The Dark Spying

The Dark Spying

by Sebastian Paquette

This book is dedicated to Dorian.

Academy School

Maple Leaf Writing Project

Brattleboro, VT

2014

Nothing was.

Nothing, that is, except for the gigantic, pitch-black void that stretched on and on into infinity, where nothing could survive. Only the vast vacuum existed in the endless blanket of darkness.

Until, suddenly, like being able to see after a lifetime of blindness, a miniscule particle of light appeared. The luminous dot, only a speck in this darkness that was expanding rapidly, was microscopic, but eventually grew bigger and bigger, until it exploded into a huge abundance of something that had never before existed: matter. Colorful stars, tiny microbes and colossal galaxies blew themselves forward, quickly growing larger. It was the Big Bang.

Where the void was became inhabited by the instantaneously growing everything, and the nothing surrounding was creeping into unknown places as the matter closed in on where the vacuum’s territory recently had been. Soon, microbes and single-cell organisms were created and they were developing new and larger shapes. No two of those new organisms were alike, but some were similar. Those organisms began to form classes, orders, families and genuses. The organisms that looked the most alike became different species. Evolution commenced.

With new life forms came new possibilities: mutations, new species, extinction, creation. But with new creatures comes improved brainpower, and improved manipulation. And with that comes power.

And with power comes death.

* * *

Several vibrantly-colored feathers floated to the ground as the pigeons closed in on the elderly man. He was wearing a red stocking cap with white trim, and a white ball of cotton on the top, which drooped down onto his head. He had a white beard and moustache. He walked over to a group of deer with harnesses coated with bells. Then, he spoke to the birds.

“Well, well, well,” said he, “what are a flock of pigeons doing in the North Pole?” He handed the birds some rye bread from a pastrami sandwich he was eating. The birds pecked and pecked. The bread was almost gone. The old man chuckled. A shadow fell over the crowd.

THOOM! An oversized, cleated metal foot stomped onto the ground, which broke, revealing ice-cold water. The pigeons flew away in fright.

* * *

The syrup seeped out of the soda machine as the cat lapped it up. The cat had been eating for an hour now-- the syrup would not stop. The cat stayed there. It loved the flavor. It was only hours later that the cat stopped eating. It licked its lips, walked home, and the minute it got inside, died on the spot.

The cat’s owner and the next door neighbor, who were playing cards, gazed in astonishment. “Oh my goodness!” the owner cried. “My cat has died!”

The next-door neighbor looked over. “Holy moly! How?”

“I don’t know,” replied the owner.

“Let’s check,” the neighbor suggested. He looked over the black, furry corpse on the owner’s rug. “No puncture marks… nothing… I have no idea what happened! Old age?”

“No! He was only a few years old.”

“Let’s take him to the vet.”

So they took the cat to the veterinary clinic, and the doctors scanned and searched the body. The vets finally found out why the cat had died. “Your cat is full of soda syrup,” said a vet in a complete monotone. “Poisoned syrup.”

“Oh no!” exclaimed the neighbor.

* * *

Billions of years had passed, and the universe still was expanding, but in a different way. Things had just been expanding normally, but all of a sudden something new was happening.

Different bits of a certain planet were expanding at different rates. Some expanded quickly. Some grew slower. Some didn’t get bigger at all. And some parts of the planet were separating from the rest, and the planet’s shape had become extremely bizarre. The planet was Earth.

The cause? A certain group of rebels, the “Dark Eyes”, were destroying and altering the world. The Eyes were motivated by disagreements with others, and only something awful would be a likely result. But the fate of the Earth does not seem to rest in good hands, perhaps not in any hands at all…

The Dark Eyes did other, smaller things as well. They scared animals and people with robots that traveled as far as the North Pole. They even implanted poison in soda machines! And so many more awful things… we can only hope for the best.

* * *

Smiling to himself, Fred jogged down the lane. A crowd of people were staring at a large and oddly shaped hill in a graveyard. Stones stuck out of the side of the mountain. “Huh, I wonder what’s going on over there,” said Fred under his breath. He ran over to the hill. A polyphonic sound of many side conversations emanated from the crowd. “What’s going on here?” asked Fred to a short man with a bowler hat who was struggling to see through the crowd.

The man answered, “Well, we don’t remember a hill being here before.”

“Me neither!” agreed Fred. “What is the cause?”

This time a different person answered, a lady dressed all in magenta and lacy frills. “We think that a group of terrorists have figured out how to alter the shape of the Earth, and break off giant chunks. She then pointed to a hole in the graveyard that went down to the very molten core of the Earth. The hole was an obtuse triangle and it was only 12 feet long, but very deep.

Fred gasped in extreme astonishment.

* * *

The crowds of shoppers pushed past each other as they tried to get to a store. Shouts of “Get out of the way!” and “Move it!” erupted from the bunches of people. Some people were knocked off balance by the group, including a little boy no older than seven.

“Mom!” the little boy cried as he was pushed over and away from his mother.

“Oh no!” yelled his mother, pushing through the throngs to get to her child. “Don’t fall again!”

Suddenly, a thick rumbling rose to a crescendo from outside. Many people screamed. The ground became curvy and deformed. The roof of the mall broke loose. The walls followed and blew along in the high wind.

“Oh my gosh!” cried the mother, hopelessly.

“Mommeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” screamed her son.

The crowd scattered, leaving the little boy on the ground in the open, but then he disappeared from sight.

“Where are you?!” screamed the mother.

A yelling arose. The small child was falling helplessly into a horrible black abyss, down to the Earth’s core.

“NOOO! MY SON!” shouted his mother, taken aback and devastated. “MY SON! THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!!!!”

But it was. Sad as it was, it actually was happening. The Dark Eyes had done this. They were truly reckless.

* * *

A quick glimpse at the Earth:

Africa looks oddly like a lopsided Star of David with large chunks floating above it and in the sea next to it.

Russia has become the smallest (and tallest) country on the map, becoming the largest mountain on the planet by far.

Mount Everest is now known as the Everest Crater.

The world has broken in two pieces almost equal in size, split between New Hampshire and Tokyo (which, all of a sudden, are right next to each other).

The Grand Canyon is full of water and in a funnel shape.

Europe is stretched out into a thousand-mile-long eighth-note shape, but the neck is a mile long and three inches wide, and it is covered by layers and layers of ice and sleet.

Each Hawaiian island has floated onto a shore of a different continent.

The world is a mess, growing bigger and bigger at this point.

Say, where is Antarctica?

* * *

Henry shuddered. What was this man doing in his house at night with a shotgun? All Henry wanted was a glass of water in the middle of the night. Then he screamed as the man turned around. He couldn’t help it. He was terrified.

“Watch out, son,” grumbled the man. “If they find us-- or if we find them-- you won’t like… I mean, run away if you see… oh, dang it anyway! What I’m tryin’ to say, kid-- this ain’t gonna be pretty.”

Wait a second-- the “intruder” was Papa!

“What do you m--” Henry squeaked.

“Take cover, boy,” growled Papa.

“But--”

“Get thee gone but good!” Papa shooed Henry off. By the sweeping hand motion, Henry inferred Papa meant “leave”. Papa talked weirdly sometimes.

Henry ducked under the sink when he heard sirens roll their way over to the house. He watched in horror as the actual intruders, malicious grimaces fixed to their twisted, ghastly faces, burst into the house clamorously. Placed on the back of each of their black coats was a picture of a single, crimson eye.

The Dark Eyes had broken in.

Henry shivered, both of the frigid air outside and the feeling of being extremely panicked.

Papa tilted his head slightly towards Henry and mumbled, “Leave this to me, old chum,”

Chum? thought Henry.

Papa took his shotgun and pointed it shakily toward one of the Eyes. “You want to mess up my life?” snarled Papa, lifting his gun about twenty degrees higher. “‘Cause I don’t play nice with jerks like you and your cronies over there,” he added, nodding vaguely to some of the other Eyes. He pulled the trigger and an extremely loud noise emanated from the firearm. The Eye in front of Papa slumped to the ground. Papa looked to the other four cohorts. “You four can stick around,” he grinned, “and end up like your buddy here.” The remaining four fled. Papa nodded to Henry. “You can come out now,” he said. “They won’t be coming back.”

Henry gaped. “Wow, Papa, that--”

“You get back to your berth.”

Once again, Henry was confused by Papa’s word choice. “You mean bed, right?”

“Yes. Go.”

And with that, Henry plodded back to bed.

* * *

This was huge. The downfall of one of the leaders of the Dark Eyes, the first time someone stood up for themselves. But the most important part is that this is when the Eyes noticed their own weakness.

This had never happened before. The Eyes believed that they were impenetrable, invincible even. But once they were threatened like this, they were more… careful, for terrorists. They all had started wearing armor at all times to avoid something like the run-in with Papa. The new armor was completely bullet-proof.

The Dark Eyes wouldn’t stop, though. Actually, some broke from the group’s rules and started a game of one-upmanship by creating a larger threat. After all, they were warring with the world now and there was only one Eye down and little time to mourn. And this threat would possibly destroy the world…

* * *

“ATTENTION!” yelled the man on top of the pile of rubbish. “I ASKED FOR YOUR ATTENTION!”

The rubbish pile was shaped sort of like a two-tongued walrus eating out of a can of beans almost twice his size, and was about ten feet tall. It was mostly made out of old, rotting food and yard waste that had collected and rolled into a ravine, and the group outside all knew at once why the man had come.

The man wore a silken cloak that dragged behind him, but now he held the hood up. On the outside, the cloak was an extremely shiny purple-black, and the inside was bright crimson. Emblazoned on the very center of the outside was a single, red, menacing eye. He wore the special armor under his cloak, which occasionally flapped to the side, revealing a segment of armor or two. He was a Dark Eye, they knew instantly.

Everyone stopped talking and waited for him to speak. Finally he said, “Thank you. Now what I have to say is very urgent yet brief: we have only weakened a tiny bit. You should fear. We have only unleashed our small power to alter the shape of the planet. But now, we can destroy it.” There were some angry complaints and mumbling before the man said, “SILENCE! I only wish to add, enjoy your last week on Earth.”

Everybody listening gasped harder than they had ever done in their lives.

* * *

Darkness crept through the fort. The cavernous hallways were crawling with shadow and mystery. Every wall, every corner was adorned with a feared symbol: the eerie, scarlet eye. The awful eye. The fort belonged to the Dark Eyes.

Only three cloaked figures remained in the capacious meeting room. They were having a talk. “Yes, everything is going well. Everybody knows our plan. Only the messenger was killed. We can successfully activate our plan with nobody to stop us,” said the first one.

“Uh, how will this work without us dying?” said the second figure.

“Don’t you remember, our fort will detach from the Earth? Plus, all the food we stole will serve us until we die.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Feel free to die with the rest of the people if you disagree,” said the third figure dismissively.

The second figure took off his cloak, set it down in the middle of the hallway, pulled out a match, and burned the cloak. He slunk home in the rainy night.

* * *

It didn’t seem as if there was any hope for anybody on Earth. The Dark Eye commander stood on the mound of garbage, some strange controller in his hand, a stubborn grin on his face. The crowd around shouted angry threats as he lifted up his hand. “OK, people, when I press this button,” he said as he gestured to the controller in his hand, “When I press this button, the Earth will go, POOF! Right into little bitty smithereens.” He made a motion with his hands to look like something exploding. “Oh yes, it may sound cheesy, but we have several thousand explosives under the ground as we speak.”

“NO!” yelled a voice. “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”

“Yes, actually, I can.”

“NOOOO!” a woman leapt onto the mound and slapped the Eye. A teenager jumped up and joined the scuffle. Soon, many people were beating up the old man in the cloak. Somehow, he still managed to shake them off.

Then someone fell over and landed on the button.

Countless screams erupted from the crowd as shards of pavement flew all over the place. Many gardens, lawns and houses caught fire. Explosions flared up everywhere. The world was ending. Everybody screamed and ran. The Eye ran to his base, but all of a sudden he crumpled, a burning piece of shrapnel in his side. He fell over, clutching his wound, and then lay still. Dead.

A cold wind blew by.

Images of the world grew sharp, smeared, distorted. Faces blew by. A high-pitched, ripping noise cut through the air, which seemed to fade away. It was the Great Sync.

The Great Sync is where time ends and begins. Imagine time as a circle. It has no definite end or beginning, but it begins somewhere far away, and grows farther and nearer as you revolve around the circle. It ends where it begins. Once you go to the beginning of time after time ends, if you do, you are one of few survivors. But as soon as you get there, you’re gone. It is but a vacuum, and that is where nothing can (or does) survive.

The beginning was growing closer and closer.

* * *

Nothing was.

Nothing, that is, except for the gigantic, pitch-black void that stretched on and on into infinity, where nothing could survive. Only the vast vacuum existed in the endless blanket of darkness. Until, suddenly, like being able to see after a lifetime of blindness, a miniscule particle of light appeared.