Spencer's+Group

 **The Search for the Cure**      Captain Chase Richardson sat with his head in his hands, pondering what was happening to his life. In the past month alone, Richardson's whole family, including his parents, brother, and two sisters had perished painfully from a new, unidentified virus. Many called this virus "Titan Pandemic", or just TP, because of how powerful and unstoppable it was. TP had eliminated entire cities around the globe because of how contagious and fatal it was. Once someone was infected with TP, slowly their organs would start to fail, one by one, until the victim no longer had any working systems in their body. This disease was also extremely painful; many likened it to being burned alive every second. Captain Richardson was one of the lucky ones who hadn't caught it yet, and he desperately wanted to help find the cure to save others from dying the same death his family had faced. Chase Richardson was 32 years old and served as a captain in the Marines. Standing 6'1" and muscle-bound, he rarely had anyone disobey a direct order. With a reasonably intelligent head on his soldiers and a soldier's personality, Captain Richardson made a great leader whom many respected and admired. He had a brown crew cut and piercing blue eyes, which always got the truth out of anyone he interrogated. Chase joined the Marines straight out of college at the age of 22, and quickly rose through the ranks because of his military prowess. He also had many acquaintances in the Marines from these 10 years of service, including Sergeant Johnson, Dr. Beckman, Private Blaine, Lieutenant Buchanon, General Philips, and Corporal Austin, all of whom were military personnel and worked with Captain Richardson. One day Captain Richardson was doing his daily routine of 500 pushups and thinking about how he could help find the cure for TP. Suddenly an idea popped into his head: crazy, maybe, but it might just work. Since the cure for the Titan Pandemic isn't found on Earth, maybe it's found somewhere else! For a few hours he contemplated his new idea, and concluded that it might be beneficial to the world if he help set up an expedition to other planets in search of the cure. He brought this idea to General Philips, who at first dismissed it, but with urging he finally consented to let them hold a secret mission to the other planets in the galaxy to try and find the cure.

A month passed and the expedition was finally set up. Those who would be going on the mission were Captain Richardson, Sergeant Johnson, Private Blaine, Lieutenant Buchanon, and Corporal Austin. Dr. Beckman and General Philips would remain at headquarters and would communicate with the squad through a communications beacon on the rear flank of the ship. What a ship it was, though! When the search team first saw the ship they would be commanding, all they could do was gasp. It was the newest and greatest ship: the EC100K. The EC stood for Extra Capabilities, and the 100K stood for 100,000 pounds of pure jet engine thrust. They said this ship could travel the length of the equator in about 10 minutes. Along with the amazing power of the ship, the weapons the ship had on the front were amazing. Gigantic, deadly lasers and bombs and electromagnetic beams were all accessible from the cockpit and would serve as a fleet of ships if they were to get in a space fight. As the retrieval squad stared at this ship, a flame of excitement was ignited in their bellies, and they knew this would be the trip of their lives. How right they were. It was lift-off day, and all of their hearts were pounding like huge bass drums. Sure, they were nervous, but they knew it was for the good of the world. What if they found the cure? They would be international heroes and would forever feel that they had made a difference in the world. It wasn’t about the money. Or the glory. These men were determined to find something of help and weren’t going to stop until they found it. Before they left, the general stored an arsenal of New-Age weapons onboard the ship, including many technologies even the team hadn’t heard of before. Plasma rifles, which they had been told couldn’t exist on Earth, were there; they even had bombs and nuclear weapons that looked like they could destroy a planet with one shot. They felt well-prepared for anything that could come; besides, they were just going to find a cure. How hard could that be?

Lift-off occurred seamlessly. Everything was fine until Private Blaine vomited all over the new upholstery of his seat because of the tremendous G-force, but thankfully there were no technological malfunctions. They flew for hours and hours on end, at Mach 12 speed. Once Private Blaine asked Captain Richardson, “Hey Captain, could we please go to another galaxy? I kinda wanna see new places that no one has been to before. Wouldn’t that be pretty sweet?” Captain Richardson, though, did not agree. “No private, this mission could be dangerous enough without exploring new areas that mankind hasn’t even been to before. It’s a no.” When it came time to go to sleep, Captain put the ship on autopilot and went to his sleeping bag for some rest. But not everyone went to sleep; actually, only one person did not- Private Blaine. Instead, Blaine went to the controls and took the initiative to change the ship’s course to a nearby large purple dot on the radar screen. He thought “I’ll show them. I’ll be the one who discovers the cure and I’ll get the glory.” But he did not realize that the purple dot on the radar screen was not in fact a planet; it was a wormhole.

Before Blaine knew what he had done, everyone in the ship felt as if something were compressing them and squeezing them into nothingness. They felt weightless, but at the same time they also felt mass-less, as if they were actually nothing. After this curious sensation, Captain Richardson angrily noticed that Blaine was by the controls. “What did you do Private? Did you change the ship’s course of direction? Do you have any idea what you may have just done to our mission?!” Blaine replied, “No sir, I didn’t mean to cause any problems, I just thought it would be cool to go to a new planet.” Richardson sighed and said “Well, there’s only one thing we can do. We have to contact HQ and see if they can track us. I have no idea where we are at the moment. All we can do is pray that Dr. Beckman can explain where we are and get us back on track.”

So Captain Richardson contacted HQ. “Roger HQ, this is Captain Richardson reporting from the space mission to find the cure for TP. We need a locations check.” Dr. Beckman, who had been snoozing, groggily woke and said “Ok, Captain, give me one second and I’ll track you using your ship’s advanced systems. It’ll be a moment.” Richardson replied, “Thanks, doc. The private messed with out navigation systems, so we might be a little off track.” There was a moment of silence and Dr. Beckman said into the phone “I can’t believe this, Captain.” “What is it”, asked Captain Richardson. Beckman replied, “When the private messed with the navigation system, he told the system to go into a nearby wormhole. Do you know what this means?” Richardson thought blankly what a wormhole was, but he had no idea. “What does this mean for us?”, he asked. Beckman sighed, “I’m sorry, Captain, but the private jettisoned you into another universe. We lost all tracking of your ship after you went into the wormhole. I guess you’re on your own, in terms of navigation.” Captain Richardson broke the news to his fellow marines. They did not take it well. Some of them even considered throwing Blaine out of the ship and leaving him behind. Others just wanted to rough him up really bad, and let the new guy know how grave his mistakes could be. Either way, they knew they must discuss what their next move would be. Captain Richardson decided they would land at the nearest planet, to see if they could stay there until HQ could send a retrieval squad after them. So he organized the landing. Once the team of marines exited the ship, they were surprised to find themselves in the midst of a dense forest, full of green trees and vines and brush. Plants meant life, so life could be supported on this planet! They all rejoiced at this conclusion, as this meant there could be other life forms that could help them on this planet. For about an hour they stumbled through the jungle, and finally they came upon a city in the jungle, with numerous burrows and holes that must have housed something, but what?

It was so quiet in the jungle, it was almost eerie. The team of marines held their plasma-infused AK-47's close to their chests as they cautiously approached the burrows. All of a sudden, a tiny green alien popped out of one of the holes! It was the traditional humanoid figure with large, black eyes and glowing green skin. "Salutations, we are the peaceful nation of Zora." Luckily the marines’ spacesuits had been equipped with a multi-compatible translator that could apparently translate any language in any universe into English. It worked to great effect. As the marines stared back at this tiny alien, they could hardly believe their eyes. Captain Richardson spoke up: "Um, hi, we are humans from planet Earth, if you have ever heard of that." The alien replied, "Ah, yes, Earth, we have heard tales of humans but we never actually believed that they existed." Captain Richardson replied with a chuckle.

The tiny alien revealed his name to be LeBron. He introduced the humans to the rest of society, who were astonished to meet a real human. He led them to the city’s temple, where there was a shrine with a few large leaves on it. "What is that?" asked Captain Richardson. "This is our nation’s lifeline. It is the sacred Leaf of Zoran, who settled on this planet first. It is said to contain all healing powers." Richardson, who was a man of integrity, could have easily stolen the leaf and ran to ship, for this could be the cure they were searching for. But instead, Richardson tentatively asked, "That is really cool. Well...you see, many people on my home planet, Earth, are going through a really bad disease right now, called Titan Pandemic, and we can’t find a cure for it...Is there any way you could give use one of these leaves so we could heal our home world? We would forever be in your debt." The tiny alien pondered this request. He noticed the large weapons on these humans, and thought. Finally, LeBron answered, "Well, you have no idea how important these leaves are to our nation. Without them we would feel completely vulnerable, as most of our defenses are down as it is. I don’t know if you knew this, but at the moment our planet is at war with a formidable and evil enemy. I don’t know if you could even call it a war though, for they are much stronger than us and our people are dying by the millions every day. Ironically they are also after our leaves, but they are trying to use force to get them. We might be able to give you one of these herbs for your planet, as long as you promise to help us fight this enemy." Richardson huddled with his fellow marines for about a minute, whispering about this offer. Finally Richardson responded to the tiny alien, "We’ll do it."

The humans were now in charge of the defenses of the planet Zora, and this was not an easy task. Fortunately they were heavily armed and could easily engage in combat with any forces known to man. The aliens informed the marines where the enemies were coming from, so the marines lined up along the perimeter of the capital city and waited, armed with the most potent weapons in the arsenal. Finally, they could barely see figures approaching on the horizon. It was easy to see they were armed with guns, but the figures appeared to be extremely stupid. They looked like humans almost, but they stood about four feet tall and had extremely large eyes. They seemed to stumble about aimlessly, slowly and clumsily moving towards the marines. They were armed with steel plates and carried small pistols. The number of them marching towards the marines approximated five hundred. Quickly Captain Richardson radioed LeBron, asking him if this was all the enemy troops. LeBron responded, “No, no, no. You haven’t even seen the mother-ship. This is only one battalion of troops. The rest of them are in a mother-ship somewhere near this planet.” Richardson responded, “Oh great. Well I guess we’ve got our work cut out for us.” Silently Richardson debated whether it was possible to kill all these…things with only a few men.

As the enemy clumsily marched towards the five marines, Lt. Buchanon launched a plasma-infused grenade high into the air over the enemy lines. Instead of running, the idiotic humanoid figures stayed in place and at least 20 of them exploded. The other marines saw this was a good technique, as the enemy was obviously not smart at all, so they kept launching grenades and destroying groups of them at a time. Finally the lines reached the five marines, but by now there were only about 50 left to engage in hand-to-hand combat. This was a harder fight; the creatures may have been clumsy, but they were strong and could use weapons up close very well. After a long and brutal fight, all of them were gone and the marines gauged their losses. Captain Richardson only suffered a small cut on his arm from a graze of one of the creature’s knives. Sergeant Johnson had a large bruise on the forehead after being whacked in the face with the butt of a gun. Corporal Austin, amazingly, remained unscathed. Unfortunately the remaining two did not fare so well. Lieutenant Buchanon got shot in the left arm but was okay after applying a tourniquet. But there on the ground, dead, lay Private Blaine, who had gotten shot in the throat. Now the marines were down to four.

That was the first step in exterminating the aliens’ enemy. Next they knew they had to take out the mother-ship, or else they would never conquer this enemy. So they boarded their ship right away and blasted off the surface of Zora. They did not have to search very long for the mother-ship before they found it. It was gigantic: it was comparable to the size of New York City. Captain Richardson, with an iron will and determination that could not dwindle, only had thoughts of destroying this ship on his mind. The others, however, were a little more apprehensive about attacking the mother-ship. But they still went with Captain Richardson. As they approached the mother-ship they were unnoticed. The enemy must not have gotten word that their first battalion had been destroyed.

Stealth was the key here. If they could approach the ship unnoticed, they might be able to pull it off. As they analyzed the ship, looking for possible weak points, they could not come up with a good battle plan. So they phoned Dr. Beckman and he told them to plant five nuclear bombs on the ship to be sure that it would be destroyed. Bombs 1, 2, 3, and 4 were easy to plant, for they were in the blind spots of the ship, so the enemy could not see them. But the fifth had to be on the front of the ship, which was not so easy.

As they were attempting to plant the fifth bomb, the ship suddenly started suddenly started to fire huge laser beams at the marines. Captain Richardson was only thinking of planting this fifth bomb and then getting away from the enemy ship so he could detonate this bomb. The fifth bomb seemed to take forever to attach to the ship, but once it did, Captain Richardson put the throttle wide open and was gone from sight before the enemy even realized what was going on. Looking in the rear view cameras, Captain Richardson pushed the detonate button, and he saw the once-intimidating mother-ship go into flames. For a brief moment it seemed as if there was another sun in space. The crew cheered, and finally could breathe a sigh of relief.

The marines returned to Zora. They were greeted with much applause and a ceremony was held for them. They were awarded with medals for protecting an otherwise defenseless planet, and were presented with one of the leaves of Zoran, which contained healing powers. The next day Captain Richardson was radioed from HQ saying that a retrieval squad would be there within a matter of minutes. They let out a sigh of relief, and minutes later they saw a retrieval team land. They all said goodbye to their alien friends, and LeBron gave them a heartfelt thank you.

The trip back to Earth was full of celebration and joy. When they finally landed back on Earth, scientists genetically analyzed the herb and found the ingredients, and then mass-produced them so that most of the countries of the world would have access to the new vaccine. As it turned out, the herb worked and the new vaccine saved many millions of people's lives.

The four marines that returned became world-wide heroes. A special ceremony was held in honor of the late Private Blaine, who was given highest honors and medals of bravery given in the military. The surviving marines were also given medals, and became the heroes of millions of children in the world. And best of all, nobody would ever have to suffer from the Titan Pandemic again.

Finally Captain Chase Richardson could feel like he had made difference in this world.