On My Own Again

When I woke up it was just getting light. I took a moment to remember all that had happened and decide what to do next. I laid there for a while listening. I didn't hear anyone, so I slowly crawled out from under the piece of roof. I brushed myself off some and started to look around.
The warehouse was completely gone. It had been reduced to a heap of rubble. I didn't see any sign of people, living or dead. I began walking up a hill to where the van that we came here in had been parked. The van was gone.
I walked back to the pile of junk that used to be the warehouse. Having nothing better to do, I began to search through some of the debris for anything that might be useful. After a while of pulling and digging I found a black briefcase. Inside were several documents. Most of them I couldn't understand, but one of them was just a lot of information about a hotel in Honolulu. About that time I heard a car approaching. I shoved the paper in my pocket and hid behind some rubble. Soon a large truck pulled up a few feet in front of me. I could see hear the door open and close, and I heard someone walking around, searching through the piles of junk. After a few minutes, the car door opened and closed again. The truck started and started to drive away. I peeked out from my hiding place. Just as the truck had gone about thirty feet, the engine died and it lurched to a stop. After trying to start it a few times, the man got out and opened the hood. Almost without thinking, I saw my moment, ran out, and hopped into the back of the truck. I hid under a tarp that was conveniently laying in the truck. After about a minute, the car started up again and we started moving.

The Mission

I was driven around blindfolded for a while. When the car stopped, I was told to get out walk straight. After I had taken a few steps, I was told to stop, and someone took my blindfold off. I looked around. It was night, so I couldn't see very clearly, but I could tell that I was on a hill by some bushes. About a hundred yards in front of me there was a small warehouse. A hand grabbed my shoulder and pushed me to the ground. I turned around and saw Chris. He motioned for me to keep silent. He handed me some large night-vision binoculars and pointed towards the warehouse. I looked through the binoculars, trying to find a window or something on the warehouse. Suddenly, a door opened and a man walked out. It was Carl. He stood outside the warehouse for a few minutes, then walked back in. I turned to Chris.
"Carl," I whispered.
Chris nodded and jotted something down in a notebook. "Let's try and get closer," he whispered back.
I was a little worried. I was told that I would be kept at a safe distance from the enemy. But I didn't have much choice. I followed Chris towards the warehouse. We walked around the building until we reached a window. Chris got on one side and motioned for me to stay on the other side.
Suddenly, the stillness was broken by the sound of a huge explosion inside the warehouse. The darkness was filled with a huge flash of light, and I was thrown to the ground. I turned to see the whole warehouse engulfed in flames. I struggled to stand up and started running towards where the car was. I could feel myself starting to lose consciousness. I managed to get behind a piece of roof that had blown off the building.
Then everything went black.

Training

The word training brought all sorts of pictures to my mind, like martial arts moves, cool gadgets, virtual reality simulations and stuff like that. I was rather disappointed to find that my week-long training was just a week of going to boring meetings. I did learn some interesting things, though:
I was in Hawaii. Apparently, whoever bumped me over the head somehow kept me asleep for a couple days, and I had been flown here. I also learned that the guy who knocked me out was not with the same group of people that I saw when I woke up. I had changed hands sometime while I was unconscious.
I found out some stuff about what I would be doing for the next few days. Apparently, my only use was that I had information about the identities of some of the bad guys. I was to be transported to some location (they didn't tell me exactly where) and try and point out some of the people that I had seen in the last few days, and describe what they were doing and what they said and who they were with.
I was to keep out of trouble, do as I was told, and I'd be on my way home within a few days.

Simple. Right?...

An Offer

I was rather surprised, as I didn't think that anyone knew that I still had the memory chip. I wasn't sure quite what to do. I was about to say that I didn't have it anymore, but the look on the man's face told me that I should cooperate.
"How did you know I had it?" I asked.
"When I created it a couple years ago, I put a tracking device in it so I'd know where it is at all times," he answered. "I've been tracking it down for the past couple weeks and it led me to you. How did you get it?"
I wasn't sure how much I should tell this guy, but since he was sharing some information with me, I decided it wouldn't hurt to tell him some stuff.
"It was..uh...given to me by someone. I'm not sure who. As soon as I got it I saw some guy named Carl who-"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "You've seen Carl?"
"Yeah, he came to me. He had a picture of someone that I later saw-"
"Hold on," he interrupted again. "You saw the guy that Carl was looking for?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"How many people have you seen?" he asked.
"I'm not sure. Quite a few. There was someone with a Russian accent, an old man with gray hair, some big guys who knew karate, and some other people. I can't remember all of them."
"Kid, do you realize that you have more information about these people than almost any of our agents?"
I thought about that for a moment.
"So," I said slowly, "who exactly are you?"
The man looked at me differently all of a sudden. "Well," he said. "We're a group of people from various countries fighting to end this war before something big and destructive happens"
"What war?" I asked. "There's no war going on!"
"Well, no," he said. "Not officially. But if it ever becomes official, it could mean the death of millions of people. Our group is trying to stop it before it happens."
I realized that this guy was putting a lot of trust in me, and I wasn't sure why.
"So what will happen to me?" I asked.
"Well, as I see it, we have two options. We can wipe your memory and send you back where you came from."
I didn't like the sound of that.
"What's the other option?"
"One thing that we're short on is intelligence. We've sent many people to get information about out enemy, but security is very tight. We could always use someone with the kind of information you have. What do you say? Wanna join us?"
He held out his hand.
I shook it.

Chris

Before long, the taxi pulled up near a small hotel. The driver told me how much I owed him, and I tried to think up some excuse for not having any money. He certainly wouldn't believe the truth! But before I could say anything, some guy that had been standing a few feet away walked over to the taxi.
"He's with me," he said, handing the driver the money. I tried not to look surprised, as the taxi drove off.
"Thank you," I said, turning to the man. He was tall, young looking, and had very dark eyes. "Why did you do that for me?"
"Are you hungry?" he asked?
Based on what had been happening to me lately, I probably should have walked off, but the guy seemed nice enough, and I hadn't eaten for a while.
"Yes, I'm really hungry."
"Come on. I'll buy you some lunch.
He led me down the street to a small restaurant. We sat down and he ordered us both some food.
"Now," he said. "I suppose I should tell you who I am. My name's Chris, and I believe you have something that belongs to me." He held his hand out. "My memory chip."

Recap

The drive in the taxi gave me a chance to think through what had happened to me the past few days.
Someone had left me a memory chip with some mysterious pictures on it. Within a few days, a guy called Carl showed up at my house. I decided to look at the pictures on the memory chip. One of them was of a paper with an email address on it. I sent a message to that address. A week after that, another guy with a Russian accent showed up. He bashed me over the head and I was unconscious for a while.
By the time I woke up, there was no telling where I was. I had been driven to a house somewhere. While there, I talked to an older man who seemed to know everything about what was happening, but he didn't seem to want to tell me too much.
The next day I was to be transported some place, but before I got there I was re-captured by some other group of people who wanted to use me as a bargaining piece. They took me to an airport where I managed to escape and now I was sitting in a taxi in some city driving towards a hotel.

And somehow, through all of this, I managed to still have with me the memory chip that had started all of this.

On my own

For the next few hours I was driven around for a while until we got to an airport. I wondered what country I was going to, and realized that I didn't even know what country I was in. I was led into the building and told to keep my mouth shut. The place was slightly crowded, and the thought came to me that I might be able to get 'lost in the crowd'. I kept a close eye on my kidnappers. I saw that they were keeping a close eye on me. Every time one would look away, it was only a couple seconds before another was watching me.

Finally, inspiration came in the form of a luggage cart that happened to be near me. Waiting until no one was watching, I grabbed the cart and pushed it as hard as I could towards a nearby group of people. It had just the effect I was hoping for. There was a loud crash, a lot of people running, a lot of people screaming. The noise caught everyone's attention and, in the few moments of panic, I was able to run out of view of my kidnappers.

I followed a large group of people out of the building, then quickly ran into the nearest taxi.
"Take me to the nearest hotel."
The driver nodded and started to drive off. I thought for a moment that I didn't have any money to pay him, but I figured I'd worry about that later. I was free!

A Change Of Scene

The doors were slammed open and several large guys appeared. There was a quick little martial arts fight between the guys in the limo and the guys that just showed up. Guns were knocked to the ground as soon as they were pulled out. People were flying everywhere. The new guys outnumbered the limo guys, and I was soon forcibly transferred from the limo the back of a truck just in front of us. The car raced off and, as I looked back, I could see that the limo had four flat tires (something that must have been accomplished while the fight was going on). I turned back around, catching my breath, and then instantly lost it again. Staring down at me were five of the biggest guys I think I've ever seen, all wearing ski masks. The largest one moved forward some.
"Are you alright, kid? You're not hurt, are you?"
That wasn't exactly the question I was expecting to hear.
"Umm..I'm fine, I guess. Who are you?" I asked.
"We're not going to hurt you. We just need some information."
That was all he said.
"And you want me to give it to you?" I asked.
"No. We want you as a hostage. You must be worth something to those guys. We left them a note. They tell us what we need to know, and you'll go free."
"Would this information," I asked, "have anything to do with a memory chip?"
The man jerked up. "You know what was on it?"
"Umm...no. I just heard it mentioned," I replied. Obviously, these guys didn't know that I knew anything, and I decided to keep it that way for a while.
It seemed I knew more than most anyone else about what was on the memory chip. I was valuable property.

On The Road Again...

The rest of the interview is sort of a blur in memory. I heard the guy say something about Iran and bombs and a river. I tried to gather as much information as I could, but my mind was racing. The next thing that I clearly remember is being told that I was going to be moved to a house outside of the country.
For the first time, I wondered what in the world my family must have been thinking at this time. What had they been told about my absence? If only I had some way of seeing them.
It was somewhere in the course of this train of thought that I remembered that I still had the memory chip inside my pocket. The people I was with obviously didn't know that I had it. After debating with myself over whether or not I should give it to the, I realized that I really didn't know who the good guys or bad guys in this were. Until I found out, I decided that I would keep the chip with me.
Within an hour, I was led outside and into a black limousine with tinted windows. The guy called Bert got in first, then me, then some other huge guy. I wasn't sure how far we would be going, but I didn't enjoy the thought of spending any length of time in a car between these two guys.
Not a word was said for a good half-hour. I spent most of the time going over the events of the past few days, trying to piece together what few puzzle pieces I had. After 30 silent, uneventful minutes, I heard tires screeching ahead of us, car doors slamming, and some shouting. The two guys surrounding me got rather tense, and the limo slowed down to a stop.

Out of the Darkness...

As soon as the door closed behind me, someone switched on a light, blinding me for a second. As I regained my sight, I found myself in a huge office. In front of me, sitting behind a huge wooden desk, was a man. His looked very much like someone you would expext to be the world's most succesful businessman. He smiled, showing his shiny white teeth.
"Sit down," he said, nodding towards a chair in front of me.
I sat down.
The man pulled a huge file out of a drawer. He looked through it, glancing at me every now and then.
"I see," he said after a couple minutes. "You are Samuel S____, born 1991. You went to school..." he went on for a while. Somewhere between my broken arms and my braces, I interrupted him.
"Um, excuse me sir, but what exactly am I doing here?"
He sort of squinted at me, as if he were deciding wether or not to tell me something.
"Sam," he said, "it has come to my attention that you recently intercepted a memory chip. I assume you saw what was on it, and I also assume that you don't know what it is you were looking at."
I didn't like the way he was assuming all the correct assumptions, and I didn't like the way he had called me 'Sam.' But, eager to know more, I simply nodded and waited.
He held out two pictures.
"Have you seen either of these two men?"
I had, but I was tired of the whole photograph thing.
"And what if I have?" I asked.
"If you have, then I have good reason to believe that you're in danger. Because of what you've seen, the best agents from over twenty countries in the world are after you. You may not want to be involved, but you're in this whether you like it or not."

A Voice

After a shower and a lunch consisting of a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich and crackers, the guy called Bert finally spoke. Up to this point, all I had heard out of him were a few grunts.
"Go in there," he said in a gruff voice.
I cautiously made my way toward the door he was pointing to. After what had been happening to me lately, I had no idea what to expect. I slowly turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.
It was pitch black inside.
"Come on in," said a voice from inside the blackness.
I slowly walked into the room, staying as close to the door as possible.
"Close the door," said the voice.
Deciding that I was tired of being ordered around, I summoned up my courage and asked, in a rather timid voice, "Who are you?"
After a moment of silence, the voice, again, said, "Close the door," this time in a more commanding tone.
I decided I didn't have much choice and, after drawing a heavy breath, I slowly closed the door behind me, shutting out the last bit of light in the room.

When I awoke again...

The next time I woke up, I noticed that the car or whatever I was in had stopped. I heard a door slam and some muffled talking. After a few seconds there was a blast of light from the door to whatever I was in being opened. I was blinded for a few seconds, but soon I made out a lady staring down at me.
"Well, look who's awake," she said in a half-friendly voice. "Come on, sleepy head. You gotta get out now."
I was too dazed to disobey. I sat up, felt the buzz of blood draining from my brain and fell back down. After another attempt, I managed to half stumble, half roll out of the car. Staggering to my feet, I looked around to see where if I could figure out where I was. All around me was thin, jungle type woods. A few yards away was a small cabin. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, and I was still a little drowsy from being in a horizontal position for such a long period of time. The lady, who I noticed to be tall with short black hair, must have noticed the confusion on my face.
"You're going to staying here for the next few days," she said. "More will be explained later. Right now, Bert will lead you to your room. You'll have time for a shower before lunch."
"Follow me," said a huge man with a Neanderthal face, who seemed to appear out of nowhere.
Things were still spinning around like a cyclone in my brain. Had I been in my right mind, I probably would have demanded to know what was going on. For now, the words shower and lunch were all that I heard. I followed Bert into the cabin.

When I awoke...

The first thing I noticed was the darkness. I felt for the flashlight I always keep next to my bed. All I felt were carpeted walls all around me.

Then the memories came flooding back.

I tried to sit up, but my head hit something about 2 feet above me. I struggled to glimpse some sort of light. It was then that I noticed a gentle hum beneath me. After a few moments, I realised that I was in the trunk of a car.

After completely feeling every square inch of my cage, I decided to take an inverntory on what I had on me. It didn't take long to find that I didn't have my camera, but I still had the camera memory chip in my pocket. I had taken it out of my camera earlier that day. Or, at least, I think it was that day. There was no way to know how long I had been unconcious.

After a few minutes, I decided the best thing to do was wait and see what would happen.

I fell back asleep.

The Reply

Up till now, my story has been mostly introduction. It was about a week after I sent the email that things really started happening.
I had almost forgotten about the memory chip, or at least I wasn't thinking about it every hour of the day. I had started making a movie. For some reason or another, I had to get some footage outside. I was walking around the block with my video camera when I saw a vaguely familiar face out of the corner of my eye. Turning, I saw a man standing across the street, watching me. I couldn't remember how I knew him, but I had definitely seen him before.
Feeling a little nervous, I continued walking at a slightly faster pace. I turned a corner, walked for a few more yards, then looked back. The man was following just a few feet behind me. He was short, muscular and bald. I was just about to start walking again when the man spoke.
"Excuse me," He said in a thick Russian accent. "I'm looking for a friend of mine." Just when I was thinking that I had been in this situation before, I recognised who the guy was. It was the man in the picture that the guy called Carl had shown me. The man held up a picture. "Have you seen this man?"
The picture was a little blurry, but I could see that it was a picture of the guy called Carl. I wasn't sure exactly what to say.
"Um...He looks sort of familiar-"
The moment the words left my mouth, something big and heavy landed on my head. The world spun around for a couple seconds, then everything went black.

An Email

It went something like this:

Dear Sir or Madam,
I recently, through a series of odd circumstances, gained possession of a memory chip. I found in it this email address. Do you happen to be missing a memory chip? If not, do you know who this chip might belong to and how I could get in contact with him/her? Thank you.

A concerned citizen.

Yeah, It was a little lame. Especially the concerned citizen part. But it was good enough. Hopefully, I would get a reply that would explain a little more about what was going on.
And I did get just such a response. The only problem was, the reply wasn't sent via email.

I decided to look at the pictures on the memory card a little closer and see if I might have missed something. A lot of the pictures were of documents and I couldn't understand most of them, but I noticed that there were two words that were mentioned several times. The words were "Object" and "Tear". They were always used as nouns, but the sentances they were in didn't make much sense.
After looking through five or six pictures, I finally found something useful: an email address.
After about ten minutes of arguing with myself about what to do, curiousity got the better of me.

Carl

Well, there he was. 7 feet tall, black hair, black suit, sunglasses, almost completely concealed earphone, neutral facial expression. When they thought up the stereotype secret agent, this is the man they were thinking of.
"My name is Carl. I'm looking for a friend of mine," he said in a deep voice with a slight Australian accent. "Here's a picture of him."
Carl held up a black and white photograph of a bald man.
"No," I said. "I've never seen him before."
Carl was looking steadily at my hand. I glanced down and realized that I was still holding my camera. I quickly hid it behind my back.
"Can I help you with anything else, Mr. Carl?" I asked. He gave me a sharp look.
"If I have any further use for you, I will certainly let you know." With that, he turned, got into the car and rode off.

The Plot Thickens

It was a box, wrapped up in brown paper. I opened it and found another box, also wrapped up in brown paper. I opened it and found yet another box wrapped in brown paper. This continued for a while until I was surrounded by no less than ten open boxes and tons of torn up paper. The last box was tiny. It contained merely a 2 GB memory card for a camera.
It wasn't long before I had it inside my Canon ZR 600 Digital Camcorder. There wasn't much on it. Just some pictures of a room and some papers, and a video of a waterfall.
Finding this all rather odd, I decided to ask my parents what they thought it meant. I was just on my way to do this when the doorbell rang. I ran out to the balcony to see who was 6here. All I could see was a black car with tinted windows sitting outside our front gate.
Curious, I ran downstairs and opened the door. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

One Last Note

I know. You're thinking "Man, when will he get on with this fascinating story?" I assure you, after this post I will get to writing. However, I just wanted to let you know that I have decided NOT to write my story in the form of a blog. I find it constrictive to my imagination and will, therefore, return to writing in my own style. Thank you for your patience. I believe when I last wrote, Sam was just about to find out what was in the mysterious package that someone left him.

To Avoid Misunderstanding...

This entire blog is fictional. It's a continuing story about myself put in the form of a blog. If something actually happens that I want to talk about, I'll start a new "real life" blog.

Greetings!

Dear Reader,
Not much is happening. Not much is likely to happen for quite some time. We just had some visitors from America, and that was a lot of fun. However, they just left today. So life will soon fall back into boring routine.

One interesting note:
Someone from the group (I don't know who) left a gift for me in my room. It had a note attached, saying not to open it until Saturday. So I'll have to wait to find out what it is. It doesn't make any noise when I shake it, and it's fairly heavy.

Well, that's all that's happening and, as I said, that's all that's likely to happen for a long time.

A Note from the Author

Dear Valued Reader,
From this point on, my story will be written in normal blog fashion. I will write the events as if they are actually happening to me day-by-day.

The Needed Explanations (or a few more mysteries)...

I won't waste words on lengthy and needless explanations. I'm sure you're wondering who the aforementioned "they" are. (see previous post) However, I won't tell you. Their identity is entirely unimportant. The only thing you must know about them is they were the first to see it and they didn't think I could do anything about it. Zoe didn't think so either, but she hadn't known me long, so that was forgivable.

Anyway, enough of this idle chatter! I believe the last word of importance I mentioned was "until". Until, that is, they fell in love. Not that love is, in and of itself, a bad thing. But there's a time for everything, and this was not the time for such trivial matters as love.
Naturaly, upon discovering their situation, they decided to get out of the country and start a new life together. It would have worked out for them, had they not brought it with them.
I don't want to accuse anyone without knowing all the details, so I won't say that they stole it. Perhaps they didn't know that it was in their suitcase. It may have been planted there. Either way, there it was. Of course, they couldn't keep it. So, not telling me of the danger it would put me in, they gave it to me. If someone was to die, better me than them. After all, they were in love!

I would like to let you know right now that I had no clue of the importance of their "gift". It wasn't until after I met Chris that I even knew that REBEL existed.

But I'm getting behind myself. I'll relate to the events in the order that they unfolded without any more of this boring history.

Beginnings...

I am Sam, among other things, the most notable of which I will keep to myself for the present. It is crucial to the flow of my narrative that you begin reading with no preconceptions about my identity other than those of a curious reader.
My story begins where most stories end: “And they lived happily ever after.” The one thing that sets my story apart from that of other authors is the word directly following the sentence:
“Until…”

Hmm...A Change Must Be Made

Reading over what I've done so far, I have come to the conclusion that this blog is excessively boring. Therefore, if the reader doesn't mind, I will, for the fun of it, dramatise my life to make it more interesting. All the ideas, of course, will be based on actual facts. The details, however, will be made up.

In short, this is no longer a day-by-day "my life" blog. It is now a continuing fictional story based on my life.

Enjoy!

Sunday

We went to church today.
We have a small church. It's a really great group of people. My youngest brother wasn't feeling well today, so my mom stayed home with him. Besides that, things were pretty normal.
This week was the last week that we'll be meeting in our current building. For the past several years, we've been renting property. We've actually changed locations 4 times since we started our church.
Anyway, we were recently able to purchase land with a building on it to use as a permanent location for our church. It needed some remodelling, but it should be done by next week.

Random fact!
Did you know that the can opener was invented in 1858, almost 50 years after the tin can was invented? Until that time, cans had to be hammered open with a sharp object. Opening cans was a long, hard and dangerous process.

PS. I changed the settings so that anyone can post comments. Please let me know if you happen to read this blog. I'm just curious as to who actually reads this.

A Quick Post

It's late and I'm just about to go to bed. I just wanted to say that if you see this post, please leave a comment telling me how you happened to find this blog. Thanks!

Sam

Hello World!

I am Sam. I am 16 years old. I was born in Oklahoma and I live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (a small country between Thailand and Vietnam). I have 3 siblings: 1 older sister and 2 younger brothers. My family and I are missionaries here in this fascinating land.

I hope to post here quite often, so check back regularly.