Cornelius woke up to a heavy banging of a loud instrumental and flashing lights. He groaned and picked his arm off of the soft bed. Cornelius looked at the device on his pale wrist, which read 8:06. Cornelius then sighed and rolled off of his black bed onto the carpeted floor. His first sight was a grey door, beside white machine that was the size of a man, and was labeled “ZEB CHANGER 2.0”. He dragged himself to the machine and sat in it. Cornelius closed his eyes as the ZEB changed his clothes into his day clothes, which were dark jeans and a white Under Arumor shirt. Under Arumor, Cornelius knew, was a clothing company that had merged with another over the past century.

After he was changed, he pushed the shiny door open, which lit up with bizarre patterns. Cornelius went to the right, down the quiet halls to a door labeled “LOBBY”, and was greeted by the stench and noise of a great crowd. Apparently, breakfast was 30 minutes ago. He suddenly stopped and looked at his back, ensuring that his bag was there. He rubbed his eyes and walked to the cafeteria, which shared the wall with the hall from which Cornelius just emerged from. Cornelius navigated through the crowd and went to eat a late breakfast.


Cornelius sat in a butt-aching seat, watching his teacher pour chemicals into a graduated cylinder, made of a metal that humans called tungsten, but this tungsten was clear, like glass. A hand went up in the room, in front of Cornelius, but the teacher ignored it as he finished his demonstration. The contents in the tube started smoking, and died down.

“And this is how you make marikium, children,” the teacher said, looking up from his work, “Fellin? What do you want?”

Fellin glanced away from the teacher and said, “I forgot… what is that element that you poured again?”

The teacher sighed and said, “Ask someone else next time. It is adamantite, a recently discovered metal.”

“But Mr. Eriryus,” said Fellin, blinking his eyes, “doesn’t it require an extremely large amount of heat to melt?”

The people around Fellin, Cornelius noticed, were cradling their head in their arms, with half-closed eyes that classified them of being awake, although their minds were probably floating out of their ears and going to Earth or something for a vacation. Cornelius didn’t blame them. He would do that if he was a late sleeper, like he heard more than half of his classmates were, and if he finally realized it was May 12th.

“Well, Mr. Eleen,” said Mr. Eriryus, “If you were listening…”
Cornelius zoned out that second like the others (purely on accident), daydreaming about what it would be like when he would become a pilot for the United Nations Armed Robotic Legion, the UNARL. The UNARL contained the best pilots, especially the 2121st squadron, by far the best, despite the fact that the prodigies that made it so great were young for their job, in the higher teens. Maybe he would be-
Cornelius shot up to the sharp voice of his teacher, who sliced through his consciousness, saying “-so that is how humans make marikium. Remember where the adamantite to make it was first discovered! It may or may not be a bonus point!”
As if on cue, the PA system emitted a loud beep. Cornelius gathered his materials (which were actually just a small computer) bounced to where Fellin was, and tapped his shoulder.
Fellin, surprised, whirled around like a windmill and nearly missed Cornelius with a bag, and said, “Time for robotics! Were gonna have a double-class instead of just an hour!”
Cornelius laughed, throwing his head back, and said, “There is just a week until ‘trying out’ for the military!”
Fellin grinned wickedly and muttered, “This is the fun part about 80% gravity!”
Cornelius opened his mouth in question just before his arm was grabbed by Fellin, and Fellin whipped Cornelius around and flung him across the already emptied hall. Fellin then started laughing like a horse and called, “See you at the workshop!”

Cornelius woke to the sound of a sound that was like banging, except it almost killed his ears. He bolted up and a chunk of metal banged against his head. He heard the laughter of his roommate, although the sound was dim, due to the banging speakers. Cornelius groaned in pain and rolled off the bed onto Fellin’s feet, which stepped on his stomach.
“Get back on your bed, stupid!” roared Cornelius, eyes bulging, “This is my bed, my room!”
The loud noise suddenly cut off, and was replaced by Fellin’s laughter, and Fellin then said, “The only thing here belonging to you is that amp and your bed, the other noise-makers that you constructed were stolen from a storage room!” Fellin continued laughing.
Cornelius frowned in anger and peeled his back from the ground, grumbling, “It isn’t stolen if I actually made them.”
Fellin laughed again, “Yeah, with stolen materials! But today is your favorite day! It’s our military drafting day!”
Cornelius whipped up. “Today!?” he said in exclamation.
Fellin nodded, the laughter still lingering, “C’mon Corny, it’s our 10th school year!”
Cornelius then burst out of the door, Fellin trailing behind, and raced to the auditorium. A loud voice was already stating, “Ok, it is time for military drafting! We will do this in alphabetical order!”
Fellin and Cornelius sat down in some random chair. The list went down and then at E, the speaker called out, “Fellin Eleen!”

Fellin walked down the aisle, Cornelius watching, and the speaker looked at Fellin’s report.
Cornelius cheered Fellin on silently, thinking, Hmm… what is that speaker’s name again?
Then Cornelius noticed that the auditorium was filled up to a comfortable level, with maybe just 60% of it filled up. 60% of it, though, was a great number for the military, for this school that he lived in was the first school up in space (as of now, there are 9, four of which belong to the United Nations), and they made the auditorium nice and monstrously gigantically colossal.
Cornelius suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, and so he savagely whipped his head around, mouth open, ready to snarl at the attacker. But the person who owned the hand on his shoulder was… Fellin? Cornelius’s mind imploded in confusion, but then he came to a quick realization that he had zoned out once again.
“Were you paying attention?” said Fellin, grinning ridiculously widely, “I’m in the army now!”
Cornelius grinned too, and said, “I bet I’ll get in! If you did, I definitely will!”
Fellin did his weird “Really…” face and sat down behind Cornelius, but not before straightening out his brown hair.
Cornelius shoved his blond hair out of his eyes, grinned and said, “I’m gonna be called –“
“Cornelius Featen!”
“Darn it…” Cornelius said, standing up and going to the stage of the auditorium, but also gnawing his thumb nervously. Even though he said he would get in, he wasn’t exactly sure that he actually would.
The speaker person thingy said (or yelled, depends who you are), “According to these reports, you are good at writing, reading, art, imagining, and inventing. Do you have any other talents worth mentioning?”
“Um… I think I’m physically fit,” Cornelius said, or maybe muttered, “and I can make people sorry for themselves, and I’m quite sure that I can program many things.”
The speaker looked at him as if Cornelius was inferior, and Cornelius lost his hope and assumed it would be in a computer recycling bin with the true reports. Cornelius frowned and cracked his hands behind his back.
“Mr. Featen,” the speaker said, “These reports tell that you don’t participate in group activities and that you are incompatible at math and science classes, but you also lack respect for others.”
Cornelius’s eyes widened in surprise then his eyes darkened as he said, “I don’t do that! None of my reports or any graded assignments that I have never stated anything about disrespect and-“
“Don’t talk back, Mr. Featen,” the speaker said sternly, “these reports tell the truth, and therefore, because of both your reports and your impression upon me, I will not allow you to join the army.”
The words fell like boulders on Cornelius, and the world seemed darker. Cornelius said, “Can I have a copy of these reports?”
The speaker looked at him suspiciously and said, “They’re on your grade website.”
With that, Cornelius stormed away down to the computer lab, receiving many glances from the spectators within both the auditorium and the hallway. He shook the hair out of his eyes and sat down at a computer. At the computer, he pulled up the website where grades were posted and scanned his thumb with a black structure connected to the mouse. When he arrived at the report page, he cursed silently. The report was 17 pages long, identified in the text “Times New Roman” and the size was 8. He looked at the device on his wrist, which said 9:33 PM.
So Cornelius read into the night, with a surprisingly peaceful time, in which he was afraid that he would be caught and interrupted. Half of him was alert, but the other half was angry, for he had never seen the report before, and he knew he didn’t act that way in class.
Is this because of the time that I dropped a bunch of glass and laughed? Cornelius thought.
When he finished the absurd report, he thought of a plan to get into the military. He pulled up his folder with a little card he scanned, and opened up a program, which title read, “UC HCK PRGM”
Cornelius smiled and opened another program, which was titled almost the same, with the exception of “TRKNG” instead of “HCK”. Cornelius smirked and triggered the program. He clicked on the report, and the program started its work.
The screen came up with the symbols, “Mongolia, IP 293.134.1.314”.
“Mongolia?” muttered Cornelius under his breath, “Why would a Mongol care to meddle with my grades and reports?”
Cornelius frowned and triggered the second stage of the “UC TRKNG PRGM”. An email address up, reading, “icelos23M@mongolia.gov”.
A government official? thought Cornelius, its even stranger that the hacker came from the government!
So Cornelius typed in “Icelos” in the search engine called Google.
Cornelius’s eyes opened wide and his jaw shattered on the floor when a site came up saying, “President Icelos of Mongolia”.
Icelos, a president of a global superpower! It couldn’t be! Cornelius quickly clicked and triggered the first program, the “UC HCK PRGM”. The program did its work, and Cornelius prayed that he could get in, that he could break through a government’s firewall. Odds are that he wouldn’t. And the odds were teaming up against him, as it seemed. He tried to calculate the 3 possible scenarios and the probability. It was probably .8% that he would break in, 54% that he would fail, 30% is that he both will fail and get in monstrous trouble, and the rest is that he would fail and be attacked and shot the next week.
But, it turned out to be none of them, or maybe a mixture of them.
There was a little pop on his screen. A box came up which had the words, “GAINED ACCESS”. In Japanese (which Cornelius was adept in reading). His eyes once again popped open and his jaw crashed through the floating… space station? Anyway, he was extremely amazed and felt lucky. He went through the files on president Icelos’s computer, and got an idea.
First, he would delete the file. He pulled up the website and did that with ease.
Then he would use his program to kick Icelos off the government, off the presidency, and toss him in jail. He wrote a 10 minute report, pretending to be Icelos, and made Icelos’s confession of evil. He then wrote the final sentence, “I have confessed my sins and I do not wish to be the president of a crumbling nation.”
He smirked evilly and posted it on the government website.
Then the door to the lab opened. Cornelius quickly shut the website and started walking out, but instead of the doorway he walked into, it was a bunch of slant-eyed Mongols, three in all. Cornelius opened his mouth to speak, but two of the dark-clothed Mongols pulled out guns. Marikium bullets by the look at it. And a tungsten barrel. Also aimed at his stomach. He felt death gnawing at his stomach, and felt a prickle up his back. He thought of his parents, whom he had left for school, his teachers, some of whom he hated and some of whom he liked. And that some who he didn’t even care. He remembered when he exploded a harmless bomb and got suspended from his classes for a week. He remembered when he stole the supplies from storage room 121B.
And his reality focused once again, with one Mongol saying, “Tell me, what you do down here?”, in heavily accented voice.
Cornelius said, “I was working on a…”
“A what, huh?” sneered one of the Mongols, “A hacking system?”
“No!” Cornelius frantically said (or screamed), “I was working on a report!”
“You no doing that! You hacking and try kick off president Icelos!” said the Mongol in the middle.
“No, I-“
FWIK!
A horrid pain went through Cornelius’s leg, and he stumbled and fell.
FWIK!
Another life-thieving pain shot through his left arm.
“You no do that! We send you to jail!” yelled one Mongol, the one without a gun, “I know you did that! I know that you tried hack!”
The Mongol who was shooting him collapsed in a heap, but Cornelius was too much in pain to think or wonder. The two others whipped around, and the other armed one collapsed on the ground.

When Cornelius Featen woke up, the speaker he saw the day before- well, the day when he was last awake, because he guessed that he probably would be… well, anyway the speaker that he met the last time he was awake was standing above a white bed. Obviously in the hospital wing, if anyone didn’t guess.
“Mr. Featen, I was mistaken about your report. I’m sorry, but that is no excuse to hack a government’s website and even hack a president’s website, friend or enemy!”
Cornelius’s mouth open to defend himself but he was interrupted by the speaker saying, “I’m meaning to let you in the army, but you are disabled. Your left leg doesn’t work, and before we let you, you are going to fix the damage that you made.”
So Cornelius did all he could to restore Icelos as president of Mongolia by hacking. Again. And the speaker supervised him the whole time.
“Cornelius, you are truly a prodigy. I will make you the mechanic of a squadron. Choose one.”
Cornelius nearly cut the speaker off by saying, “2121st!”
The speaker smiled and said, “Okay. Sure. You may or may not fit there, but I understand why you chose it.”
Cornelius grinned, but then the speaker said, “But, you have offended a Mongolian dictator. You may know that the Mongols are territory-hungry. If you give them a reason to hate us, we, by tradition, will toss you in confinement.”
“But-“
“No buts. You are going to jail, but while you are in there, think up some plans for structures and other things for the army to use.” The speaker said sternly.
“You told me that I could join the army!” Cornelius said frantically.
“I did,” the speaker said, “but after your 1-year confinement.”
Cornelius glared at the speaker, saying, “Why? I fixed the damage!”
The speaker said, “And so you did. But does Mongolia care? Do you think Icelos cares? He’ll probably tell them to attack us.”
“Why, though?” Cornelius questioned, “Why would Icelos care to break my grade and my future?”
“Icelos likes power. He probably wants the best in his army. So he fails you in the UN schools and invites you to his army. Isn’t that smart?” the speaker said, pushing his glasses up his nose, “And if he fails, there is a chance you would do something radical and help him declare war against you. That is how dictators and other honor-less leaders think.”
Cornelius sighed and looked down, “Thanks for saving me though.”
The speaker smiled and said, “I didn’t save you. Your friend Fellin did and you were lucky that he did. You could’ve lost a lot more than your leg. Anyway, my name is John McDopple. You can call me Colonel McDopple, although that sounds strange.” McDopple grinned, and said, “I’ll check your jail every once and a while.”
“Wait a sec-“
“Cornelius Featen, try not to be as ambitious as you just were. You may survive for more than 3 years, unlike most people do in the army.”
The colonel stood and walked away, and Cornelius swore and muttered, “I just hate this. I get in trouble because I’m good at things.”
And so Cornelius Featen spent his next year in jail.