Chapter 1: First Contact

"Ah!" The sound of my alarm had woke me up from a bad nightmare. I had never had a nightmare before, only dreams. I looked at the time, "5:11." Kind of early for my alarm to be going off, and wondered why it had gone off so early. Got up thinking that this day ... this day would be like any other school day, not knowing that it would change my life and everybody else's.

I stretched a second and turned on the light. Somehow it seemed easier to do than I expected. Or maybe to reach it's hard to know what could be easier than flipping on a light switch. Once I went to the restroom and looked at the mirror and stared at myself.

My name is Kriss Age Godfree, 17 years-old and a senior in high school. My name is kind of unique. My mom changed her name around the time I was born, and combined with my middle name it's supposed to imply that I'm a free soul in both mind and body and a whole bunch of other stuff. Personally, I think it's catchy and I love seeing the expressions on people's faces when they hear it.

I'm part Hispanic with some Asian; I don't know what kind of Asian but I hope it's Japanese as I love anime. I'm 6 feet tall, pretty tall for a Hispanic and even more so for an Asian, with black curly/straight hair almost to my shoulders. The only other thing that stands out about me is my endurance; most people are stunned when they notice how much stamina I have when they see me do activities.

I brushed my teeth, emptied my bladder and rushed to my room, realizing that the faster I got ready the sooner I can start watching anime on my iPod. Dressing quickly and grabbing my school stuff I headed downstairs. I saw my cousin Martin, a 9th grader who rides the bus with me, on the couch in the living room ready to leave but watching the news on TV. "What's up?" I asked. He nodded to me and I sat down next to him to see what the weather would be like for the day.

The numbers the weather channel were showing kept changing; the temperatures, they were increasing everywhere in every state including our own. My aunt, standing behind me, said "I told you that the weather channel lies too much, look at those numbers!"

I agreed laughing with her.

After a couple minutes I stood up and I also saw my other cousin and sister who are in middle school, who are sitting at the dining table texting I said my good mornings to them when I passed by them. In the kitchen my mom and her boyfriend were in the kitchen making breakfast. I said "good morning" passing them I told my mom I'm skipping breakfast again. I hate breakfast in mornings I don't know why; I just don't like eating in mornings.

My mom stopped me; "Kriss go take the trash out its Tuesday the truck will be here today." Hate doing this I grunted as I grabbed the garbage bag and headed outside. When I opened the door and a huge gust of warm air hits me. It's close to winter, so I thought it must have been a warm front headed our way. I walked to the side of the house where the bin is and I dump the bag in the bin and took it in front of the house.

I looked up and can almost see the air gusts flying over me and beyond the fast moving clouds like water currents. Also I saw that it's a little bit brighter this morning, winter mornings should be darker. But I didn't see the sun on the clouds and saw that the brightness was on the wrong side where the sun should have been. It was the morning; I didn't want to think too hard about this stuff.

Finished with the trash I open the door to the house and I went to the dog room on the other side of the house. I sat down on the chair and saw that my dog was staring at me under our X-mas tree. I called out his name while shaking my head and then he waged his tail and just sat there. 'I laughed inwardly'. The bus comes at 6:21 so I took my iPod out, its 5:31. I put on my headphones and clicked the Netflix app and started watching an episode of bleach.

When I finished watching the episode, I checked the time, '6:01'. In the direction of my iPod I saw my dog who was under the tree running in the kitchen too the living room. I also saw my sister, mom and her boyfriend rush to the living room. I saw something in their faces, like a terrified look and head my mom say "oh god". I quickly got up and speed walked through the kitchen to the living room and saw everybody staring at the TV...

When I looked ... it was ... some sort of tall metallic pillar. The news reporter was on the helicopter going well above the clouds to meet this pillar ... at the top it's a flat area larger than 3 football fields, like a sort of an arena. I saw another helicopter and another, when I see at least a dozen of them. I see a few big Military helicopters; it seemed like there trying to land somewhere on the flat surface on the pillar. Then it stopped, the news took us back to the women sitting down looking as terrified as us.

She began clearing her throat "we are getting word from other countries that other metallic Pillars are rising or already rose in other countries." They began showing a video of a city, I saw the Eiffel Tower so it's from Paris and I saw the pillar. Sort of ... the pillar isn't coming from the ground, and it's not fully there yet. It's sort of coming from the sky, it's sort of appearing of out thin air most likely. There's light coming from the bottom then to the top of the pillar, and then it stopped. I was amazed ... there in the middle of Paris next to the Eiffel tower was a metallic pillar, as it goes well above the clouds. Then they showed other country's with the pillars.

First the U.S, the pillar is on the Chicago Lake, then another at the bottom of Mexico near a small town, another in Brazil near the ocean, the one in Paris, another in Egypt, and another in South Africa. All of those videos were either morning or afternoon. They showed other pillars in north Russia, another in East Asia, and the last was on north east of Australia (they say either the U.S or Japan was the first to get the pillars)

I toured my head away from the TV, I was mind blown beyond repair, I never knew this could happen, I thought this morning was a normal school day! How ... I looked at the time, 6:20! "Martin!" He was drawn away from the TV now looking at me with his mouth still open. I said "BUS!"

Realizing the time he quickly got up and grabbed his book bag and ran to the door, I said my goodbyes to the dumbstruck family, on my way out my mom said "call 911 if anything happens!" I laughed as I was leaving the door.

As I was walked to the bus stop, I couldn't stop thinking about what I just saw, what I just witnessed ... I knew from that point on, since the first pillar appeared that the world has changed and my life seemed less important than ever before.