The Substance

By Christopher Bishop

Tell Time: 7 minutes 30 seconds
Scare Rating: 0/5 Ghosts

“Long ago,” my mom started, “there was said to be an alien planet holding a valuable substance called edim. During a war with the planet’s leader and his brother, a piece of the planet broke off, bringing all the edim in and on it. There is a myth that the meteor hit Earth.

Everybody knows that story from when they were kids, but Jack believes that the edim mine exists.

At school the next day, Jack was up in a tree and had his nose stuck in a history book trying to figure out when the meteor hit and where. Kids laughed at him, saying, “You’re a nerd,” and “Why do you like studying?” but he just ignored them.

For the rest of that day, Jack was trying to figure out where the edim mine was. He hadn’t done this much research since his third grade research paper about China. But this was far more than just a report about China; this could change history forever. Jack was in sixth grade now, and was ready to take on something more. Jack spent the rest of that month getting laughed at and humiliated, trying to find the mark in history. Finally, he thought he’d found it, he thought it was underneath the town of Orick, California – his town.

That night, Jack was asleep when out of nowhere, his mom burst into the room, shouting “Get up! There’s an earthquake! Get up!”

“Umm,” Jack moaned. “Do I have to get up?”

Jack’s mom replied, “Yes! There’s an earthquake! Most buildings might collapse underground!”

Many thoughts were going through Jack’s mind at the moment, but one idea was the most important: “This might be my chance to look for the edim mine,” he thought.

After the shaking was over, Jack went out to look. Only a few buildings were partly underground. Jack was disappointed.

The next day at school, Jack was up in the school’s tree again, with three other people again making fun of him. At the end of recess, there was an aftershock, and the small area with the tree where Jack and his classmates were sitting collapsed underground.

It was pitch black underground, and the hole where they fell in was covered over. Katherine, Austin, and Joe (his other classmates) were sitting in the darkness, while Jack was up looking for the edim mine.

As Jack was walking, his foot fell into what appeared to be a deep hole. He pulled it out, and told his classmates to come and see. Now Joe wasn’t so bright, and instead of looking, went right on in.

“Hey guys! There’s random glowing spots indented in the wall of this cave!” Joe said.

“What color is it?” Jack asked.

“Blue!” Joe responded.

“Yes! I think I found the edim mine!” Jack murmured. “You go on ahead; we’ll catch up with you!”

In the long, dark tunnel, Jack picked at the spots of edim and put it into his backpack. Finally, the kids reached the jackpot of edim.

“There’s tons of this stuff, everywhere!” Jack said.

“Wait, what’s this stuff you’re talking about?” Austin asked.

“It’s edim, remember? From the story of the meteor crashing into the Earth?” Jack replied.

“Oh yeah, right. I just didn’t know what it looked like,” Austin said.

“Well great – while you guys are being amazed and all about finding the substance, you haven’t even thought about the problem,” said Katherine.

“What problem? We found the most valuable substance on Earth!” Jack, Joe and Austin said together.

“We’re stuck deep in a mine and we have no way of getting out!” said Katherine.

“Right,” said Joe.

“Well, how are we going to get out?” asked Austin.

“Well, edim is really strong and is easy to craft with,” said Jack.

“So let’s make some tools and get ourselves out of here!” said Katherine.

“OK,” agreed Joe and Austin.

“But this edim is boiling hot,” said Jack.

“Well, let’s see if we can find some embedded in this cave that isn’t boiling hot,” suggested Katherine.

“Jack, didn’t you put some edim in your backpack?” asked Austin.

“Yeah, but that’s stone hard, and we can’t craft with stone-hard substances,” said Jack.

“Well the edim down here is boiling hot, so maybe we could get it soft and then craft with it,” said Katherine.

“Good idea! Let’s do that!” they all agreed.

About an hour later, all of their tools were cooled and ready for use.

“Well, we used all of the edim out of my backpack that I was going to bring back to the surface of the Earth, so I think we should gather some more to bring back,” said Jack.

So they all gathered edim and put it into Jack’s backpack.

“This was a victory for us!” everybody cheered.

When they got back to the surface, they took the edim into the government, and they all got rewarded.

Time passed fast. Those four kids began to be friends, and Jack wasn’t made fun of anymore.

As time went on, the government began making more and more weapons from edim, and where Jack’s school once was, became a huge mining plant.

This was good that they were making weapons, because two years later, the planet Edima sent out ships to get back the edim.

Everybody was panicking. The city of Sacramento was already getting bombed. Jack wasn’t going to let this happen to his wonderful town, and he wanted his planet – Earth – to survive. So Jack took the little bit of edim that he saved for himself, and he made arrows, a bow and a sword, to use to fight off Edima.

Soon enough, Edima came for the small town of Orick, and the town was prepared. But Edima wasn’t going to lose a fight; they’d lost the edim, and they wanted it back.

This was a large war, and soon enough, Earth had to take cover. Edima couldn’t find the citizens of Orick (they were in the edim mine).

In the mine, the government tried making bullets out of edim. Turns out, it worked! They made tons of bullets, from assault rifle bullets to rockets. Now, Earth seemed to be ready to fight back!

But Edima knew that Earth was making more supplies to defend themselves, so Edima called in reinforcements. The battle grew tougher and tougher, as more and more cities in the U.S. were attacked, and had to fight back.

Jack was ready to attack. He and his friends left the cave and went to attack Edima. In the nearby city of Sacramento, Jack and his friends went to the top of the Renaissance Tower to defend against Edima. Although it took many shots – and rockets – they took down one of many ships.

Jack was getting tired of fighting for so long, so he came up with a new plan.

“I know; they came here to get the edim back. Let’s give them some of the edim but keep some for ourselves,” Jack said.

“Great idea,” said Joe, Katherine and Austin at the same time.

So in big chunks, big cranes hauled pieces of edim to Edima.

“Yes! They are going away!” yelled Joe.

“This is a victory for us!” said Jack.

“Hurrah!” said Austin and Katherine.

But suddenly, they saw a different type of ship approaching. This ship wasn’t from Edima; this ship was from Eadim.

Eadim was Edima’s sister planet and had been in a long war – centuries ago – fighting for the edim.

“I bet they’re here to take back the edim from Edima!” said Jack.

“I bet you’re right,” said Austin.

“They’re gonna have a war on Earth!” said Katherine.

“Can’t this all just end?” said Joe.

The friends went back to the mines to report that Eadim had arrived to Earth.

“Great,” said General John Kakadew, “now they’re just going to be fighting on our planet.”

Sergeant Jeff Kakadew, the general’s son, was in the crowd and suggested that they lure both alien forces away from Earth.

“Great idea, son! Now you continue with that plan; I’ll be taking care of some other business in my underground office.”

“O.K. Dad,” said Sgt. Kakadew.

“So what do you want us to do?” asked Jack.

“I want you to take these flares and toss them into the sky, to get the attention of the alien forces,” said the sergeant.

“On it!” said the friends, together.

So the flares got the attention of the aliens, and then Sgt. Kakadew came up with the solution to their problem.

“Hey you darn aliens, why don’t you just share the edim – there’s plenty to go around!” he told them.

The aliens thought about this, and agreed to share it. All was well except for one thing. The good part was that the aliens left Earth, and never fought again. Also, Earth got a handful of edim. But the bad thing was, Sacramento needed to be rebuilt.

THE END