The Odd Couple of Sandstone Creek

001: Dyscalculia

It wasn't always easy for me. When I was younger, it was hard for me to understand numbers. It was always difficult to comprehend, the numbers jumbling around on the papers, or, more recently, the computer or phone screen. But now the numbers are everywhere. It's not like it wasn't around. Math class, for one, was a beast on its own. But now? Now math is the foundation of the new language on Earth. A language that most of the new inhibitors are fluent in. One that I could never even learn. This isn't the place I grew up in. Not anymore. Now things are harder. Humans like me live in constant fear of what comes next. We hadn't even won the giant war that had groped the land for the past five years. I was fifteen when it first started, The Battle of Sandstone Creek. This is where the destruction first started. I, Mattias Mason McLean, had witnessed first hand the start of the war. And three years later, I was drafted to fight in it. The year was 2045, a good twelve or so years after we found a cure for the infection that once took over the world. We were almost back to normalcy. I was watching the Tube with my mother when there was a government broadcast. A worldwide shutdown. The calling of the first soldiers. I wasn't allowed to be called yet, but there's one name that stood out for me. Rhys. Rhys Estes. My mother gasped, as he was only seventeen. The youngest fighter ever. He was still in training, but he was top of his class, which was the best military training camp. I wondered how desperate our city had to be to call the youngest fighters. At least I hadn't been called.