give the land to them. In the end, the treaty became just another piece of paper in someone’s filing cabinet.” The corner of Grandpa’s lip curled upward. “On the five-year anniversary of their arrival, the spacemen had the gall to hold a celebration. They called it ‘Discovery Day.’ We called it ‘Invasion Day.’”
Ray gritted his teeth. “We let them get away with that?!”
Grandpa looked at him gravely. “No, my boy. Invasion Day was the last straw in a series of insults. We went to war ... but it was a war we never could have won.”
He said it was one-sided from the beginning. The space men fought with giant robotic birds, mass-produced in factories. Like steel phoenixes spitting fire from the heavens, the hellish things bombed military bases, bridges and cities.
“They killed so many,” lamented Grandpa. “We managed to destroy some of the robots, but they didn’t carry pilots so it made little difference.”
“Did my dad fight?” interrupted Ray, choking on the words. Hot tears welled up in the boy’s eyes.
Grandpa nodded. “Your father, and your grandmother, too. But what we were up against....”
“Is that how he—?”
“No, but the war did claim your grandma. We were fighting side-by-side on a city street when the bomb dropped from the sky.” He shook his head sadly. “Ray, if I was standing just a few feet to the left, I would have been a goner, too. But all they got was my leg. And so, I escaped with my life, but had to sit out the rest of the war. While your father and our friends continued to fight, I couldn’t do anything but lay around in bed.”
Mom interjected, “Your grandpa was a war hero.”
Grandpa laughed. “Your mom was a nurse and she took great care of me. She is still taking great care of me.”
Ray considered the lingering crumbs of cake on his plate. “What happened after the war?”
Grandpa sighed deeply. “The spacemen pushed the ones who were left into the far corners of our world. When that turned out not to be far enough, they sent us on rockets to the moon and other remote locations off the planet. Your folks and I avoided relocation for some time, because some of our alien friends stowed us away in their attic. But in the end, they betrayed us, too. We ended up on a freighter to the moon.”
The old man described a slow and difficult journey. “They packed hundreds of us into their steel ships, like meat into a can. It was cold and they gave us hardly anything to eat. A lot of people got sick and didn’t make it through the trip.”
The old vet looked to Mom.
Somberly, she nodded. “Ray, your father—he was wounded in the war. He needed medical attention, but on the freighter, there were no supplies. He fell ill....”
Grandpa’s gaze plummeted into the spotless table. “The ones who survived the journey were packed into this soulless reservation built by the spacemen. They keep us alive out of what? Pity? Guilt? But the truth is that we are all prisoners here.”
“There was nothing we could do,” Mom said gently.
“And now we have nothing,” said Grandpa.
“That’s not true,” said Ray, squeezing his grandfather’s arm. “We have our family.”
The old man looked at him in surprise, and his face seemed to brighten several shades. “Boy, you are wise beyond your years. How old are you today, anyway? One hundred, was it?”
“No!” Ray glared. “I’m ten!”
The smile returned to Mom’s face, too. She got up and gave him a hug. “There was one miracle that happened on the journey here, you know.”
When the embrace became suffocating, Ray choked desperately, “Mom ... stop ... you’re squeezing too hard!”
She let go, but continued to beam at him.
Chuckling, Grandpa pushed himself up off the seat with his cane. “Okay! Time for me to turn in,” he said, starting a slow amble toward the house. “I can tell you more stories another day.”
“Wait,” called Ray. “What’s it called? Our home.”
Grandpa did not turn as he answered. “It’s like you said. The moon is our home now. We are together wherever we are home.”
The old man disappeared into the house. Ray turned desperately to his mom. “But ... I want to know what to call the planet.”
“Our people never had a name for it,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “When the spacemen came, they called it Earth, after their old world.”
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Break through the government propaganda and avoid surveillance cameras in WE, THE WATCHED. Told from the unique first-person perspective of an amnesiac, this acclaimed dystopian novel places the reader in the shoes of Seven as he struggles to go unnoticed in a surveillance society and discover his identity.
Seven enters a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution. Seven’s amnesia gives him a blank-slate perspective that helps him see through the propaganda, and he soon gets involved with a group of rebels called the Underground. But this same perceptive power could get him into a lot of trouble with the government police force known as the Guard.
The debut novel by Adam Bender exposes a current political issue in an exciting science fiction adventure, carrying on the tradition of dystopian classics 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, as well as more recent blockbuster novels like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
Also by Adam Bender
DIVIDED WE FALL
The war has come home. The mission has failed. Agent Eve Parker just wants Jon back.
Eve must arrest her fiancé after he loses his memory and becomes a revolutionary named Seven in a fight against the government. However, when she learns more about the President's plan to broaden citizen surveillance, she begins to question just who is right.
Seven runs, but in his flight, realizes he still has feelings for Eve despite his amnesia. Unable to escape his past, Seven determines that he must come to terms with the man he was if he ever wishes to win freedom.
Divided We Fall, a sequel to We, The Watched, takes place in a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution.
About the Author
Adam Bender writes speculative fiction that explores modern-day societal fears with a mix of action and romance.
Adam has written two dystopian sci-fi novels about government surveillance: WE, THE WATCHED and DIVIDED WE FALL. His next novel is a dystopian western about guns in America. In addition, Adam has adapted WE, THE WATCHED into a screenplay.
In his day job as a journalist, Adam has covered politics and technology for Communications Daily and Computerworld Australia. He has won investigative reporting awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Specialized Information Publishers Association. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife.
Despite how this all might appear, Adam is generally a rather modest and amiable fellow. Please subscribe to Adam’s newsletter for updates on his creative writings.
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