The Race-X

I remember it as if it had happened just yesterday. In fact, it had happened over a decade ago. The human world had been in a state of peril. An energy crisis had struck worse than it ever had. Gas prices were sky rocketing, and food was starting to run scarce. The human world had become over populated by far, and there was nowhere else to put the incoming number. For the first time since the mid 2000’s, people were actually calling on the end of the days. At this time I was only sixteen years old, an angst filled little spitfire who didn’t know why the world had decided to end just when she had reached the brink of freedom. If things hadn’t been rough enough with the transition through puberty, this was just the icing on the cake. The world as I had known it was falling apart, buildings that had been standing since the beginning of known time, the pyramids, the ziggurats, and beautiful Catholic cathedrals. I remember my parents exchanging a constant look of worry when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. What would happen with school? How would they feed their students? What would happen when they ran out during lunch period one day? An all-out brawl? But for the time being they put it to the back of their mind. It wasn’t something for them to worry about at that exact moment, so they wouldn’t.

But then the famines started. First, the third world countries were knocked out, and rather quickly too. Most countries in central Africa didn’t even take a month or two to die out. That was when the buzzing of fear and nervousness fell into the air. My folks didn’t think I noticed it, the visible aura that hung heavy on their shoulders every time they walked in and out of the door. Much to my displeasure, school was still held. But the food rationed out at lunch grew smaller and smaller with each day. Grocery stores were stocked for about five minutes before people desperate to stock up on their canned goods wiped it out in a manner of minutes. Next went the industrializing countries. Countries that had once been close to wiping out like Japan and Russia, who in some miraculous way made a steady growth back in population and economic value.

Finally they had canceled school. And that was the last I had seen most of the friends I had made during my ten or so years in the educational jungle gym. My parent’s work places closed down. Money grew to be a tighter and tighter noose around my mom and dad’s neck, with me as the one to pull away the plank from beneath them. They thought I didn’t know what kind of stress was hanging over them, but I did. I stopped asking for that $10 to go see a movie (mainly because at this point, the cost to go see a movie was so high only the rich and famous could actually afford it). I started wearing holes in my clothes, because I was too ashamed to ask for new ones.

Not even the government was of any help. They had no answers. They had no more crops to grow, or scientifically engineered food that could actually sustain human life. There was no other answer for them to turn to, or scientific lead to turn up under a rock. It had literally been the end of days, and all the human race could do was wait. Soon enough, they had placed curfews and food rations. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out where most of the food was going; to the wealthier class, because if they could weed out the lower and less fortunate, they could start a world all over again. And then, when over 99% of the population was lying in a mass grave dug in the center of the United States, could they start repopulating. It drove my mom insane, thinking about how unfair a hand we had been dealt. And that the government was a ‘crapulous crock of shit that a bear produced’. It was several months before my eighteenth birthday that she took a shotgun my dad kept locked away and propped it into her mouth. My dad never went into the basement again after that.

The newspapers stopped printing the obituaries, because the numbers were too high and frequent to keep up with. Some people even resorted to cannibalism, but that was more the south of the United States than where I spent my childhood and adult life. But that didn’t make it any less terrifying to think about. A thought I kept to myself through the end of my teen years, was that it was more than ironic that the apocalyptic shows that paraded the television networks were actually coming true. Houses fell apart just as quickly as the people did. Looters made their presence known outside the grocery stores with the markings. There had been rumors that the red marking was blood, but I had never found out.

On my twentieth birthday, when my cheeks were hollow and my skin pulled tight over my skeleton, did our chance of luck change.

Nobody was quite sure where they came from, or how they got here, but there they were. One day, out of nowhere, they just came down from the sky. In ships that envied the size of all ships. Craft ships that were made out of a metal we had not discovered. Their technologies were already much more advanced than ours, when we had the ability to explore and advance ours of course. Upon landing, well not really landing but really coming to a hover over the grass, did they meet with the rather plump remaining world leaders. Nobody was sure what really went on inside the buildings, but our life as human beings were forever changed by that discussion. The Cryptics, which we called them in reference to our inability to understand them, were going to help rebuild our world. An energy crisis fixed by eliminating the need to depend on oil with hovercrafts, hovercars, and hoverboards. A food crisis fixed by planting new foods in places where homes had been abandoned and repairing what damage we had done to the earth as well as gifting us with the technology for instafood. A computer so smart and advanced, that any order placed into it would spit out said order in a matter of minutes.

While grateful for the help of the Cryptics, everyone was waiting for the blade of the once famous guillotine to come down on our heads. They had given us jobs, and training, hell I had never gotten the chance to finally graduate high school without ragged clothing or worry of if I was going to get fed that day. They had helped rebuild our infrastructure, with better, eco-friendly materials. Our air was cleaner, our atmosphere possibly doing some much needed relaxing after going through the hell that we had put it through. But where was the catch? What did these; pale colored people of the rainbow and outside planets want with us? They never let us see their true forms, which made my dad a skeptic when they would shift to match our appearance. But why earth? Of all things that they could have possibly visited in the entire universe, they chose earth. A deteriorating planet that had been put through the ringer. But nobody put that much thought into it as we shoveled our mouthwatering faces with food we had been denied for years.

The truth had a habit of coming out though, as I’m sure most of you know. Among the hovtransports and the instafood, they were planning something with the world leaders. The piggish little leaders I would come to think of them as. The Cryptics had come to earth for one specific reason.

Entertainment. It was announced on the second year that the Cryptics had been on earth, on the day of my twenty-second birthday, also the day celebrated as the rebirth of earth. November 12th of the year 2403. The leader, a Cryptic that went by the name of Leader-X announced in front of a holocam that was hooked up to every holohome in the world. He was flagged by the world leaders who had traded our immediate freedom for sustainability. Though I couldn’t blame them, I was sure if I was given the same option I would choose the same. But on that day, November 12th, 2403, nobody listening was prepared for what Leader-X was about to say.

I remember it so vividly. I was sat with my dad on a faded and holy couch in a living room with chipped paint and exposed walls in a farm house that creaked and moaned with every breath. He had scrounged up enough money from beneath the cushions of the furniture to buy me a lavish cake. A cake that had the big ‘HAPPY 22ND BIRTHDAY EVAN’ in creamy cursive. We both had a slice of it held in our laps, finger gripping the paper plates so hard they bent upwards. Neither of us would say that we nervous out of respect for the other. He wasn’t going to let my birthday be ruined, and I wasn’t going to let him know that my exterior was a fragile shield. Leader-X went on and on about how while earth had become a sustainable planet once again, they were not going to be leaving. In fact, they were going to be making a home right here. They liked it, and what we had destroyed now being brought back to life by ingenuity and skill that we never would have caught up with, they thought earth beautiful once more. And since our (cowardly) leaders had put Leader-X in charge, he was by vote, now the leader of the planet. The words hit me like a sack of potatoes as I sank back into the couch, ignoring the sharp pain of a loose spring shooting into my ass cheek. And since the Cryptics sought out entertainment on this planet, there were going to be a couple of changes happening. I couldn’t remember much after that besides that we were still people, going about our normal lives. But our rule was now not under a leader specific to one country, but under a leader to one world. My dad dropped his cake.

The entertainment part caught my interest as I’m sure it did many other 22 year olds throughout earth. As marker to the kindness showed by the Cryptics, we humans were to put on a show on for them. A show of the best racers in the entire world, competing on a track raised high in the sky. Whichever team one, not only was the winning team gifted with money and lavish things, but they would have the chance to be elected into a position of power. Whether it is a council member, or a subdivision of something, they were part of the government. Their country would throw a grand celebration as well as receive a surplus of whatever they were in need of extra.

And so, the time of famine and death was over, as well as the recession period known as CrypticX.

Now was the time of Race-X.

And when they called, you answered.