Project Integrate Series Boxed Set

by Campbell, Jamie

  They can’t stay on their planet, we should be more understanding.

  They’re just like us. Amery has always been nice to me.

  If anyone are to blame, it’s the government.

  Who are the Originals anyway?

  The comments were into the tens of thousands. And that was just from Lochie’s friend list. The Slam was restricted to only people from our school, I needed to see what everyone else was saying. I did a search for aliens on Facebook. There were millions of hits. Already alien support pages had been set up, attracting likes in the hundreds of thousands.

  “Do you have a Twitter account?” I asked. Lochie nodded and opened up a new page to log-in to his account. One look at the trending topics and there was nothing else anyone was talking about.

  I did a search on Twitter next, it was having trouble handling the request. When it finally did load, there were thousands of new tweets waiting to be shown.

  Scrolling through the list, it was difficult to find any negative comments. Those that were against us were dripping with hatred, it seemed people were either for or really against us.

  “This is insane,” I muttered. A little glimmer of hope was returning to my heart. Perhaps there was time to salvage the damage Krom and his army were doing.

  “You know what this means?” Lochie grinned.

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much. “It means a lot of people are bored and venting on social media.”

  He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. It means the project worked. Everyone is supporting the aliens because they all know one. You did it.”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to me. But, looking through the pictures of those tweeting and commenting, they were all young. They were around our age, our peers. Perhaps we had managed to convince people we were just like them. Perhaps we hadn’t failed as miserably as I had thought.

  But, on the other hand, just because people were talking about us, it didn’t stop the war going on right on our doorstep. Talk was one thing, we needed action.

  “I know how we’re going to stop the war,” I said, barely able to believe the plan forming in my mind. Thinking it through, it could work. It was a fine line between failure and success but it just might work.

  I frantically logged out of Lochie’s account and logged back in with my own. Lochie watched on in silence. I tweeted a message, making sure to use the hashtags of all the trending topics. I prayed someone would see it and catch on.

  Next, I did the same with Facebook. I created a page calling for help with Project Integrate, leaving instructions for anyone who saw it. I wasn’t asking for likes, I was asking for people to put their action where their words were.

  The simple message I posted was for people not to be afraid of us, that our armies would not harm anyone who didn’t hurt them first. I explained about Project Integrate and how it was established so humans would not have to suffer through the experience they had recently. Basically, I laid it out flat for the world to see, exactly what the Department should have done weeks ago.

  I ended the post with asking people not to be scared but band together to support us. The Government wasn’t going to win this war, but the people could.

  “What do you think?” I asked, conscious of Lochie poring over the words. I waited until he was done and watched his face for any signs of what he was thinking. “Well?”

  “It’s honest. And awesome. If people don’t believe that, they have rocks in their heads. They would be the kind of people who wouldn’t like it even if the project had made it the entire twenty-five years,” he finally answered.

  “Do you think anyone will see it?”

  “Only one way to find out.” He shrugged, pushing the post button. The words grayed out until they were official.

  I sat back, crossing my arms and sighing. The message was out there now, my message, the one I wanted everyone to know. It was my truth, whether anyone saw it or cared enough to read through everything.

  We were interrupted as Lochie’s mom knocked on the doorframe with her elbow while she juggled a tray of snacks. Lochie hurried over to help, bringing back a tray of cookies and two mugs of hot chocolate.

  “Just a little snack, I thought you both might be hungry,” she smiled. She had the exact same dimple in her cheek that Lochie did.

  “That’s really nice of you, thank you Mrs. Mercury.”

  Lochie grabbed a cookie and shoved it into his mouth. “Yeah, thanks Mom.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t hang around and embarrass you.” She patted Lochie on the head like he was still her little boy and left us again.

  I picked up a cookie, it was still warm from the oven and gooey in the middle. Lochie dipped his next one into his hot chocolate. “That’s gross.”

  A smile spread across his lips at my disgust. “Try it, you won’t scrunch your cute little face up like that again.” I hovered the cookie over my mug and he started laughing. “Come on, the world might be about to end, what are you waiting for?”

  I dipped it in briefly, not wanting the whole thing to crumble and fall to the bottom. I took a tentative bite, waiting to taste the awfulness I was expecting.

  “Well?” Lochie waited expectantly.

  I couldn’t stop the giggle rising up. “It’s actually pretty good.” He leant over and started tickling my ribs. I tried to swat him away, juggling my mug at the same time. “I’m going to drop it.”

  He stopped his relentless tickling until I could put the hot chocolate on the desk. He gave me a whole second to recover before starting again. I fought him off, breathing becoming an issue through the laughter.

  “Lochie… stop it… I can’t… breathe.”

  He finished by planting his lips on mine before releasing me completely. We both had to take a few deep breaths and wait for the beating of our hearts to slow down and recover before we could talk again.

  “You’re evil,” I teased.

  “You’re a weakling.”

  “You love a weakling, what does that say about you?” I poked my tongue out. Lochie held his hands up, threatening to start tickling me all over again. “No, don’t. I take it back.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, my head was filled with so many thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking. The bed was so close, Lochie was so perfect, it wouldn’t take much to be under the covers and naked.

  The war. I needed to focus on fixing the problem. If I could figure out how to stop the war, then we would have a lifetime to be together. My hormones and lust would have to wait.

  “Hey, check this out,” Lochie said, pointing at the screen. He still had my Facebook page up. In the fifteen minutes since I posted it, there were over a million likes and over two million people had viewed it.

  I opened up the comments, scrolling through. About one in ten were full of swearing and hatred, but the other nine were supportive. I couldn’t help but think we might be onto something.

  “Let’s check Twitter,” I said before flicking to the other page. I refreshed and watched all the new tweets posted after mine. I had been re-tweeted over five million times. “This is insane.”

  “It’s working.”

  “Talk about getting the message out.”

  I tweeted a link to my Facebook page and watched as it was favorited over and over again. It only took seconds for the hashtag to be a trending topic. The way things were happening so quickly made my head spin. I had managed to reach millions of people in the time it took to eat a cookie – all from Lochie’s bedroom.

  “Well, Leader Amery, what are you going to do now?” Lochie raised one eyebrow in question. Every time he did that all my sensible plans went out the window. I had to recover from the impact each time.

  “I think I want to lead a revolution.”

  He saluted me. “Lead on, Captain.”

  I laughed, leaning over to kiss him. If there was anyone I wanted on my side, it was Lochie. It meant so much to have him there with me, following me even when the situation was hopeless
. I never wanted him to be further than an arm’s reach away.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Amery, you have a visitor,” Mom called out from downstairs. I was still in my pajamas and definitely not ready for a visitor. Who was brave enough to disobey the government’s advice and go outside anyway? The sky had been filled all night with spaceships, only a fool would risk being out in the open. If it was Garrick, come to talk me around again, I was going to scream.

  Or cry.

  Probably cry.

  I threw on my dressing gown and patted down my bed hair. I stole a glance in the mirror, it would have to do. If someone wanted me in a presentable state, they shouldn’t have come over so early. It was only seven o’clock, not an appropriate time for calling unannounced.

  It was probably Lochie, Garrick wouldn’t knock. Turning up early without warning was totally something he would do. He wouldn’t even think about manners or what was appropriate. At least he already knew how grumpy I could be in the early morning. Not to mention the bed hair.

  I padded down the stairs to find my mom standing, holding the door slightly ajar. She was grinning like a fool. Whoever my visitor was obviously got her seal of approval.

  “Who is it?” I whispered as I reached her.

  “See for yourself.” She pulled open the door. To my awe shock, horror, and amazement, there wasn’t just one visitor. The entire lawn and half the street was covered in a sea of people. I recognized most of them from Portview High. There had to be the entire population of the school there.

  Ella was standing on the porch, I guessed the elected representative. “Good morning.”

  Lola stepped up onto the porch to stand beside her. “Morning, Sunshine.” She grinned, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

  “Hi. What are you all doing here?” I suddenly became conscious of still being in my jammies and pulled the dressing gown a little tighter. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted my whole school to see me.

  “We’re here to support you, we’re prepared to do whatever it takes to welcome your people to Earth. Ready for action, no more words,” Ella replied resolutely. “We want to stop the war.”

  “Yeah, we want to rock it,” Lola added.

  Tears stung my eyes as I was overcome with the sincerity in their voices. I couldn’t believe so many people had come there, willing to help aliens. “Why? You don’t even know the Truconians.”

  “We know you and if they’re all like you, we want them here.”

  “Are you sure? It’s not going to be easy.”

  Ella put her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to talk us out of it? Because if you are, it’s not going to work.”

  I rushed over and wrapped my arms around her, pulling Ella into a tight hug before moving onto Lola. “You are amazing, thank you.”

  When I let them go, Ella was still smiling. “We’re all going to the school and we need someone to tell us what we have to do. Are you in?”

  “Can I change first?” Everyone in earshot laughed.

  “I think we’ve got time for that. See you at school.”

  They turned and everyone followed suit. I watched them disappear down the street, a long line of bodies, until they went around the corner.

  I raced upstairs and jumped in the shower. I was dressed and munching on some toast, walking into the school gymnasium within twenty minutes. The entire time, my mind raced with the next stage of my plan. I had help now, I just had to figure out what to do with it.

  The bleachers were full, as was half the floor of the huge room. Someone had set up a microphone at the front where Principal Tobin usually addressed everyone. This time, there were no teachers in sight.

  “Thanks for coming everyone,” I said nervously. I spotted Lochie in the front row, giving me two thumbs up. Lola sat beside him, for once dressed in blue and not her usual black. Hopefully it wasn’t the first sign of the apocalypse.

  I relaxed my shoulders a little, I could do this. We had a shot, I could make it work. If only I could make everything stop shaking. “Our leaders, both alien and human, aren’t going to back down in their fight. They’re so stubborn that they won’t stop until one of them wins. Which means neither wins. We need to get the word out, there is a way to settle this. We can still be true to Project Integrate if we can convince the rest of the world to believe.”

  A round of applause rang out from my audience. To know they were listening to me and weren’t walking out was encouraging. More people started to join the group from the back doors. I couldn’t help but notice there were no adults amongst them, everyone was a teenager or at the most in their early twenties. I didn’t care though, it was our generation that was powerful enough to effect a change. We were the ones most adaptable to change, according to all the statistics, we could do this. We didn’t need age on our side, we had passion and determination. That trumped everything else in my opinion.

  “We’ve already conquered social media,” I continued. “It’s proven to be an incredible way to get the message out. Now I think it’s time we showed people what we mean.”

  Nobody interrupted as I explained my plan. The next social media forum on my radar was YouTube. Reading words on a screen was one thing, but if people could see that we were exactly like them, it might convince them even more.

  We spent the entire day taking videos and uploading them to the website. All the people I used to consider my friends and peers explained what we were like. They recounted memories of us growing up, the good times we had. I had to give them credit, they all attacked the task with enthusiasm and put their heart into their videos.

  By the time night was falling again, we had gone viral. Our videos and posts were topping all lists that existed online. The views were in their millions, the comments triple that. It was dizzying just watching the updates.

  At ten o’clock, I decided everyone had enough. I took my place at the podium and waited until I had everyone’s attention again. “I can’t thank you all enough for your efforts today. Now it’s up to everyone else to hear the message and get involved. Go home and sleep well. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Please be safe on the way home.”

  Ella came to help me put away the microphone. “It feels like we’re doing something big,” she commented. “Like we’re changing minds.”

  “I hope we are. We can only try, right?”

  “For what it’s worth, I never believed what was said on the news about you. I’m sorry I didn’t speak up sooner,” she said sincerely. I knew she wasn’t just telling me what I wanted to hear.

  I gave her a hug. “Don’t be sorry, what you’ve done today more than made up for it.”

  “It was a shock, you know, when they said you were an alien. I didn’t know what to think but then I remembered the time when you helped me with my homework because my dad was sick and I spent all night at the hospital. Nobody else understood, but you. After that, I knew you couldn’t be bad.”

  I remembered the day Ella talked about. She had turned up at school in such a state. She was crying about her homework but I knew what she was really upset about was her ill father. I knew it was my duty to help her as part of the project but that didn’t even occur to me at the time. She was upset, I could help her so I did. It was touching to know she still remembered such a little thing.

  “Thanks for believing in me,” I replied.

  She nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you then.” I watched her leave, wishing there could be more people like Ella in the world. If there was, perhaps Krom wouldn’t have had to call in the army. Not that I could blame humans for what was going on, not most of them anyway. The jury was still out on the humans at the Department.

  While I was innocently standing there, Lola launched herself at me. Hugging me tight as we moved in a circle. When she finally let me go, I had no idea what I had done to deserve such an enthusiastic hug. “What was that for?”

  She giggled, which infected me. Before I knew it we were both laughing like we were thirteen
years old again. “I just felt like it, that’s all. You were awesome today, you rocked it.”

  “I pretended I was you,” I teased. “Being on stage isn’t really my thing.”

  “Could have fooled me.” She gave me a playful punch on the arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow. When you single handedly stop the war, you and I have a date with some movies and ice cream. Are we clear?”

  “Absolutely,” I wholeheartedly agreed. It seemed like years since Lola and I had hung out and been normal. I missed her so much in that respect.

  Lola left, giving me a final wave before she stepped out the door.

  “You ready to go home?” Lochie asked. I bobbed my head, exhausted and so ready to curl up in a nice warm bed for the night.

  Lochie drove me home and I went to bed like a zombie. I didn’t even have time to miss Lochie lying beside me before I was dead to the world.

  I was plagued with nightmares all night. I watched the sleek silver spaceships collide with army jets over and over again. The sky rained with blood and debris. As much as I tried to run for cover, my feet never got me anywhere.

  Morning was a sweet relief, even if the nightmares could actually be true. I dressed and hurried downstairs, keen to go online and see the progress of our videos and posts.

  My parents were in the living room, eyes glued to the television set. I dreaded to know what they were watching so intently but I had to. Ignorance was a luxury I didn’t have any more.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, sitting next to Dad. He put his arm around me like he used to do when I was little. I didn’t fit as well as I used to.

  “Just a little revolution,” he grinned, nodding toward the screen. The news was on, as it was nearly twenty-four hours a day now. The words Breaking Newsflash was seriously getting overused lately.

  The female newsreader didn’t seem as serious as she normally was. “…and we cut now to scenes from London where teenagers and college students have taken over Trafalgar Square. Staging what can only be described as a peaceful protest, they are demanding the government act against the anti-alien organizations…”