Explosions, Screeching Zerg, high adrenaline gunfights, and death-defying feats! That is what the Player thrown into StarCraft provided for its watchers. The follower count was by and far the lowest of all the rated Game Shows that had begun to pop up over time.

Primarily because to become a Follower required you to understand that you placed yourself in the pool of replacements should the Player die. You went in for a fresh start but retained the current difficulty with only a choice of increasing it. All the citizens of Earth were provided this information.

We even had a showing of the current follower count. Forty-two was StarCraft Players count. At least twenty of them were Military men and women that served with him. One was mine, my little boy all grown up and forced to fight for survival every moment he was in that Hell, in the hopes he could survive to completion.

I felt the tears coming again, it was so hard to see him fight like this, be thrown into the fray with those monsters and cruel people that had tried to kill him. I feared for him, every waking moment. I had no idea how he was doing in the other aspect of this show, that wasn't scheduled to be released for another two months unless he died, then it reset for the newest Player.

I had to believe in my boy though. I watched every single available episode these Aliens that conquered and enslaved us released, refusing to miss a second of his struggle. As his Mother, it was the very least I could do. I hoped, in some small way, that me watching him would provide some unknown strength. A Mothers hope. A foolish one I had been told, but I still did it.

The most recent episode for my Damian had ended with him jumping back, away from those Zombie things, and firing some kind of explosive bullet into them. A loud explosion and then just him on the ground while those armored men shielded him from the others things coming after my baby. The credits rolled then, advising that it would air again tomorrow night at nine PM eastern Pacific time.

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The next show detailed a game called Dragon Age, and it was on its third Player already. For some reason they always tried to have sex with this Morrigan woman by force, a lot of the more violent games seemed to have people doing that.

The real heartbreaking part though, what always made me fear, even more, were the shows that had children often and younger. They went through staggering turnovers as the Children couldn't take it anymore, or made a small mistake. The Aliens swore that once the pool had run dry, and our population was brought under control, like we were animals to be kept and selectively bred, the poor babies of the world would no longer be allowed to enter games until the age of fifteen, by Human years.

It was all so monstrous, and there was nothing we could do. There had been a very minor revolt somewhere in China, someone had actually beaten their game within two weeks (no one knew how), and had led people to fight the Lumarians with their retained abilities. It had ended...poorly. The young man in question, who raged on and on that he was a God and would win in the end, was vaporized in public, before the world's populace. His language had been translated via the Aliens technology.

They allowed him the chance to fight their weakest member in combat, the man had lasted one minute, only because the Lumarian had allowed him to unleash everything he had, for their amusement. After that...they, I covered my mouth and choked back a sob at the memory and scenes that had been shown to the world. They atomized an entire third of China. Almost ten million people, no matter the age or if they were involved, were simply destroyed.

We had then been informed that another revolt would result in larger destruction. It ruined their fun to have to quell the pathetic little 'Monkies' that was Humanity. I got up, ignoring the latest death in the Dragon Age game, at the hands of someone named Wynn, with an advertisement for something called Zelda and State of Decay coming on after. I needed to make dinner, try to not set a place for my baby boy, for he would always be my baby boy, and get some sleep. Tomorrow I would watch him fight for his life all over again, and pray he continued to beat the odds.

Hope was all I had anymore...It was all any of us had.