With the toys in my backpack, my job is to hold the Intruder for five minutes. I am backed with a photon shotgun, tactical grenades and two drones that continuously fly on top of me, fending off any projectiles. The Intruder starts the show with a scatter shot from his pistol, sending twenty or more red pellets bouncing around the hallway, but then they all head to my place. I snap my finger, and the two drones block the bullets by flaming the area in front of me, burning the red pellets into self-detonation. Then, I charge forward with my loaded shotgun. I press the trigger as my sight aligns with his head and my spectacles signal me to shoot, but then the powerful electromagnetic energy packed in the photon pellets gets blocked when he raises his left arm, blocking them. The shirt is torn, but then his arm is still intact thanks to the armour. I jump back, right before he fires another round of bouncing bullets. The drones shoot down some of them, but almost half passes

The next morning, again, arrives peacefully on the prosperous and peaceful Australia. Being in the Southern Hemisphere, it is currently summer here. The soft sunlight shines through the window of my hotel room, where I am currently sleeping and restoring energy from an exhausting yesterday, only for another exhausting today, and likely for the rest of the week. It is currently seven in the morning, and since there are no scheduled activities today, we are free to travel to and from the mine at any point in time. Our timetable will be quite flexible, only if I turn to my right and see that Mirai is doing something on her bed with some mechanical components - Mirai, what are you doing? It is like seven in the morning. - Finally you are awake. Thanks to the early lights-out time yesterday, I finish charging at three or four in the morning, so I automatically wake up and prepare for the trip later. - We have like a whole four days, and our progress is al

- Noted. Please standby. - I receive a reply from Mirai. It sounds like she also hits a jackpot on the side. I sit in a hidden corner, looking at the two Intruders manually mining the metal ores. After getting about a pile of ores, they throw them into the conveyor belt, and continue mining. I sit mindlessly for ten to fifteen minutes, counting hundreds of sheep in my mind, then turning to look at them, then yawning in boredom. I almost fall asleep, wondering why would a species lying on the high end of the universe is using the most basic tools to mine, when a loud bang makes me startled. A row of Intruders appears from a tunnel path, geared fully with all kinds of advanced tools and protection (although they do not really hide the hideous appearances of a typical Intruder of low rating), each pushing a trolley stacked with boxes and boxes of alunimium ores. One by one, they line up to pour all of their mining products into the conveyor belt tunnel. The sound of the or

The intense patrolling of the drones continues until the early morning, which leaves us with no way to use any electrical devices, so we decide to just sleep. And it seems like other residents in the area had soon fallen asleep before the midnight came, so effectively, nobody, except us, are aware of the situation. It is currently five, and immediately after the drones seem to disappear from our window view, we gear up to attack the underground facility as early as possible. This time, we cannot resort to ordinary travelling, because it is literally digging our own wave to enter an unprotected car. I send a message to Issac, who is currently dead asleepin his comfortable bedroom to let him know that we would be heading out first. Then, we get out of the house. Mirai takes out the familiar plane that we have been constantly using for missions from the archive. Right at the moment the plane is taken out, I withdraw my photon magnum pistol from my pocket... ... and shoot d

You know, after years of honing my common sense, if you tell me that on a random day, a random package just spawns in front of my house out of nowhere, and from inside the package, a random entity just casually tells me to embark on a fifty-year journey to save the entire humanity from an invasive alien force, whose probability of occurrence is as good as the numerical metric dimension of a hydrogen atom, I would just laugh and brush it off. That is literally the plot of a science fiction novel. Just a dream that any person can have. Yet, this weird dream of mine has been around for a solid half a year, and it is not like I would wake up any time soon. There is a saying that in a dream, half of the brain is like a director, and the other half just watches it happening like a movie, getting surprised at the plot twists that it creates itself. But, just think of it. What an irony, is it? Even for a brain, generating such vivid content, even without prior exposure or experience, is