Earth Story

By Rose Jones

Tessa Morgan wakes up day after day in a suspended cage. She tries repeatedly to escape, not knowing why or how she came to be there. Each time she attempts to leave, she is followed by a strange creature. When she is finally free, the two of them become friends and embark on a journey to find her father. In the process, they become unlikely heroes who must save all of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648013164

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Earth Story

Rose Jones

Copyright © 2020 Rose Jones

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64801-315-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64801-316-4 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Escape

Tessa Meets Ooslah

Command Orders

Flying with Ooslah

Acceptance

The Plan

The Stakeout

Planet MKR

The Nest

Shock

To Christy and Curtis, with love

Prologue

I, Tessa Morgan, am writing this log so that future generations will know what happened to us and to earth. You won’t be able to come back and change anything because earth no longer exists. But I want you to know the truth because it did not have to happen this way.

The Escape

Log 1

Date: AD 2042

Tessa Gordon

How did it all start? That is my quest to find out how this happened. First, I had to escape my captor or die trying because I refuse to die in this cage. I am telling these events as I remember them.

Breathe deep—out.

This time, I will get out of here, Tessa said, determined.

She had climbed to the top so many times before only to have the Ooslah grab her and throw her back down into her infernal cage room. She neared the top, peeped over the rim. All clear, she whispered.

In a wink, she pulled herself up onto her feet, crouched down, checked all directions, and ran. Her top speed was 200 mph as the crow flies, not bad for an older fully functional tenth-generation android, humanoid autobot. Its acronym TENGAHA was tattooed on her right back shoulder, along with a serial number. And when they say fully functional, they mean it! You thought the Terminator was badass; he would melt in her thermal hug, and Predator, oh, please, Tessa’s weapons far outmatched his, and the Transformers, wait until she goes supersonic on you, morphing into a cloaking bird of prey!

She was a genius, identified early in life, beautiful, cool, cunning, and her mind was like laser radar. She could sense danger, spot anomalies in patterns and sequences, and had a knack for tactical moves. For all her special instincts, Tessa had no idea that she was not completely human. Her mind fed images to her that seemed unreal. She would be alerted at the hint of someone who seemed out to do her harm. She did, however, believe that she was being watched and followed at all times. She wanted to know why. This made her a bit paranoid and eccentric about safety, and sometimes, she thought she was going crazy.

Tessa ran through the maze. She had been here before. I know that Ooslah is here somewhere, waiting to catch me.

As hard as she tried, Tessa could not remember the circumstances that caused her to be trapped in this odd place with no obvious way out or reason to be here. She did not know how long she had been here or exactly where here was. Tessa wondered if it was real or a dream. Her eyes darted left, right, up, down. She stopped, held her breath, and listened.

The maze was like a forest that started right outside her cage room. There were five deliberate paths. She had tried two of them already, and they had led her right back where she stood now. There was a fountain that bubbled endlessly and provided a safe drinking spot for many birds and other creatures she had seen in the forest. She retrieved her backpack from its hiding place, in a hole in the base of a tree behind the fountain. She started to move slowly, noiselessly, letting her senses tell her what was coming. The Ooslah had a distinct noise when it moved being part bird and part robot: click, click, sheerp; click, click, sheerp.

There you are, you half-breed, bot-headed cluck, cluck!

This time, Tessa had a plan. She had learned by accident that she could camouflage herself to anything she touched. She had been in the bathroom of her cage room and stood against the wall opposite the mirror and sink. She wished so hard to be gone that when she looked in the mirror, all she could see was the wall! She screamed, and the shock made her visible again. With a little effort, she learned to control this talent and vanished at will into her surroundings.

The Ooslah grew closer. It scanned the nearby trees and shrubs for Tessa’s heat signature. The wings could extend ten feet and held missiles; the legs collapsed into the body when airborne. The eyes became targeting lasers. Tessa believed it was being controlled remotely by someone. Click, click, sheerp. Click, click, sheerp. It stopped right in front of a large tree, probing it up and down. When satisfied that nothing was there, it moved on. Once the Ooslah was a safe distance away, Tessa’s eyes became visible through the bark as she opened them to watch him go.

"Whew! That