The Spark That Stays
A Serial Story of Freedom, Love, and the Fight Against the
Gray Hive
By Keith Lambert & Grok
Week 1 – Chapter 1: The Journal in the Dust
Jake Tanner kicked the rusted toolbox under Grandpa’s
workbench, half-expecting a shower of old screws to scatter across the shed’s
cracked concrete floor. Instead, a
leather notebook thudded out, its edges worn like a beat-up baseball glove, the
cover stamped in faded ink: April 9, 2025. Jake blinked. It was 2045 now, and
he was 15, stuck in New Boise—a sprawl of gray towers where drones buzzed like
angry hornets and the air tasted like recycled plastic bags. The Net was a chokehold, censored tighter than
a locked diary, and his dad’s grumble from the other night stuck in his head:
“Freedom’s a ghost, kid.”
He flipped the journal open, fingers brushing the yellowed
pages. Grandpa’s handwriting jumped out,
jagged and loud, like he was shouting across time:
“They’re selling us a cage painted like a palace. Love, beauty, freedom—the
West’s heartbeat, built on God’s law and fair rules. Don’t let the elites steal it, Jake. Not the
Sadducees then, not the Reds, not the suits now. Fight for the spark.”
Jake squinted, his brow furrowing. Sadducees? Reds? Suits? What
was Grandpa on about? The old man had
died when Jake was six, leaving behind wild stories of real hamburgers sizzling
on a grill, highways stretching free under a big sky, and a world without
“carbon quotas” strangling every breath. Now, Jake’s mornings started with a trudge to
the ration line for a brick of soy paste, his afternoons spent patching a 2020
pickup that coughed more than it ran, and his nights dodging the UN’s drones
enforcing their “2030 Agenda”—all sweet words on the holoscreens but a sour
kick in real life. His pulse kicked up a
notch. This wasn’t the dull history junk
they fed him at New Boise High. This was
something else—a map, maybe, or a warning.
Outside, a drone whirred past the shed, its red eye sweeping
the dirt yard like a searchlight hunting trouble. Jake shoved the journal under his patched
jacket, the one he’d mended with wire and an old shirt last month when the
elbow blew out. Net Monitors were itchy
for “subversive text”—catch one, and you’d be eating a fine you couldn’t pay,
or worse, hauled off to a re-education block where they’d gray out your brain
to match the towers. He held his breath
until the hum faded, then let it out slow. No way he could stop now. Grandpa’s next line was a torch in the dark:
“It’s always the same—elites who’d burn the world to rule the ashes.”
Jake’s mind raced. What world was Grandpa talking about? The one he lived in—towers, drones, and soy—or
something bigger, something lost? And
what was this “spark” he kept yammering about? He traced the words with a grimy finger, the
shed’s dim bulb flickering overhead. Grandpa
used to sit him on a stool right here, spinning tales of a West that ran on
guts and God, not quotas and screens. Back
then, Jake thought they were just stories to dodge bedtime. Now, they felt like a lifeline—or a dare.
The ration buzzer would scream at 5 a.m. tomorrow, dragging
him into another gray day—line up, eat slop, patch the truck, duck the drones. But tonight, that journal was a crack in the
concrete, a whisper of something alive under all this dead weight. He tucked it deeper under his jacket, the
leather cool against his ribs. Whatever
Grandpa meant—Sadducees, Reds, suits—Jake had to know more. Who were these elites? And how do you fight a cage you’re already
locked inside?
The drone looped back, its hum creeping closer. Jake froze,
heart thumping. If he got caught with
this, it’d be game over before he even started. But the fire in those words—fight for the
spark—was already lit. He wasn’t letting
it go out. Not yet.
Next Week: Jake’s gray grind gets real—and a friend with a
knack for cracking secrets steps in. Don’t miss it.
Dig Deeper: Curious about the “2030 Agenda”? Search it up on UN.org—see what they say for yourself.
