Part I: Woebarren

When I was seven I was read the story “Horton Hears a Who”. A few weeks after that, the school nurse came in with rubber gloves, and combed through everyone’s hair, looking for head lice.

I was in second grade at the time, and I usually spent recess alone. At some point, I began to imagine the story of the “whos” and the “lice”, two microscopic races at war. I imagined trees in the playground as massive cities, miles tall. I imagined the tiny hills as massive mountains, the grass as vast forests. It was an alternate reality I used as a canvas to imagine.

Paperclips, twigs, and chips of wood became massive battlecruisers that floated through the air, firing at each other, laying siege to the strongholds around the playground. Much of the world I ignored: people, houses, cars and many other places and things. If it didn’t fit into my fantasy, I pretended it wasn’t there.

The “whos” were nothing like the Dr. Seuss creatures, they were pretty much normal humans. Much, much later I came up with an explanation for their names, which turns out to be very important.

Similarly, the “lice” were far less insectoid, but at the time I did not think much about what they looked like for many years. They were mere dots in the war; the air battles were more of what mattered.

The names were very childish, but as I was a child I didn’t care, and later on it felt wrong to change them. This story never took place outside of school,

I invented characters, Peter and Emily Green. They were the whos’ best pilots, and competent soldiers as well. They were the champions of the whos, and they were at the center of nearly every battle. They were very much ideal people, at least as I saw them back then.

There was also the character of Myron Brown, a loyal friend of Peter and Emily. He had a very rough, straightforward temperament. I cannot remember when I added him to the story, but when I began writing, I included Myron from the very beginning.

Their nemesis was Timeless, who, while not the leader of the lice, was their most deadly agent. His fighter craft had an hourglass-shaped profile, and he often clashed with Peter and Emily. Whether the mission was to jetpack onto the back of a louse cruiser and board it, or to stop meteors sucked down from orbit to hit the whos’ fortresses, Timeless often showed up to try to foil Peter and Emily’s plans.

The school itself was a titanic louse superfortress, miles tall, full of millions of louse soldiers. At the time, it was nameless, as there was no real reason to name it. It was the center of the war. Years later, I gave it the name of Woebarren, for convenience of reference.

I myself did not exist anywhere in their world; it was a completely separate place. I also never did this outside of school, and wouldn’t for years. For some reason, it felt “dirty,“ as if it belonged only as a way to pass the time at school. I understand this feeling even years later but cannot put it into words.

Eventually, when I was in my last year of elementary school, the whos managed to overwhelm Woebarren’s outer defenses, and attack its interior. Over time they took control of several structural columns, and detonated them, destroying the structure. The who fleet fled the wreckage, as a massive louse fleet flew toward them to retaliate. The Whos evacuated Alabaster, gathered the remains of the fleet, and fled beyond Woebarren into the world beyond. Leaving elementary school felt like an escape, and so it was for the whos.

On the way, a portion of that louse fleet ambushed them. This happened in some field not far from my school, some end-of-the-year event they had. I imagined one huge climactic battle between the whos and lice.

Peter and Emily’s ship was heavily damaged. It limped away into the clouds, but was pursued and shot down. It crash-landed in a rocky desert. As Peter and Emily and the other shaken survivors emerged from the wreckage, they saw an even larger superfortress in the distance. I left the story off there for the summer, as I had done every year up until that point.

Part II: Macalavay

When I returned to school in September (now in middle school, hence the new superfortress), Peter and Emily and the other survivors began to unite with clusters of who resistance around the superfortress, and Peter began to rebuild his army.

During this time, I began to develop more of the story. Part of this was Peter and Emily’s “Chosen” heritage, which I developed as an explanation for why they had lived so long. I normally hated stories with “prophecies” and “chosen ones”, but it didn’t make sense that they had not run out of luck by now.

As such, Peter and Emily would have split-second visions of the future that allowed them to dodge or duck at just the right time. Or wheel their fighter craft out of the way of an incoming missile. I would develop the Chosen heritage more and more as the story went on.

A year later, the Whos finally began an attack within Macalavay itself, having weakened its outer defenses over a fierce siege. The siege against Macalavay attracted whos from far away, gathering together a massive army and air navy under Peter’s command.

The siege lasted twenty years.

During this time, Emily and Peter had three children; Orion, who was an excellent warrior; Cassiopeia, who piloting skills exceeded even Peter’s; and Procyon, who, at the time of the fall of Macavalay, was just an infant. Orion and Cassiopeia had grown into young adulthood.

As the Who army began to attack and capture points within Macalavay, the lice launched a brutal counterattack. Point Seven fell; the Whos had to retreat back to a makeshift stronghold miles away, from which they repelled the louse counterattack. Orion, Emily, Peter, and Julia were at Point Seven when it fell; all of them barely escaped. But the fall of Point Seven was a chilling defeat for the Whos. “Remember Point Seven!” was the battlecry of the Who forces as they attacked Macalavay from within. The battle lasted for months.

Finally, Who armies had pushed in far enough to gain access to several structural columns that were integral to the support of Macalavay, as well as several nuclear reactor stations that provided power for important areas of the superfortress. The Whos began to organize special strike teams to attack these points, while secretly preparing their fleet for evacuation; they would destroy Macalavay, then flee from the catastrophic explosion that followed.

The mission was successful. Macalavay began to collapse as the last few structural points were destroyed. The last day of seventh grade (my last year of middle school), as I walked out of the building to the buses lined up along the blacktop, in my mind it was a lightning-paced escape from Macalavay, as explosions roiled around them, and the final destructive pulse festered within. Peter and Emily died in the escape, as their ship was shot down and destroyed by Timeless, but their children lived on.

The scattered who fleet rendezvoused a few hundred miles away on a great mountain, from where they watched Macavalay explode with a light brighter than the sun, annihilated at last after twenty long years of siege. The who fleet drifted onward, toward the world beyond that awaited them.

Part III: Sarengarth

After several months of wandering aimlessly, occasionally attacking small louse outposts to gather supplies, the who fleet stumbled across a great tree-city, miles tall, a mix of natural growth and artificial construction. Its leaves had been partially converted into great solar panels; however, the true source of its power was below the surface; a deposit of nuclear ores richer than any found on Omna.

In real life, this was a tree outside my house.

This city, called Sarengarth, offered the Whos sanctuary. It was ruled by a old king who had little power; his cruel son, Prince Diomitrick, was the true power behind the throne. His sister, Xenia, was not an heir and spent most of her time being overshadowed by her brother.

Orion brought news of the coming war to the king. Diomirick didn’t like Orion’s declarations of doom. The tension between the Sarengarthians and the newcomers continued until Orion learned that several of his people had been killed on Diomirick’s orders. Then, a few days later, the king died. Orion, all but certain that Diomitrick had ordered the king murdered so that he could ascend to the throne, showed up to Diomitrick’s ad-hoc crowning ceremony, challenged him to a knife duel, and killed him. Rather awkwardly, Orion ended up as the leader of Sarengarth. Later, he married Xenia as a symbol of the alliance.

At around this time, Orion began to realize how large the war around him was. Hundreds of nations fought against the lice, whose war machine was unbelievably vast; thick clouds of battlecruisers formed clouds in the upper atmosphere, and trillions of louse soldiers marched into combat. The ancient who empire, once a world-spanning nation, had been scattered far and wide, and the few fragmented nations that still survived, fought on.

I began to imagine this story at home, usually wandering around my yard after school. I never had before because it had felt “unclean” for some reason, as if it didn’t belong at home. By now I mostly just imagined the story in my head.

In the last frenzied months before the louse attack came, Orion desperately tried to prepare Sarengarth and the other Who strongholds for attack. Diomitrick’s reign had left it weak, and a great louse war machine swelled in the south, growing nearer with each passing day.

For a time, the whos waged war on Lurgiam, another louse superfortress nearby, to weaken it before the louse attack arrived.

Sometime in early December, the lice attacked Sarengarth. The first snowfall brought millions of snowflakes down from the sky; I imagined swarms of louse landing craft attacking Sarengarth.

The Sarengarthians fended off the lice throughout the winter.

Later on, Xenia was killed when a louse ship destroyed one of Sarengarth’s branches. Orion grieved her because, although the marriage was for political reasons, he had grown to love her.

Once the snow of winter began to melt and the long siege ended, the Whos began another counterattack, striking at nearby louse strongholds.

Often when we went out to the nearby mall for dinner, I imagined Orion leading his squadron of fighters, weaving between the looming who siege cruisers as they dodged anti-aircraft fire, swarming through the hallways of the massive louse fortress to wreak havoc within.

The year after eighth grade I went to another, very small school, that actually interested me. As a result, I spent far less time imagining the story while there; it switched from being a school-only thing, to something I imagined mostly outside of school, to fill in the boring cracks of my life where I had nothing else to do.

Vacations became missions and quests by Orion and the others. One, to a distant desert place called Arsthonna, allowed them to acquire a type of cloaking technology called a Guire suit, allowing the user to blend into the environment by bending light with magnets.

The next year, Orion learned of the ruins of the ancient who capital, Faien'roh, more than a million kilometers to the west. He began to make plans to journey there, hoping he could learn a secret that would let him defeat the lice.

Part IV: Faien’roh

The stalemate had gone on long enough. It was time for Orion to learn about his past, that of his people, and what could possibly win this endless struggle.

After two years of brutal sieges, I decided Orion and Cassiopeia deserved some answers. After reading some old archives, Orion discovered the site of “the Schism”, where the war between the Whos and Lice began thousands of years ago, and ended, at first, with the fall of the Who Empire.

Orion, Cassiopeia, Myron, and a platoon of soldiers gathered onto a captured louse ship, with fake orders to be transferred to the very, very far west. They boarded one of the huge louse troop ships in this disguised cruiser. It took them far to the west.

When they arrived, they sought out Faien’roh, the once-capital of the Who empire. It had been shattered in the war, reduced to a land of geysers and volcanoes. Lice pursued them from the airport, and eventually caught up and heavily damaged the cruiser. It crashed into the middle of the desert, and the Lice, believing their quarry dead, withdrew.

Emerging from the wreckage, the survivors build as inconspicuous of a camp as possible in the shadow of their crashed ship. But before long they were approached by the few Whos who still remained around Faien’roh. Led by a man named Tenebrauk, and his sister Calana, the small band of Whos believed themselves to be keepers of the sacred ground. They had some industry, enough to give them guns, but little else. They were almost entirely isolated.

Orion told Tenebrauk what he sought; answers about the Schism. Tenebrauk sent Calana to guide Orion and his companions to a cave where he said the answers would lie. He gave them another ship, and sent them off with his blessing.

The cliff was thousands and thousands of feet above the ground, a churning, massive waterfall a few miles away. Along the way Orion felt flashbacks, inherited memories almost, of the battles that had razed this once-great nation. When they arrived at the cliff, they realized the cave was too treacherous to be approached with the cruiser. Orion brought Calana, a carbine rifle, and a knife with him, and flew a small craft alone to the cliffside. Within, he hoped to find the answers to why his world was as it was.

The lice shot down the ship, and killed the other crew. Orion and Calana escaped alone, and began walking a trail along the cliffside.

They spent a night in a small alcove off the trail, getting to know each other. They began to fall in love.

The next day they continued on to the cave.

Inside Orion faced several strange creatures that guarded the place; tall, emaciated humanoids with arms that ended in a long, scimitar like claw. Panther-like things. I can’t remember the rest. Eventually he came to the inner sanctum of the cave.

In the center, hovering, emitting light, was a solid white orb. Orion began to approach it, and it brightened. As he grew closer it brightened further, until the light and the heat were intolerable, and he had to draw back. He looked at the thing, trying to figure out how this was the answer, but could discern nothing. He closed his eyes, hoping the mysterious intuition that had visited before would aid him here. Nothing.

Before long, Timeless showed up, with a contingent of louse soldiers. Orion gunned them down, fought Timeless to a standstill, before being rescued by Myron and Cassiopeia.

Tenebrauk’s fighter flew to escort Orion and Calana’s ship to safety as louse cruisers closed in. He sacrificed himself to lead away several long-range guided missiles. Calana was, of course, grief-stricken.

After a short war that lasted barely a few days, the few Whos that had lingered around the ancient capital were dead or hopelessly surrounded and outnumbered. Orion fled, with Calana, Myron, and Cassiopeia. They barely managed to make it home.

Around this time, some other stuff happened that distracted me from the story. When I finally got back into it, the story began to take on a much bleaker tone. Sarengarth was slowly crumbling under years of siege, and it looked to Orion like their time was running out.

Part V: Falling

The Whos had survived two more years of war with the lice, but had lost many of the Who strongholds that protected and surrounded Sarengarth. Calana had died, shot by Timeless in a louse city called Rhashidon, who proceeded to almost-mortally wound Orion.

The next year Orion returned to Rhashidon, on a mission to destroy a mysterious louse weapon referred to in captured messages as Kaga-Hirik. It turned out to be the construction of a massive ship, several miles long, that could crush Sarengarth with nukes. Orion and his allies managed to cripple it, but Cassiopeia was killed in the battle.

Sarengarth started losing ground. Strongholds everywhere were being taken, softening up the Whos for the winter offensive. All along, the defense of Sarengarth had had an “endless siege” tone to it; except now, the defenses were cracking. Algabro (a very large boulder down the street from our house, one of the most powerful strongholds, save Sarengarth itself) was overrun after a month of siege and a month of louse soldiers slowly clearing the hundreds of levels from top-to-bottom.

Eventually, Orion began to fall in love again, this time with a soldier named Emma, who fought side-by-side with him. For a long time, it seemed to Orion like there might be hope after all, that perhaps he could outlast the lice, and maybe one day there would be peace for him to share with Emma.

Last winter he set off to the deep south with what little fleet the Whos had left to spare, hoping to destroy Casa Novak, believed to be the louse “capital”, in the deep south. But even when he gathered together every hidden resistance he found on the way, the attack failed brutally. And Orion knew how foolish he was.

He fled back to the north, hoping against hope that Sarengarth would hold.

Then one day Emma was killed as they fought together, desperately trying to recapture a stronghold the lice had taken, but suffered heavy casualties in the attack. An hour later, Sarengarth was struck by a powerful EMP weapon that destroyed what was left of the shields. Invasion ships swarmed around the great city, louse troops flooded in, slaughtering all who could not escape.

Orion, driven mad by Emma’s death, by Calana’s death, by his sister’s death, by his parents’ death, by Xenia’s death, by Julia’s, stole a fighter from Myron’s ship as it flew back to Macalavay. Hoping to kill as many lice as possible, and die in the process, he flew directly into the thick of the fight, destroying ship after ship. Eventually he was shot down, crashed into the side of Sarengarth, where he was captured by louse troops when they flooded in an overran the structure.

I had a vision of Orion, in one of the great atriums deep within Sarengarth (the interior was quite a bit like a shopping mall in my mind, in terms of set up; wide, spacious corridors throughout. Like an underground city, but inside a tree). Around him, shattered glass and tile, the dead lay strewn everywhere, on his knees, teeth gritted, as a circle of black masked soldiers surrounded him, torn clothes blowing in the wind that whipped through the gaping holes in the walls of Sarengarth. Orion was captured; Myron’s ship was heavily damaged trying to help repel the lice, and he fled. The ship stuttered for a few days, traveling thousands of miles, before crashing into the thick on the side of a cliff near a parking garage at a college (I don’t go there, it was merely a visit). He started a small colony there, hoping he could hide at least some of his people from the horror of the lice.

Part VI: Remnants

Orion stayed in captivity for few months, doing hard labor for the lice. He was forced to work cleaning up destroyed Who villages and cities and strongholds, cleaning up the corpses of the dead for them to be burned or buried in a mass grave. A couple of months ago, they finally took him high over a great sea, along with a few other prisoners who had been important louse leaders (but no one Orion knew; Myron was the only person left in his life, and he had fled). One by one, the prisoners were shot, then pushed out to fall thousands of feet into the water. When it was Orion’s turn, he spun, wrenching himself out of the grip of one of the soldiers, and smashing his cuffs against the barrel of another’s gun; the jolt caused it to fire, shooting through the links. Another louse soldier raised his gun to shoot, but Orion had already leaped over the edge, into the water below.

Somehow, gusts of wind saved him, dropping him roughly into the water, but not fatally. He survived, eventually floating to shore, clinging to one of the floating corpses of those executed. On land, he found a ruined village, where he gathered food, an old bolt-action rifle, and some clothes, and began a long, solitary trek alone.

As he did, he saw the horrors of war, of the terrible Dholeska virus that the lice had unleashed on the world, leaving half its victims dead, their skin rumpled and bubbled, the other half deformed and insane. Orion had to shoot many of the creatures, who had once been people, and now were monsters.

Eventually, he was rescued by Jack and Megan, two soldiers from Sarengarth’s fragmented fleet, part of what little who resistance remained. He joined them on a great attack against the louse city of Nethogra, a city powered by massive waterfalls.

They headed back toward Sarengarth soon after, a long journey to a place called Benatio, one of the few Who cities left, and with little time remaining. A nuclear strike forced them underground. Orion caught the Dholeska, and found himself dying. As the disease progressed over the space of just a few hours he realized he would die soon, without the Chosen heritage being passed on. It was essential to him, and to the world. Driven mad by the disease, his mind barely functioning, he tried to rape Megan, hoping that somehow it would let the Chosen heritage be passed on, but in seconds Jack found them and knocked Orion unconscious.

The next day Orion was marooned, forced into the dusty nuclear wasteland above. He barely managed to convince Jack and Megan not to have him executed.

He wandered north for many more weeks, taking “underground railroads” that ran through the forests. Eventually he ended up meeting a couple, Gordon and Amelia, who survived by themselves in a small cottage. Accessing a network from their house he learned that Jack and Megan had been killed, along with hundreds of others, in an attack on a louse skytrain tower.

He continued north.

Eventually he happened across the small town of Alderheim, a seaside village. Here he met Trielle and Cormick. Trielle’s husband had died long ago, and Cormick had been one of his friends. Trielle’s daughter Marie had been lost in the nearby town of Cullsweth, just over a small cluster of mountains further inland. Cormick blamed himself, and eventually they managed to rescue Marie, but Cormick died in the process.

Eventually Alderheim itself was attacked, and destroyed. Orion barely fled with Trielle and Marie, and they managed to survive in the woods for a few weeks. Eventually they met a mercenary named Kellerick Nole, and by his side, watched as the Underthrown finally rose from the titanic underground caverns. The first wave was destroyed in nineteen hours, but the second gained a toehold, and they waged war on the lice, retaking Sarengarth.

Orion was eventually reunited with Myron, who was hunting for a cure for the deadly Dholeska virus. Orion joined him in his quest. Around this time, he married Trielle, and a few months later, she was pregnant with Orion’s child.

Before long, they learned of a louse superweapon to the far west, called the Finality weapon. Orion left just days before his children were born; he had to speak to them over a videocam, with a slight speed-of-light delay from how far across the surface he was. He never saw them in person. A week into the sieges, they attacked the weapon, which planned to spread Dholeska over the entire world. Orion had captured enough Dholeska information for biologists to create a version of the virus that would infect the lice, bypassing their immunity. He got it in, killed twenty-four louse Dhaika special forces by himself, and had his final showdown with Timeless, sacrificing himself to push both of them into a pit of energy. The overwhelming damage was too much for Timeless’ regenerative capabilities, and he was finally dead. The weapon detonated minutes later, killing whos and lice alike, a storm of nuclear fire and disease spreading east. Myron found the scene, and escaped with Quicksilver, Orion’s knife (and his father’s before him).

Back at Sarengarth, the who fleet gathered to fight the tide of louse ships fleeing east, trying to escape the rolling tide of the Finality weapon’s destruction. They gathered allies, but Myron lamented that he was not as good at diplomacy as Orion had been. The final battle was over in hours. Then the nuclear tide hit Sarengarth, popping its shields, and forcing its inhabitants underground. The fallout would render the surface uninhabitable for seven years.

Part VII: Aftermath

Seven years later, Trielle, Aldrick Nauss, and Myron were still alive. Myron’s wife, Abby, had had a daughter, Hannah, who was seven now. So were Orion’s three children, Leo and Zoey, and Andromeda (though she was born a year later in a rare delayed pregnancy, and turned out to manifest the Chosen powers incredibly strongly as a result).

Myron, Trielle, Aldrick, and Abby left Sarengarth to head west, looking for a new place to settle. But the true reason for the journey, was Myron’s attempt to find a cure for the Dholeska virus. He knew it was an ancient disease, and that somewhere, in ruins almost fifty thousand years old, there might a solution.

When they returned from their long journey a month later, Sarengarth had been overrun by the Dholeska creatures. Trielle and Aldrick barely managed to rescue the children, before they had to flee Sarengarth.

After wandering for months, helping other fleets wage war on the lice, and seeing how barren the world was now, they eventually returned with a fleet and slowly cleared out the Dholeska, and retook Sarengarth.

Myron and the others continued their quest for a Dholeska cure, searching through ancient temples in many places. During one of their journeys, one of Timeless’ lieutenants, hunting Orion’s children, ambushed them and shot down Myron’s cruiser. Aldrick was badly wounded in the crash. A louse gunship circled the ruins, gunning down Trielle’s daughter Marie as she tried to escape. Aldrick and Trielle helped defend the wreckage from louse soldiers as they closed in; Aldrick, mortally wounded, covered the others’ escape, shooting Timeless’ lieutenant with his dying breaths.

Myron, Abby, Trielle, and the children trekked through the forest for several days before finding a who village where they chartered a journey home on a trade cruiser.

Back at Sarengarth, Myron went through some of the data they had found, and discovered an ancient medical facility. He and Trielle went there, fighting strange and horrifying creatures called xholokaths, and finding a cure inside the ancient lab. They brought it to Sarengarth, but it did not work, and Myron was left with a dead end.

Zoey contracted the Dholeska virus, and Trielle lost another of her daughters. Myron gave up on looking for a cure.

Meanwhile, whos from many nations gathered at Sarengarth, the one last place they could truly make a stand. The population had been diminished by the Omnicide, and entire cities and even nations migrated to Sarengarth.

The lice swarmed north, committing most of their remaining fleet and troops to the attack, against a battered and weary Sarengarth. A skygun neared completion at Balbonnar, to the south, capable of bombarding Sarengarth into submission. Myron and his fleet went to destroy it. Trielle died during the ground attack, shot dozens of times while defending the explosives that would destroy the tower.

A month later, another of Timeless’ lieutenants, named Relentless, led a huge fleet north to reinforce those attacking Sarengarth. Myron led much of the latent Sarengarth fleet south, and they battled furiously in Balbonnar, finally cornering the core of Relentless’ fleet near a superfortress. The ships clashed in the winter night, and Brie led her squad to destroy Relentless’ command cruisers with a nuclear missile. However, most of her squad was shot down, and her fighter was damaged. Unable to escape, she detonated the missile while it was still attached to her fighter, destroying most of the ships. A hollow victory won, Myron headed back to Sarengarth. The battle at Balbonnar proved a crushing defeat for the lice, who mostly fell back to the south to rebuild their forces. A period of relative peace came, though the louse threat still festered in the south.

Part VIII: Nackshaw

Ten years later, Leo and Andromeda were seventeen, and helping Myron attack the louse stronghold of Nackshaw. At last the whos were on the offensive, and had a chance of maybe, just maybe, winning the war.

Andromeda was a marksman of unsurpassed talent. She was also addicted to the drug Icridium, a mind-altering pill that who soldiers usually took before a “last stand’ against the lice. It would give them heightened reflexes and coordination, but at the cost of brain damage after the effects wore off. Less harmful versions of the drug existed, but they still weren’t healthy.

When Andromeda took Icridium she had vivid visions of the future, of a terrible ancient secret held within Nackshaw. Her lover, a man named Erco, provided her with the Icridium. Often, her brother would find her in her room, muttering under breath, occasionally flailing about in her visions. She believed that the Icridium enhanced her Chosen intuition, allowing her clairvoyant powers.

Abby had become an admiral, leading a fleet of her own among the Sarengarthians. Her and Myron led the fleets that attacked Nackshaw.

After months of siege and attacks by Leo’s fighter squad, the whos exposed the core support columns of Nackshaw. The whos pressed the advantage, and Leo and Andromeda battled with the lice on a special mission to plant explosives.

Nackshaw was crippled, and the whos celebrated their victory.

Since then, the story has progressed further, but I will leave it there for now.

I still continue this story in my head. I have begun writing it, as well as expanding the world with information and drawings of the ships, characters, creatures, weapons, and places in the story. In a strange way, this little childlike fantasy has grown into a sort of alter ego within me. It’s made my life feel a little more important, in its own strange way. And even when problems in life forced it away for the time, I always returned to it eventually. It keeps me alive somehow. I think the story of the Whos might continue for the rest of my life.

For more, check out these links:

Birth of a Louse Soldier

Drawings (pt. 1)

Drawings (pt. 2)