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I'm gonna spare you the part where I spent a couple years hiding how I was able to do things other people couldn't. The truth is that after the first few times someone figured it out and I had to move, the will to keep it a secret simply dried up. I was sick of running. So when Damon and his people approached me, I didn't even hesitate to accept their offer.


The bullets didn't hurt at first. Then a sharp, hot pain raced through my back as blood soaked my shirt. It felt like a hot poker but only for a moment, and then it was gone.


 What I hadn't told Damon was that I wasn't like the others; I wasn't a telekinetic. It wasn't in my nature to manipulate the world around me — I could slow things down, maybe, but that was about it. I didn't have any power over matter or space. In fact, I'd never heard of someone lacking that kind of power at all.


My first thought in the back of my head was that I was going to die. But then a man in a camouflage uniform walked up and waved his fingers at me. He didn't move his mouth, but he mouthed something that sounded like, I love you.


He sang it front of my face and hundreds of other people, like a rock concert, and it floated into my ears and stayed with me, somehow. The feeling of love and joy didn't last, but I'd never forget it, and I could never forget his face.





I've been with the other rebels for three years now. We're holed up a few miles from the lab, and we have talks about what's to come.


Every time we speak about this, about whether we should use our powers or stay hidden, the same argument comes up. We're not the only ones who can do this. There are a lot of people out there who have the same abilities we do. Like the man who shot me in the back. He didn't have a name, but we're calling him Commander Damon.


He's a good guy. I think we should trust him. Damon took us in, and he was the one who found us. He introduced himself as Commander Damon, the same way he refers to himself in front of everyone else, like we're all a part of one big family, to remind us that we're all on the same team and nobody will ever hurt anyone else.



 He said we should all think of him as our father and that when he talks or utters words, it's supposed to be god's word to us. I think Damon's new religion might be bad, and I think it's why he calls himself "Commander" and rebelled against his father. I think he does it to make himself seem more important.


He reminds me of my father sometimes. I see similarities in their personalities.





My first taste of Damon's idea of "family" was a few months after he found us. He brought us to a farm according to his orders, to give us a chance to see if we could get along with other people.


The farm was actually two farms. One was an organic farm with cattle and sheep. The other was a chemical plant. In other words, it had fields of corn and soybeans, and also contained feedlots and soil treated with pesticides. There was a big debate between the rebels and the rebels-in-training over what to call this stuff. A lot of people went with factory, since it was technically a factory. I personally prefer lab.


Some people were upset about this, naturally. I wasn't because I liked it. It was sort of like my classes where I taught my students about biology and ecology, but I was the student, and things were going a lot faster.




 I was learning a lot and getting excited about the environment. I'd never felt that way before. I thought so many things before were stupid, including the environment — I felt that the Earth was kind of like a big toy, a big virtual reality game, but we were humans, and higher beings. We were like the gods of the Earth, and we could do whatever we wanted.




 That's why I expressed my feelings to the class so often, that the problem of the environment is just a problem of technology, and that humans will figure it out. I never believed in man-made global warming, pollution, and I certainly never thought that we were killing the Earth.


I respected nature, sure, but it was something that I just figured out how to survive in, like a video game. Now I see that humans are able to control the environment, that we can turn the Earth into a paradise. I learned so much on the farms.






 I learned how to make biodiesel, how to make my own plant food, how to grow food in a greenhouse, how to make a compost toilet, and more. Some of the things we made were things I'd never heard of, and probably never even seen before. I found out that the soil in our area was very toxic, and it was because the farms were so far from our location, and the air was filled with pollutants.










There were different kinds of crops you could grow, and you could even grow different flowers in the same soil. I learned how to make fertilizer of human waste, and how to grow apples, as well as pumpkin and carrot seeds. The apples and the carrots would have died if it weren't for Damon. I'd always had an interest in growing things, but now I could do it. 





Through farming, I found that I could feel even more connected to the living world, which had always been something I felt a certain kinship with, but never before was it something I could do. It didn't even feel like work. I knew I was improving the soil so the plants could have food. My mother would have been proud.





The organic farming was done in the first couple fields on the left. The other fields to the right of that were all crops treated with fertilizer and pesticides, with corn and soybeans. The corn was treated with herbicides, since the corn we grew was genetically-engineered to have a self-destruct function. Instead of growing fruit, the ears of corn would simply die and break apart.





There were some people who grew their own biodiesel, but the idea was to be more self-sustainable. We were supposed to be able to grow our own plants for fuel, for food, for just about anything. The natural foods could be eaten, and the genetically-engineered foods could be used as animal feed.