1 Prologue

John Good woke up early as he usually did to prepare for his job. Before slinking out of bed he kissed his wife on the cheek and did his best not to disturb the blankets she had cocooned herself into. Stepping as gently as he could he traced his fingers along the dresser to the light switch inside the bathroom and flicked it on while dashing into the shower and closing the door behind him to keep the light from bursting into their room.

John finished getting dressed and as he adjusted his tie with one hand he opened the door to his son's room with the other. The floor wasn't visible underneath all the clothes but his son was sleeping soundly with his arms tightly wrapped around the monkey stuffed animal they had gotten him for his fifth birthday. Smiling John slowly pulled the door closed and proceded to eat a granola bar before hopping into his truck to begin the 45-minute commute to his graphic design job.

Hating to drive into the sun in the morning John had picked a house that was directly south of his job even though the drive was a little further than he would've liked. He glanced at his dashboard, 6:54, John thought to himself, "Phew I thought I may have overdone it with the length of that shower." Turning onto the highway he could see the crest of the suns rays peaking over the horizon. Something made John feel like he was having vertigo but he pushed it aside thinking it as a lingering effect of taking too long of a shower. Stepping softly off the gas to settle into the familiar lull of traffic that seemed determined to never allow him to continuously have his foot on the gas John looked around as that vertigo feeling crept back into his head. Pulling his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun John pondered what possibly could have him feeling so uneasy on a typical Wednesday morning. Slowly drifting forward in traffic John went through what he had eaten the day before, what he had said to Jane before bed, dreams he may have had as the feeling grew more and more urgent in his head. Alarm bells were screaming at him as his thoughts raced through what could possibly be the reason for this terrible feeling. Picking up his sunglasses to allow himself to put his hand down a thought struck him which caused a chill to go down his spine. "Why was the sun in my eyes if I'm driving north..." John thought quickly glancing up but he couldn't deny it, the sun was directly in front of him almost completely risen over the horizon.

It seemed quite a few people came to the same exact realization that John just had as a car rear-ended him quite forcefully. John was thrust forward but didn't even seem to acknowledge this event, his eyes were bulging as he noticed in his rear view mirror it looked like the sun was rising from there as well. Screeching tires echoed down the highway as cars plowed into each other, stopped dead in their tracks, or slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting people frantically climbing out of their cars to see if there were really two suns in the sky.

John glanced behind himself to see if the cars behind had also stopped. After ensuring that they had he climbed out of his car to join the groups gathering throughout the highway. John piped up, "So, uh, did I smoke too much weed before driving to work today?" A few nervous laughs bounced amongst the group but the mood was too tense to allow people to relax at his attempt at humor. Suddenly a booming voice echoed through the sky, somewhat like thunder but with a metallic screech behind it that raked against their ears.

"I told you guys the humans would fuck up the planet again, maybe I was off by 150 years but the case remains that I was right."

Another voice, equally as booming but with a more molten rasp to it laughed wholeheartedly at this statement, "Well done, well done, I will admit I thought that the third time the humans attempted living on their own planet they would be successful but I guess I was too optimistic as usual. Well, I guess there's only one course of action left to undertake huh..."

A third voice echoing like a forest with a gale force wind pushing through it responded, " Look, I say we don't give them another chance. Three chances are already so many and there are many more far more deserving races who might earn a chance to advance to our level. I say we delete the humans and just move on to the next round."

These three voices struck a divine fear in the people who heard them. Petrified and unable to determine who or what was talking people scanned the sky with their hands covering the eyes to protect them from the rising suns. At once the two suns jumped through the sky with unbelievable speed, all of a sudden it was as bright as noon but the clock on John's phone still said it was only 7:03 am.

Shrieks escaped the lips of the people near John, he was dumbstruck. Sweat forming on his brow John's mind was racing. "Who are these beings? And what possible test could we have failed?" His face was pale and just looking at those around him he could tell they were as terrified as he was. Gulping to try and calm himself John rubbed his eyes before looking back into the sky. There were indeed two suns that he could see and to his left and right he could vaguely make out the outline of two more suns illuminating the whole world. John closed his eyes and was just about to yell out in a panic when the first voice rang out again.

"Now you know that we always give the species as many tries as they earn to reach our level, truly this is the furthest the humans have made it since their first attempt. I say we just trim their population by half as a punishment."

The third voice reluctantly answered, "Fine, half is as much as I'm going to get isn't it?"

The two other voices "mmhmmed" in unison. After a second the sky suddenly disappeared into pure blackness with green lines forming a grid in the sky and the suns dissolved but their light remained. It looked like the inside of a 1995 computer game when the coding glitched and ended up somewhere you weren't supposed to be. "Humans!" the second voice boomed, " You have squandered your planet, and within the next five years our predictions show that you will completely destroy this planet's ability to sustain life. Unfortunately, you have failed the test... again (a sigh followed this), and this simulation will be terminated with immediate effect. We appreciate you playing the game and we wish you luck in the next game of CHAOS SIMULATION!" Canned applause played after his words, as though they were on a game show.

With this announcement, the wind started whipping into a hurricane force. John turned to his right as he heard a someone scream, and was greeted with the sight of the skyscrapers slowly dissolving as if someone was erasing them with a pencil from the top down. The eraser carved downwards taking meters at a time in a perfectly straight line moving left and right as though it was on a laser-guided system. As the line descended every building was filed down to nothing. The radios on the cars that had left their doors opened suddenly switched off and the eraser started reaching some of the taller people as their hair, then face, then entire bodies disappeared. John wanted to run, to hide, to get away from whatever this invisible eraser was but his legs couldn't move. He heard someone cry out in the distance, "It's just like that Avengers movie!" and John smiled ruefully to himself. "I hope Jayce survives this," he thought as his body was erased piece by piece.

After what seemed like an eternity but was in truth only 6 minutes the eraser suddenly stopped. "Well that's about half of all of them, I may have stopped it a little late..." the third voice guiltily admitted. The second voice sounded disappointed, "You always want to just destroy everything don't you?" The first voice laughed out at this and then announced to the remaining humans, "You lucky 36.7 percent of humans have survived your species purge for game balance purposes. In the next 15 seconds, you will be transported back to the original Island. Please do not grab anything with lead as this may affect your transportation process. Good luck in the next round of the game and know that if you succeed again you will be rewarded with an even more generous planet to build on next time. Until then, goodbye Humans!"

It was pure silence as everyone heard these words, and they looked at each other with terror in their eyes.

...

Jayce Good had woken up when his dad opened the door to his room. Snuggling deeper into his blankets he slipped out his mom's phone and opened the app to play the latest pay to win game before she realized he had swiped it from her room last night. A "pop" sound indicated a push notification from Twitter was received, "Sky echoes with mysterious voices" it read but Jayce just giggled and looked outside. Dropping the phone from his hands as the game's intro music played he watched as buildings were dissolved and voices said things he was too stunned to understand. He then heard a scratching noise as his roof was suddenly erased and the walls started to come down too. His door burst open and his mom scooped him up in her arms and ran with all her might into the basement to hopefully save them from this unseen force. Just as the eraser reached the first steps of the basement it stopped. Staring at the unending blackness Jayce looked at his mom as the last of the words spoken by those mysterious voices rang out. They hugged each other tightly as a blindingly bright light spread from every corner of the Earth and they felt their bodies moving through space.