Hey, guys, this is the intro to my story, My City. It’s not the best, but I was trying to give some background. Katrina, my main character, is the one who’s writing. This will essentially be her memories on what happened to her, and I can’t say anymore.

So, without further ado…

I've never seen a forest.

Grass in between the cracks in the sidewalk is about the only green thing in the City. You see a lot of mold, too, in my district. I've seen a tree twice in my life – once with my mom when I was six and the same one ten years later, when I'd said my last goodbyes to that same woman.

The thing I remember most about that plant was the rough texture of the main part of it (the trunk, I think it's called). It was like nothing I'd felt before – not like the smooth city buildings, not like the perfectly-spaced grooves in the treads of my recycled sneaker soles. It unlike anything I'd ever dreamed before, but I've dreamed of it ever since.

Time was, trees were as common as gravel. But even as numerous as the trees were, nothing could be bigger than the human plague on the planet. Humans spread, and spread, and spread, until they threatened to consume the world: resources, animals, plants, and all. Some people saw what was happening and gave up on this world. They flew off to make a new society for themselves and swore that they'd never return.

Normally, no one would've given a lug nut what they did (people were all about freedom and privacy and stuff like that back then), but the three launches ate up the last of the Arabian oil supplies. The black gold that had once flowed so freely finally trickled to an end, just like the scientists had said it would. With the global depression that followed, mankind went hungry, thirsty, and broke. Once mighty nations fell to their knees when centuries-old debts were called in, and even the people who had money found that paper couldn't fill their stomachs on winter nights.

The ensuing fight over resources finally tested the nations beyond their limits of patience, and the Paper War, or WWIII, began in 2058. Of course, the teachers never called it the Paper War, but the stories about soldiers burning money to stay warm at night kinda stick with in a kid's head better than "World War III".

The teachers told us that when WWIII ended in 2060, all the countries which had fought in the war were done. The war had drained the last of their finances and fighting spirits. They were reduced to imaginary lines marking boundaries in the now planet-wide city. The old names were never used, except maybe in documents no one bothered to read (if they could) and maps people had long since stopped drawing.

That was as much as our brainwashed teachers in the school room ever bothered to tell us; that was all they'd been taught, and so that was all they knew. What they didn't know was what happened afterward. It's common knowledge on the streets of the City what really happened once an end to the Paper War was in sight. A group of businessmen, who had managed to hold on to a little bit of their money through the hard years following the Launch, got their hands on some blueprints. What exactly those plans were, how they got them, no one can really say. All we know is, once WWIII was over, a new governing body was in place: the Council.

Not many people liked the Council at first; sparks, not many people even wanted to tolerate them. So a bunch of folks got together and stormed into their Headquarters in Atlantic District. They thought that they'd be easy to get rid of, being businessmen and all.

They were wrong.

Those plans the Council had gotten their grimy little fingers on? They were designs for robots. Warrior ‘bots. The common theory is, once the governments in the Paper War saw they had no more people to send out to die, they decided to modify the plans for the maid ‘bots and companion ‘bots and turn them into metal-hearted killing machines. Now the Council had an entire army of these ‘bots, and they planned to use them.

That was nigh on thirty years ago now. In the year 2091, mankind had settled into its role as factory workers and technicians (for the lucky ones) and beggars on the streets (for everyone else). However, not everyone was content to be a second-class citizen on their own planet. Not everyone wanted to be a slave to the Council forever. Some people had plotted for decades to try to overthrow the Council one last time. Some people had decided that the City’s time for freedom had come once again.

Those "some people"? They would be me and mine.

My name is Katrina Parks, and this is how we saved the world.