Our Freedom

It was a chilly morning, we were all huddled together. We cooperated when they came in, we allowed them to raid our homes, we allowed them to take over our homeland but still, they treat us like second class git. After careful debate, we decided to take back our land, our homes, our freedom. We were cautious, making sure our plan would be a success. We had set up a trap home, we spent days: cleaning the place, repainting the outside, making it look like it had never been touched before. We were hoping we could trick the soldiers into thinking this house wasn’t searched. We sat in wait, finally, we heard the door busted open, and the cryptic chatter of the soldiers, when one of the soldiers started to walk up the stairs, we got ready to lunge at it. “Wait for it…” I said in a hushed whisper, “Wait for it… now!” My friends beside me jumped up screaming, Aiesha attacked the soldier, ripping its head off, pulling at the wires inside. Chase and Jian, jumped over the banister attacking the ones down below. I strolled down the staircase, walked out the door frame, and stood guard, clutching my bat in hand. It is nightfall, the streets bleak and empty, no sign of civilization whatsoever. Homes and building half destroyed, others in ashes, doors and windows shattered. Britain has fallin’ into some very dark times when the ‘bots invaded. But we’re going to take it back; even if it means our lives. When I saw a ‘bot patrolling the street, I made as much noise as I could banging the bat on the trashcan next to me, hollering! “Oi, why don’tcha came at me ya’ ol’ box of bolts!” “Stop! You are in direct violation of order #2332, either stop what you are doing and submit or face your punishment.” I smashed its face in before it could even lift its hands up. Toppling it down to the ground. I walked back inside, looking around at our achievement. “What I tell you, it worked like a bloody charm didn’t it.” “Well, I must admit you did well. I had my skepticism but you proved to be worth something after all Keenen.” Jian said, “You bet I am Jian! Can’t keep ignorin’ me forever now. Come on, if they find out we’re here they’ll kill us by the hoards.” We all gathered the scant things we had and headed out. We were energetic when scurrying back to our safe place, everyone excited to go back, and finally be able to celebrate. When we’re all safely in the bunker we cheered. Rejoicing in the fact that we were able to pull off our plan. I got up in front of everybody and tried to get them to quiet down. “Oi, everyone! Settle down, we ‘ought to come up with a plan for our next attack. I know y’all wanna celebrates but if we want to get our homeland back, we gotta work hard. Now, we can do something like we just did but it’ll require a lot of work. So does anyone else got any other ideas?” Aiesha spoke up– swaying as she talked. “Well, I might have one; what if we try reconstructing the robots? I can try and rewire it so it’ll work for us. I know it’ll take a while and is not what you were looking for but I just wanted to throw that out there for y’all.” “A’ight, yeah, we can do that. Bring in a couple ‘bots for ‘ya. But you’re right, I’m kinda looking for new attack plan.” “Why don’t we just go out there and smash them all into little bits?” Chase said, “Do you wanna die? Because that’s how you die. Anything else! I’m serious, we need to do something unless you wanna submit to the ‘bots and die. Okay, how about this, we build and plant a row of bomb in the street–the one near us will be fine–we make as much noise as we can, have a whole bunch of ‘bots come at us, then we’ll duck into hiding places, and have them get blown up by the bombs. How does that sound?” I said, “Sounds like a plan that’ll make a lot of noise, Let’s do it! I’ll accompany you to gather supplies! Then we can also bring back some robot parts for Aiesha!” Jian exclaimed, “Right then, let’s do it, the rest of y'all can stay here, y'all can party or whatever else you want.” We got out of the bunker and started creeping down the edges of the street. “Where are we going?” Jian asked, “Well, I remember there used to be this really barmy ol’ man, living up the street. He use-ta go into a shed near his house, foolin’ about. I remember a rumor that he was creating bombs, in case the Russians came, thought he was still in the Cold War.” “So, you’re going to some old crazy guy’s house to get bombs based off a rumor? Yeah, ‘cause that’s totally sane.” “Ah, bugger off, I don’t need ‘ya to tell me what I should do. I may not be logical but I ain’t crazy.” Jian sighed, I ignored her and kept going. If there’s even a slight chance of bombs being there I’m gonna take it. After creeping around for a little while we finally saw the house. We looked around for any stray patrols, and when we saw none we took our chance. We hustled across the street as quietly as we could, and entered the shed. Inside was American flags on three walls, the shed’s too small to put one on the wall with ‘ta door. A table at the back end filled with odds and sods. Drawers lined the back end of the table. I walked over looking at everything on the table, seeing nothing I looked under the table and started pulling out boxes, some had half done bombs, others had already exploded ones, the final box I pulled out was the jackpot; fully done bombs. “Yes!” I shouted, “Jian! Come look at this!” Jian walked over “Well I’ll be damned, he actually was creating bombs, and you found some.” “Hell yeah, I bloody found some, when are you going to learn Jian, I’m smart.” Jian started to walk out so I followed luggin’ the box with me. “Hey! Jian! Why do ya’ get all pissed around me? I know I’m annoying but for some reason I make ya’ all hot and bothered; why?” “Well, if you really must know, I guess I tend to see you as less because of your welsh accent, and bumpkin ways. Now I know this is a horrible way of thinking but I just can’t stop myself; I have grown up in a very anti-bumpkin area, I was raised to be “better” than the Middle Englanders, so I mean in the back of my mind I know it’s wrong but I just can’t really help it, I was raised in it for so long that it has become second nature for me. I’m trying to become better, I really am, but sometimes it just gets the best of me.” “Well, I appreciate your honesty, I understand what you’re going through, I was raised to despise upper-class manship. I was taught the same conservative views my parents grew up with. I obviously had my own ideas and didn’t agree with my parents, I had a more progressive stance. So when did you come to England? If I remember you were adopted, right?” I asked, “Yes, I was raised by my parents since I was a baby. My parents were Infertile so they decided to adopt. They heard about this program that allows you to adopt abandoned babies from China. They took the plunge, and soon enough I was in their arms. I’ve always known from a young age that I was adopted because, well, my parents are Americans living in England, and I’m a little Chinese girl, I knew something was wrong with that picture. My parents told me when I was about twenty-two that I was adopted, I confessed to them that I already knew; that’s when I got the full story about everything.” We walked in silence after that because neither of us knew what else to say. When we arrived at the bunker entrance we started to go in but then we heard the electronic chirping of a ‘bot. “Go on, I’ll take care of it,” I said to Jian, I handed her the box and pulled the hatch down after her head disappeared. I grabbed my bat and got ready for some action. The ‘bot looked different from all the others we’ve seen.“Halt! You are in direct violation of order #2332, come with me or die!” “Umm, I think not ya’ ol’ box of bolts!” I started to swing my bat but it caught it, the damn ‘bot caught it. The bat got crushed into pieces, the ‘bot said: “You are now in direct violation of order #2355, your punishment is death!” It pushed into my chest, throwing me back into a shed. I crashed through the wall. I was laying there, defenseless, the robot hovering over me, staring at me with those intense red eyes; I knew right then and there I was going to die.

“Hey, Jian!” Chase said, “Did you get what we needed?” “Yes, I did Chase, Keenen found a box in some weird old guy’s shed.” “Oh, was it that old Cold War guy, the one who thought the Russians were going to attack?.” “Yeah, I gotta admit I thought Keenen was crazy for trying to find bombs there but he was right.” “Where is Keenen anyway?” Aiesha asked, “Oh, he’s outside breaking down a robot, thought you’ll want the parts. You know what, I’ll go check on him, he should’ve been back by now.” I set the box down on a table and climbed the ladder. When I got outside I looked around for any patrols, after seeing none I got out, noticing it was unusually quiet. “Keenen?” I shouted “Where you at? Did you kill the robot?” I started to look around some more hoping I can find some indication of where he went. That’s when I noticed a shed with a smashed in hole. “Oh, my god!” I said wide-eyed, I hurried back to the bunker, “Keenen has been taken!” “What do you mean?” the both of them said, “I went out to look for him but he wasn’t there. I started checking the surrounding area for any indication as to where he was, that’s when I saw a shed with the side busted in. I remember that shed, we walk past it all the time, it never had a hole in it before.” “So, what do we do?” Aiesha asked, “What else can we do, we gotta rescue Keenen. He was the leader behind this whole thing. Without him, we’re lost.” Chase said, “Right.” I replied, “Alright Chase. What’s the gameplan?” Aiesha asked, “Wait, what?” “Well, you’re the one who came up with the idea. You should be the one who comes up with the plan like Keenen does.” “Well… umm… I… I don’t know,” he starts backing away “Hey, don’t put him on the spot like that. You know he can’t think under pressure; Chase, I still want you to think of a plan because I really think you could come up with a good idea, this could be your chance to shine. Can you do that for me?” I asked, “Yeah,” he said, “I can do that.” He starts pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself. “Where did the robots take the hostages? Have they ever taken hostages before? I thought they just killed them all.” Chase said out loud, “Yeah, this is new.” I said, “Are the robots getting smarter? I mean that’s impossible right?” Aiesha asked, “Okay, so if we were taking hostages where would we take them?” said Chase, “I don’t know. I thought you were making the plan.” “Alright then, we need to find out. We’ll spy on the robots.” “What!” the both of us said, “Yeah, we can go out, wait for a robot patrol to pass, then we will follow it. Easy!” “Okay, so now how do you think we’re going to do that? It will be insanely hard to hide from a robot while following them.” I said, “No it won’t, all we have to do is stay in the shadows on the side of the road, and follow them from behind. As long as we stay quiet, which we know how to do, we’ll be perfectly fine. Now come on and follow me, we need to rescue Keenen.” Chase started to walk towards the ladder and so we just followed him. “Alright, I want no taking while we’re up there, just follow my lead, and remember, stay in the shadows, and always be behind the robot; we don’t want to show up in its peripheral view.” Chase told us from above, When we got out of the bunker, we waited behind a barricade and waited. Finally, after about twenty minutes, we saw a robot patrol. This one was incredibly different from the others, it was bigger, black coloring, and piercing red eyes that gleamed on the road. All of us lost our breath when we saw it. Chase snapped us back to reality by waving his hand in front of our faces and gave a wave to follow him. He stepped out of the barricade after the robot had passed, and started to creep from behind it. We followed him down the road, continuing down until we had reached the bridge, the robot stood right at the line where the street stopped and the bridge began. It then turned down towards the river and heading down the hill. We all looked at each other perplexed, we decided to go with it and follow him. He then stopped again at the riverside, and started to speak binary: “01001111 01110000 01100101 01101110.” After it said that a square on the ground started to rise up. The robot descend into the opening so we ran over as fast as we could while still being quiet. We managed to get into the chamber way too close to call, the robot has disappeared on us; which is fine because it’s work was finished. We started to look around to see if we can find any sort of idea as to where Keenen might be. “Aiesha can you read Binary?” I asked, “Some, I haven’t exactly figured it all out yet.” “Well can you read what that sign says?” I pointed to a sign on the wall with binary written onto it. Aiesha stared intently at it deciphering what it meant. “It says Human Cells. that must be where Keenen being held!” Aiesha said, “Alright, let’s go get him.” said Chase, We walked down the hallway looking for a room or another sign, anything to tell us where he could be. We continued walking until we finally came across a room filled with cells, and inside one of them was Keenen. “There you are! What happened!?” I asked, “Well, when you were goin’ down into the bunker, I heard a ‘bot, but this ‘bot was nothin’ like the others. It broke my bat into little pieces, and it said it was gonna’ kill me but it brought me here instead. Don’t ask me why ‘cause I have no clue!” “I think I might be able to help.” we heard a man say from behind us, we all looked back, and saw a guy, dressed in all white, with two robots behind him. Possibly more that we can’t see along the walls. “Hello! I don’t think you belong here.” “Who are ya’ and what ya’ want?” Keenen said, “I want you all to be my prisoner. You are in the land of the enemy, did you really expect to come out alive–” the power shut off before he could finish his sentence. “What’s going on!” the man shouted, We didn’t waste anytime trying to figure out what was going on. We took our opportunity to take him down. All of us charged at him, tackling him to the ground. He groaned, we started beating him, and after he was subdued we grabbed him and threw him into a cell. “Well now that’s done.” I said, The lights came back on, and that’s when we saw Aiesha standing in the doorway, holding a gun. “Well, hello there boys and girls!” she said, She then shot Chase in the head. Blood splattering all over the floor, Keenen and me screamed, she then shot Keenen in the mouth, the bullet coming out the other side. I screamed more, “why are you doing this!?” I shouted, “Well don’t you know? I’m double-crossing you sweetie.” She then proceeded to shoot me in the kneecap. I screamed at the top of my lungs, tired of everything that has been happening, I started to lunge at her but she shot me in the abdomen; I fell flat onto the ground. “Aww, she looks like a lost little child.” The man walked up besides her, “Yes, she does dearest, yes she does.” Aiesha gave the gun to the man and he lodged the final shot right into my head, right between the eyes.