Celina Torruella, “How To Get Rid of Z Nation”

HOW TO GET RID OF Z NATION

Celina Torruella

Sam and robot A1 were inseparable. They grew up together and never spent a day apart. Sam was a human. She enjoyed life, always taking risks and living it to the fullest. Robot A1 was Sam’s best friend but was also a robot. Robots and humans shared the world. Everyone was living normally and everything was peaceful. But there’s no such thing as a perfect world with robots and humans. There is a group of robots that are called Z Nation. Z Nation is led by robot Z26, a very horrible robot, and is a group of robots who have absolutely no emotions. Back when robots and humans first started sharing a world together, there was a genetic mutation causing robots to be able to have emotions, but one type of robot did not get it. That clearly shows that it is all of the Z Nation who didn’t get the genetic mutation. Z Nation was always a worry, but for some reason, for all these years, they just let everyone be at peace with them living in their own place. But, of course, with that there are rules. Rule number one, you are to never ever cross to their area. If you take a long tunnel full of do-not-enter signs: you will end up seeing a rusty and dull entrance with a huge Z sign. Rule number two: if you ever encounter a Z robot, do not communicate with them. Z Nation has picked up a skill where they can impersonate a robot with feelings. They will trick you into thinking they’re a good robot with emotions and end up in the unknown. Rule number three: just stay away. But Sam was never one to follow the rules, especially if it was an adventure. One day while Sam and A1 were exploring in the forest, they heard a loud noise. Next thing you know they are flying from the pressure. A1 called out for Sam but then everything turned black. Waking up from being passed out, Sam blocked the light from her sensitive eyes. Seeing glares of a whole bunch of

robots walking around, she turned to see A1 tied up. Instantly getting up to try to save him, she notices they’re in Z Nation! Sam quickly ran to A1 without any hesitation. Sam noticed that they were dragging more people in and all of them were asleep. A1 started to wake up and helped Sam out with untying him. Sam was scared yet stoked for actually seeing the inside of the Nation. “Sam, what do we do? We have to get out, but there’s so many robots,” A1 said. “A1, don’t be mad and you know I love you, but I need to know what they’re doing here, and why they exploded the forest,” Sam responded. “No, no, that’s stupid. We have to get out. You know that once you’re in here people never make it back out,” A1 said, worried. “Fine. Just one peek and then we can find an escape.” A1 rolled his robot eyes and quietly followed her. As Sam and A1 started walking down the hallway without the robots noticing, they noticed they were in a hospital-looking building. When you looked outside, you could see it was the only building taken care of. Everything else looks just rusty and abandoned. “Why is this one huge, hidden building so well taken care of yet everything else is a war zone?” Sam whispered to A1 as they looked out the window. “I’m wondering the same thing. Oh snap, guards. Run, run,” A1 said, scared. Z robots noticed Sam and A1 and started chasing them. Sam and A1 started running until they found a room and hid in it. Once Sam closed the door she sighed, deeply relieved. But once she opened her eyes she saw A1 standing there frozen. Sam looked at what he saw. She nearly screamed. They were robot costumes. “What. The. Hell,” Sam said. “Sam, why are there fake robot costumes?” A1 said, still trying

to process. Suddenly they heard a noise, making them break out of their trance and hide. They both ran in between the racks of costumes and hid as they heard footsteps walking into the room. “Shhh.” A1 put a finger over Sam’s mouth when she was about to say something. He then pointed to his ear to signal that he is trying to listen to them. A1 being a robot means his programs are way more improved than humans. “Boss is making lots of orders right now. We never had runaways before. He wants to know who messed up sedating the human,” the first voice said. “Well, then they will die. But for now we need to put these on and look for that human and robot,” the second voice said. Sam decided to try to take a peek, but A1 grabbed her hand. “No, don’t. We’ll get caught,” he said. “Don’t worry, I got it,” Sam said as she continued to move a costume out the way. Sam gasps loudly. Frightened, she backs up fast, causing her to hit the rack behind her. “You heard that?” said the first voice. Quickly the second robot ran to check, pushing the rack out the way. “Found them,” the second voice said, quickly making the first robot hit the alert button. “SAM, IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS?” A1 shouts, shocked out of his mind. “Aliens,” is all Sam manages to say very quietly as she stares, amazed. Before they can move, the aliens take Sam and A1 and drag them to a huge room that looks like a place where kings and queens sit on their throne and speak to their people. “Sir, we found the prisoners,” says the alien. “Good job,” is all they hear before two loud bullets shoot the two aliens making them explode green goo everywhere. “They needed to die. They have been seen in their true form,” Z26, Z Nation’s leader, says before getting up and slowly circling Sam and A1.

“What the hell are you people? What was with those costumes? WHY were they aliens?!” “Sam, shut up, this is not the time,”A1 says, and kicks her leg on the low. “Lots of questions, I see,” Z26 said, pausing his sentence. “Long ago when humans and robots decided to unite together, one of our own decided one day to just jump onto Earth, of course not knowing it was Earth. He thought it was just a ball. He was going to bring a ball to play with his friends. Us living miles and miles away, Earth looked tinier than it was. He said hold on, I’m going on a mission, and jumped from our planet to Earth. We can jump very far, if you are confused. Anyways, when he jumped, he ended up landing right here in New York. “Us aliens used to have all the emotions in the world, but him landing on Earth created a glitch in all aliens causing them to pass out for one year and wake up emotionless. When the alien who was on Earth finally woke up, he saw you humans and robots and the world you were living in and decided to want to stay and be friends. Since he was on Earth, he was the only alien left with emotions. When he jumped back to our planet, excited to tell everyone, he saw it was dead. Everyone was so emotionless and he didn’t understand why everyone was being so cruel—his friends, his family, everyone. “After five years of him doing research, he finally figured out what happened. There was a secret letter from an alien from way back then who discovered to never touch Earth, or our people will get hurt. The alien instantly blamed Earth for what they had done. He started jumping back and forth from Earth to our planet to figure out how to get revenge and take over. Finally, he figured out how to morph us into robot costumes and pretend to be one of you. His name was Bob Ronald Trillion, my great-great-grandfather going way back. Smart man, isn’t he? Now we finally have all the information we need to take over. We will kill all the robots and turn the humans into emotionless creatures, as you guys did us. All these years and research and now I will complete what my grandfather started,” Z26 finished.

“Damn, you’re telling me all that happened here on Earth? Is all of this real? Alien planet, aliens, a freaking alien named Bob, a ball, really?¨ Sam says trying to hold in her laugh. A1, not being able to hold it in, begins bursting out laughing, causing Sam to crack up on the floor. “Aw man, dude, that’s hilarious,” A1 says, hysterically laughing. As Sam and A1 are rolling with laughter on the floor, Sam suddenly stops and says, “Wait, so what do I call you? Are you still Z26?” Staring at them, Z26 takes a seat in his throne and says, “My real name is Donald Barbet.” Sam and A1 burst into laughter again as Donald (Z26) tells the guards to take them away. As they are being dragged out, you hear A1’s fading voice say, “A ball? Seriously?” with laughter in his voice as Sam cracks up. Sam and A1 end up in a prison cell together that’s under the building they were in. “Okay seriously though, we need to tell the world what’s going on. How do we get out of here?” A1 asks Sam, getting kind of concerned. “Do you think he was serious about taking over the world and finding a way to do what he said?” Sam says. “Yeah, they’re serious every second of their life, Sam,” A1 says to Sam like shes dumb. “Man, I really don’t want you to die, and I’m trying to have my emotions. I can’t be unfunny for the rest of my life.” It seems like Sam is thinking really hard. “Idea,” Sam quickly says, then starts looking around the cell fast. “Are you going to tell me?” A1 says getting up from sitting, very confused. “If aliens have jumping power, what if robots also have powers? Right here,” Sam says, putting her hand on the middle of the wall. “Outside is right here. We just have to find a way to get out.” “Well, how am I supposed to know what my power is? What if I

don’t even have one? This is dumb,” A1 says, shaking his head. “Think about it,” Sam says. “Why is it that they need to kill robots in order to carry on their plan? Because you guys must be a danger to them or have something that can defeat them.” “Get me angry,” A1 says, getting in a ready stance. An hour goes by and absolutely nothing happens. When they finally sit down and give up, an alien in its robot disguise comes and takes Sam. Sam starts panicking and screaming, scared for her life. A1 gets up and tries to pull Sam from him but the alien pushes A1 causing Sam to also fall and hit her head. Blood starts to shower down. As A1 stands up, Sam touches the back of her head. Moving her fingers to her eyes, she sees the blood and looks at A1. A1 looks back at her with complete fear and shock. The alien disguised as a robot tries to take Sam again, but A1 is mad. Really mad. Not just mad, but furious. Shocked and scared out of his mind about Sam. All that is on his mind is seeing Sam falling and cracking her head. A1, without thinking, shoots laser beams out of his palms, causing the alien inside of the suit to explode. He shoots the laser beams over and over till there’s alien goo everywhere. Once he breaks out of his trance, he runs to Sam and rips the bottom of her shirt, wrapping it around her head. “Sam, you okay?” A1 says, worried. “Dude, did you just shoot lasers out of your hands . . .? That’s awesome! I do have a headache though,” Sam says, shocked. Without thinking, A1 activates a med kit out the side of his stomach. “Woah . . . How did I know I can do that?” A1 says, also shocked. He quickly stitches the back of her head and helps her up. “Come on, we got to go.” A1 grunts as he tries to help Sam stand up. With Sam on his side, he uses one hand and shoots a laser beam into the wall where Sam pointed before. As Sam and A1 walk outside, they look around and see Z Nation: dirty and rusty. All abandoned buildings. They then look back and see the building they were in. It was tall, all white, and had a huge A sign right in front of it. “Must stand for aliens,” Sam

says, looking up at the A. Quickly, Sam and A1 run out of Z Nation and back to safety. But of course the fight isn’t over. Sam and A1 decide to buy a bunch of water guns and replace the water with the liquid of A1’s laser beams. They then buy a bunch of belts and strap the guns onto them, putting the belts around them. The last thing was armor. But of course, Sam couldn’t do this without her headphones, and her music playing. She wanted to feel like she was in a movie and it was going to be in slow motion. Of course, before Sam and A1 went into this, they informed everyone, even the government, the president, everyone knows. Sam and A1 knew not to go into this without backup. As they entered Z Nation, the aliens were already ready for attack. Sam and A1 started firing, Sam using the laser guns and A1 using his hands. Exploding heads and aliens went everywhere, filling the floor up with goo. Sam’s favorite song starts playing and her gymnastic skills kick in. She’s flipping, ducking, and shooting. She felt so powerful. A1 suddenly starts naturally using his other powers. He’s shooting a laser out of his forehead, using super strength, and can see very quickly from each side of his head. It was a real life war with aliens. Sam never felt more complete, especially doing it with her best friend by her side. The aliens were using a power they have with goo. They can put it into a gun, they can shoot it out of their body, or they can throw it very fast. The backup robots came and began to help A1 and Sam. Finally when they killed all the aliens outside, you could see goo and ripped-up robot uniforms everywhere. “Woah” is all Sam can say before she gives A1 a look, and they run into the building where they were held captive. As they snuck through the hallways, they were shooting any alien they saw. The backup robots couldn’t come in or it would be noticeable they were there. Now it was just Sam and A1 who were responsible for saving the world. A1, using his super memory, memorized everywhere they had gone when they were there. Suddenly, they walked into the room where all the hu-

mans were held captive and saw they all had these sticky white circles stuck on their skin. They were sound asleep and all had a computer and heart monitor next to them. There had to be at least a thousand humans in this huge room. “What do we do?” Sam asked A1. “Well, first we have to figure out how to wake them up without killing them. Then we have to find out why they were captured in the first place.” As Sam searches the room for answers, A1 keeps lookout. “A1, come look at this,” Sam says as she’s looking at a huge book she found in a secret box under the tiles of the floor. It was the answer to everything they were doing. The humans were being kept sleeping with a shot as the aliens conducted experiments and studied them to figure out a way to take away their emotions. “They actually figured it out,” Sam says, skimming through the book. The book also explained the explosion was for them to knock out anyone who was in the forest, so they could collect more humans. Suddenly A1 stops her and reads a page where it says how to wake them back up. “Hopefully they didn’t start the process of doing it,” A1 says as he and Sam begin waking the humans up. The paper said it would take up to an hour for them to wake up if you use a special serum they created. Sam and A1 injected it into all of them and then left the room to look for Z26. When Sam and A1 look for Z26, killing any alien they see, they find a huge door. It was so big you had to look up to see the whole thing. A1 began lasering a littler door for them to go through. Once the door fell, they walked in, and it was full of a bunch of alien glue and slime-like texture everywhere, different colors and dripping down the walls. Z26 appears from the corner of the room. “Welcome to my kingdom,” he says, walking slowly, putting his hands high. “Dude, this is so cool,” Sam whispers to A1. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure we might die now,” he whispers back.

All of a sudden Z26 rips his robot outfit off and becomes a huge alien. Z26, A1, and Sam begin fighting. Z26 uses special powers, taking guns out of his body, shooting goo out. A1 uses his special powers and Sam uses the laser gun, jumping around, dodging. When Sam notices that Z26 gets too cocky, she sneaks behind him, runs up the wall, does a flip, lands on his head, and then shoots a laser right in between his eyes. Z26 falls to the floor and dies. A1 and Sam watch as the goo splashes everywhere then walk out. As they walk out the building, all of the hostages walk out behind them. It was like a movie. “We’re heroes,” Sam says as she gives A1 a high five. “Hell yeah,” he responds back. A week later, Z Nation is smashed down, and they are now rebuilding it into a little town called A1 and Sam in honor of them two for saving the world.