64E2C

"Nervous?"

I turned to face 59 as I shook my head. I wasn't nervous, not really. I had been to Earth before, twice actually. This time would be no different. We were to act as average teenagers, stay under the radar, collect the needed information, and then make our move. We couldn't treat this assignment any different from the other two we had done. Sure, we weren't the first choice to do this, but we were the only.

"Well I am," 59G1K said while throwing some things into an old duffle bag.

"Don't say that. We're not supposed to feel anything," I answered with no tone. 56 just shrugged in response without looking up. We continued packing the few things we had.

Feel nothing.

That was the rule, the standards we lived on, and had lived on for hundreds of years. This was hard when we were on earth. There we were constantly surrounded by laughter, happiness, grief, sadness, all different emotions that I didn't even know existed.

Twenty minutes later we were packed up and loaded into the small ship that would take us to Earth. The trip would take nine days. We were millions of miles away, but traveling a speed that humans found unfathomable.

The human word that would describe the journey would be boring. But on Gliea, we had no such thing as boring. No emotions. No feelings. From the moment we were born, we were raised and trained to be soldiers, workers, laborers. We aren't given names. Instead we're given a mix of number and letters. I'm 64E2C. Sometimes just called 64. The Elders of Gliea, the people in charge of the planet don't like the shortened 'names' we give each other. But they allow it. It was one of the few things they were lenient on.

When we go on assignments to Earth, we're given a human name. This name changes for each task and cannot be used until we touch down on earth. We must never use the name once we set foot on the ship to come back to Gliea either. Doing so will result in punishment from the Elders. We need to stay serious about our work, we cannot make ties with humans. Of course during missions and tasks we can talk and interact with them, but they can't be mentioned once the assignment is over.

Extermination.

That is our duty. The Elders of Gliea have a way of knowing what each humans fate is. If they find one with a fate that will end in the death of many, it is our job to go to earth, on what we call assignment, to exterminate that human. It might sound harsh, sometimes that person doesn't even know they are destined for tragedy, but in taking their life, we are saving the lives of many more. By doing this we have prevented many massacres. Of course we can't stop them all; Osama Bin Laden, Hitler, Genghis Khan, Stalin, and many more. But what we have stopped is way worse.

Going on assignment is a perilous thing, but the second most respectable job in Gliea. Failing to finish assignment could mean execution back on Gliea. Saving the world was worth it though.

Gliea's population is small, much smaller than earth. We have roughly 20,000 citizens so almost everyone between the ages of 14 and 30 goes on assignments. Children and teenagers go to daily lessons to learn about Earth. We learn about different cultures and the way of life there as it is very different from what we are used to. As a teen going on assignment, I will be attending school on earth. So in my lessons on Gliea, I learn all the subjects I would need to know on Earth. We also learn languages. We never know where our next assignment might be so we learn English, Chinese, Arabic, French, Spanish, and at least one of our choosing. For me that's Romanian, Russian, and Czech.

On the first day on the ship to Earth, I spend nearly all my time gazing out the window. Everything I see is black except for the tiny specks of light from other stars. It seems as if we're just floating, suspended in the nothing because there's no point of reference to judge how fast we're going. But I know we're moving at great speeds. Twelve inches of glass is all that separates me and the space. I wondered what would happen if it were to shatter. Me, and everyone else on the ship would swell due to the form gas bubbles in our skin and our blood circulation would be impeded. Within 15 seconds we would lose consciousness because of the lack of oxygen. And then we would perish.