Chapter 1: Awakening

So, I have to explain my most valuable experience on Earth, huh? Well, I always knew I would have to do this eventually, and since everyone wants to hear about it so badly, I guess I might as well finally tell my story. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing these twisted versions of it, and I want everyone to know what really happened. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. I'm not just talking about Carthians. I want Earthlings to know about this story too, so I'm going to write this in a way that they'll understand.

Anyway, it all began on what I thought was a typical October day. I was awoken from the piercing sound of my alarm clock, indicating that I had to get up for Hell, a.k.a. school. As you can tell, getting up at 6:20 am by the most irritating sound ever created wasn't exactly something that I enjoyed much. But unfortunately, I still had to get out of bed and face the horrors of teenage life anyway.

Not anticipating the day ahead of me, I just laid in bed for a second, trying to think of a way to get out of going to school. Even though it was Friday, I really did not feel like going through with the whole normal teenage Earthling illusion. I couldn't care less about it, mostly because I was furious with my parents, and I didn't exactly feel like pleasing them at the moment.

You see, the previous night, there was this show that I wanted to go to at a local temple. All these garage bands were playing there, and these temple shows were only held a couple times a year. But at the last minute, my father forbade me from it, and he didn't even give me a reason as to why.

So, out of anger and foolishness, I snuck out of the house and went with my friends, Abby and Melissa, anyway. Sadly, I was only there for about an hour because I got caught and had to leave. As a result, I was prohibited from having any fun over the weekend.

For all of this, I was just really mad at my parents and felt the need to aggravate them. I knew being late for school, yet again, would infuriate them, so my procrastination to get out of bed and face the day was my best idea so far.

So, I lied in bed, staring at my ceiling for a couple of minutes until my eyelids became unbearably heavy, and I fell back into a deep slumber. About five minutes later, I was awoken when my lights were suddenly turned on, and my pupils shrunk to the size of a grain.

"What the hell?!" I said as I quickly sat up and shielded my eyes with my hands. Being awoken from a blinding light just as the sun was rising wasn't exactly my favorite way to be woken up in the morning.

I turned towards my door with my eyes tightly shut. "Ryan, you are such an asshole. Why did you do that?" Even though I couldn't see anything, I knew it had to be my brother since he was the only one obnoxious enough to do this to me.

"Well, I knew that would wake you up," he said. At that moment, I could so visualize him leaning against my door with a smug look smeared across his face. It really pissed me off.

I opened my eyes slightly, trying to adjust to the brightness of the room. I was only able to keep them open halfway though, so I couldn't really make out any definitive shapes. "Okay. And why are you trying to get me up?" I asked, annoyed.

"Because we all knew you were going to be reluctant to get out of bed today, so Mom and Dad wanted me to make sure that you woke up. They don't want you to be late for school again."

I blinked a couple of times, slowly adapting to the intense luminosity that was surrounding me. "So, what're you, their errand boy? Seriously, why couldn't they just do it themselves?" My parents never did anything that even remotely involved parenting.

"Because there were a couple of abductions upstate, so they have a lot of work to do."

If I could have, I would've rolled my eyes at that moment. I mean, of course they had a lot of work to do. They never seemed to have time for anything else.

"Anyway," my brother was saying, "they just sent me to get you up, since I was already awake, and they know that I'll continue to pester you until you finally get out of bed."

At this moment my full eyesight had finally returned and like I had predicted, Ryan was leaning against my door looking smug. "You are such a suck up," I stated.

"Well, you're an immature brat. Now get up."

"No." I quickly laid down and covered my head with my sheets, trying to block out the light. Sorry to say, the brightness was still able to seep through it, turning the covers into a nice orange.

"Nice try, Cass," my brother told me. He walked over to my bed and ripped the covers off my body. I was met with the cold air of my room. Ignoring the goosebumps that started to appear on my arms, I grabbed my pillow and put it over my head in an attempt to maintain at least some blackness.

"Cassie, come on. Just get up," Ryan said in annoyance.

I kept my eyes closed, having no desire to face him or the day. "I don't want to."

"Look, I don't care how mad you are about last night. You still have to go to school. Now, come on."

I took the pillow off of my head so I could glare at him. "That's right. I am mad about last night. So, if you don't mind, I would like to sulk in peace."

He folded his arms. "Look, either get up now or I'm gonna drag you out of bed with telekinesis."

I rolled my eyes at his lame threat and rested my head on the pillow once again.

He then nudged me in the arm and said, "Get up, Cass. Come on." He did this repeatedly for about a minute, which I found to be rather annoying, and pretty soon, I couldn't take it anymore.

"Fine!" I yelled. I jumped out of bed and glowered at him. "I'm up. Happy?"

He smirked. "Yes, very."

You have no idea just how much I wanted to hurt him at that moment. "Look, since you have no other reason to be in here," I said, trying to get him to leave, "why don't you go back to your room and take a shower or something. Trust me, it would be better for the both of us." I knew if he stayed any longer, then I would most likely just give him a serious injury, something which I didn't feel like getting lectured about, so I really wanted him to just get out of my room.

He paused. "Fine. I'll see you later." He started to walk away and then added, "Hopefully."

As soon as he took step out of my bedroom, I slammed the door with my telekinetic power, and the noise echoed throughout the house. Ryan was so obnoxious. Don't get me wrong though. I didn't hate him. I mean, occasionally we did share some moments together where I was actually kind of happy we were related. But this was not one of them.

So, when my brother finally made his departure from my room, I was rather glad. However, my happiness was soon replaced with discontent when I realized that I still had yet another day of complete boredom ahead of me. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought of a clever plan to get out of going to school, so I figured that I just had to suck it up and go. Besides, it was Friday after all. Therefore, I just had to get through one more day of the horrors of high school.

So, I headed over to my closet to pick out my attire and selected my favorite shirt that said "the Ataris" on the front with a graphic of a fist smashing a gun and "don't ever compromise what you believe" on the back. I then found my black Converses which were covered in song lyrics and doodles.

I headed over to the bathroom and turned the shower on. As I was waiting for the water to warm up, I looked into the mirror and stared back into my tired eyes. My gaze then drifted to the rest of my facial features. I wasn't ugly but I wasn't exactly what you would call drop dead gorgeous. I thought I was just average looking but some might have argued otherwise. I had shoulder length blonde hair and gray-blue eyes. My features made me look completely different from the rest of my family members who are all brunettes with brown eyes. Sometimes I wondered if I really belonged with them.

I entered my shower and as the warm water fell onto my skin I just started to think about it all. How it all started. Why my family and I were on Earth. Why the human race was on Earth.

Sometimes I just wished that I didn't have to be on that planet. Sometimes I wished that there hadn't been any terrorists and it was just a perfect utopia with no problems at all which is basically the definition of a utopia. But it did happen. It all happened, and I'll have to live with it. So will everyone else.

You see, what all Earthlings don't know is that the human race has actually been around longer than 4.4 million years. And humankind didn't exactly begin on Earth. It originated on a planet called Carthia.

The first couple millions of years that humans existed, they basically had the same chaotic society that they do on Earth with war, rape, murder, prejudice, etc. But as time went by, humans somehow finally learned from their mistakes and as a result, their society went through major reformation. Soon everything that was wrong in the world ended, and Carthian society became very similar to that of a utopia, meaning there was world peace, discrimination was nonexistent, poverty was practically eliminated, incredible technology was being developed, and people had evolved into superior beings. For instance, they were telekinetic, and they could become invisible and make anything that they touched invisible at will.

Anyway, Carthians lived in bliss for a while thinking that all major criminal organizations had been eliminated and that none were forming. But they were wrong. As they were living in a world with the illusion of perfection, an underground terrorist organization called Earth had formed and was planning on taking over the naive planet. This group was comprised of native Carthians and a few were even corrupt agents of the government. All of these agents had high clearance, so they knew about the defense systems and had access to major technology, thus, giving them enough power and knowledge to be able to destroy Carthia's peaceful utopia.

Earth kept a low profile for a while and then finally made a terrorist attack on the city of Faukes one night. Their demonstration shocked and appalled the planet's inhabitants. The Agency, the group that governs Carthia, knew that they had to terminate this organization. They decided to send two agents undercover in order to gain knowledge about Earth. One of these agents was compromised and beaten to death, but the other was able to remain incognito. He made a sacrifice in the end as well, but his loss brought about the end of the organization.

This agent was able to climb to the top of the group's social ladder. Because of his elite position, he was informed of their end game. Earth had somehow gotten their hands on what was theoretically a time machine. They were planning on using this to threaten Carthia for money, technology, a nice little planet at the edge of the galaxy, and immunity for all past crimes. If Carthia didn't meet these terms, then they were going to drastically alter the past. They were willing to wipe out their own existence just because of greed. Humans are so stupid sometimes.

Anyway, when the Agency was informed of this matter at first they were not threatened because the more accepted theory regarding time travel was that the past could not be changed. But this theory was no proven. Because of this, the Agency concluded that they could not take such a large gamble. So, when Earth threatened them with their machine, instead of complying, they decided to risk their agent's life and raided the terrorists' base of operations. But when they arrived, they found something that they didn't quite expect.

You see, Earth had found out about their arrival, so they activated the machine. Carthia's agent compromised his cover and tried to stop them. A fight ensued and in the process, the machine was damaged and the agent was killed. Despite the fact that the machine was defected, one of the members turned it on anyway. But because of the damage sustained to it, it did not provide its intended results. Instead of allowing everyone in the room, which was basically all the members, to go back in time, it regressed them to the amount of time that the machine had been activated to, meaning their bodies basically back tracked in the evolution cycle.

The Agency didn't know what to do about this. Earthlings were now inferior beings who didn't belong to Carthian society. Not only that, but no one knew how to rehabilitate them, and the families of their victims were begging for at least some atonement or punishment for their crimes. Obviously, the most logical thing to do was execute them, but Carthians didn't believe in the death penalty anymore and more importantly, they weren't hypocrites.

So, the Agency came up with this extremely complicated idea which is now known as Project Earth. Here's the short version: they decided they would drop the terrorists off on a planet which had no intelligent life and was similar to their own. Earthlings would be able to form their own society on this planet. And since they would almost definitely form a society that was violent and hateful, the Agency would bring Carthians to the planet to rehabilitate the terrorists after a couple million years had gone by. They concluded to wait this long because they needed to give the Earthlings time to form societies on their own. If they brought Carthians to the planet right away, then the terrorists would not be able to learn to survive on their own and the project would fail. Rehabilitation would also be impossible to achieve since there would be nothing to reform.

The Agency was about to go through with this ridicules plan until they realized it had a major flaw. By the time they brought agents to the planet, Carthian society would be so much more advanced than the terrorists' civilization that Carthians would never be able to understand them and rehabilitation would be impossible. Ironically, they concluded that the only solution to this was time travel. So, they repaired the original machine, dropped the terrorists off on the planet, which became known as Earth, about a couple thousand years after the human race began on Carthia, and Project Earth officially began.

So, what does any of this have to do with me? Well, my parents got transferred to the PEB (Project Earth Bureau) a couple of years ago. The PEB is a division of the Agency which mostly deals with rehabilitation. But my parents' jobs aren't related to that. Their section deals with alien affairs. They prevent illegal visits to Earth and abductions, and they also have to cover up the existence of Carthia, every other intelligent life, and of course, the Project. Earthlings constantly refer to the agents of this division as the Men in Black since they're always the first ones at crash sites like Roswell.

My parents knew I had to be on Earth for a minimum of five years in order to join the Agency, so when they got transferred, they gave me the option of coming with them. I decided to go for reasons which I'll elaborate on later.

Anyway, I took a quick shower, and by the time I was done blow-drying my hair, I only had about five minutes left until I had to leave for school. So, I departed from my bedroom and quickly headed to the kitchen.