Joanne Beckford, “The Destruction of Gioia”

THE DESTRUCTION OF GIOIA

Joanne Beckford

In the middle of the galaxy, there is a planet, a planet nobody has ever heard of, where the people there live differently: Planet Gioia. There are lots of inventions, beautiful rivers and streams, with beautiful plants everywhere, some created, some real. There are even inventions that can do everyday work, like VRS-22s for transportation and robots doing everyday’s work. Some would say this place is like Earth because of similar technology and inventions that are on this planet. But the real attraction were the cities: places with brand new technology. One of the many people who lived in this country was Natalia, a very imperfect, awkward girl. She wasn’t really good at school, but she liked to look at the bright side of things and always came up with a different way to solve ideas. She had never had the chance to prove herself to everyone else because everyone seemed to believe that in order to be good, you need to be good with technology. She felt that everyone around her was the same, including her friend Hannah, who was creative, smart, kind, and very supportive of Natalia and her ideas, despite how others saw her. She was mostly seen as the outcast of the community. While everyone else was the same. But no one is perfect. Not even this planet, even if it looks perfect on the outside. And pretty soon, lots of trouble soon started to unfold. Natalia woke up as early as usual. She made sure everything was running as it should: the robots were doing their everyday work, the plants were watered and organized perfectly, the house was running smoothly. Pretty soon the sun was out and

the town was busy. Nat went to check up on her inventions. Her new robot (which she called Nova) still needed a few wires and some batteries. She also needed to remember the formulas for her science work. She pulled out a sheet of paper that looked like instructions but it was filled with lots of scientific information and lab experiments. “Maybe you should take a break and come eat.” Nat looked up and saw her mother at the doorway. “I know, Mom. I just wanna finish making this before I go to the library,” she lifted the robot to make it stand on its own. “But nothing’s working. The pieces keep falling out, and I can’t remember any of the steps to make this properly.” Her mother came over to where she was sitting. “I think you’re overthinking this.” She took the wires and the leftover pieces and put them together. “It’s okay not to know everything when it comes to these things. Don’t overdo it.” She put the pieces together and then the robot started to turn on. “I know, Mom. And thanks for fixing Nova for me.” “How about tomorrow, we go over some of your chemistry notes? But right now, take a break and come eat.” Nat was working in the library. It was a very wide room with massive bookshelves and huge windows. In the back, there were beanbags, hammocks, and desks with computers. There was also a lot of space to play around with technology pieces with calm music playing in the background. “Why are you even making this robot?” said Luna, who was looking outside at the new VR-6 (an invention that can water plants). “Because I want to create something that can help with anything, like homework or something useful. Who knows? Maybe I can even sell this in the new Technology and Inventions store.” Nat said this without looking up from her wires.

“Well, have you guys heard the news about the aliens? And how they can probably shapeshift too, which makes it harder to find them? So far, they’ve started taking things in the city, and their goal is to take over the entire planet, if that’s even possible. But for now, how’s your robot going?” While Hannah, Luna, and Nat started to talk about how to improve Nova, Leo came in and heard the radio make glitching noises. Suddenly the radio switched to a news broadcast. “Guys be quiet. There’s something on the radio.” “We interrupt this program to bring terrible news. There are unknown people damaging properties and leaving messages behind. The most current message was ‘You all will pay’ that was left on the side of the broken glass in the Medicine and Cures department. No one knows who these invaders are just yet, but our message to you is to stay safe and hide your technology before another one gets stolen. There are currently investigations going on right now as we speak” The radio started to glitch and then switched to its regular music. Hannah stood up at last. “That was a lot.” “Yeah, it was. I gotta go. It’s starting to get late.” But Nat stayed seated. “What if we can stop this somehow?” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Leo said in a doubtful tone. “You can’t possibly stop these people.” “Why not?” “Because they can shapeshift,” he replied as he reached for his bag and his folders. “Even if you could, you won’t know who to look for because they could be anybody.” After Leo, Hannah and Luna all made their way outside the studying room, and Nat stayed behind, cleaning up her robot pieces. She also thought about the Invaders on the news, and if she could do something about it, even if Leo told her not to. She’d heard it all before: “Nia just stay out of this,” “It’s okay let someone else handle it,” ‘I know you want to help, but maybe you

should just step aside.” She thought this was the time she could actually prove them wrong, prove everyone wrong. She would find out who’s doing this. She would find out the reason for these attacks. Even if it took a while, she would do whatever she could to help.

* * * * * By the next morning, half of the buildings in the City were either destroyed or had missing technology. The amount of crimes that were happening were growing like a weed, day by day. This worried Nat. She’d heard about nearby buildings with broken windows and lots of stealing. She’d also seen witnesses on the news that had been robbed and seen the invaders “They were in these weird spaceships and they stole all of our robots and wires.” “They had these long cloaks on. I wasn’t able to see their faces, but there were a bunch of them, and they blew up some nearby buildings that killed a few people.” “They were almost as tall as a tree.” “You ok?” Nat’s mother, Amanda, was sitting next to her, helping her with her notes. Nat looked away from the TV that was playing, put her head up, and looked at her mother. “Yeah. I’m just a little tired.” “Hey.” Her mother organized some papers and looked at Nat. “I know you’re worried about everything that’s on the news. But you have nothing to worry about. I’m sure they’ll put a stop to this somehow. Just get your notes so we can get your work over with.” After her mother said this, she went to fetch her notes. “Nat,” Her mother was calling her down the hallway. As she walked down the hall, suddenly she felt a strong force sucking

her into the bathroom. The door soon closed behind her. She looked behind her and saw Amanda, looking cautiously at her. “Don’t go. I heard it, too.” “What? Mom? Wait, who was that?” “Nat. Are you back yet?” The voice was starting to get louder. “Look I don’t know who that is.” Nat’s mother, Amanda, was starting to pace around the bathroom. “But that’s not me. When you left, I went to get something from my office, and then I saw someone sitting at your desk. Stay here. Do not leave this bathroom.” “But what about you? Why are you leaving? Mom what is going on—” The unknown voice soon started thrashing and destroying anything in sight. Nat tried to look for something to break the door open, but her mother was two steps ahead by locking the door on her way out. BANG. Amanda was thrown into the whiteboard on the wall by the unknown figure. Nat broke the door open by picking the lock, and ran over to help Amanda. “You ok, mom?” Amanda could barely move. She turned her head to try to see Nat clearly. “Don’t let them steal any resources from here. And stay safe.” “Mom, it’s ok. You can still get up.” “No, Nat I’ll be fine.” She handed her a baseball bat from behind the dresser, and a small bottle that fell off the dresser. “Use this to kill the alien. I’m not so sure if it actually works, but you can still try.” “Mom—” “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be ok. And so will you.” “But—”

“Stay safe. You can do this. I know you can.” Amanda was starting to feel tired. A few seconds later, she started to feel lightheaded. She slowly fell to the floor, lying lifelessly next to Nat, with her eyes closed. “Ok.” The unknown figure finally found her, laying next to Amanda. “I don’t have time for this.” Nat stood up with the bottle and baseball bat still in her hand. “Who are you?” “That’s not important. I’m gonna need you to tell me where your inventions, resources, whatever useful items you have are.” “Yea that’s not happening anytime soon.” She said this with anger in her voice. “Kid.” The voice was starting to get impatient. “Don’t make me do this. I’m gonna give you one last chance to answer—” But Nat didn’t wait to hear. She knocked the figure out with the baseball bat, but when she went to make a run for it, the figure kicked her ankles, causing her to land flat on her face. Before she could even react, the figure had a space gun pointed towards her. “I’m not gonna repeat myself. Where are the inventions?” Nat slowly started to get up. “I don’t know.” The figure dropped the space gun next to Amanda’s still body. “Fine then. I’ll just get it myself.” But Nat started to get up and try to chase them all throughout the house but they were too fast; they were able to take most of the resources that were in the living room before escaping through the window. But Nat didn’t stop there, she went to chase them down the street. She then saw lots of alien shapeshifters damaging nearby buildings and people were also fighting and chasing after them. “Nat!” She heard a similar voice and saw Hannah behind her

while Luna was dealing with an alien shapeshifter. “Hannah, it’s really nice to see you, but right now I gotta take care of something.” But when she turned around to face the figure, they were gone. “Great. Now I lost him.” “Why didn’t you just use this?” Hannah took the bottle from Nat’s pocket and looked at it closely. “It looks like something that could’ve stopped the weird alien person.” “I didn’t know.” Nat said, taking the bottle from Hannah. “I just thought Mom gave this to me for something else.” “C’mon, we can still find them.” Luna said impatiently. “You’re not the only one they stole resources from just now. That’s why there’s so many people out here.” Nat turned around to try to scan for the intruder who stole her technology. A few minutes later, she spotted someone and chased after them. She finally got up to where they were, but when she tried to take the bag full of resources, she heard a space rocket behind her. “Go ahead, I dare you.” Nat turned around and saw a rocket pointed towards her by another alien. Behind them, Hannah was being held back by one of the aliens, while Luna was being held back by none. She then felt someone grabbing her from behind, forcing her to stay still. Hannah tried to break free, but the figure was too strong. “Luna.” Hannah tried to look over to Luna and whisper to her. “Luna help. Do something.” But instead of helping, she looked at the alien holding Nat down. “Take them inside the spaceship. And don’t let them out unless they can help.” While Hannah and Nat looked at Luna in shock while being dragged away, Luna left with the rest of the remaining alien figures

“We’re not done with this planet yet. There’s still more resources here. Take them all.”

* * * * * Nat soon woke up and found herself tied up against the wall next to Hannah. When she looked around, she could see that she was trapped in a cell with bright purple walls, bags full of iron, batteries, and pieces of robots. On the other side of the room, was a gray cell with the paint still peeling off. Nat tried to wake up Hannah, but was too far away to reach her. She soon had to half-yell her name for her to wake up. Nat and Hannah started to look around the room for anything to help them escape. After a few minutes of searching, Hannah noticed something similar in one of the bags. “Nat, look. It’s your robot.” “Great .We’ll use that to escape. But how are we going to get over there?” “You don’t need to.” Luna unlocked the door and came inside the room, took Nova and threw her all the way down the hall. “Why are you doing this?” Hannah asked. “Why would you try to destroy this planet?” “Because of what this planet did to mine. You know, your planet and Planet Vendetta, in case you didn’t know, our planets used to be allies. Until your stupid planet decided to betray us. You stole our resources and just left us with nothing. So we’re here to take back what’s ours. And no, we won’t stop.” She grabbed a bag full of weapons. “So if you plan to stand in the way of that, we’ll stop you before you even get to leave this ship.” “That kinda makes sense,” said Nat. “But what does that have to do with destroying this planet?” “Well, we don’t know where the technology is, so if we have to destroy every bit of this planet, then so be it.”

But before she could leave, she felt something hit her hard in the back of her head. She fell to the floor and there was Leo standing behind her. “That was a lot.” “How did you get here?” “I snuck onto the side of this ship. Come on, we don’t have much time.” * * * * * There was a lot of smoke outside. Hannah went to make more liquid to kill enough aliens, Leo worked on shutting the ship and drones attack down, and Nat worked on protecting as many resources as possible and fighting off the aliens. While fighting, she saw Luna blowing up nearby banks and departments. She immediately started chasing after her. Luna and Nat kept fighting, until one of the drones Leo shut down, collapsed. Before it hit the ground, Nat finally pushed Luna off of her and moved out the way. The drone fell on top of Luna and blew everything within distance. But Nat couldn’t stay and mourn. She didn’t have time. So she went to find Hannah and Leo and finish this once and for all. * * * * * In the end, Hannah made more alien acid (acid that can hurt aliens). Leo successfully shut down the entire spaceships and drones, but also got badly injured in the process. Luna and all the other aliens were all dead and were sent back to their planets. Nat fought for her planet as best as she could. But there was one last thing she needed to do. She went to the hospital of Gioia. There she found Hannah. “Hey Hannah. What brings you here?” “Well I’m just here to visit some of my family and Leo. Also there’s someone I want to show you.” She followed Hannah to a small room, where Amanda was lying

down, still recovering from her injuries. “Mom—” “Shh,” The nurse said. “She’s still sleeping. You can stay for a little, but you have to be quiet.” When the nurse left the room Amanda leaned over to Nat and whispered, “Did it work? The bottle I gave you?” “Yeah. Well, I needed some help. But we did it.” Anamda smiled. “I knew you could do it.”

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