The First Generation: The First Generation, #1

By JR Rodama

Words matter because words become matter...

 

Ignacio House goes to math class and soccer practice every day, you know, like other average kids. Fixing bikes, watching movies, walking home after school with Isabel... Life is pretty normal in middle-of-nowhere Colorado. At least until Ignacio wakes from cryogenic suspension to discover that he's been asleep for a year, and terrible creatures have invaded Earth and enslaved the human race.

 

The "Unmentionables" drag whip-claws along the ground, race faster than velociraptors, and loom larger than giraffes. Their screeches are loud enough to crack your skull right open. And the worst part? We made them. The Unmentionables grew out of all the hateful, dark, and wicked words ever spoken by human beings. 

 

The situation is crazy loco, especially because five kids plucked from middle-of-nowhere towns around the world are humanity's only hope for survival. Good thing a giant alien octopus teaches them how to use their powers...

 

Yeah, that's right. These kids have been given the power to bring words to life. Mythical dragons, giants, ice breath, telepathy... They are the First Generation with the power to turn words into matter.

 

Humanity's worst words spawned horrible aliens that seek to destroy us. Is it too late for the First Generation to stop them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JR Rodama
• Release date: Mar 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393160588

Book preview

Part I – The Beginning

Chapter 1

Wake-up Call

LAST NIGHT, EVERYTHING was normal in little Cortez, Colorado. I was super tired after throwing horseshoes and having chicken fights in the pool with my friends at City Park. Papá and Mamaci called me their sweet hombre nene, kissed me goodnight, and shut my bedroom door behind them. My window was cracked open, and a warm, dusty breeze blew in the night air. It smelled like dry grass and wildflowers, like always. The wind rattled the wind chime Grandpop whittled when he was my age on the Ute rez.

The old German cuckoo clock on the wall tick tocked as I got into bed. It used to hang busted on Mr. Jenks’s front porch before I fixed it. Mr. Jenks was the oldest man in town at a hundred and two, and watched us kids walk by after school like he was a town sheriff in the Wild West. He’d heard that my favorite thing to do was fix old, busted things like bikes and lawnmowers, so he tossed the clock at me from his wheelchair one day: Give it a tune up, House, and it’s yours! May your next year on Earth be filled with projects and possibilities galore.

When I fell asleep, it was June tenth, my birthday. The next day, the Unmentionables invaded Earth.

Sorry, that may come as a shock to you. We’ve learned how to be direct with our words since the invasion. Words are crazy-powerful... I’ll start at the beginning, the way it was for me and the four other First Gens.

I fell asleep at home in Cortez, but woke up in The Nursery, an underground bunker under Cheyenne Mountain. I had a Sparktree growing out of my head...

Wait, lo siento, still too direct. Let me slow down for you...

First of all, if you’re reading this, that means there’s hope. Something’s gone right. When I woke up naked, ice-cold in a cryo-capsule, nothing was going right. I didn’t know it yet, but I would become part of the resistance. Even after all that’s happened, I think sometimes there’s no way we’ll win the war... Just don’t give up hope, okay? We’ll need you and your hope to join us one day.

Back to the capsule... It was freezing, and I couldn’t move a muscle. I came to on my back and stared at a digi-display projected on the capsule lid:

"Ignacio House – Miguel de Cervantes – 00:00:00:12"

...11... Ignacio House... wait, that’s me...

Thoughts moved woozily through my mind, like I was coming to after smashing into a tree on my bike.

...10... I can’t move... grahh!

...9... Quien es Miguel de... what?

A device inside the capsule activated and a needle connected to a vial filled with clear liquid started to move. It glided along a track and positioned itself next to my shoulder.

...8... Get that thing away from me!

It pierced my skin and dug into me.

...7... Ach! Wait, I don’t feel anything...

Warmth spread from my shoulder through my whole body. My heart began to flutter, and all of a sudden I could feel my fingers and toes.

...6...

...5... Oww! Now I feel it...

...4... Ach, my head feels like it’s in a vice...

...3... and my jaw hurts so bad...

I could just barely move my arm and raised my hand to scratch an itch on my cheek. I fumbled along a tendril running down my face...

...2... Ahh! Something’s attached to my face!

...1... Ahhh!

Whoah! I shouted and lurched upward as the capsule flung open with a fisssssst, my whole body feeling like it was on fire. Warm, stale air rushed in, like the inside of a car baked in the sun. And there was a musty smell in the air, too, like a wet dog was in that car.

My legs still wouldn’t move, and I could hardly see anything around me. Everything was so blurry and dark... All I could tell was that I was in a huge chamber.

My hand was still grabbing whatever it was that was running down my face. My fingers fumbled along it, and I realized that I could feel it feeling my fingers. I followed it to the top of my head. I grabbed onto a couple of its tendrils and jostled them back and forth, which didn’t help my headache. I watched a leaf float like a feather into my lap.

Ignacio House. Cryogenic cycle terminated. Stage-4 sprout complete.

A computer voice echoed from the capsule, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I fell to the ground and landed on one of the tendrils running along my jawbone. Ow! Some kind of warm fluid cushioned the blow; the whole floor was covered in a few inches of water. I scrambled to stand up. My legs and feet tingled as the feeling returned to them. I put them under me, super wobbly.

Then I realized I was totally naked! Oh, man, this is totally a dream! Now’s the part when I find out that I didn’t turn in my math homework to Mrs. Ridgemont, and the class laughs at me (even Isabel), and I turn around to leave, and I look down and see that I’m naked, and I get super embarrassed, and then I wake up...

Hrep... hmm... hrep... I heard something faint in the darkness that stopped my thoughts in their tracks. If I was dreaming, I wasn’t waking up. Hrep... D’arc a few weeks more... Tasmania next... hrep...

Hello? I called quietly into the darkness. I squinted hard and saw a tiny light glowing in the distance. I couldn’t tell how far off it was. Is anyone there?

Hrep! I heard a crash and then total silence. The tiny light went out.

Hello? Um, my name is Ignacio House... My voice echoed ominously in the chamber. And I want to wake up now...

Then I heard a splashing sound coming up fast, like a bunch of little kids patty-caking the water. Hrep, hrep, hrep, hrep, hrep, hrep, hrep... The splashing started to sound like a nest of river snakes, slithering closer across the watery floor. I started shaking, scared of what was coming at me and still really, really cold... I gotta wake up!

Hrep-sal-joon! Two huge eyes leapt at me from the darkness, and I blacked out.

Chapter 2

Hrep

Iwoke up on a stone table staring up at bright hospital lights. Wires ran up and down my body. Ay, okay, that makes sense , I thought. I must’ve hit my head at the park or something and went unconscious. Probably like when Isabel went for that header in the match against Durango Prep. She never saw that cleat comin’! She’s so cool... But, man, what a weird dream... I raised my hand to scratch a nagging itch under my left ear. I felt one of those tendrils protruding from my skull.

Ahh!! I lurched up again into the muggy air of the chamber, though now it was lit like the town mall. Bright white light covered everything. And the place was huge. A bunch of machines sat nearby. The chamber went on in all directions as far as the eye could see. No windows, no doors...

Hrep... I am of such gladness to see you seeing all that is around you, Ignacio House. Hrep... I jumped at a voice that came at me from all sides. It sounded like Kermit the Frog and a buzzing bumble bee had a kid. Buzzy the Frog... Hrep... But it hurts my eyes, the voice continued, so we must turn down these lights. Please step off me and onto the floor. The table under me started to... squirm.

Ahh!! I shouted and rolled onto the floor. I craned my head up and saw the table begin to morph. Its flat slab rippled and its four legs doubled. And it rose higher and higher into the air. And higher... and higher... Two horns shot up from the slab as it transformed, and then two orbs the size of melons seemed to shimmer into existence on top of them. Suddenly, I was looking at something like a giant octopus the size of a grizzly bear, standing upright on eight squid legs striped white and brown.

Ahh!! I was getting hoarse from all the screaming.

The creature flicked one of its tentacles toward the machines next to me, and the lights throughout the chamber dimmed to a low glow. I scrambled and splashed along the floor like a fish flopping on the deck of a boat, tendrils sticking out of my head, my arms and legs still super weak.

Then the creature spoke in its high-pitched, Buzzy-the-Frog voice: I, Hrep-sal-joon, Bygolan Emissary to Earth from Una-I, am of very much gladness to meet you, Ignacio House. It bowed its he—horns and eyes, and continued. It is most unfortunate that the circumstances of our meeting are not under better circumstances.

I found the strength to stand on my two wobbly legs. And I noticed that I wasn’t naked anymore. I was covered in a skintight bodysuit that felt like I was a character in some bad sci-fi movie from the nineties.

"What... is... going...