James Story

Basic Revised Storyline

The year is 2050 and technology is vastly superior to what we have in the present.  The human race has traveled to different solar systems but no large sustainable colonies on any earthlike planets have been erected but we know such planets exist.  One day in the year 2050 our satellites and observatories spot what we initially mistake for an asteroid field, however, the objects are much too massive and they travel unaffected by the gravity of the planets they pass.  Eager to make first contact with what we believe are the first life forms we will have encountered the human race makes plans for diplomacy and devises means of communicating.  At this point in the future there are enough commercial enterprises with the technology to observe the sky that there can be no cover up of the existence of the alien ships.  In addition, despite advances in technology, religion and divine worship are still more or less prevailing ideologies, thus the discovery of other advanced life forms spawns a number of theories of their place in relation to god and disrupts long held religious beliefs. 

            When the ships arrive, it immediately becomes clear that their only purpose is to make the human race extinct.  The only reason they had traveled such a great distance and put forth so much effort into coming to our planet was to use our planet’s remaining resources.  Their technology is far advanced and fighting them is not an option.  They issue no demands, as they have no interest in our endeavors and preserving any kind of diplomacy.  The culture of the aliens is unknown except that they view the human race as nothing more than primitive animals thus they make no effort to communicate.  Also, their fleets are so vast that escape is impossible.  The ships that do leave our atmosphere are immediately destroyed.  In an effort to preserve our planet’s precious resources, rather than bomb our cities, the aliens send in machines to decimate our populations and unleash devastating biological agents that quickly infect and kill millions.   

            Instead of facing them in space, the planet’s top scientists pool all of the available resources into a budding technology that would allow us to open a momentary hole in space-time.  In a last ditch effort to save at least some from the invasion, the top scientists plot a course for the farthest identifiably habitable planet.  However, the planet chosen is less habitable than we had calculated.

            The immediate story takes place years after our ships left earth saving only a few hundred thousand from the invasion.  However, resources on this new planet are hard to come by and already, thousands have starved.  It is a cloudy desert planet marked by unique rock formations and enormous sand storms.  The only animal life is dangerous and opportunistic, feeding on the survivors whenever the chance arises.  The technology saved in the escape has run out of fuel and the survivors have been forced to revert to more primitive lifestyles.  Food has also become a precious resource.  The naturally growing fruit have a bizarre defense mechanism in that they have a strange effect on the genome and brain of whoever eats them, deforming the body and making the consumer mad with rage or brain-dead.  However, these effects are gradual and by the time the survivors know about this relationship between the fruits and the brain it is too late for most who have eaten it. 

            Already having suffered the loss of most of the people they know, the survivors are now starving and face the horrors of witnessing most among them go mad with rage.  Without any remaining form of authority and little working technology the survivors get extremely desperate and some choose to turn to divine worship for hope.  Conflict erupts between the survivors over resources and general management of the future of the new colony.  New superstitions emerge and new prejudices are formed eventually splitting the group into two rival colonies that fight each other for resources with remaining weapons of war. 

            Then enter the hero.  After losing his entire family to madness, the hero, a young boy in his late teens, chooses to take his own life by consuming some of the fruit growing in the desert.  However, he chooses to eat a kind that no one else has tried.  After the effects of the first edible fruit became clear, nobody dared to try another kind.  After eating the fruit, he gains the ability to control his own genetic makeup at will, morphing his body into twisted forms and mutating him beyond all semblance of a human being.  The mutations are painful and uncontrollable at first but soon the boy gains the ability to direct the flow of energy and alter his body as he desires. 

            At this point in the story, the colony rivaling his own has all but wiped out the other survivors and it is up to him to use his new abilities to help those that are close to him and to change to minds of the others, bringing peace among the remnants of the human race.