Happy Columbus Day, ! You have no idea how much I needed this day off from school.

Remember yesterday's entry? I said I was going to Michigan. Plans changed. I stayed right here. Had I gone on the voyage, I would have visited some small town...I forget exactly where. All I know is that it's a place I've never been to before. The reasons for the trip are not something I really want to discuss here.

Achin' to read something? Tell you what -- I'll post a hero story that I originally had to so for a school project a while back. I would have made it much longer, made it more detailed, and put in some dialogue, but the assignment asked for no more than 3-4 pages double-spaced. The purpose of this assignment was to write a story with a definite structure of that of a "hero story," and think I came up with a fairly interesting plot. Here it is (sorry in advance for the lack of creativity in the names):


The story of John Johnson takes place far into the future, a time when there will be no war or conflict between nations. And that isn’t because they all chose to maintain world peace – it’s because they were too busy fighting an enemy that couldn’t be destroyed with weapons. Over centuries of evolution, a super-virus developed and rapidly spread throughout a small part of the world. It was able to transfer itself through all animals, including humans. It made its victims very sick, and the most notable symptom was death. Even though mankind worked very hard together, nobody could find a cure or create a vaccine for the illness. Every last human in the plagued country had to constantly live in fear of the epidemic, and had to come up with his or her own ways of avoiding becoming sick. Those who didn’t died.

The leader of the country’s people and his wife had to flee to a remote island where there was no plague present so they could have their son born into safety. They regretted having a son before the plague had ended, but there was nothing they could do short of killing him. Much to their surprise and relief, their son, John Johnson, was diagnosed with immunity from the virus. They took him back home to the mainland and raised him in the national palace. John and his parents were a loving family, and John promised to himself that he wouldn’t let the virus affect them. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anything John could do to save them and they were killed by the virus when John was fourteen.

John was then taken back to the island where he was born, where other orphaned children were being kept safe from the plague. There he befriended Tom Thomson, who was an eighteen-year-old medical researcher and was trying to develop a vaccine for the virus. He had already seen his homeland overrun by the epidemic and survived, and he taught John everything he knew about avoiding infection. In a remarkable occurrence, John was able to return the favor and help Tom create the first ever vaccine against the virus by giving him a sample of his blood, which held the secret to his immunity. The two of them were able to vaccinate everyone on the island, and were hailed as heroes, but John was not a hero yet. He had never forgotten about his homeland where he grew up with his parents.

In of the confusion and lack of resources due to the spreading of the plague, the orphans and their caretakers were virtually stranded on the island, with no real transport or communication. They weren’t in any danger of starvation, but they had no way of taking the vaccine to the mainland. One day, an ambassador from the main continent came on a boat to the island to tell them that the orphans might never go home because the virus was too out of control. John was asked by Tom and the ambassador to take his vaccine to the mainland in the boat so the threat of the plague would finally end. John claimed that he had never experienced travel by sea boat, but the ambassador convinced him that he could brave the sea if he remembered that he could prevent other children from suffering the loss he did. John, Tom, and the ambassador were given food, fresh water, and a large supply of the vaccine for their journey over the sea.

The voyage to the mainland was in no way easy or safe. One day, clouds gathered over them and there was a great storm. The boat was being thrashed around and started to sink. Worse, John and his crew were having trouble keeping the barrels of the vaccine from floating away. The situation looked hopeless, until the ambassador suggested fastening the barrels of vaccine to the bottom of the boat, keeping the boat above the waves and the vaccine from floating away at the same time. They survived the storm intact, and traveled for a few more days until they reached the shore of the mainland.

They found that most people had been living in underground shelters to stay alive, as if the plague couldn’t find them. The surface wasn’t really the place to be at that time. John, Tom, and the ambassador started traveling towards the national palace in the heart of the country, from where they would launch their plan. Being immune, they were able to cross over land that had been contaminated with the plague and greatly shorten their journey. There were no barriers that stood in their way, except the one in John’s head. Eventually, they came upon the country cemetery (which just recently had six new lots of land added to it) where his parents were buried. John recalled that promise he made as a child, and how he couldn’t keep it. If his parents had been the most important thing in his life, and not the people they led, there couldn’t really be a reward for curing everyone. The ambassador understood this and told him that the citizens of the country still had a part of his parents in themselves. His parents didn’t lead the people for years without leaving a mark on them. John couldn’t do anything else but agree with his reasoning, and the three continued to the palace.

There were a lot of citizens who had come to the national palace to find a place to stay. It was crowded, but getting to their destination was not a problem. The three travelers planned to take the barrels of vaccine to the the fresh water source: the hub of all the pipes that supplied clean drinking water to the entire country. There they would dump the vaccine into the pipes, and anyone who drank the water around the country would be immunized. They opened one barrel, and dumped its contents into the pipes. They opened the second and did the same. Then they opened the last barrel and found it completely empty. It had leaked into the sea when they had crossed it. Two barrels would get too diluted in the water system and would not be as effective in curing the people. John asked for a barrel of water. He was given one, and then he willingly cut his palm to spill his blood into the water. When John was finished, the water turned pink, and was dumped into the pipe system like the other barrels. Finally, the threat of the plague was over.

Months later, after everyone was cured and peace came back to the country, John was made ruler just like his parents, and became well-known for his bravery and sacrifice. John was pleased with himself, that he honored his parents by saving the people. They celebrated even years after John saved everyone. John lived on to be the greatest leader they ever knew.