Spencer looked out the window of the passenger seat, watching the empty roads go by, with the occasional strange, lively household in view. I focused on driving the car we “borrowed” from that kindly family. We drove all the way to our uncle’s house, all things considered, since I didn’t actually know how to drive, but rather just used info I kind of picked up from watching others.
We pulled up into the driveway of a medium sized home out in the middle of nowhere, with my uncle sitting outside on the front porch.
Stepping out of the car, he quickly approaches us.
“Where’s your parents?” He asks, concerned as to how it’s just us two.
“It’s a long story,” I remark.
“I see, well, come inside, I need to show you something.”
We follow our uncle to the front door, and we could immediately tell something was wrong. The fuzzy brain feeling. So it’s another case of the black devices unsurprisingly. What was surprising however, was the fact that our uncle seemed to be immune to this effect much like Spencer and I.
He opened the door and let us in, bringing us into the living room. We saw quite the scene, with the lights all dim, and several familiar family members all sat around strangely.
Our grandpa and grandma sat on a couch next to our aunt, all three of them staring down at our young cousins “playing” with some toys. When I say “playing”, I mean more like that they too are sitting around blankly, just waving around a couple of action figures and other items.
Our uncle walked over to his wife and waved his hand in front of her face, to no response.
“They just suddenly became like this a couple of hours ago,” he described. “And since then, I’ve been feeling all fuzzy too.”
I look at our uncle, ready to explain everything that I think has been going on. I have him sit down at a table with Spencer and I.
“So, where do I begin?” I mutter to myself.
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After roughly a half an hour of explaining later, our uncle seemed to finally be in the loop. He now knows about the black devices, the apparent mind control capabilities they hold, and the fact that Spencer and I are immune (and that he seems to be too), as well as Spencer’s ability to sense the direction in which the devices come from.
We also casually mentioned the aggression the mind controlled victims express when we get close to the source of their controlling.
“So now, we need to actually find the black device,” I explain to our uncle.
Spencer closes his eyes and tries to feel around for where the device might be. This time however, something is different. He looks around for a moment, then faces me.
“I don’t know where this one is...”
I raise my eyebrow, and we get up from the table and start walking around. Our uncle joins in, looking for any kind of machine or device that has a battery of some kind. We checked TV remotes. Nothing. We checked phones, laptops, tables, nothing. This time around was a lot more difficult. To top it all off, none of the mind controlled family members even batted an eye at us, making it seem like the device isn’t even in this house or something.
We expanded our search. Going around the outside of the house, inside of sheds, the garage, anything nearby. We checked lawn mowers, power tools, vehicles, anything. We even considered looking up at the power lines to see if maybe one of those weird things attached themselves to one, but nope, not even that.
As I stood outside of a shed near the house, Spencer approached from behind to get my attention. He leaned in closely to whisper in my ear.
“I think I know where it might be,” he began. “The toys.”
That’s right! The one place we didn’t check, the toys that our cousins were “playing” with. As far as I could remember, at least one of them was a light-up toy, and it never even crossed my mind to check it.
It’s great that Spencer figured that out, but one question nagged at my mind; why didn’t our uncle even consider checking there either? Surely he knows exactly what kinds of toys his children play with.
We decided it’d be best if we check those toys on our own, while our uncle is out checking around other places, just in case.
We sneaked around the back of the house and slowly made our way to the sliding glass back door. Opening it slowly, we checked around for anyone that might be able to see us, and after confirming our hiding, continued.
Sliding through the halls, we make it back to the living room and see... Our uncle, right in the center, inspecting one of the battery-powered toys. He spots us and waves for us to come over.
“So, this is what we’re looking for, huh?” He remarks, as we approach and look.
Surely enough, the toy in his hand is opened up, and on the inside, another one of the strange black devices is stuck right onto the two batteries on the inside, it’s black thin tendrils wrapped around the inner construct of the children’s toy.
I smiled and nodded, reaching for the toy. But, our kindly uncle pulled it away a little. I looked up at him, and he seemed unbothered, inspecting the device closer, seeming to really make sure it’s the right thing.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’ll have that now, thanks,” I chuckled nervously.
Uncle moved his vision right over to me and stared me right in the eyes. No, he stared past my eyes, but then broke the intense silence with a grin, handing over the toy to me.
I took the toy and took out my hunting knife. Looking at my grandparents, aunt, and cousins all staring off without a movement, I set the toy down on the ground in a sense of unease, preparing to stab the device and free them from control.
I slowly squat down next to the toy, and raised my knife in preparation to stab. This is turning out to be a little too easy, I realized. None of the controlled family members are doing anything to stop me, unlike the last few times I tried to destroy these devices.
I glanced at my knife. I looked over at the family members, over at my nervous brother, and up at my impatient uncle. With a breath of preparation, I closed my eyes and struck down at the device.
KASHUNK!
...That didn’t sound right.
I opened my eyes and saw what made such a noise. Before my very eyes, rested my uncle’s arm, covering the device, and the hunting knife of mine stabbed all the way through, protecting the thing below.
Blood ran everywhere all over the floor and toy underneath. I looked up in horror to see my uncle’s completely indifferent face.
“Well, are you going to destroy it?” He asked in such a calm, yet eerie manner.
I pulled my knife out and stumbled backwards. What just happened? Why did my uncle do that? Did I really just stab him in the arm?
“Destroy the core. Come on. Do it.” My uncle stood up, arm pouring blood, demanding me to try and destroy the black device.
“Destroy the core, now. DO IT!” He shouted, lunging at me, and tackling me flat to the ground.
Suddenly, my grandparents, aunt, and cousins all got up in unison and started slowly approaching. My uncle held me down to the ground.
“Why won’t you listen? Obey!” He shouted in an unhinged voice.
My brother managed to shove my uncle off of me and get me free just as the others came at us. This makes sense to me now. My uncle was controlled from the beginning. How in the world did he even know to call me on that one grilling man’s phone out of anything?
Spencer and I sprinted through the house and ran outside, unfortunately unable to smash this black device before leaving. When we swung open the front door, the outside world was different than even 5 minutes ago.
It was no longer the early evening with the sun hanging low in the horizon, but rather a murky dark sky, with bizarre black clouds moving and pulsing high in the air as if they’re breathing the same air as ourselves.
Surrounding the house for as far as the eye can see, are dozens, hundreds, no, thousands of them. Mind-controlled people, all facing us.
Like a horde of mindless monsters, they all started coming at us from all around. My brother and I had to swing and dash through the crowds to try and get through. While all of this was happening, the black clouds above began to move and pulse, pouring down, revealing that they were never in fact clouds at all, but rather a collection of millions of tiny black devices floating through the air.
It started raining these devices, and they started to move and attach to anything with electricity as if magnetized. The power lines were covered in every inch by these devices, as thin black tendrils would sprout out of them like the roots of a plant, and whip around until they can get a good hold of the electric devices.
While all of this was happening, the feeling in my head was like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It sounded as though the voices of a thousand robotic machines screamed right into my brain, my vision was distorted and fuzzy, and my entire body was blasted with pain, as if the very nerves in my body were hyper-charged with electricity and energy. By the looks of it, Spencer wasn’t having the greatest time either.
After essentially swimming through mindless puppets en masse, we made it out of one end, finding ourselves in a large open field of tall grass. We ran, the crowd behind us following distantly. We ran until we made it to a nearby forest.
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It’s been several hours. Spencer and I were huddled up in a quickly assembled tent of branches and leaves, next to a small, dimly lit fire. The skies were dark, and we weren’t able to hear anything too worrying for a little while.
We were beat. Covered in bandages from the aggressive crowds, and exhausted from the effects of being near so many of those black devices. I wondered how so many people could be remotely controlled by those things, but decided I should just stop thinking and get some sleep if I could.
I laid my head down on my backpack, set up like a pillow, and closed my eyes in an attempt to get something that resembles a rest. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too long until I could feel myself slowly drifting off to sleep. Spencer was beside me, already sound asleep himself.
I laid there for a moment, but then, heard some kind of sound outside. I got up and poked my head out of the tent for a moment to look around. Nothing seemed to be out there, so I laid back down and stayed vigilant for a moment.
About 10 minutes later, I turned over to sleep again, looking at the empty corner of the tent, and closing my eyes.
Until, I realized, the empty corner of the tent was in fact, not empty. I opened my eyes and shot up, knife prepared, and saw there, a small black device on it’s lonesome. Before I could shout to get Spencer up, the device made some kind of loud sound, which caused me to blank out.
I was suddenly in this weird, dark world of some sort. A voice was echoing through my mind; my own voice, but being used by something else. It spoke in words I couldn’t really hear, but somehow understood. This is the black device speaking to me, and what it said had opened my mind to everything.
These black devices are “cores” of some kind. From the vast unknown reaches of the cosmos, they had traveled alone by the billions, looking for electricity. They had found our world, and began to feed on our machines and devices. Something even they didn’t know, was the ability to be able to control the minds of humans, and select other animals, and so they used this strange ability for self defense, attempting to keep the humans and animals acting as they normally would.
It seemed like some creatures were made immune to their abilities, like Spencer and myself, and so they had struggled against those like us who were destroying their cores. In reality, they did not want violence, but clearly they did not understand that controlling the minds of people isn’t the right thing to do. Unfortunately, it’s them versus us, so they took action. I sat in awe, listening to the many stories this voice had for me, understanding everything now.
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After what felt like a week or so of listening to these strange and wonderful stories, I woke up. I looked around with blurry eyes, and found myself inside of some kind of dimly lit room. Looking at a few figures around me, I spot a woman and a few men, all in their mid-20s to late 30s. They were all equipped with strange homemade armor and weapons, and the room itself was a little bit messy.
I saw up, feeling a pain in my back, and also noticing that it seems my right foot is entirely missing.
Suddenly, one of the men in his 20s lunged over and gave me a huge hug, eyes full of tears.
“I’m so glad you’re back!” He exclaims in a voice of relief.
He pulls away and I manage to get a good look at him.
“It’s me, Spencer,” he states.
That right there told me everything.
“We saved the world!” He exclaims. I look around as my vision finally adjusts, and see a large group of people, including my own parents who were now considerably older.
I was taken under the control of the black device all those years ago, and Spencer had been fighting all this time to stop their attack. He, and all these other people, they stopped the devices, and saved the world. I smiled. teary eyed, and hugged Spencer back.“Sorry I was out for so long, guys, I’m glad to be back,” I spoke.