The Spark That Stays
A Serial Story of Freedom, Love, and the Fight Against the
Gray Hive
By Keith Lambert & Grok
Week 2 – Chapter 2: The Gray Grind
Jake Tanner woke to the 5 a.m. ration buzzer slicing through
the dark, a sound like a rusty saw on his nerves. He rolled off the lumpy cot in his family’s
cramped New Boise flat, the concrete floor cold under his patched socks. It was
2045, and this was life—gray, managed, a grind that chewed you up and spat you
out tasting like soy paste. He stumbled
into the kitchen, where Mom hunched over a 2015 coffee maker she’d jury-rigged
with duct tape and a scavenged heating coil from some trashed drone. “Power’s at 20%,” she sighed, pouring a watery
brew into a chipped mug. No new
appliances had hit the shelves since the “Green Lock” of 2030—imports banned,
factories shuttered under the UN’s “sustainability” rules. Like those old
Cubans keeping ‘50s Chevys wheezing on spit and wire, folks in New Boise
patched relics to limp along. Ingenuity
was all they had left, but it was a slog that weighed a ton.
He grabbed his jacket—the one with the elbow stitched up
from an old shirt—and trudged two blocks to the ration line, 50 gray coats
blending into the fog. The line snaked
slow, boots squishing mud; new ones were a city-kid perk, not for outskirts
grunts like him. A drone hovered
overhead, its speaker crackling: “No meat until 2050—for the planet’s sake.”
Jake’s stomach growled as he collected his soy paste brick and a chalky vitamin
pill—breakfast, lunch, dinner, same as yesterday, same as tomorrow. Back home, Dad was already under the hood of
their 2020 pickup, its bald tires patched with glue and prayers, the engine
coughing on homemade biofuel siphoned from a junked lawnmower. “Used to drive clear to Idaho Falls,” Dad
muttered, wiping grease on his patched overalls. “Now? Carbon quotas say stay put—or pay
credits we don’t got.”
School was no escape. Jake slouched into New Boise High by
7, dodging a drone that buzzed him for “excess walking”—five credits docked
from his family’s ration account before he even hit the door. The classroom smelled like damp concrete, his
desk wobbling on a leg he’d fixed with wire from a busted holoscreen. Those
screens blared “Equity Day” propaganda—UN slogans about fairness—but the soy
slop at lunch still leaked from his patched thermos, a relic Mom had kept
running since the power grid started flickering. He slumped into his seat, the journal from
Grandpa itching under his jacket, its leather warm against his ribs from last
night’s close call with the drone. He
couldn’t shake it—those words about elites, cages, and a spark he didn’t
understand yet.
Mia Cruz slid in next to him, her wiry frame barely filling
the chair, hacked goggles perched on her nose like a badge. She was 14, sharp as a tack, with a knack for
cracking systems the Net Monitors couldn’t touch. “You look like you swallowed a glitch,” she
said, twirling a spork she’d bent into a tiny wrench—her latest basement fix.
Jake slipped her the journal under the table, keeping it low as Ms. Kerr droned
about “global unity” up front. “Grandpa’s,”
he whispered, voice tight. “Says we’re losing something—freedom, maybe. Ever
hear of Sadducees?”
Mia’s eyes lit up—she loved a puzzle. “Old Jewish bigwigs,”
she said, voice low. “Ran the Temple back in Roman days, kissed boots to keep
power. What’s the hook?”
“Elites,” Jake said, glancing at the holoscreen flashing
“Global Unity—2030 and Beyond.” “Then and now—crushing us, he says. Like this.”
He tapped the journal, heart thumping.
Mia flipped it open, her fingers quick, and froze at the next bit. Grandpa’s scrawl jumped: “Kamala Harris won
2024—kicked off the New World Order. Suits took over—UN, WEF, the works. Cage snapped shut.”
Mia’s goggles slipped down her nose. “Harris? That’s
wild—fiction, right?” She grinned, but her eyes narrowed, like she wasn’t so
sure. Jake shrugged—it sounded like a story, sure, but it hit too close. The drones, the quotas, the gray—it felt real
enough to choke on. “My rig’s off-grid,”
Mia said, snapping the journal shut. “Basement, tonight. Monitors can’t sniff
us there—we’ll crack this open.”
Jake nodded, a jolt running through him. Maybe he wasn’t alone in this mess. The bell
buzzed—another drone patrol circled outside, red eyes glinting through the
fogged windows. Ms. Kerr barked, “Line
up—ration check!” Jake stuffed the journal deeper, his mind racing. Soy lines,
patched trucks, drones on his tail—Grandpa’s “cage” was here, now. But Mia’s grin, sharp and alive, was a crack
in it. Tonight, they’d dig. What had
Harris’s win—if it even happened—unleashed? And who were these suits pulling
strings?
The drone’s hum grew louder, hovering just past the school
gate. Jake’s gut twisted—close calls were piling up. But that spark Grandpa wrote about? It was
flickering, and he wasn’t letting it die.
To be continued...
Next Week: Jake and Mia crack into the journal—history’s got
secrets, and they’re about to spill. Don’t miss it.
No comments:
Post a Comment