Lizi turns and moves a couple steps towards the shimmer.

This thing is going to take off. And green beam all of us. I have no choice.

The craft emits a low rumble as the green vapor billows around it.

Sideways, backwards or forwards, Lizi stares at the shimmer,
I don't care where that craft is going. I need to stop it.
Now. Disarm the threat.

"Chiara Elizabeth Buttegieg you stop right now!"
Despite her mother using her horrid first name, Lizi doesn't take her eyes off the craft.
Hagstrom barks. "Call IO! Call someone! Call them!"

Lizi stops and looks at their anxious faces on Nelson's EO com.
She smiles, "To stand between the people and danger. Isn't that the oath, Hagstrom?"
"But Lizi, you're not an agent."
"I'm the only one here. And if I don't do something, then a lot of people are going to get hurt. So, today..."

She turns the blood stained IO patch on the sleeve of Nelson's jacket towards the com. "Today, my name is Lizi Hagstromsdaw."

Lizi clips the com on the front of the jacket and slings the scanner over her neck and arm.
She pulls the blue beam out of the holster, ignites it, and walks towards the green vapour.

"This is for you, Nelson. For all of us!"

The year is 2075

Forty years since the last empire fell.
It has been a time of peace and rebuilding.
Most countries have formed together into smaller sustainable units called Unions or Alliances,
upgrading their operating systems to OS2020 standards.

Hagstrom Vik is an IO Agent working for the First Union Firewall.
His new partner, Katija and her daughter Lizi, are adjusting to living together as a family.
At 17, school is boring and adults are annoying to Lizi. Only her best friend Kai and her Haplo pals keep her sane.

The Firewalls keep the populations stable.
But a highly disciplined outfit called The Mechanism operates in the shadows.

A new threat is emerging.
One that will test them all.
As IO, EO and The Mechanism scramble across the world to stop it,
Lizi will be caught at the center of the fight.

The Trail's End Mobile Ranch in Apache Junction, Arizona.

Once, a gleaming mobile home park, full of happy winter visitors.
Now it decays under the relentless desert sun.
The bleached out bones of a tin dinosaur.
Tin Town.

Disabled house painter Winston Smith, is waiting to receive disability benefits.
And watching his bank account dwindle down to nothing.
But his Mulligan's stew of neighbors provide ample distraction and comic relief.

Tongues wag and opinions fly around Tin Town.
Mostly over politics or someone else's medical condition.
And opinions are more popular than facts.

Winston, and a handful of his neighbors, look for the truth behind the opinions.
But telling the truth is not popular.
And it just might get someone killed.

We are animals.

And, our behavior is more similar to the behavior of other animals, than it is different.
We have invented several ways to try to explain our behavior. We use psychology, biology, religion, and astrology.

But there may be another explanation: Instinct.

- Do you go out to eat fast food when you have healthy food rotting in the refrigerator?
- Do you believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to do most things, and you always know the right way?
- Do you constantly put other people's needs before your own?

Birds fly south for the winter. Fish swim upstream to spawn.
These are instinctive behaviors.

Our behaviors, even though they can take different forms, might still be motivated out of the same basic Primitive Instincts that motivated our ancestors. How we do things changes. But why we do things hasn't changed in thousands of years.

balance

black cannot exist
without white

good
has no definition
without evil

a one sided coin
cannot exist

all things happen
in balance

unless
i embrace both
without judgement
i will wander
in the delusions
of my primitive Instincts