The Core: The Dark Enemy

13. Month one: The calm before the storm

-Inside the Blazing Bean coffee shop-

"I don't care what you say! I was as good as dead, with a chunk of my leg missing from a shark bite out in the ocean, and then whoosh! Everything turned dark for an hour. Next thing I know, I wake up next to my truck, my leg is stitched back together, with the intact piece that the shark ate, and I am still alive." a lean-looking man told his office colleagues sitting nearby as they all recounted their experience during the event.

Dean looked on from behind the counter as he listened in to the stories told by each of his customers to each other.

The Event, the Dark Hour, the Invasion, and even the Beginning of the End, as some preferred to call it. It all depended on how they saw the alien invasion and what mindset they chose to adopt.

The aliens, whoever they were, coined the term "Uplift" for some reason. Humanity had yet to see it as such.

The main media news had all been one-sided, completely against everything the aliens had done, until the people began to understand that their alien-given devices all had separate news sites that could be uploaded to by individuals, either through voice, video, or written word that completely bypassed the government's agenda filter. This means of sharing what had happened had started spreading slowly, simply because people were initially leery of the new technology, but eventually was used by almost everyone.

Like a dam of voices breaking over the world.

Dean looked down at his black wristwatch, the form that his alien stuff was currently taking, and back up at the group of office workers as one of them started to detail what he had discovered about the device.

"Have you all tried to get your devices to do other things than just act as a phone?" The lady was asking.

"Yes, I found that I can use it as a flashlight. It even let me use it as a laser pointer when I checked if that was an option."

"I was just using it as a pocketknife."

"I use it as my glasses."

Each of the six people shared their uses and what they had each interpreted their alien device should have been capable of. It wasn't until the last voice mentioned their use that everyone's attention spiked.

"I was using it as a camera."

"What?"

"Yeah, it takes really good photos and seems to have unlimited film. I haven't figured out how to get it to print the photos that it shows on the screen, but it says that once I have some cr, whatever that is, I will be able to print them."

"Really? Can you show me how?"

"Sure, just bring up your Tutor and ask it to change to a camera."

Dean looked down at his black watch before slowly unclasping it and taking it off. The thoughts were swirling inside his head, ideas and solutions from all of the many people that had come into his place of work and openly chatted about their experiences were beginning to form a pattern.

So many companies were now obsolete from this "gift". Mankind had yet to realize this.

With slow movements, Dean leaned closer to his alien watch and whispered, "turn into a normal-looking pair of glasses" before watching as the watch nearly instantly morphed into what he asked for. The lenses were clear, and the frame was something that appeared to be made from simple black painted metal. He was unsure how it made the lenses, alien tech voodoo it seemed.

If not straight-up voodoo.

With deliberate lazy movements, making sure to not draw the attention of any of his current customers he slipped the glasses onto his face and looked through the lenses. His vision was nearly perfect as it was, so he didn't expect to gain anything special from them.