I wake up to the sounds of bombs crashing, mothers and children screaming, buildings falling. The smell of death fills the air, and sirens pierce my wistful dreams. I look out the window, and at first the dust of destruction blocks my view of anything, but as it settles I see that the ground around me has been leveled. I see mothers holding their babies tight in their arms, crying, covered in dirt and debris. I shed a tear and say a prayer for the fathers that have been lost, and remember my own father away on the front lines. I remember what set it all on edge, the secrets that brought the war to home.

My father that had always said that there are secrets and telling that we don’t know of, and he would find them. He went on a journey, a quest, a search for answers. He found what he wanted, but it came with a price. Knowledge is power, he said, and that was what They didn’t want. Civilians must not have the power. They came to our home, my home, my childhood, and broke down the door. They told my father to follow them, but it was too late. The Knowledge had been spread, and the civilian militia had formed. The militia was ill equipped, but they would give their all to stop the withholding of Knowledge. The militia waited outside of our house with their feeble weapons prepared, and waited.

They came out of my home, and they saw our militia. They had come unarmed, and didn’t have a way to remove the militia, so they went to the home base and sent out a red alert to all outposts. My father told them, he said They couldn’t stop us. But They had other plans. My father was to be tortured until he would do their will, but he wouldn’t break. But what nobody could have seen coming was the Knowledge still hidden by Them. We thought my father had found all, but the part he missed would affect him terribly. He would be controlled by them, and he couldn’t stop them. A machine, we learned, could take the ‘you’ out of you, and leave room for refilling. The militia spies chose to call it the brain washer. It was a vicious machine, and it controlled my father to do horrible things. However, I saw when he talked a piece, just a sliver, of my father as he had been and knew that he was fighting on the inside. In the months that followed, much destruction and ruin came to our small neighborhood, and the world took notice. Soon our small militia was filled with past heroes of war and men who were willing to make the great sacrifice all for the sake of Knowledge.

Now our world is filled with death and destruction; there is no happiness but what you make for yourself. I walk out of my room in the shabby barracks and head out to tend to the wounded. I will survive, and I will help others survive as well. By the end, there will be no more war, there will be no one left to fight. And when all that we know is taken from us, we will fight each other and ourselves, destroying our minds and reliving the nightmares.