Daniel, at least, is eager to leave our past behind. For his country, for me, he had nearly died.Īfter the war ended, we moved here to Ross City, Antarctica, and during that time, I finished school and Daniel became an agent in the Antarctican Intelligence Service. There are documentaries about what he did during the war between the Republic and the Colonies, about all he had sacrificed. He went from being a notorious criminal to a national hero in the span of a year. His name was spray-painted on buildings, his profile drawn on both rebel pamphlets and wanted posters.

Ten years ago, he was known as Day, the boy from the streets who led a revolution that saved the Republic of America. I may be a star student, good at figuring things out … but my brother is Daniel Altan Wing. This is Eden Bataar Wing, Daniel’s younger brother. I’ve already got an internship lined up back in the Republic, and in a couple of months, I’ll be headed there for an orientation session.īut most people don’t know me like this. I skipped the last few semesters at my high school to become one of the best students at Ross University of the Sciences, the top-ranked college in the world, and I’m about to graduate with an advanced degree after seven years, which should have taken ten. My mother once called me her little alchemist, told me she believed I could turn rust into gold, and that I would ramble on about every little detail that makes up something until I ran out of breath. I like figuring things out, the how and the why. I love the way flowers bloom and then wilt, how you can preserve them forever just by pressing them between the pages of a book. I love watching ants march in a line to a bit of food, take it apart, and carry it single file back to their hill. It doesn’t have to be a human-made machine, either. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a tinkerer-prying apart old gadgets and laying out the innards of a broken radio or clock or toaster, delighting in the puzzle of making something new out of something old. If you asked me to tell you about myself, I’d say first that I like to understand things. And it will become the reason why Antarctica is the greatest nation on earth. It is a tool used to help us each live the life we deserve. Our Level system may seem like a game, but it is far more than that.

Let us never forget the struggle between global tyranny and democracy that led us to found this free nation of Antarctica, where every person has the chance to work their way up from nothing, and where technology, not human ego and error, governs how successful you can become. Let us never forget the pain that our ancestors have suffered and are still suffering all around the world. To those charting their own paths and those who make it possible for others

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