, we’re trying to keep our enemies incapacitated yeah, but alive.”

“I said I was sorry.” Tera smiled.

“Ugh, fine. But next time, alive. Okay?”

Tera rolled her eyes, flipped the body over and started shoving it in a sack.

“Okay?” Cedrella said with a threatening tone.

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’ll make sure to keep them “alive,” as you say.”

“THANK YOU.” Cedrella replied as she helped hoist the body.

The two of them hauled the body bag across the abandoned rooftop. Below them, the honks of the hovercars and the sirens of cybercops could be heard echoing distantly.

“Well to be fair, it was self defense?” Tera bit her lip.

“No. No, it was not. It really wasn’t.” Cedrella shook her head.

“In my opinion, it’s self defense.”

“Well, your opinion is wrong, unfortunately. And, this conversation is over.”

“It was self defense and my opinion is right.”

“I SAID, this conversation is OVER.”

I quickly ran down the floating marble sidewalk. I had missed the 7:30 portal because I overslept after my bed ran out of batteries. If I were late, Ms. Aron would punish me. I did not want to spend two hours trying to clean the dirty windows. As I was concentrating on soapy windows, I did not see the sheet of paper slip out of my backpack to the land beneath my rocket shoes right as I was turning the sharp corner around the rainbow powered rock. My feet slipped out from under me and while I desperately tried to skid to a halt, I slid off the platform and into the abyss below.

I tried to stop my fall, but I knew it was useless. I lay in the abyss and thought of what I should do next. I didn’t call for help. No one would hear me. I started to panic. 80 people fall down this place on a yearly basis. They are stuck there until they get rescued, or until they get sucked through the end of the hole. They are never seen again. Very few have been rescued. I was about to lose hope as I neared the end of the tunnel. I heard voices from up above. I saw the worried expressions of rescue workers as they lowered down a rope. It was too late. I reached my arms up and screamed. I was sucked into the void.

On a cold Friday night I was in my bed and BANG! The sound woke me up and with a loud jolt of my squeaky bed I sat up. At first, I thought it was a dream, but there was a bright light filling my bedroom. I knew there was no way that light would let me sleep. So, I got up to see what it was and where it was coming from.

I walked down the stairs to the door. I put on my slippers and fuzzy coat and went outside. I walked around the house and to my surprise, it was a flying saucer! It was an exact replica of the ones in comic books and movies, so I couldn’t possibly have mistaken it for anything else.

Excitedly, I watched the saucer to see if any aliens emerged. I waited for something to happen while sitting on the cold, wet grass. The sun came up and I was very tired. I stood up to go back inside, when just at that moment, I felt a tug at my fuzzy coat. I was amazed at the sight of an alien!

Very humanoid in appearance, they were green as they are always portrayed. They stood there with their strange, large, black eyes staring at me. I ran! I ran as fast as I could, faster than I ever ran before. I went straight back to my room.

And of course, now no one believes me... but do you?

I remember one time when the world was dark. It was shrouded in black, stygian darkness, and I couldn't see a thing. The government called it progress, it was industry; it helped us make money, until they died. It was a moment of hope, it was hope for all of us. Now we had to undo what they did in a hundred years. We had fifty or our population would tank.

We got on, cleaning soiled rivers, blocking off sunlight in our incandescent air, and planting trees. Trees! Hah! I hadn’t seen them before. And, and green! Not the hard green we saw, fused with plastic, but a green of freedom and life! It was a new age! This was amazing; and it was on earth. Mars was nice, but turns out we nuked it a little… much. So Earth was our best go, and we turned it green.

Well we could have.

Turns out big companies did not last to a single generation, boomer ideology expanded, and it gradually destroyed Earth, for a single buck. I haven’t seen a tree, nor the colour green. Only red and gray, and now, black.