I Pledge Allegiance

There comes a time when one must ask if reality is, in fact, reality. But when asking that question, you must also ask if you really want to know the answer. Say you decide that you really do want to know if everything you already know is or isn’t real. Now, say someone told you…

It’s the year 10008 and things are entirely different than they were in our time.
The world is run by five governmental systems, North, South, East, and West. And then there’s America; except it isn’t called America anymore, just, the village. It’s about the size of a small island and only about 100 people live on it. The law has completely changed. Last names are decided by talent or craft, which means that you share the same last name as your mother and father until you are ten. If you are a man you keep your last name when you marry, if you are a woman your last name becomes the same as your husband’s when you marry. All is good. The economy has never been better, the school system is wonderful, and crime is nearly nonexistent. The trouble is none of it is real…

Prologue: The Lion


“Will! You need to come on! We have to leave soon.” Will DaringFlight shuddered; today was his naming, the day when he would receive the last name that would stay with him forever. He had been hoping that this day somehow wouldn’t come. He had no idea what the name would be. With his father it had been obvious; David DaringFlight performed stunts in air planes. With Will’s mother it had also been clear what her name would be, before she married David her name had been Maria SureThread. She was one of the best tailors in the village. But Will wasn’t particularly good or bad at anything, everyone knew who he was, but he wasn’t exactly popular. The only thing that set him apart from the other islanders was that he was so…different. He didn’t look like everyone else, not even his mother and father looked remotely similar. Will’s skin was very pale; he had blond hair and silvery blue eyes. And he talked differently than the other villagers… And he asked too many questions. He went slowly downstairs, silently praying that his last name wouldn’t be Asksalot or LooksWeird. His father was waiting at the bottom of the staircase. David DaringFlight was a tall man, he was also very muscular. Will sometimes thought that his father could have been a good builder, but he had never said so. David had olive skin and brown eyes. His hair was black. “Ah, finally; Are you ready?” he asked, ruffling his son’s hair. “Yes, Father.” said Will. He followed his father outside and to the barn, where the horses were waiting. Will’s horse was named Morningstar. It was a black horse whose mane was white. The other horse was named Rodeo. It was a brown stallion whose mane was black. There were no cars, as far as Will knew there never had been cars. All transportation was walking, running, or horseback riding. The streets were wide and the buildings were tall. People were still running about and buying things despite the fact that it wasn’t even dawn yet. Naming ceremonies had to take place early in the morning, the ones being named still had to go to school. As Will and his father approached the large brick Civil Services building, something dawned on Will. “Why isn’t Mother here?” he asked his father. “She had… something very important to do; no one is allowed to witness the naming ceremony anyway, son.” said Will’s father. They dismounted the horses and went inside. Will gasped in amazement, this was the most spectacular room he had ever been in; the floor was made of marble, complex designs decorated every inch of the walls, and there were paintings every few feet. There were mahogany tables with various plaques and trophies upon them, and the curtains were made of red velvet. Will, being 10, had an almost unbearable desire to touch everything. He finally remembered to breathe when his father gently shook him. He looked up, his father was grinning as if some enormously funny joke had just been told. “Will, you can day dream about this later, the president is waiting.” he gestured toward a big oak door with a golden handle. Will stared at him for a moment, and then registered what his father said and made his way to the door. He looked it up and down before entering the room beyond…



Will glanced around the room, it was very dark. There was nearly no furniture except for a chair in the exact center of a wooden and marble floor. A man strode into the room from some other entrance. Will knew that it was probably the president, but something told him that he should be very afraid of this man. “Hello, Will DaringFlight. Sit down.” said the man, nodding pointedly toward the chair. Will slowly walked to the chair. The president strolled slowly around him. The man had thick gray hair and cold, stormy eyes. “Your name is Legend. Remain here and try to withstand your trial.” The man left Will alone in the room. Will was stunned. That was it? He wondered what the president had meant by trial, exactly. And what kind of name was Legend? A light suddenly appeared in front of him, a small, glowing, orb. Will tried to grab it, but it floated just out of reach. Will stared at it curiously, as he looked; the orb began to glow brighter and brighter. Soon the whole room was filled with light. That was when it appeared, the lion. It was the biggest thing Will had ever seen. It was a cross between a wolf and a lion. Will was out of the chair and all the way across the room before he realized that it couldn’t possibly be real. He went back to have a closer look. As he reached out to touch the lion, pictures began to appear; A statue of a woman holding a torch, a banner with stripes and stars… and a bell. Will wondered what it meant. Suddenly a door in the back of the room opened and the president came back. Will inwardly wanted to choke him, the pictures had vanished and Will wanted them to come back. “You passed the test. Go.” said the president. Will hurriedly left the room. His father had been waiting outside. “So, what’s your new last name?” he asked. Will looked at him for a moment, wondering if he should tell his father about the lion and the pictures, he thought better of the idea. “Legend… My name is Legend.”

Chapter 1: Robin and Raina

Robin grinned as his father yelled at him about all the trouble he would be in with Jury when he came back. “It’s not funny Robin! Who knows what Jury will do to you this time?” Nathen looked at his son with the sternest look he could, which made Robin smirk evilly. “But this time it actually worked. Besides, I could take Jury with both arms tied behind my back!” Nathen decided that Robin was a bit over confident. Robin had white hair already even though he was only 10. His eyes were a strange violet color. He also wasn’t very strong, if anything, he was very small. But what he lacked in strength he made up for in pluck and wit, and sheer luckiness. Everyone joked that Robin was born holding a rabbit’s foot. Others said that his courage was simply foolishness. Nathen wished that Robin had turned out a bit more like his twin sister, Raina. She was two feet taller than Robin, and had the strength that he lacked plus the courage and wit that he did have. The only thing that she didn’t have was willingness to oppose Jury, the inspector. She was furious to the point of not speaking to Robin because that morning he had managed to get a message to the Terrathieves (People who lived above ground) “You couldn’t fight him if he was bound head and foot and stuck in a slab of concrete!” she jeered. Robin flinched. “Well at least now someone will finally help us.” he said defensively. “We didn’t need helping! Anyway, I hope he gives you a good-““That’s enough, you two!” yelled Nathen.


Chapter 2: Genesis

Will was in the principal’s office. He HATED the principal’s office. The receptionist was clicking around high heels and the noise was setting Will’s teeth on edge. His name was finally called, so he got up from the wooden chair beside the doorway and went in. “Was it really necessary to lie about your last name?” said the principal in that annoying ‘I’m better than you’ voice. “I didn’t lie, my last name really is Legend, you can ask the president if you don’t believe Me.” said Will. “Very well then I shall ask him, and in the mean time you will resume class.” said the principal.

The reason for Wills being in the principal’s office was that when Will had arrived at school, a large number of students had inquired as to what his last name was and he had told them that his last name was Legend, the reaction had been far from normal, everyone had gasped as though Will had uttered some awful profanity and then he had been sent to the principal’s office. He walked slowly back to class, wishing that he had gotten a different last name. He thought back to the lion and the strange images. Suddenly the word ‘Tippin’ came into his mind. A voice broke through his thoughts. “Will!” it was Alicia Swiftfoot, one of Will’s best friends. “Are you okay? The principal didn’t do anything too horrible to you, did he?” Will grinned; Alicia was always worried about him. “I’m fine.” “Do you know what ‘Tippin’ means?” Alicia looked at him as if he had gone mad. “Will, ‘Tippin’ isn’t a word.”

After school, Will went straight to the research center. He looked up the word ‘Tippin as many times as it took to overload the computer, then he went to another computer. The attendant asked him what he was looking for, when Will told her, she made him leave. That night at dinner…

“Dad, can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“That’s not funny.”
“What did you want to know?”
“What does ‘Tippin’ mean? I’ve asked several people, but no one seems to know.”
Will’s father looked at Will’s mother, then back at Will. He heaved a sigh. “Will. Sometimes… sometimes you have to ignore curiosity. Tippin is something that you do not need to know about.”
“Why?”
“I just told you that you don’t need to know.”
“But you didn’t tell me why I don’t need to know.”
“Go to your room.”
“Yes sir.”


The next morning, at school

“Will! I found out something about tippen!” Will jumped in surprise at Alicia’s voice. He looked up in time to see black haired, brown eyed Alicia running toward him. “Hi Alicia,” Will was ecstatic; he had thought that he was wrong about tippen; he thought that it was important, but was beginning to think that it didn’t exist. “What did you find out, and how? I couldn’t find anything.” Alicia stood panting for a moment; she had run a long way. As her name, Swiftfoot, suggested, she was a runner, so for her to be tired it must have been a long way. “I didn’t find out what exactly tippen is, but I did find out that it was something that was very important to a thing called the ‘Genesis’ project. Something about how the Island came into existence. It was also referred to as the ‘Nemesis retribution’ project.” Will stared in amazement; Alicia had recited the information as if she were a computer and had been programmed to do likewise. “But if it involved how the island got here, why would it use the words ‘nemeses and ‘retribution’? I thought that the founders built the island.”
Chapter 3: tippen or Tippen?


Everything got much worse during class; Professor Iver was teaching the history of the island, how the founders wanted to be a greater nation and had built the island so that they could be separate from the other nations. It was too much, Will raised his hand. “Yes Daring’… Legend?” the teacher was looking down his bespectacled nose at Will. Will winced. “What about the Genesis project? And what’s tippen? Why did the founders call building the island the ‘Nemesis Retribution’ project?” The teacher gave Will an odd look. “Genesis means ‘beginning’, and the builders were starting a new nation, so, of course, it would make sense for them to call it Genesis. As for ‘tippen’, there was no such thing. And I don’t know where you heard this nonsense about ‘Nemesis retribution’.” Will looked down and wondered why no one would tell him what was going on. Again, curiosity won over. “Sir, are you sure that you don’t know? My friend Alicia told me about ‘nemesis retribution’, which means that it has to be real, because she’s like a walking computer.” The professor fixed Will with a steely glare. “You have no idea.”

“This doesn’t make any sense! Nemesis means ‘enemy’. Retribution means ‘punishment’. If the founders built the island then there wouldn’t be any enemies to punish.” Will was pacing furiously in front of the civil services building. Alicia looked at him sympathetically. “Maybe… Maybe the founders had enemies in their original home and they built the island as a way to punish those enemies, think, Will, none of the history lessons say that the founders actually lived on the island after they built it. They might have sent their enemies here to punish them for… I don’t know… something.” Will shook his head. “No, if the island was a prison then we wouldn’t be here. Maybe there’s something in one of the record books.

Leah was getting annoyed; she was being forced to endure the unpleasant company of an unpleasant 10 year old. Sometimes she wondered why she had chosen the job of receptionist at the civil services building. In her opinion, there was nothing civil about having to listen to the nagging questions of an underling.

“Can I help you?” asked the receptionist. Will was surprised that he had to look up so much in order to see over the desk. “Yes ma’am. I need to find out about the founders.” The receptionist looked at him blankly. “Can I help you?” “Aaaahhh, never mind, I’ll find it myself.” Will walked sullenly away to the library section. As he opened the doors, the huge, claustrophobic, bookshelves loomed menacingly in front of him. Will searched for the ‘F’ shelf and found where the book on founder should be. But the book wasn’t there, only a hurriedly scrawled note. Will picked it up and read: ‘Tippen.’ Will frowned. “Tippen, tippen.” He noticed that where the book was supposed to be, there was a strange sort of dial which would have been hidden from sight if the book had been in place. He cautiously turned it. Much to his horror, the bookshelf began to sink beneath the floor, in its place; a bust of a serious looking man arose. Will looked at the name written on the plaque: ‘President Marcus Tippen’. “Tippen… It isn’t a thing, it’s a name!” He slowly traced the lettering with a trembling finger, only to jump back with a surprised yelp as the bust transformed into a sort of box and completely enveloped him. Will felt a strange jolting sensation and then got the feeling of traveling downward at an alarming speed.



Chapter 4: In Trouble Now

Robin was thrilled; he had successfully tricked Jury into placing a vital message in a place that it would be impossible to overlook, and now a terrathief was coming to the colony! He gave his sister a wicked grin and received a killer kick in the shin. “Let’s go and see the newcomer.”He said. “Whatever.”Raina said

Will staggered dizzily out of the box and into a virtual whirlwind; there were people everywhere, people that looked like Will. Some were inside strange things that had wheels on the underside. A man carrying a club came toward him. “Get off of the road! Do you want to get run over?” Will looked at him fearfully. “I… I…” A boy of around the same age as Will came running. “He’s with me; forgive his traffic skills sir, he’s a few letters short of a word, if you catch my meaning.” The man nodded several times. “It’s being underground like this, if those Terrathieves hadn’t come, fewer people would catch the madness. As you were.” Will watched the man slowly amble away. “What’s a Terrathief?” The boy glanced at him curiously. “You’re a terrathief.” He then grabbed Will’s hand and led him down a complex system of alleys and streets, talking the whole time. “Mr. Elm will explain everything. You know, originally there was only dirt down here, but Americans are imaginative, so we built a sort of city. It isn’t as good as America, but it’ll do until you rescue us. My name’s Robin, by the way. If anyone seems hostile and doesn’t want your help, it’s probably my sister, Raina, you can ignore her though, might want to consider leaving her down here…” Will wasn’t really paying attention to what Robin was saying; he was looking at the spectacular place that he was in. There was the statue he had seen during the naming ceremony! It was much larger than it had been when he had seen it though. Will stared in awe at the flashing lights above the streets. “What are those for?” he pointed to one of the lights. Robin looked at him as if he had gone mad. “They direct traffic.” Will looked at him blankly. “People wouldn’t know when it’s safe to drive without them.” another blank look. “What are those?” Will nodded toward the strange things with wheels. “Those are cars. Did you hit your head on the way down here?” Robin thought with dismay that he may have summoned a hero who had gone mad. “We’re at Elm’s house now, watch your step while we go up these stairs. Do you know what stairs are?” The door at the top of the steps opened… And there was Jury. Robin gave Will a nervous glance. “We’re in trouble now… run!” Robin tore off through the streets while Will stared at the hulking figure that stood before him. “I… I…" As it happened, they were in trouble. More than they would ever know.

Well, yes. I'm intentionally leaving out paragraphs. I know I need to work on it a little, but that chapter is one of the chapters just for introducing a charecter, not one that acyually helps the story. Most of them are longer. I know you're trying to help, but I did that on purpose.