Chapter 1

 

February, 2012

Manchester, Great Britain. The temperature was -2º Celsius. The beginning of a blizzard blew from the North Atlantic.

 

The TV broadcasted out of the weather forecast. “Possibly the coldest winter the world has ever been in, Cuba has hit rock bottom temperatures of 7º Celsius...very scary.”

Touching the 42” plasma TV I swapped the channel over to the news channel.

 

Unzipping my snow jacket I threw it onto the couch and went to get a drink, as I came back in, there were reports of serious incidents and hazards as people were dying from the cold weather the world has been having.

 

Some politicians were arguing with Asia complaining they had wrecked the planet we lived on. China, Japan, Korea, Russia and the other Asian countries argued their side and said it was the west’s fault.

 

It was everybody’s fault in the world. Earth itself just gave up and let us fend for ourselves. In 2011 we endured hot seasons all year round which were a shock for everybody, in 2012 we have been having extremely cold temperatures, and I fear it may get worse. Antarctica was the only place that was not suffering. Scientists who are currently hidden from the world suggested last year that this was the way of Earth ‘healing’ itself. Most of the population in the west had evacuated to Mars’ Biodome Recovery Centre (MBRC), the Project’s name is ‘Dust Storm’.

 

At first we didn’t think the project would work in 2009 but later in the year had been a flush in technology, we successfully created a oxygen creating facility which replaces specified gases with Oxygen (seen as most of the world is Nitrogen and a threat from carbon dioxide, it flourished and began to help the air quality and make the Earth live for one or two more years. However, there was still complications, the Earth did have an expiry date and is now near the end of it.)

 

We produced another 100 copies of the Oxygen combiners and sent them to Mars, where we had a monitoring station to conduct testing every second for oxygen levels, the levels of Oxygen increased and we were able to populate Mars. Unfortunately, only a selected few were allowed onto Mars, mainly troops and some civilians.

 

Those who were not allowed to go up, stayed and lived their days on Earth. It was mainly older people and people who were physically unable to get to Mars. Approximately 1,000,000 troops stayed. 600,000 US & UK soldiers and 400,000 Asian soldiers. However those 400,000 Asian troops had more firepower, they conquered Europe and took the factories for themselves. They built tanks by the thousands, and build weapons by the millions, each day.

 

Any civilians that got captured got put into a detention facility and put to work. Civilians like me that were part of a neutral organisation which was started by Tom Cooper, he allowed people like me to do our jobs which we were assigned to. My job was to cook for the scientists down in Antarctica, we lived there 11 months of the year I stayed a little longer to freeze food for the next time we came back to the compound.

 

 

 

The civilians that are in America were placed in facilities underground which were the best option the troops had.

 

Tom Cooper had helped the neutral scientists; we didn’t work for money although both sides were funding us to do our job, either side paid more for the result information at the end, we sold it to the highest bidder, our organisation is worth 100’s of billions but neither could afford to buy us, only pay for the information we held.

 

Statistically, the West had $203,129,102 on hand (America ruled above their allies); the East had ¥423,299,219 on hand (Japan ruled above their allies.)

 

It wasn’t a struggle for money; it was extinction between the sides.

 

The next day was worst, as I awoke from the sleep, I focused in to my senses to find my mobile phone ringing, and as I checked it I found six missed calls, all from the same number, I answered the ringing phone and started the conversation.

 

“H...Hello?” I grumbled.

“Hey, mate can you get to the airport, as soon as you can? Tom has asked all of his team to go to Antarctica.”

“Why? We are not supposed to be out there till next month?”

“He mumbled something to me in person; I am not allowed to say over the phone for confidentiality purposes. Someone may have your mobile tapped.”

“Okay, which airport am I going to?”

“Manchester, I’ll meet you there with our money for tickets.”

“Bye”

 

The conversation ended, I got up, started to get dressed and packed my bags at the same time, and there was not much to pack as most of my clothing was in the Antarctica Compound.

 

I reached the airport, Liam stood there with his suitcase and a steel briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, as I walked over underneath the monorail stop with him for shelter from the blizzard, he shook his briefcase, as if to say ‘here it is’ he didn’t say much, but pointed to inside the airport and walked in, I followed behind him. The thoughts running through my head as we strolled through the empty airport, in fact, it was too empty something was wrong, it could be the blizzard but highly unlikely as our private jet, owned by Tom Cooper were now able to withstand the turbulence of blizzards and could fly anywhere with the fuel it could hold. It was way faster than normal passenger planes and built for anything, especially hiding from any enemy fire.

 

We reached check-in, the employee told us to put our bags on, we refused and told her we are with Tom Cooper, she shook her head and looked toward her computer screen, she began to type on the holographic keyboard and looked towards our faces. She nodded in recognition.

 

She pointed down a corridor for direction.  “Okay, sirs, just follow down that corridor”

We thanked her and began to jog down that direction along with our suitcases and baggage.

 

As we came around the corner, we stumbled upon an ambush of troops pointing their weapons towards us, they held Heckler & Koch weapons (German factories were part of Asian property so they had plenty of German weaponry)

 

“Whoa, whoa... what is going on here? We have an arrangement with Tom Cooper” Liam negotiated with the Asian soldiers. They didn’t seem very friendly and carried on throwing their weight around.

“Hey...Hey! Let us through now!” Liam raised his voice.

The lieutenant of the group threw a fist at Liam and it took him down to the floor. As the lieutenant went in for more hits, I stood in the way and retaliated with my own strength, pushing him to the ground and hitting his soldiers in their faces, I pulled Liam up as quickly as I could as he grabbed his suitcase, we raced past the floored soldiers and ran straight to the jet. Its engines roared up as they started, we raced up the steps of the jet as troops ran after us. As they reached the airstrip doors from the airport we were closing the door.

 

Liam and I took deep breaths to regain our energy. Tom sat in his leather chair that was fixed in front of the circular table with other ten other leather chairs. Two cabin crew members came to take out suitcases and put them in storage, we sat down facing Tom with the other eight employees already sat waiting for us.

 

On either side of Tom was his right hand men, both bodyguards, both are smart in their own ways, basically one is “the cup is half empty” and the other is the “the cup is half full”.

This makes them a deadly pair.

 

Along the food chain of the organisation are the three scientists,  they are built to figure out everything there is about anything, these guys own separate groups which do different pieces of research, one group does technology, the second group does environmental ecology and the third does human ecology.

 

Even further along was the workforce leaders, all arrogant idiots who don’t know right from wrong, these guys hear out the workers and request things from the leaders and negotiate better equipment and everything they could possibly want, the WFL (Work Force Leaders) as they call themselves don’t think about the workforce.

 

Thankfully, I’m one of the last ones along with Liam. Liam does all the odd jobs he is told to do along with give everybody else ideas and thoughts on how to improve and what not, I just lead my own group to cater for the organisation, we work solely just to feed the organisation, Tom has

discussed I can do what I like, just as long as the organisation is fed and everybody is satisfied with what is on the menu.

 

Basically, without my workforce the organisation cannot run properly, the Earth itself is in a struggle, so we are the only available catering group the organisation can get, all equipment and ingredients are paid by the organisation.

 

As Liam and I sit down on the last available leather chairs, facing the rest of the groups leaders. Tom leans forward and clicks his fingers to the two cabin crew and points to us, they turn to the storage and pull out Tom’s favourite 'stomach warmer', whisky on ice, Liam held his against where the lieutenant hit him to ease the pain.

 

Tom leans in again but places his hands on the sheets of paper in front of him and re-arranges them.

“So, gentlemen, glad you could make it.” He smiles at us all.

“Tom... we just got pulled up from the Asian security, they held their guns at us and they hit me, I fear this will be the last time we are able to land in England again.” Liam alleged.

“Liam... calm down, I’m sure it was a misunderstanding?” One of Tom’s right hand men assured to us.

“Bullcrap! This is unfair, we could’ve been shot you know, we are a neutral organisation, we shouldn’t be hitting their soldiers as we fend for our lives against them” Liam interrupted the right hand man.

“Shut up, both of you!” I exclaimed, hoping in my mind they would be quiet.

“Arguing between ourselves is not the way to go about things, people.” Tom spoke in a stern voice.

 

A moments silence hit us all, but after a brief “breaking the ice” from one of the WFL cutting his finger on paper and making the group laugh, we got into discussions about what ever was on Tom’s sheets of papers.

 

We landed in South Africa, refuelled at a station, loaded extra fuel in our storage; so we could build up the fuelling station in Antarctica, we then set to off to New Zealand, at New Zealand, we loaded supplies and sorted our workforce out, they were put on a passenger aircraft owned by our organisation and sent to Antarctica to start work, and we followed afterwards and reached Cooper Compound as we liked to call it.

 

At the compound, which was located in the North West, our workforce was preparing their bunks and putting their belongings into their footlockers at the bottoms of their beds and on the wall lockers, the compound used to belong to the BRA (British Renegade Army 2010 - 2011). As Britain was taken over, BRA used it as a temporary base of operations; unfortunately the BRA was forgotten about and they became rogue and lost throughout Antarctica and we don’t even know if they are still alive or not.

 

The compound became abandoned in the middle of 2011 but was found by our organisation and it has grown ever since.

I joined the organisation last march and have been a useful asset to the organisation ever since.

 

However, with everybody leaving Earth to go to Mars, Antarctica has been abandoned and all the compounds have been left for our organisation to conquer and use. We now own the entire North, North West, and North East section of Antarctica.

 

My group of caterers were out across being used in all the buildings in the North West and West region.

 

 

To Be Continued...

 

E7LI0TT