The World of Hope Read online

  The World of Hope

  Parker Fentress

  Copyright © 2018 by Parker J Fentress

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed By

  Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing ©2018

  www.kdp.amazon.com

  Independently Published

  Cover was Created by an Independent Digital Design Specialist, and Publisher does not retain rights to any images within the Cover

  Please contact the author for more information in regards to this work.

  Other Works

  The Annihilation of Planet KS

  :

  Series Novel 1

  What Does it Feel Like to Come Back

  :

  Short Stories (Soon to be Released)

  Sam Victrian

  :

  Novel (Soon to be Released)

  Introduction

  I often sit and wonder, what would it be like to rethink the whole concept of alienation? What is an alien? I would think, and most would tell me, a giant monster. Or they would get offended due to personal beliefs because there’s no way there is anything else out there. Sarcasm implied. Whatever the reaction, I wanted to rethink it.

  I figured, perhaps the word “alien” held a meaning beyond that which many abuse. By that, I mean those big green monsters with tentacle thing's and a few arms and one leg. Boom! Solid! Classic Hollywood Animation come to life!

  I think that it was possibly the boredom of the idea that all of the movie industry found a way to group all alien things into green monsters. Boring. We have seen that over and over and over again, and if I could say “over again” a thousand more times, it’s quite possible you’d want to change it to.

  I wrote this novel like it was human nature. Always evolving in a way not even I really know how to control. We just evolve, evolve and evolve; then, we start to simplify. I believe that whatever this means to you, is what it should mean. No offense anyway.

  I revisited how I wrote my first novel; The Annihilation of Planet KS. I figured it got complicated in that it changed dynamics quiet often. For anyone’s first novel, it surely wasn’t all that perfect either.

  It sort of went like this; almost like a recap. A boy of nine, is alive in the year of 2082. Earth is decaying. The humans of Earth are growing more corrupt, things aren’t what they seem. Society is strange, and when I mean strange, they have eleven-year old’s taking military strategy classes and how to maneuver through the jungles to prevent getting killed by, you guessed it, aliens. Also known as the people of Planet KS. You heard it here first! The people, the humans, are the aliens! I know, I know, it might sound corny, but I wanted to try this out.

  That boy at a young age, Luis Phillips, is sent away on something both nightmarish, as well as adventurous on a mission he isn’t even aware of. He is sent away from his home on Earth, to a foreign place. Lost, he is forced to make something of it to invent his way out of the estranged planet and peoples of Planet KS under the control of the Councilor; better known as a modern-day dictator. Almost like that described in the book by Alduous Huxley, The Brave New World.

  At the end of the first novel in the series, we learn Luis is not only suffering from physical reality and distortion, but also a mind-boggling mental situation. Constantly being chased by his own figment of his imagination, but also enduring a constant fear of physically being trapped in a world he doesn’t even know himself. Luis is supposed to be a character who resembles human evolution. Constant suffering, as they believe is how life is in the Buddhist sense. It isn’t just the physical suffering that makes Luis the intriguing character he is, but it is what we gather when we read how he is suffering inside his own mind in societal decay.

  I am no genius. I believe that the only genius there is between here and there are cut up novels which one can understand. Having finally completed high school, I can look back and see how fast time has flown. Something which many don't realize until they are sitting for their high school graduation.

  I pride myself on finishing high school in three years, writing and publishing my first novel, and completing over five online courses (one being a college course on Global Perspectives). I did this all while driving an hour to school each morning and working part-time as a Service Desk Representative; helping resolve issues both large and small for customers.

  Having a giant gap in each college application I submitted for my senior year, I realized how much I would miss as all my friends enjoying their final year in high school in Nokesville, Virginia. I, on the other hand, have committed to a long and rigorous journey to a confused, yet very well thought out college plan. An attempt to further my education in a place, which I deem to be quite foreign to me.

  As mentioned in the past novel; The Annihilation of Planet KS, alienation is much more than a physical displacement from the rest of society or worldly matters. It is the idea that one can be alien and foreign to any place. Not having been somewhere doesn’t mean you don’t know the culture. It means you do not know what rests there. I grasp the value that anywhere I go, there will always be the gratification and intrigue in fully understanding the new culture, beyond what I have learned in school. I truly believe that not only should you “see the roses”, but really breathe them in, know them, understand them. Apply it to yourself; how does it change the way you feel? All these things, not only in my travel’s, but also all these collected ideas I have been able to, at the very least, try to understand and apply, have allowed me to sit down and really write about how alienation is more than just a big green scary monster. It is a theme. It is an ideal of society. It is scary, imaginative, and intriguing. All these things I have tried to apply to my own novel adventure.

  My advice to those, who may or may not read this, is look beyond the plot stated directly, and look at what it means in our modern-day world. Is it bad to be different? Is it bad to be strange? Is it bad to be foreign or alienated to a certain place or culture? What does it mean to act on the government and to not act on the government? What is social injustice? Is it bad to be gay or straight? Why does it matter?

  Why does it matter? If there is one thing I could change about the world, it would be to make it 100% all-inclusive to those who are different, and to those who are indeed judged by political injustice as right or wrong. The ideal concept is to involve and include everyone, and “make the change you want to see in the world”.

  “To be anything but human, means to be alien, if alien is normal, let’s all be human.”

  Parker F. (17) 2018

  Prologue

  One could say that I was home. I was home. One might say it wasn’t real. It was real. One could say that I was lost in my mind. I was not lost, nor was I ever. I was home now, but was it all really home?

  Between the depths of those who supported the Councilor, I wasn’t fazed by the reasons why they did what they did. They wanted a way out. They had a way out, and I gave them that. On the Dolly home, I really began to wonder what truly happened to my dad. Was he taken by the Councilor? Or was he a part of something big on Earth?

  I never did find out more about the lengths that the Agency went through to go from one world to next to find me, but I did find out about a delirious little boy who’s the son of the Fleet Commander General Phillips.

  “A great epitome, a heart loving story come together at once, a reunited family… a miracle!” Many called the event which we returned home on the Great Mother Ship.

  They said I had imagined it all, that th
e black drug that coursed through my veins did send me into a flight of delirium. I saw the Man in Black. I saw the Councilor. I felt his blows of manipulation every hour of the day, I felt the pressure between his hands on my neck, I felt the paranoia that came with being watched every second of my artificial life on KS, in my mind. So, they say, or tell me.

  It became apparent to me, one day after the next, I would never stop having the nightmares of the hotel; which I experienced excruciating pain from the dangers that laid within the countless murders. The blood dripping from each door to each room, the darkness that grew on each corner of the hallways, the opaqueness of the Man in Black who hid away only to disappear in light of my return home.

  I am glad he is gone. I am glad he jumped, for that poor little girl didn’t understand what to make of him. I said, “No. He isn’t your father little girl. Run little girl, run. He killed your mother. Don’t you remember?” I recalled crying out.

  That never stopped him, and it didn’t stop her, it didn’t stop the boy Charlie in the Psych Ward from wanting to get to know me. The truth is, the darkness was in everyone. Every citizen on KS had the Man in Black running in their dreams because, as unreal as it seems, it was real. It was the only thing keeping the people on edge of day to day life. That without expression, no one can seek the wrath of the Man in Black.

  Not even I could experience the wrath of the Man in Black, I could just regard his ruthlessness, and remember that I was always being watched, I was always being pumped full of the dark black liquid, I was always under control of the once great Councilor.

  1

  Lying in bed, I could finally feel at home. The warmth radiating over my body, the air blowing over my face, nothing could take it away. I remembered it all now.

  Memories of being young with my friend were now left in the past, not even my mother would let me out of the house. Her extreme paranoia still lied in that I could be taken at any time, remaining in her personal distrust of the World Government Police. I found it interesting that every day that passed, was another day that I had been given. Just like the gifts that I once believed were important to my every day virtues. Showering without worrying of cameras, locking my door without an alarm going off, waking up in a room that was so white with plastic that I couldn’t even see through the reflection of the walls in the glass.

  The worst part of being back, was that no one knew what I went through by being on that planet of disgruntled humanoid aliens. They don’t know what lengths I had to go through to get back to the world of Earth. I didn’t even know what existed anymore. For all I knew, I played by chance, counting that maybe someone out there far far way would come to me and save me. It was selfish really.

  I was slammed in the face by my sister Angela’s Bluetooth blow drier. “Hey!” I screamed springing up from my bed. The lights came on slowly over me to a subtle yellow. “Come on! Wake up, it’s time to go and you can’t be late to your Junior year of high school. Are you okay?” She asked me.

  “Yeah I am fine. Just please — get out of my damn bedroom. I’m not nine anymore!” I yelled irritated since I couldn’t sleep in.

  At least I wasn’t being tortured anymore.

  I got out of my bed and thumb printed my way into my bathroom. The door slid open and shut as fluid as anything in the world.

  I put my hands on the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. My pale-dry skin, and dark circles under my eyes seemed like the new normal on Earth. I felt like this was supposed to be on KS, I feel like this isn’t Earth or home to me. It was just, vacation away from KS, and I believed that I probably only had three days to spare before being taken back in my sleep. I always asked myself in my mind, would I even know if I woke up on KS?

  I scratched my cheek and flakes of dried skin floated away through the suctioning air ducts. It is strange, how vents that once blew air now sucked it away. Is this the cause of my lethargy?

  I grew sick to my stomach and fled over to the toilet, dropping to my knees a painful yet relieving experience. It all left me, the poisons they injected day after day. The Councilor knew what he had done. I was addicted and withdrawing, I felt alive. I felt well. I hid the death on the inside.

  I sat up for the tenth time that morning, and I walked into the shower uncaring of the temperature of the water. The frozen recirculated ice water flowed all over me, making my hair solid, my skin tight, my mind stops.

  I knew I couldn’t think because my mind had been petrified in space, but I kept slipping through. Who was really at fault for my illness, and who was really at fault for the war?

  I kept thinking over and over again, they tried to find me, they looked for me they begged for my return. They didn’t. I checked every news feed, I checked every government resource, there was nothing about the Fleet Commander’s son missing after his already mysterious death.

  They had no conclusive evidence I was even gone. My mom thought I had died, my dad was tied up and beaten by my same persecutors, Angela probably didn’t realize what had gone on. Everything was fine. Everything was not okay.

  I stepped out of the shower with shriveled and cold fingers. I looked into the mirror growing dizzy and nauseous. I started to see black spots everywhere, and before I fell, there was pounding and yelling coming from the door. “This is the Mili… police… open…with your hands… in the air!” I about fell to the floor, and foamed at the mouth shaking and shaking, I couldn’t move but I still stood, “If you… don’t open… door in ten seco… we maintain the rig… to take down this door!” a large sounding man from behind the door yelled.

  Flashing in and out, in and out, black, white, black white, the door was thrusted open, shards of glass flew everywhere. I was thrown in at my stomach to the floor, still foaming and shaking, foaming and shaking.

  My head pounded with excruciating pain, I knew I was being bled of the dark fluids.

  I woke up in a chair, a dark room with a single light that burned my pale skin. My wrists were tied down so tight they looked purple. I still had a conscious flashing in and out before I was smacked by an enormously large man.

  “We never thought you would wake up,” it wasn’t a man, it was a woman. “You need to start by telling us everything you have told anyone about this incident… this— this catastrophe, this event that could indefinitely… I can’t say. Just tell me, what have you said since you have returned?” She began asking questions slowly and softly.

  “What… what are you talking about?” I asked confused. I already knew I had to keep everything I had experienced confidential.

  “You need to start talking right now,” she stated blatantly. “I don’t care whether you have told the mailman, or if you told the damn milk man from the 1960s. I need you to start talking, or you won’t be returning to the public eye. People are talking… you know, it isn’t looking good, all these assumptions the citizens of the world are making.” She said, almost worried like she was preoccupied with some other thoughts in her mind. She was crazy.

  “I haven’t told anyone anything. What is with this kidnapping? What is it you are hiding? Who are you and what will you do to me if I don’t talk? Nobody knows what has happened, and guess what? I know you don’t want everyone to know. Why are we really at war?” I asked.

  “Honey, you don’t know anything. You are a dumb little kid who thinks he’s got a lot of importance in the world. You don’t know anything and you are not anything in this world if you do not comply, otherwise you are a terrorist committing crimes against their world if they think withholding information from the Global Government is a smart idea. We know everything about you. What you’ve done, and how you helped the that miserable Planet KS,” she said before yelling so close to my face I could smell her gross old breath. “Who do you think you are Luis Phillips? You will tell me everything right now or I am sending you into the army! You will not escape this!”

  “I swear, no one knows what I have gone through, and just so you know I didn’t h
elp that man on that planet, he was my captor and I was his slave. I obliged to help, I was only nine. If you think a nine-year-old could help the “aliens” win a war against humans, then you are stupid and you ignore the fact that I hold power over what is really going on in this world. Nothing is perfect, and I dare you, touch me one more time and you are over,” I said hoping that it would put an end to things.

  “You are not going anywhere. We will commit a polygraph. You will stay in your quarters till you are taken into custody tomorrow morning by the MP’s,” she walked out and slammed the door shut. The lights turned off.

  What a great first day of my junior year back on Earth.

  2

  I woke up in a daze. Everything was blurry. I felt cold, buy the light illuminated on me was warm. The door opened again, and I was thrown into a chair. The fibers from the restraints made me itch. I still wore the clothes from when I got out of bed; smelly and gross.

  The woman was there, but absent from the room watching from a window.

  A man in white, “Okay, hello, I am sorry about all of this. We are going to conduct the polygraph now. I need you to hold out your arm. We are going to go ahead and cuff you with the blood pressure monitor, then we will also analyze your blood sampling, one IV through one arm and another in the other arm going out,” he said.

  I replied, “Okay, I don’t understand why this going on. I think I have a right to know what Agency this is?”

  He remarked, “This is the Agency of Worldly Affairs. We the Agency, are led to believe that you hold a key role in setting paranoia about society. It is not that we fear that you may be toxic to the people now, but that you may not be carrying viruses that can destroy the human race. The truth is, they are afraid of the unknown like everyone else. They are afraid of you. Now let’s begin.” I knew he was lying.