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Grade
8

The Power of Gravity

I awoke with the worst headache. The world spun. Dots were floating in my vision. The wind quietly whistled by. The air was tense--the calm before the storm. A prairie spanned around me, undisturbed and peaceful but, even gentle and harmless things can have scars. I was in an incredibly large one; a crater tunneling 40 feet into the earth leaving singed rock and rubble in its wake. 

I cleaned my cracked glasses to take a closer look at the destruction of the crash. Massive trees were cracked in half and charred, and the world around me seemed to have been pushed away from the crater. I turned to see a small meteor the size of a basketball made of solid metal in the center of the crater. Taking a whiff of the now calm air, I smelled ozone and burnt plants. 

Pulling myself out of a daze, I noticed my brother groaning on the other side of the depression. Attempting to pull myself up, I placed my palms on the ground and realized the ground was smooth and devoid of glass, even though the soil was quite sandy.

This was odd as the heat from the meteor and the impact should have turned it all into small glass shards. When I finally stopped curiously sifting through the dust I got back to my original mission, getting to my brother. I tried once again to pull myself off the ground but I struggled to find enough strength. With a heave I pulled myself onto wobbly legs and started towards my brother, staggering as I went. I stumbled up to my brother and tripped over him. We pulled ourselves up and looked around to see where we were. Wait why don’t I know where I am or how I got here? 

“Jason?” I mumbled nervously, “where are we?” He looked around cautiously. 

“We’re at the park,” he said. 

“How did we get here?” I inquired my voice getting higher.

“I don’t know,” he frowned.

I started to walk towards the meteor. I couldn’t understand how we survived a meteor strike. Jason grabbed my arm stopping me from getting any closer.

“Hey!” I whined.

“We don’t want to get to close, it could be dangerous,” Jason retorted.

I bent down and sifted through the dirt like a walrus looking for clams, quickly finding what I was looking for.

“Aha!” I shouted. Holding up a small stone.

“What do you need that for?” Jason queried.

“I’m gonna’ throw it at the meteor,” I giggled.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Jason warned.

“Why not?” I shot back.

“Because it could be dangerous.”

“I’m doing it.”

“You probably shouldn’t...” 

“I just did!” I laughed as I threw the stone. It sailed through the air but about a foot from the meteor it started to curve.

“Wait why is it doing that?” I asked. 

“I don’t know.” Jason said worriedly. The rock started to orbit the meteor slowly, gradually picking up speed.

“Cool!” I exclaimed excitedly, creeping closer as the rock started picking up speed.

“Get down!” Jason yelled pulling me to the ground just in time as the rock came flying back at us 10 times harder than I had thrown it. The meteor began to glow as if it were incredibly hot turning bright white with lightning crackling in all directions. A bolt streaked toward us as we dove out of the way; but we never hit the ground. When I opened my eyes I was floating in a strange white bubble of energy with lightning zapping towards the edge of the bubble like a giant plasma ball. 

“Woah!” I shouted in amazement.

“This is amazing!” Jason boomed. I started to wave my arms around like I was swimming. Surprisingly I started to move. I was so enthralled by the lack of gravity I didn’t notice that the lightning was slowly circling around us. Suddenly the lightning struck us - it didn’t hurt, it was just a rush of energy. The power seeping into me felt amazing. As we absorbed the the energy, the bubble started to disappear and we fell as we took in the last drops of energy.

“What happened” I questioned disappointedly.

I got up and poked the meteor cautiously. Nothing. The fun was gone. Suddenly it cracked open and split perfectly in half to reveal a small glowing gem a few inches long and diamond shaped. I put it in my pocket to take a closer look later.

“Wait, if all that energy went into us then are we like the meteor now?” I asked Jason.

“Maybe?” he questioned.

“Let’s test it then,” I suggested.

“How?” he asked.

“Throw a rock at me. If we have the energy of the meteor then it should orbit me like it did before.”

“Ok.” he said warily. I got into an open area and stood still. He tossed the stone at me but it sailed through the air and thunk, hit the ground as normal.

“Weird,” I mumbled. I walked back to the meteor to poke around some more. I picked up both halves and a spider-like machine crawled out onto my arm.

“AAAAAAAAH” I screamed shaking my arm. The thing went flying. 

“Don’t be afraid,” it stated, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“What are you?” I asked.

“I am a deep space genetic material carry drone from the planet Arthrax but you humans call me a ‘robot’,” It said.

“What are you here for?” I asked.

“I’m here to save the Arthraxians,” it fired back plainly.

“How?” Jason asked.

“By doing this,” it said as it poked us with a needle and shot a light into our eyes

“AAAH!” we yelled. My brain started to swirl as it filled with information. The meteor started to melt into strands and flow into us. Suddenly everything stopped. 

“What happened?” I asked.

“I altered your DNA,” it stated.

“WHAT!?” I yelled.

“I was sent here by people called the Arthraxians. They are a highly intelligent organism that was wiped out when their planet died, but before they were all gone they made me. I was shot into space with their genetic material to the nearest inhabited planet to pass on the gifts of Arthraxians and help this planet survive.”

“Ok, but why alter my DNA?” I questioned.

“You’ll see,” it said.

“Let’s go home so we can figure them out,” Jason suggested. Suddenly we were home. It was like something out of Harry Potter, we were at the park and then poof, we were home.

“What happened?” I asked.

“We teleported,” the robot said.

“Huh?” I grunted.

“Teleportation is one of his powers,” the robot said, “he controls space and you control time. These are your gifts. Your power is limited though. You can only control a small bubble of time and he can only manipulate space for a small period of time.”

“Woah!” I exclaimed.

“Not only that, but you both control gravity,” the robot added, “and during the DNA alteration I uploaded a network of Arthrax information to your brains.

“This is amazing!” I exclaimed, “Jas’ try sending us back.”

“I’ll try...” he said. In the blink of an eye, we were back at the park.

“Wow!” I squealed, “I wanna’ try!” I raised my hand and blue energy flowed out forming a sphere. I flexed my fingers and BAM! It went flying, it stopped midair and expanded. Everything inside the bubble slowed, crawling along at the speed of a snail. Before I could do anything else sirens started to wail. Jason quickly grabbed us and teleported us home.

“Let’s go back,” the robot suggested, “these people are government workers so they’ll have resources that we can use to train.” 

“Ok.” Jason replied. Poof we were back.

“Hey!” exclaimed a lady stepping out of a car “where’d you come from?!”

“Pretend not to have control of your power,” the robot whispered in our ears. I started to float around using my gravity powers and pretended to cry.

“Help!” I whined, “I don’t know what’s happening!” Jason began to teleport around and wail too.

“I can’t stop!” he cried. Five big guys that looked like secret service men started climbing out of a big black van. 

“Get ‘em!” the lead one shouted.

“Hey! Stop! They’re just kids!” the lady shouted angrily. The men kept going and began to chase us. They charged at us and Jason just teleported or floated then I knocked them over by making a time bubble that threw them off balance. 

“Hey, get back here!” one of the men yelled. He ran at us and tried to tackle us. We moved away before he could get us. The men looked quite foolish as they ran around trying to tackle us. We continued to fling ourselves around even hitting them by “accident.” The lady, who turned out to be their boss, was eventually able to get them to stop chasing us and got us to “calm down” enough so we could be taken away for testing. They loaded us into the back of the van and we started off to a government facility a few hours away. The van walls were soundproofed and there were no windows so I used my time bubble to freeze time over the only camera in the back of the van. The robot crawled out from hiding.

“Do you have the glowing gem from inside the meteor?” it asked. 

“Yes.” I responded, “Here.” I handed it to him.

“This is what gave you your power. It, along with the DNA change allowed you to control space and time, an ability that will be passed down in your family. The crystal itself is made of massive amounts of compressed space/time energy,” it said.

“What about the meteor? It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen!” I asked.

“The meteor is made of a special metal unlike any other. It has the power to contain the energy from the crystal and it is what I used to create the synthetic DNA needed to give you your powers.” it answered.

“WOW!” I squealed excitedly.

“We will need something to give these people until we can know for sure we can trust them,” it said.

“We can rearrange the structure of a quartz crystal to contain just a little energy, but they will think it is the real crystal” Jason suggested.

“Good idea!” the robot praised. Jason quickly teleported to find a crystal and used his powers to change the structure. Then we put a small amount of energy into it. We were almost there by then so the robot hid and I got rid of the time bubble around the camera. We pulled to a stop and the men got us out.

“We found this at the crater,” we said to the lady as we walked into a big building. We gave her the crystal we had made. We were led into a large room where scientists were standing in hazmat suits with equipment. As soon as we sat down they started to poke and prod us. They had us use our powers and they put different meters inside our mouths and ears. Suddenly an alarm went off. A soldier ran in and started yelling.

“Come with me!” she yelled, and we followed her into a different room with people watching a monitor.

“You two! Come here!” one of them said.

I walked over.

“We have been tracking a terrorist who appeared in Czechoslovakia that seems to have similar powers to yours. They have been using some sort of explosive that comes from their hand to attack cities.” 

“This guy sounds like an Ignatian,” the robot whispered in our ears, “they use vacuums filled with antimatter to make large scale explosions.”

“We need you to go stop him.” they said

“Uh ok. But we’ll need gear first.” I said, “He uses antimatter to make explosives but before he detonates them it is contained in a vacuum so we need something to see them.”

“Got it!” one of the soldiers yelled as she ran off. The soldiers quickly assembled all of the gear we needed and we set off on a high speed jet to find the terrorist.

“When we get there I’ll teleport us down instead of landing so our pilot isn’t in danger.” Jason said.

“I can use my time bubbles to neutralize the explosions by slowing them down,” I added.

“After we neutralize the explosions we can restrain him by trapping him in an infinite loop of space/time energy!” Jason suggested.

“We’re here,” the pilot reported. Jason teleported us down to the ground.

“HEY! UGLY!” I yelled at the terrorist, “Come get me!” The terrorist started to hold out his hand forming a bomb. I used my time bubble to hold it. BOOM! The bomb went off but it only felt like a strong wind due to my bubble. He started making more and I was trying to hold them off but it was hard to keep up.

 Jason moved in. He came in from behind and used his power to condense light into blades and threw them at him but the terrorist just swatted them away. 

The terrorist made his move, he went charging at Jason but before he got to him, Jason teleported away. That didn’t stop the terrorist he turned around and charged at me. I used my gravity powers to fly away but he just used small explosions to propel himself after me. I dropped to the ground and used my time bubbles to stop him but he kept pushing. He was making so many explosions that I couldn’t hold on. He flew up and came hurtling down like a meteor exploding on contact. 

The second he was on the ground I struck. I increased the gravity on him to force him down. I was pushing harder and harder. His knees started to buckle as I pushed. I pushed so hard the ground began to crack. Jason started forcing cars onto him and adding more pressure using his powers. The cars became a pancake on the ground flattened by our power. Finally, we stopped pushing. I was breathing heavily and sweating buckets but we had done it. 

The cars began to shake. WOOSH. The car pancake went flying as the terrorist climbed out of a depression in the earth. His eyes glared with malice as looked at us. He didn’t move a muscle he just started to glow red hot.

“GET DOWN!” Jason yelled as he tackled me. An explosion rocketed out of the terrorist sending us both flying. The last thing I remember was seeing a silhouette of Jason’s limp body against the wall next to me as I blacked out…