The Outside (#wattys2016)

The Fight

Bombs. It was just a sound, but it was terrifying. "Run!" James yelled but I stopped him. "We gotta face our fears, and this may be our only way to the Inside." I told him so I took his hand and ran strait toward the hideous sound. Then I saw it. The ground in front of us was collapsing and bullets were falling from the sky. I thought I saw a flying machine holding people not that far away from us. "Is it too late to run?" I asked. "Never." He replied. I ran and ran as fast as my legs could take me. Once I could barely hear the sound, we stopped. "How are we gonna get there?" I asked, completely out of breath. "We're going back, we just need a strategy."

We had a plan all figured out. We would run in, dodge the bullets, and in the meantime try not to get killed. But when we got there, nothing. There were no bombs, nothing falling from the sky, just dead silence. And the ground was right there as if it hadn't even happened. "It's too easy." I said. "No, it's not." He told me. "I think something must have fell on it. Like," he paused. "Watch this." He ran over to the nearest tree in the clearing and pulled of a stick. The he threw it where the bombs just were. One, two, three exploded underground. We both looked away and covered our ears like we were thinking the same thing. When I turned back around, the ground was right there, but the stick was gone. "So... we can't go that way." I confirmed. "No, duh." James looked so deep in thought. For some reason it bothered me. Then it killed me. "Oh, come on, whatcha thinking about? I know you can think your way out of this, you've just gotta..." I didn't know what to say. "Gotta ignore the pressure." I finally decided. But then the sparks finally came. "You've gotta think like one of them, not one of us." Still, he looked like he was ignoring me. "Think like an Insider." He mumbled. In seconds his face lit up. "I've got it!" He exclaimed. "Yes?" He looked the most excited I had ever seen him. "The Government set these traps so that we wouldn't get in right?" He asked. "Yeah, probably." I replied. "So if they don't know we're coming, they won't set the traps." I got confused. "Why?" I asked. "Why wouldn't they set the traps?" He responded: "Because machinery like that takes lots of energy, and that's something the Inside has always been low on. "How do you know all this?" I questioned him. "It doesn't matter now. So all we have to do is make it so they lose track of us." More confused than ever, I asked: "And how do we do that?!" "We shut down they're cameras."

"Haven't you seen them?" James asked. "They're everywhere." Cameras? Well, how else would they track us? I thought. But I had never seen and cameras around. "The little red dots in the trees?" "Nope, never seen them." I replied. He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the tree he pulled the stick out of. He pointed to a little red dot planted high in the tree. "Now do you see it?" I nodded as he started to climb the tree, all the way up to the top. "You know, the Inside may be tech geeks, but they're really not that smart." He told me as he picked off the little red ball and destroyed it with two fingers. "How?" I asked. "They're that fragile." He told me. I was amazed. Maybe they actually weren't that smart. But if we were going to make it we were going to need a smarter plan. And we're making it now.