Darkness Rising

“When was the first time you died?” If someone would’ve asked me that question even just a few hours ago, I would’ve looked at them like they were completely stupid. Obviously, since I was alive, I’d never died; logic would tell us that. But, with the way the world was screwed up now, that logic would be wrong – like just about everything else seems to be anymore!

Where can I start at? My first death? No. Perhaps I should go back just a bit further before that.

My name is…

.. well, it isn’t important.

I’m nobody special; just your average slacker student at one of the largest schools in the world! Several years back, the U.N. decided to get together and do the stuff that politicians do, and they meddled in the lives of the people. They wanted to foster some sort of intercountry awareness program, to help build cultural diversity and crap, and they decided the best way to do that was with the children. An agreement was signed and ratified by most of the nations in the U.N. and a special “Culturally Oriented World School” – which we not-so-affectionately referred to as “COW School” – was created.

It took them 30 years, and who knows how many billions (or even trillions or godzillions – how the heck should I know what it cost; I’m just a high school slacker!) of dollars, pounds, franks, euros, and yen to build. When they started, they choose a nice little unhabituated island somewhere between mainland Japan and Hawaii and built there. The school itself had several buildings to it, as well as dorms, a cafeteria, and even an amphitheater to it, and it was built to house up to 10,000 students and who knows how many teachers, supervisors, support staff, and all that other stuff. A town (they called it a culturally diverse shopping center, but let’s be honest: it was a town) was built not far from the school with all sorts of different shops, buildings, houses, and things. We called it “COW town” for short.

30 years for them to build the stinking place and about 30 seconds for my parents to decide that it was the school I needed to attend. I wasn’t a child of one of the rich and fancy. My parents weren’t politicians, nobles, or aristocrats. My name was drawn from a hat (or however they drew it) and I won some type of crappy lottery to be one of the first to attend! Yay me! I get to leave all my friends, my family, my LIFE behind – just to pack up and attend a school some place far out in the middle of nowhere, with people that I knew absolutely nothing about, just because some politicians thought it’d make me like the people from other countries more. I hate to tell them, but I don’t think it worked. They just made me annoyed, depressed, and miss my old life.

I suppose, if one was to look at it right, you could say those politicians stole my life from me. At least, that’s how I used to think – right up until my life really was stolen from me!